JEFFERSON CITY – Hunters checked nearly 45,000 turkeys during the three-week spring turkey season. Although that number still is impressive by most states’ standards, weather conspired to keep the spring turkey harvest well below last year’s figure.
Hunters shot 44,949 turkeys during the regular spring turkey season April 16 through May 6. Last year’s figure was 51,018.
When combined with the harvest during the youth season March 31 and April 1, the 2007 spring turkey harvest is 48,476. That is an 11 percent decrease from last year’s figure of 54,712. The record spring harvest occurred in 2004, when hunters killed 60,744 turkeys in the youth and regular seasons combined.
This year’s top harvest counties were Franklin, with 880 turkeys checked, Texas with 791 and Callaway with 734. Regional harvest totals were: central, 6,904; northeast, 6,612; northwest, 6,602, southwest, 6,163; Kansas City, 5,654; Ozark, 5,470; southeast, 4,121; and St. Louis, 3,423. Last year, Texas County placed first.
Juvenile male turkeys made up approximately 22 percent of this year’s spring turkey season harvest. Missouri’s overall turkey hunting success rate was approximately 33 percent. However the actual proportion of hunters who filled tags is slightly lower than one in three, because some hunters killed two gobblers.
Jeff Beringer, a resource scientist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, said weather and a poor hatch two years ago are to blame for this year’s harvest dip. The most immediate effect was from record-breaking hot and cold weather days apart in late March and early April.
Unseasonably warm weather throughout March and the first three days of April pushed turkey nesting ahead of normal. Beringer said some hens already had laid half their eggs by April 4, when temperatures plummeted into the 20s and teens at night several nights in a row.
“That extended spell of extremely cold weather hit turkeys just like it did mushrooms,” said Beringer, referring to this year’s disappointing crop of morel mushrooms. “Spring follows a regular progression. Turkey breeding was progressing just fine but the extreme cold temperatures disrupted that progression.”
Within days, turkey hens that had been laying eggs were back to wintertime behavior patterns. Beringer said volunteer observers in a study of turkey gobbling behavior sent in multiple reports of hens roaming the landscape with gobblers in late April, rather than sitting on nests full of eggs. That meant that male turkeys didn’t have to gobble as much to attract hens, which made them much less likely to respond to hunters’ calls.
Beringer summed the situation up, saying, “It was a problematic season for hunters.”
Making the season even more vexing for hunters was the fact that turkey nesting success has been substantially below average two of the past three years. That was the result of cold, wet weather during the time when hens were incubating eggs and caring for tiny hatchlings that were not yet protected by feathers. The hatch was particularly disappointing in 2005, when observers reported the second-lowest number of poults – young turkeys – since the conservation department began keeping records.
The poor hatch in 2005 was especially noticeable to hunters this year, because 2-year-old male turkeys are the most vocal. “It is much harder to hunt birds that don’t give away their location by gobbling,” said Beringer.
Turkeys’ weather woes do not seem to be over yet. In addition to the possibility that eggs were lost to freezing in April, heavy rains in early May caused widespread flooding in low-lying areas. Many turkeys that had the bad luck to nest in those areas almost experienced nest failures and will have to renest if they are to regain lost ground.
The only good news in all this is that turkeys had slightly better nest success in 2006, so hunters should hear more gobbling during the 2008 season if weather is anything like normal.
Harvest totals in recent years have been:
* 2003 – 58,421
* 2004 – 60,151 (record)
* 2005 – 57,692
* 2006 – 54,712
* 2007 – 48,476
While the number of turkeys bagged was down this year, hunters had the safest spring turkey season in 35 years. The conservation department recorded only two firearms-related accidents. Neither was fatal.