The year 2004 had good productivity, with 2.8 poults observed per hen and those male poults would have been 3-year-old gobblers in spring of 2007. Hunters may have killed a disproportionate number of 3-year-olds and as a result dipped into their future capital for the 2008 season by doing so because of the poor recruitment in 2005. The year 2003 was the poorest recruitment year ever recorded at 1.6 poults per hen and the male poults would have been 4-year-old gobblers in spring of 2007. Not many gobblers survive much longer than age 4.

That leaves the newer areas of the turkey restoration project supporting higher harvest rates and one defining factor is probably better weather in those counties. The newer counties with escalating harvests are along the coast or at the edge of the Piedmont and Coastal Plain and are definitely establishing a trend. Brood counts have been slightly higher in the warmer counties, as the effects of cold, rainy and even snowy springs in counties at the higher elevations have limited their turkey reproduction.

There is a winter season conducted in 10 traditional turkey counties and hunters may question whether this special season is having an adverse effect.

However, there are two answers to this question: No and no. First, the fall season harvest numbers are so low as to become statistically insignificant. Second, it’s not a traditional fall or winter season, because the harvest is skewed toward gobblers, whereas traditional late-season hunts in other states have harvests consisting mostly of hens. The winter season turkey harvest was 181 in 2004, 151 in 2005, 174 in 2006 and 130 in 2007. The proportion of gobblers is 55 percent in each of those years. Even in the high-harvest counties of Ashe and Alleghany, the total winter harvest was only 17 and 19 turkeys, respectively.

“It’s a very small number of birds and the highest percentage are males,” Sawyer said. “It means a county that’s’ been killing 200 to 300 gobblers per year is killing 10 gobblers three months early. It’s difficult to believe that’s affecting recruitment. The amount of concern depends on your objectives for turkey management. If your priority is a quality spring harvest, then you certainly have to keep a close watch on your winter harvest.” North Carolina hunters were not alone in suffering through these years of poor reproduction. Other states in the same latitude as North Carolina, such as Arkansas, also experienced a decline in turkey reproduction and survival.

The most likely causes of poor wild turkey reproduction in the southern and central states are rainy weather and cool temperatures throughout the nesting and brood-rearing periods, or worse, during both periods of the spring and summer months. Hunters with good memories can certainly remember these conditions occurring during the spring and summer of the last few years. But weather conditions during the spring turkey-hunting season can also affect the number of turkeys taken home by hunters because bad weather constricts hunter effort and hunter success rates.

“Weather factors in spring of 2007 may have also contributed to the year’s lower harvest,” Sawyer said. “We definitely had some poor hunting conditions with cool temperatures and extremely high winds in the early part of the season. One day during the first week of the season, WRC Section Manager Perry Sumner said, ‘Any gobbler attempting to puff out his feathers and strut today will just get blown away and go rolling across the field like a tumbleweed.’ ”

Another observation that state biologists use is the ratio of gobblers per hen. During the summer of 2006, this ratio was 0.41 gobblers per hen, the lowest gobbler per hen ratio in four years. A good ratio is .50 gobbler per hen or greater. This count is a good indicator of how many adult gobblers actually survived the hunting season. Therefore, it also probably translates into a reduced number of 2-year-old gobblers for the 2008 hunting season.