Post by Woody Williams on May 11, 2008 20:16:57 GMT -5
2008 Tennessee Turkey Harvest
Bad weather causes reduction in turkey harvest past two years
By Bob Hodge (Contact)
!
The state's declining turkey harvest shouldn't be blamed on bad biology or bad hunters. Blame it on bad weather.
Unless hunters finish with a big push the harvest will have gone down in Tennessee for two consecutive years. Since the record of 35,839 turkeys bagged was set in 2006, the harvest has fallen to 31,253 in 2007 and was 28,043 for 2008 as of Friday.
The spring season closes 30 minutes after sundown today.
Gray Anderson, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency'sturkey project coordinator, believes this spring will fall short of last spring.
"It's going to be close, but it's probably not going to get there," Anderson said. "It's the first time ever to have two consecutive years of decline in the turkey harvest."
It's a situation that hasn't gone unnoticed by hunters, who have several different theories why fewer turkeys are being carried out of the woods.
Some hunters believe the four-bird bag limit has put too much pressure on turkey populations. Some think fall hunting, when hens are legal to shoot, is the cause. Still others think last year's unusually cold April led to poor reproduction in the spring of 2007.
Anderson says the data points to something else.
The 2007 decline? It was the weather.
"After the record-setting year in 2006 everybody was complaining (in 2007) because we had an early spring and everything was greened up," he said. "But that first weekend we were 400 to 500 birds up on the 2006 season, then we had the weather shift."
Temperatures were 17 degrees above normal for the opening weekend of 2007. By the second weekend they were 17 degrees below normal.
The 34-degree swing might not have affected the turkeys, but it affected the turkey hunters.
"There was no 'weekend effect' the second weekend of last year," Anderson said.
The weekend effect is the spike in the harvest numbers seen on weekends. Daily harvest totals vary little during the week, then go up on Saturday and Sunday when most turkey hunters are off work.
"Last year the second weekend of the season looked like a Wednesday," Anderson said. "Then the next weekend temperatures were 12 degrees below normal. We lost about 4,000 birds compared to the 2006 harvest during those two weekends and we never made it up."
After 10 days of hunting this spring the total bag was about 5,000 turkeys behind the 2006 number.
Did last year's cold snap freeze the eggs? Did last year's drought kill off too many poults?
Anderson said it was the weather again.
"Those first 10 days we're having rain blowing sideways, high winds and generally horrible weather," he said. "If you look at the data, after the first 10 days we are just about dead on with the 2006 totals.
"You see the same thing during deer season. If you have a rainy weekend the opening of gun season the totals are off almost immediately."
Anderson said TWRA's data points to a healthy turkey population.
Last summer's surveys found 4.7 poults per brood, which is exactly the state's long-term average and well above the 2.8 poults per brood needed to simply sustain turkey populations.
Bad reproduction in 2007 would also lead to fewer jakes being shot in 2008, but so far this season the jake harvest is slightly above average.
"It looks like productivity was right on," Anderson said. "That gives me a reasonable level of confidence things didn't go as haywire as I expected because of the cold weather last April."
Anderson is putting the finishing touches on a report he calls his "Turkey Manifesto" that explains why the harvest has been down. The chart may be posted on some websites, but for all the graphs and curves and numbers, he said the analysis boils down to nothing more than hunters being either too cold or too wet.
"A lot of hunters just say they are staying home," he said.
Bad weather causes reduction in turkey harvest past two years
By Bob Hodge (Contact)
!
The state's declining turkey harvest shouldn't be blamed on bad biology or bad hunters. Blame it on bad weather.
Unless hunters finish with a big push the harvest will have gone down in Tennessee for two consecutive years. Since the record of 35,839 turkeys bagged was set in 2006, the harvest has fallen to 31,253 in 2007 and was 28,043 for 2008 as of Friday.
The spring season closes 30 minutes after sundown today.
Gray Anderson, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency'sturkey project coordinator, believes this spring will fall short of last spring.
"It's going to be close, but it's probably not going to get there," Anderson said. "It's the first time ever to have two consecutive years of decline in the turkey harvest."
It's a situation that hasn't gone unnoticed by hunters, who have several different theories why fewer turkeys are being carried out of the woods.
Some hunters believe the four-bird bag limit has put too much pressure on turkey populations. Some think fall hunting, when hens are legal to shoot, is the cause. Still others think last year's unusually cold April led to poor reproduction in the spring of 2007.
Anderson says the data points to something else.
The 2007 decline? It was the weather.
"After the record-setting year in 2006 everybody was complaining (in 2007) because we had an early spring and everything was greened up," he said. "But that first weekend we were 400 to 500 birds up on the 2006 season, then we had the weather shift."
Temperatures were 17 degrees above normal for the opening weekend of 2007. By the second weekend they were 17 degrees below normal.
The 34-degree swing might not have affected the turkeys, but it affected the turkey hunters.
"There was no 'weekend effect' the second weekend of last year," Anderson said.
The weekend effect is the spike in the harvest numbers seen on weekends. Daily harvest totals vary little during the week, then go up on Saturday and Sunday when most turkey hunters are off work.
"Last year the second weekend of the season looked like a Wednesday," Anderson said. "Then the next weekend temperatures were 12 degrees below normal. We lost about 4,000 birds compared to the 2006 harvest during those two weekends and we never made it up."
After 10 days of hunting this spring the total bag was about 5,000 turkeys behind the 2006 number.
Did last year's cold snap freeze the eggs? Did last year's drought kill off too many poults?
Anderson said it was the weather again.
"Those first 10 days we're having rain blowing sideways, high winds and generally horrible weather," he said. "If you look at the data, after the first 10 days we are just about dead on with the 2006 totals.
"You see the same thing during deer season. If you have a rainy weekend the opening of gun season the totals are off almost immediately."
Anderson said TWRA's data points to a healthy turkey population.
Last summer's surveys found 4.7 poults per brood, which is exactly the state's long-term average and well above the 2.8 poults per brood needed to simply sustain turkey populations.
Bad reproduction in 2007 would also lead to fewer jakes being shot in 2008, but so far this season the jake harvest is slightly above average.
"It looks like productivity was right on," Anderson said. "That gives me a reasonable level of confidence things didn't go as haywire as I expected because of the cold weather last April."
Anderson is putting the finishing touches on a report he calls his "Turkey Manifesto" that explains why the harvest has been down. The chart may be posted on some websites, but for all the graphs and curves and numbers, he said the analysis boils down to nothing more than hunters being either too cold or too wet.
"A lot of hunters just say they are staying home," he said.
