Rappahannock turkey harvest down a tad

While Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) says a harvest of 17,929 wild turkeys during the 2019 spring gobbler season was 11 percent higher than last year’s harvest, Rappahannock County saw a slight decrease.

Rappahannock hunters took 94 birds this spring — ten below the 104 harvested in 2018. There were 116 turkeys taken in Rappahannock in 2017, 109 in 2016, and 128 in 2015. The five year average for bagged turkeys in Rappahannock is 110.

Statewide, the 2019 Youth and Apprentice weekend harvest was 623 birds — higher than 2018 (465), but similar to the 2017 harvest of 627 birds.

DGIF Turkey Biologist Gary Norman says the harvest was encouraging because reproduction was low in recent years, which would have predicted fewer 2 and 3 year old birds. These age classes typically comprise the majority of the harvest and they normally gobble a lot, which is important to spring hunters.

Since younger gobblers are typically not with hens as much as dominant older birds, they are more likely to respond to hunters’ calls.

“We’ve experienced a long string of years with poor reproduction; we’re overdue [for] a good hatch like the one we experienced in 2011,” Norman says. “Unfortunately, production in 2018 was particularly low, so hunters will be facing a tough year in 2020.”

More birds were harvested in counties east of the Blue Ridge (12,348, 69 percent) than west of the Blue Ridge Mountains (5,581, 31 percent).

The North Piedmont and Tidewater Regions posted significant increases in 2019 (25 percent and 23 percent, respectively). A moderate increase (9 percent) was seen in the South Piedmont Region. The North Mountain Region harvest was identical to 2018, while the Southwest Mountain Region declined 3 percent.

The highest harvests were reported in Bedford County with 533 birds, Franklin County with 466 birds and Southampton County with 441.

“Annual changes in harvests are driven by a number of factors like turkey population size, weather, and hunter participation rates,” says Norman. “Long-term harvest trends are indeed more important than annual harvest changes.”