Friday, March 23, 2007
Tracking gobblers
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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PEMBROKE -- As Marvin Gautier huddled in his tiny blind high on the Giles County hillside, he waited for dawn and hoped this would be his day to nail a big gobbler.
For the past few days, he had carefully baited this site with corn, running small trails of kernels into a large spread in the middle of this small opening over which he now sat, watching.
Had the turkeys found his bait pile?
Would they come in early?
Or would he be here all day?
The answer came soon after first light, when the crunching of leaves on the forest floor signaled the approach of turkeys. Seven hens walked toward the bait pile, some passing just a few feet from Gautier's blind.
And there was the gobbler.
For an hour, it strutted in the distance before finally coming into range.
Boom!
Four large projectiles launched over the turkeys' heads, pulling behind them a large net.
Gautier had his gobbler, along with three hens.
Fifteen minutes later the big turkey was running through woods, a special electronic transmitter collar around its neck.
"That is the most satisfying part," said Gautier, smiling broadly as the gobbler fled. "I'd rather do this than hunt."
It's something he and other technicians and biologists with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries have been doing quite a bit for the past three years as part of a special gobbler tracking project the agency is conducting.
The study, which is focusing on birds in both Western and Eastern Virginia, primarily focuses on tracking survival rates of adult gobblers, birds that are at least 2 years old.
Along with survival rates, the study is allowing scientists to examine topics that have long been the source of hunter discussions and conjecture, such as when adult male turkeys tend to gobble the most, and the effects of spooking birds from roosting areas.
"The management stuff has been the justification for the study," said Gary Norman, who manages Virginia's forest game bird programs. "But the added benefit is the stuff that we generally haven't been able to provide in the past."
Survival rate information can help shape management strategies for turkeys, Norman said.
"We're under constant pressure to exert more pressure on gobblers," Norman pointed out.
For example, some hunters want to start the spring season earlier or make all-day hunting legal during the entire season.
Norman wants to be able to address such requests with specific data supporting his staff's stance.
The study costs about $60,000 a year, of which about 20 percent is covered by a grant from the National Wild Turkey Federation.
According to preliminary data, Virginia hunters are putting the hammer down on adult gobblers at a relatively high rate.
In the first year of the study nearly half of the tagged adult gobblers were killed by a hunter during the spring season. Last year the rate was 30 percent.
Some juvenile males have been tagged, too, but almost all have survived the hunting season.
The survival rate influences hunter satisfaction, Norman believes. While killing a turkey is part of what makes for a satisfying and successful hunt, hearing gobblers and just getting a chance to interact with the birds is also important.
"I think we can translate a survival rate into the likelihood of hunters hearing birds, how many birds they hear and the how likely they are to harvest a bird," Norman said.
So it's best for hunters to have some success, but not too much success.
"If the harvest rate is low," Norman said, "I think the quality indices will be higher."
The team traps the birds in late winter, and outfits the turkeys with leg bands and the special collars, which cost about $800 each.
The collars not only emit a signal to allow the bird to be tracked with telemetry gear, but the past two years the devices also have recorded gobbling activity.
The transmitters' batteries last about 60 days, so they are programmed to start recording gobbling data about April 1.
The gobbling data will be analyzed in an effort to determine if factors such as the daylight hours, weather and hunter pressure can affect gobbling rates.
The scientists have also conducted some other experiments, such as flushing gobblers off their roosts to examine how far those birds go relative to gobblers that are not disturbed.
"The birds we flushed ranged only a little bit father than the control group," said Norman, a statement that may please some hunters who have believed that flushing a roosted gobbler is an unforgivable sin.
In general, the gobblers had large ranges.
"We saw birds move 212 to 3 air miles between roost sites," Norman said. "On average there were 1,000 meters between roost sites."
The flushing experiment was conducted prior to hunting season, so it's possible gobblers become more oriented to smaller areas as spring progresses, Norman said.
Hunters who kill a collared bird are asked to call a number on the tag. In exchange they get a subscription to Virginia Wildlife magazine -- a $12.95 value. That's a modest reward, but every transmitter has been returned so far. Norman believes the perfect compliance is due in part because hunters are so enthusiastic about wild turkeys.
"I think hunters are just curious," he said.
When the study concludes, those hunters should have even more answers about the notoriously difficult-to-hunt bird so many passionately pursue each April and May.
