Missouri‘s worst spring turkey season in who knows how long finally was put out of its misery Sunday, with a total harvest of 31,798 birds.
To the surprise of nobody who hunted locally this season, that’s well behind the 38,734 taken last year and so far off the record of 56,882, set in 2004, that you can’t even laugh at it.
I have harvest records dating back 26 years, through the 1996 season, and this year was easily the worst in that entire time frame by a wide margin.
Keep in mind the three-week season didn’t begin until 1998, and even before then, with just two weeks to hunt and the loss of one permit after the first week, the harvest was better than this year.
Day after day, hunters were lucky to hear any gobbling, except in a pocket or two here and there. I heard a single bird and one shot the entire season.
The last weekend saw a minor surge in kills, as expected when hens go to nest in early May, but even that was minuscule.
Every local county was off the pace this year except one.
In Butler County, a total of 83 turkeys were tagged compared to 86 last year. That seems pretty comparable, but it’s far from where it should be.
To put that in perspective, neither Southeast Missouri’s Mississippi County, which has very little good turkey habitat except for some private stuff along the river, nor Newton County in the far southwest corner of the state, allow fall turkey hunting because the Department of Conservation says they have low turkey numbers. Yet both outpaced Butler County during this spring season, with 86 taken in Mississippi and 92 in Newton.
Think about that. It speaks volumes and should tell you a lot.
Carter County’s tally for this year was 129 birds, down from 161 a year ago.
In Reynolds County, hunters took home 165 birds, a drop from 229 last year.
In Ripley County, 130 birds were killed, down from 154.
Stoddard County hunters tagged 203 birds, a bit below the 232 taken there last season.
Though it still was the top county in our readership region this spring, Wayne County saw a huge drop in its harvest. A total of 221 birds were taken there, down almost a third from the 305 taken last year.
The only county in our region to see a harvest increase was Dunklin, where 18 turkeys were killed. That’s up from 11 a year ago.
Jakes made up 17.9% of the total harvest.
With all that said, it’s pretty obvious Missouri’s wild turkeys are in trouble. That leaves two questions: what are the reasons, and what will the Department of Conservation do about it?
“I’ve been hearing from a lot of concerned people around the state, and I have for a while. Folks are definitely concerned, and I understand that,” said MDC turkey biologist Reina Tyl on Tuesday.
Tyl said this season was “a bit more challenging than I had predicted. That was a bit of a surprise.”
Recent studies in Northern Missouri, she said, point to poult production and survival as the main concern with the turkey population.
“Poult survival is really at the center of all of this,” she said.
While nesting success has been mostly normal, researchers have found a very high number of poults don’t survive until they are 28 days old.
Through reasoning, that limits the possible culprits to predators, cold and wet weather, or a lack of food.
There currently is a study taking place where poults are radio tagged shortly after they are hatched “so that when they die, we can hopefully locate them and figure out whether it was predators, hypothermia or were they unable to find food and they just don’t have any meat on their bones,” Tyl said.
Asked about predators, the most likely problem, Tyl said she has contacted MDC’s furbearer biologist to ask “what our reason is for not allowing nest predator take year-round or into nesting season.”
She’s waiting to hear back, but said “We know the (predator) population is greater than it was several decades ago. That’s not a question.
“Frankly, there’s not a good argument against it and it’s something I will probably talk to them more about.”
Habitat loss also is frequently brought up as a possible problem for the turkey population, and while it certainly is true in some areas, that’s a tough sell in Southern Missouri, where large tracts of timber and intermixed fields are the norm.
Harvest rates, Tyl said, “appear to be sustainable, but that might be something we discuss.”
To be sure, the turkey decline isn’t unique to Missouri. Most states in the central portion of the country are seeing the same thing with their turkey populations.
The difference is many of them have taken actions to improve their situation, whether it be reduced bag limits, shorter seasons, eliminating fall seasons, not allowing jake harvest, year-round predator harvest or other things. In Missouri, MDC just sticks with what it did last year. And the year before. And the year before that. Tradition trumps everything.
Asked about changes to hunting regulations other states have implemented, Tyl said, “Some other states are controlled by outside forces, but we try to make our decisions based on the data and the science and what that tells us.
“It’s hard to express to people that you understand the problem and if there was an easy regulatory fix, it already would have been done.”
Now that the season is over, Tyl said, MDC will send out its annual turkey hunter opinion survey to gauge what people are thinking, and that, she said, is considered a primary factor when determining regulations and potential changes.
“Once we get the results of our spring turkey hunter survey and we look at what hunter satisfaction was like, that could potentially tell us we’ve flipped the switch and there’s enough people out there that are unhappy with their hunting experience,” she said.
“I’m going to take a close look at that hunter survey data when it comes back because that’s really going to be the thing that tells us if we need to make a change,” she added. “If there’s not enough gobblers out there for people to be happy, maybe we need to make a change.”
Unfortunately, that survey goes to about 13,000 hunters instead of the 102,490 permit holders this season, so its reach only goes so far. (Editor's note: MDC is changing to an online survey this year and will send it to 26,000 hunters, double the past number.)
“I can’t say what moving forward is going to look like, but I can tell you that we are very clear of what’s happening and are going to be looking at the feedback from our hunters,” Tyl said, adding “This is all I think about all day, every day.”
Personally, I think MDC would be well served to communicate better with the public on this problem, because from the outside, it looks like they are doing nothing.
Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t. All I know is the downward trajectory in turkey numbers is continuing, and it has nothing to do with hunter participation.
MDC always touts its willingness to listen to the people. Well, the people are screaming and roaring at the top of their lungs, and I hope they can hear it.
People are angry, they’re frustrated, and they’re fed up. They are begging for meaningful action, even if it means reduced hunting opportunity.
Until they see that, the Missouri Department of Conservation should be ashamed of itself.