Published: April 16, 2008 10:13 pm         

Prospects good for spring gobbler season, DNR says

West Virginia hunters take to the woods April 28 to launch another spring gobbler season, and from all indications, it appears their chances of bagging a big bird are a little better than a year ago.

Last year, hunters took 9,865 turkeys and the Division of Natural Resources is predicting a slightly higher kill this spring.

“I don’t think hunters who want to go out and scout early in the morning and find an area where turkeys are gobbling will have much trouble doing that,” game biologist Gary Sharp said Wednesday.

“I saw a turkey strutting today as I came into work. Gobbling activity is good now. There seems to be a lot of turkeys.”

Sharp works out of the DNR’s District 5, known as the McClintic Wildlife Station, in the Point Pleasant area.

Traditionally, the bulk of the harvest is composed of 2-year-old birds, Sharp pointed out.

“Year-old birds don’t come into a call as easily,” he said. “We’ve been able to predict what the turkey kill is going to do from the brood reports. So this season is going to be the result of turkeys that hatched out in 2006. Brood reports were up a little bit in 2006 from the previous year, so we’re predicting just a slightly higher kill.”

A restocking program undertaken by the DNR to replenish counties where turkey populations were down actually ended in 1989.

“Catching wild birds, trapping wild birds and putting them in areas that had good habitats but didn’t have a turkey population worked out really well,” Sharp said.

Brood counts were up 12 percent in 2006 over the preceding year.

All 55 counties are open to hunting, as opposed to the fall, either-sex season when the hunt is limited, but spring hunters had better make sure the bird is wearing a beard.

And that doesn’t always mean the bird is a male, Sharp noted.

“Some hens occasionally will have a beard and that makes her a legal turkey,” he said.

“Just something that occurs in nature. A quirk of nature. Probably less than 5 percent of the hens have a beard. But a bearded hen would be legal.”

As the hunt progresses, the DNR is working in tandem with the state chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation for a survey, and a hunter doesn’t necessarily have to shoot a turkey to provide useful data. Some of the information entails what a hunter hears or sees, or merely what he wants to express an opinion about.

Looking ahead, Sharp said brood reports from a year ago point to a good future.

“You can already predict that next year’s turkey kill is going to be a little higher than this year,” he added.

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com