Population decline could lead to grouse-hunting ban
Typically, hunting proposals travel a path from acceptance to implementation that is smooth, straight and unencumbered. This year’s trail comes with a twist.
Hunting proposals for 2023-24 put forth by the Ohio Division of Wildlife in January are on their way to what ordinarily would be approval in April, but the Ohio Wildlife Council has been suggesting a few of those proposals need another look.
As part of an eight-member citizens oversight committee, council members are appointed by the governor to fouryear terms and approved by the Senate.
Among council duties, the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) states, is to “investigate, consider, and make recommendations in all matters pertaining to the protection, preservation, propagation, possession, and management of wild animals throughout the state.”
The ORC, then, could be interpreted as encouraging activism by its members, who serve without pay. In practice, however, council routinely has acted as a pro forma panel that grants approval to what the division proposes.
In play is whether the council is morphing into a role different from the part played by councils past.
Deference to division wishes does make sense. Division biologists, many holding doctorates and other advanced degrees, bring a high level of expertise to the proposals they make on wildlife management.
On the other hand, public agencies can, and sometimes should, plot courses based more than just the objective parsing of numbers. The question becomes whose decisions, based on what knowledge and preferences, will prevail.
One prickly item this year involves ruffed grouse, once numerous in southeastern Ohio but these days difficult to find, let alone hunt. The other covers wild turkeys, which flourished for years after reintroduction through wildlife division efforts but more recently have been in a protracted population slump.
What the division has proposed for grouse is the same as last year: a daily bag limit of one with a statewide season starting the second Saturday in October and running through the Sunday after Thanksgiving on public land and through Jan. 1 on private land.
Not many years ago, grouse season ran through the end of February. Limits and season length have been tightened over time as numbers declined.
Columbus resident Tom Vorisek counts as one council member who says Ohio doesn’t need to continue grouse hunting, at least for now.
“I don’t think we should shoot any more grouse until we find out why they’re disappearing,” he said.
Grouse are already listed as a “species of concern” in Ohio, one downgrade away from threatened. Should Ohio grouse be listed as threatened, as they now are in Indiana, hunting for them would no longer be permitted.
As for wild turkey proposals, Vorisek and at least a few other council members agree that the fall hunt – which is open in many, but not all, counties – should be restricted to male birds. Slightly fewer than 500 beardless birds were checked last fall, reducing the potential nesting stock going into spring.
Given low wild turkey numbers, hens ought to remain unmolested by hunters year-round, Vorisek said.
outdoors@dispatch.com