Decline of wild turkey focus of meet

Workshop reveals several states facing issue of decreasing harvests

Harvest of wild turkeys in Arkansas during the 16-day season in April has continued in the declining direction seen for the last 14 years.

The 7,885 birds harvested by hunters was a concerning decline from the 10,000-plus wild turkey harvest in 2017.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission hosted the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Southeast Wild Turkey Workshop at DeGray Lake Resort State Park recently to share information and learn what 15 other states are experiencing.

State wildlife biologists learned Arkansas is not alone when it comes to concern for a decline in the turkey harvest.

“Several other states are seeing the exact same issue that Arkansas has seen for the last seven to 10 years,” said Jason Honey, turkey program coordinator for Arkansas Game and Fish.

Joy Sweeney, the turkey program coordinator for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, who attended the conference, said Tennessee has seen a fall-off as well.

The two days of presentations and discussion brought together nearly 100 biologists, turkey program leaders and wildlife agency administrators to share ideas and concerns about what is happening with wild turkeys.

Brad Carner, Arkansas Game and Fish wildlife division chief, shared with the group the issues Arkansas has seen the last two decades. He noted even when Arkansas hunters were harvesting a modern-day high 20,000-plus turkeys in 2003, data was showing the average number of poults per hen was in decline statewide.

Arkansas began addressing an anticipated drop in future harvests because of the expected drop in overall production of turkeys in succeeding years after the high harvest of 2003.

Dr. Mike Chamberlain, one of the region’s leading turkey research biologists from the University of Georgia, said he will be investigating the harvest as it relates to overall turkey populations.

The workshop revealed some telling numbers. Missouri harvests the most birds in the region, averaging 35,000 annually, but has seen a gradual decline much like Arkansas.

West Tennessee’s harvest has been increasing, compared with the rest of the state, with substantial numbers of birds in a quadrant between the Tennessee cities of Jackson and Nashville. Tennessee manages turkeys by dividing the state into four sections. The quadrant closest to Arkansas is in decline. Mississippi harvest numbers appear to move up and down on a two to three year cycle, reports show.

East Texas has closed multiple counties for turkey hunting and is in a major restocking effort.

The gist of the message at the workshop, Honey said, was finding a balance of resource management and hunter satisfaction.

“We as biologists, and being hunters, and the hunters out there are both frustrated at the situation,” he said.

To pinpoint the exact cause of the decline across the Southeast requires research that takes several years. The workshop discussions revealed that one downfall to current research techniques is that each state has been collecting data differently.

It was decided at DeGray that researchers would forward their information into one central hub to be shared so “we can effectively learn from the information that’s been collected,” Honey said.

Problems with wild turkey production and harvest vary from state to state. But, “every biologist in the room was concerned about what was going on,” Honey said.