12/6/07
Wild turkey reproduction poor in S.C. – again
By Terry Madewell

Turkey hunters in Clarendon County, as well as the entire state, will likely have to work harder to get a gobbler in the spring 2008 turkey hunting season.

Based on data released by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR), the overall production of poults was down again in 2007.

The 2008 turkey hunting season will be the first time in many years that South Carolina turkey hunters have entered a season with three consecutive poor recruitment seasons. Not only will there be fewer two- and three-year-old gobblers in the woods, there will be noticeably fewer jakes as well.

This marks the third straight year that recruitment of wild turkeys into the statewide turkey flock has been poor. This information is based on data from the 2007 Summer Turkey Brood Survey conducted by the agency.

Charles Ruth is the SCDNR Deer and Turkey Project Supervisor who oversees the brood survey project. Ruth’s analysis of the 2007 reproduction/recruitment season is bad news for turkey hunters.

“Every year since the early 1980s the SCDNR conducts the survey to estimate reproduction and recruitment of turkeys in South Carolina,” Ruth said. “The survey involves agency wildlife biologists, technicians and conservation officers, as well as many volunteers from other natural resource agencies and the general public.

“As was the case for the previous two years, it appears that wild turkey reproduction was poor to very poor in most regions of the state,” he said. “Overall, the statewide projection would be very poor based on the data.”

TERRY MADEWELL/Manning Times

Turkey hunters may have to work harder for success during the 2008 turkey hunting season because of poor reproduction success for the prevous three seasons.

Ruth explained that while wild turkeys typically nest during April and May in South Carolina, the survey does not take place until late summer.

“By waiting until the late summer to conduct the survey, the survey documents poults that actually survived and entered the population going into the fall,” Ruth said. “Average brood size was good in 2007 with hens averaging 3.6 poults. But that is based on hens observed with poults. The big issue this season is the extraordinarily high number of hens with no poults at all. In 2007, 58 percent of all the hens observed had no poults. When all of this is calculated it leads to a total recruitment ratio of 1.5. Recruitment ratio is a measure of young entering the population based on the number of hens in the population. Both of these statistics, hens without poults and the overall recruitment ratio, were the worst that have even been recorded since the surveys began.”

In Clarendon County, 57 percent of all hens were noted without poults, very close to the statewide average.

Ruth said that weather conditions often play a big role in turkey populations.

“In the Southeast, rainfall coupled with cool temperatures during the spring nesting and brood-rearing season can lead to poor reproductive success,” he said. “However, that does not seem to be the case this spring. Also, many hunters seem to be concerned that the record cold snap that occurred this spring caused problems. But that is highly unlikely. Research in states that frequently have freezing temperatures during the wild turkey nesting season did not find cold temperatures alone to be a big cause of mortality. Chilling of poults associated with wetting appears to be more important. Additionally, the timing of our late freeze was too early in the reproductive season to cause a significant problem.”

Ruth said that one consideration is that the state is in the midst of an extreme drought and although dry conditions are typically good for turkey reproduction, there is likely a limit to what constitutes dry in term of being beneficial to turkeys.

“Under the conditions that much of the state experienced this summer, the production of seeds and insects could have been limited, as could the vegetative growth that is important to brood-rearing cover,” Ruth said. “Finally, perhaps we have reached a point in time where the relationship between the turkey population and habitat is simply not as good as it was when turkey populations were expanding across the state. We have seen an increase in pine plantation habitat that is greater than 10 years old. This type of habitat simply does not have high productivity and it may be playing a role in turkey reproduction.”

What does poor reproduction by turkeys for three consecutive years mean for the spring turkey hunter?

“With poor reproduction the last three years, the number of mature gobblers available during the spring of 2007 will likely be low across most of the state,” Ruth said. “Reproduction was good in 2004, but that was the last good recruitment season. Not only is the number of adult gobblers expected to be down in 2008, the survey results indicate that the number of jakes will be low as well. This is significant because jakes can make up 25 percent of the spring harvest following years of good reproduction. In 2007, for example, only 14.1 percent of the harvest was jakes.

“Even though many spring turkey hunters prefer to harvest only mature gobblers or long beards, jakes do typically make up a significant portion of the harvest following years of good reproduction,” Ruth said. “Nonetheless, a decrease in the total turkey harvest is typically seen anytime there is poor reproduction the previous year. This decrease in harvest is typically the result of the low availability of jakes.”

According to Ruth, the bottom line is that it will likely take a couple of years of better reproduction to overcome the poor reproduction during the last three years.

Ruth said he doesn’t expect a disastrous hunting season in 2008. He estimates about a five percent reduction in total harvest based on the poor recruitment seasons. In Clarendon County for the 2007 season there were 500 turkey hunters who harvested a total of 261 gobblers.

“The 2007 total turkey harvest estimate was 19,289 gobblers,” Ruth said. “Overall, this is a 4.2 percent decrease from the 2006 harvest. I think we’ll have fewer birds harvested in 2008 than in 2007, but there are still a moderate number of gobblers in the woods.”

He added that hunter effort may have an even larger influence on success than normal for the next season. Pre-season scouting may play a critical role in hunter success in 2008 because of fewer gobblers. It’s never too early to start scouting places for the spring season.