A precipitous tumble of about 35 percent in the kill for Ohio’s just-concluded fall wild turkey-hunting season from its three-year average will likely be additional ammunition for those seeking more restrictions to the annual autumn hunt.
Hunters in Ohio checked 694 wild turkeys during the 2021 fall wild turkey-hunting season. By comparison, the three-year average total is 1,079 birds of either sex. The 2021 fall season ran from October 9th to November 28th.
Also, The Division of Wildlife issued 7,470 fall turkey hunting permits in 2021, itself representing a 21-percent decline from the three-year average of 9,428 permits.
Of the 70 Ohio counties opened to the 2021 fall wild turkey hunting season, 11 showed gains over their respective three-year kills while five counties experienced identical kills with their respective three-year averages. The rest of the counties recorded declines from their respective three-year averages.
However, in the case of the counties with gains, seven of them noted respective jumps of just one or two birds each.
“One of the interesting points js the deviation in the pattern we usually see in years with good poult production – like we saw this year – where the fall harvest reflects an increase,” said Mark Wiley, the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s lead wild turkey biologist.
Yet Wiley says the decline in the fall turkey kill may be a simple reflection of the decline in the number of permits issued, even though the former’s percentage decline is considerably larger than is the drop in latter’s percentage.
“We will need to see if the decline is due to hunters seeing fewer bird, if the hunters are being less successful or if more hunters believe the birds need a break,” Wiley says.
In effect, the drop in the fall turkey kill may simply be a matter of hunters self-regulating themselves against shooting birds in the fall, Wiley says.
These sorts of questions will find at least some resolution when the Wildlife Division conducts its turkey hunter survey which is to begin soon, Wiley says.
Asked if this year’s steep drop in the number of birds taken will possibly translate into more conservative fall season regulations in 2022, Wiley says more than just one year’s slippage will likely be required before the agency goes down that road.
And that point doesn’t sit well with some hunters who consider themselves hard-core turkey pursuers.
“I think the Wildlife Division develops tunnel vision when it comes to managing game. I don’t think it takes into account the variables enough, things like poaching, disease and being sought by predators. All we see and hear about are harvest numbers,” says Troy Conley of Brown County.
Agreeing with Conley is Adams County turkey hunter and outdoors writer Tom Cross.
Cross believes this reticence - at least partially - comes down to a Wildlife Division which seemingly digs in its heels against reevaluating “long-held regulations that may have been set during years of abundance.”
“They are reluctant to change and are based on what they consider to be a temporary down cycle,” Cross says.
Wiley did say the Wildlife Division will present its set of preliminary fall 2022 hunting regulations before the eight-member Ohio Wildlife Council in January. The public can express its views in March with the Wildlife Council giving final approval to the rules in April.
Here is a county-by-county list of all wild turkeys checked by hunters during the 2021 fall hunting season. The first number following the county’s name shows the numbers for 2021, and the three-year average of turkeys taken in 2018, 2019, and 2020 is in parentheses.
A three-year average provides a better overall comparison to this year’s numbers, eliminating year-to-year variation because of weather, misaligned season dates, and other unavoidable factors. Numbers are raw data and subject to change.
Adams: 7 (13); Allen: 6 (8); Ashland: 13 (13); Ashtabula: 25 (39); Athens: 9 (18); Belmont: 4 (23); Brown: 12 (12); Butler: 15 (13); Carroll: 10 (24); Champaign: 5 (4); Clermont: 19 (25); Columbiana: 27 (26); Coshocton: 22 (44); Crawford: 5 (3); Cuyahoga: 2 (3); Defiance: 7 (12); Delaware: 9 (9); Erie: 3 (7); Fairfield: 6 (9); Franklin: 2 (3); Fulton: 6 (10); Gallia: 7 (25); Geauga: 11 (28); Guernsey: 20 (33); Hamilton: 14 (9); Hancock: 1 (5); Hardin: 4 (4); Harrison: 12 (25); Henry: 2 (3); Highland: 29 (24); Hocking: 5 (18); Holmes: 5 (27); Huron: 3 (10); Jackson: 14 (18); Jefferson: 13 (18); Knox: 18 (21); Lake: 5 (9); Lawrence: 7 (14); Licking: 10 (25); Logan: 7 (8); Lorain: 8 (9); Lucas: 3 (12); Mahoning: 10 (13); Medina: 9 (13); Meigs: 14 (20); Monroe: 14 (22); Morgan: 3 (19); Morrow: 4 (8); Muskingum: 10 (20); Noble: 10 (23); Paulding: 2 (4); Perry: 13 (16); Pike: 11 (12); Portage: 7 (15); Preble: 12 (7); Putnam: 2 (3); Richland: 16 (21); Ross: 8 (18); Scioto: 11 (19); Seneca: 2 (6); Stark: 25 (17); Summit: 7 (10); Trumbull: 29 (28); Tuscarawas: 21 (35); Vinton: 6 (15); Warren: 7 (6); Washington: 8 (19); Wayne: 10 (10); Williams: 8 (14); Wyandot: 3 (2). 2021 total: 694. Three-year average total: 1,079.
By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com
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