Saturday, May 1, 2010

Turkey kill way up (Just shows you what good weather can do)

Sorry for the delay in getting this out but I was busy on my vacation, catching salt-water fish and shooting wild hogs in Florida.

Ohio's 2010 spring wild turkey hunters have done exceedingly well. Much better, in fact, than they did a year ago.

First week results show that a preliminary 11,152 wild turkeys were shot. That compares to the weather short-sheeted 9,054 birds that hunters killed during the first week of the 2009 spring turkey-hunting season.

Not surprising was that Ashtabula County keeps a firm grip on first place in the county-by-county count. In Ashtabula County, 397 birds were taken in the first and compared too the 343 birds shot during the first week of the 2009 season.

Of keen interest is that Clermont and Adams counties were ranked Number 2 and Number 3, respectively. Clermont saw 378 birds show (compared to 278 in 2009), and Adams County recorded 354 birds killed (compared o 201 turkeys during the first week of the 2009 season).

Mike Reynolds - the Ohio Division of Wildlife biologist in charge of the state's wild turkey management program - had predicted that Adams and Clermont counties would do very well. This belief was predicated on the fact that southwest Ohio experienced a good hatch of 17-year locusts which provided much-needed protein to young turkeys, increasing their ability to survive.

Tom Cross, outdoors writer from Adams County, said he's never seen more turkeys than he has this year.

Remember as that beginning Monday, hunters can stay afield until sunset and not be required to quit at noon. This is Ohio's first-ever try at an all-day spring wild turkey-hunting season.

Here are a selection of counties with the 2009 first week results in parentheses: Ashtabula - 397 (343), Coshocton - 296 (247), Cuyahoga - 9 (6), Erie - 26 (29), Geauga - 171 (131), Gurnsey - 318 (314), Harrison- 315 (351), Huron - 84 (63), Lake - 112 (94), Lorain - 102 (94), Medina - 61 (67), Sandusky - 11 (9), Tuscarawas - 268 (308), Trumbull - 260 (209), Vinton - 140 (85).

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