Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Electronic stats up for gobbler hunters
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Based on the volume of complaining I heard from spring gobbler hunters throughout much of April, it seemed likely the total kill was going to be dismal.
This is why it's never a good idea to base hunting season prognostications on anecdotal evidence.
When the season ended a couple of weeks ago, turkey kill numbers gathered through the electronic checking system were 18 percent higher than the same figure after the 2008 season.
This season hunters checked 8,241 birds over the phone or Internet, compared to 6,987 last year.
Now, that doesn't mean the kill was up 18 percent.
That's because the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries accepted spring gobbler check-ins not only by phone and Internet, but also allowed hunters to check their birds in person at designated checking stations.
This was the final spring season hunters will have that in-person option. The department's board recently voted to record turkey kill numbers only through electronic checking starting next spring.
The percentage of hunters using electronic checking has steadily climbed since the program was started. Last year, about 47 percent of spring gobblers were checked electronically.
It stands to reason that the percentage of electronic checks increased this spring, too.
Was it up the roughly 3 percent it's climbed annually in recent years?
Or did it climb less, or even fall, because some hunters wanted to personally check a bird one final time?
Or did it jump more because hunters knew in-person checking was ending and figured they might as well get used to the new system?
We won't know until the results from the check station booklets are manually tabulated, something that hasn't been getting done until deep into summer.
Biologist Gary Norman, who oversees the state's turkey program, said he expects the kill numbers to show notable regional trends, with significant jumps in some areas, and drops in other areas.
For example, turkey populations seem to be struggling in the state's Northern Piedmont region, but doing well in the Southern Piedmont.
"I have no good explanation," Norman said. "But there's something going on there and I'd like to figure out what it is."
Norman and his team will be looking for answers to that question and more as they take an in-depth look at turkey related data as they intensely work on a new wild turkey management plan that it plans to have in place by 2010.
Fewer stripers going in Smith Mountain Lake
Concerned about the "red flags" he sees regarding the striper fishery at Smith Mountain Lake, fisheries biologist Dan Wilson has made the call to reduce the number of fingerling stripers stocked in the lake this spring.
This year the lake will get 250,000 baby stripers.
The baseline number is 350,000, but the lake has gotten as many as 450,000 striper fingerlings in recent years.
Wilson, who oversees the lake's fishery, said two factors were of concern to him.
This winter brought a significant kill of threadfin shad, a forage fish that had been abundant.
Also, Wilson said he has found that striper growth rates are slowing down.
The conditions are similar to what the lake experienced in the years leading up to a mysterious striper kill in 2003 that all but wiped out the lake's larger stripers.
At the time of the kill the lake's stripers were heavily afflicted with copepod parasites in their mouths and gills. Those parasites typically aren't fatal, so scientists worried that other contributors, possibly including overcrowding and a forage shortage, may have compounded to kill the fish.
"I'm not wanting to wait three or four years to see if the same thing happens," Wilson said.
The lake's striper population has rebounded nicely. While large fish are not as common as they were prior to the kill, the lake has been producing an increasing number of 20-pound-plus fish.
This year's reduced stocking doesn't represent a new direction, Wilson added.
"It's going to go up and down," he said.
Long wait for spring squirrel changes
Of the hunting regulations changes recently adopted by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the one that will keep hunters waiting the longest is the expansion of the spring squirrel season.
The change will increase the number of public wildlife management areas where spring squirrel hunting is allowed, and also open the season on private land.
But the changes don't take effect until next June.
For this season, which opened Saturday and runs through June 20, hunters are still restricted to 17 designated wildlife management areas.
River Renaissance draws big crowd
The Float Fishermen of Virginia's first Roanoke River Renaissance was a hit.
Ken Ingram, organizer of Saturday's low key float, said the event drew about 100 paddlers.
The river was rolling, especially early in the day, when paddlers made the trip in about 45 minutes. But there were no safety issues.
Ingram said the group is already working on plans for a sequel next year.
