Photo by Mike Marsh.

Like a hunter hiding behind a camouflaged head net, the face of turkey hunting in North Carolina is becoming more difficult to identify. Where once biologists and hunters could reliably name which counties were likely to produce the best chances for bagging a big gobbler, the entire complexion of turkey hunting has changed. There are several factors at work and biologists are still puzzled about exactly what is going on with turkeys and turkey hunters. However, they can make some educated guesses.

With the recent retirement of long-time North Carolina Wildlife Commission turkey biologist Mike Seamster, that role is being temporarily filled by David Sawyer, the Surveys and Research Program Coordinator. Since there is a short-staffing situation in the absence of Seamster, Sawyer had not yet had time to thoroughly analyze the summer brood survey from 2007. However, he could still provide an analysis and some predictions for the 2008 turkey-hunting season based on a preliminary look at the data, as well as historical harvest and reproduction figures.

“The most interesting thing we’re seeing is that some of our more traditional counties in the upper Piedmont and mountains have dropped some in terms of turkey harvest, while some of the coastal counties are beginning to experience an increase in harvest,” Sawyer said. “It’s hard to know for sure exactly what’s going on because we don’t know the extent of hunter effort in those counties. But as turkeys are becoming more abundant in these non-traditional turkey-hunting areas, people may not be traveling as far to hunt them. The same thing happened with deer hunting as the deer herd expanded. While it can’t be proved that’s what is going on, I expect it is. Turkey harvests in northern mountain counties, such as Ashe and Alleghany, are down. But the (statewide) 2007 turkey harvest was still the second highest on record.”

While there were steep declines in many of the traditional counties, other counties had sharp increases in harvest numbers to offset them. These increases may also be attributed to an expanding turkey population, despite what brood surveys count in the poults-per-hen category.

“It’s a numbers game,” Sawyer said. “You may have fewer hens seen without poults or you may count fewer poults per hen. But if you have a lot of hens, reproduction and recruitment can still occur at a high level.”

The turkey population is still expanding and the last estimate was 150,000 turkeys in North Carolina. However, even that’s a big assumption, since there’s no way to really count the number of Tar Heel turkeys.

“Our biggest concern is with the rapid development that is going on all across the state,” Sawyer said. “Turkeys do well in close proximity to humans, but there’s a lot of land that is good turkey habitat being transformed into subdivisions.”

Eventually, turkeys will occupy the state’s available turkey habitat and the population will stop growing. However, there are other reasons limiting harvest and weather seems to be the biggest factor of all. High driving costs may keep hunters closer to home as new hunting opportunities arise in their back yards. But Mother Nature trumps economics when it comes to actually producing those new opportunities.