Young hunters have been taking aim at wild turkeys during the weekend.
A year ago, hunters age 16 and under checked 1,785 bearded birds statewide during their designated weekend hunt, making the two youth days among the most productive of the combined spring season.
The youth total in 2024 came within a few of the 2023 count and furthermore represented about 11.5% of the 15,673 turkeys checked during the combined spring seasons last spring.
Opening weekend for the South Zone hunt, which covers 83 counties including all of central Ohio, invariably racks up the biggest numbers of the spring hunt.
The South Zone turkey season begins April 19 and continues through May 18. Typically, the spring hunt in the Northeastern Zone starts a week later, but because of a calendar anomaly won’t start this year until May 3 in the zone’s five counties comprising Ashtabula, Lake, Cuyahoga, Geauga and Trumbull.
The limit is one bearded bird during the entire spring regardless of season or zone, a reflection at least in part of a turkey population that perhaps has plateaued.
Numbers, at any rate, haven’t kept the explosive pace shown during the few decades after successful reintroduction efforts made by the Ohio Division of Wildlife that began as far back as the 1950s.
The spring harvest, at any rate, topped out at 26,156 in 2001, the year after the first statewide season. More than 20,000 birds were checked in 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2017 and 2018.
Problematically, a recent bottom occurred in 2022 when the spring limit was reduced to a single bird. All told, 11,872 bearded birds were checked.
A single-bird limit was mandated after 14,546 turkeys, the fewest in more than 20 years, had been checked under a two-bird limit during the 2021 spring hunt.
Bearded turkeys are almost invariably males, meaning they become expendable once their procreative commitments are completed. The turkey season is scheduled so as not to muss up nesting and hatching, which in the turkey realm and many others is strictly female work.
Given that so many influences – weather, predation, food availability and disease among them – can undo a lot of motherly effort, it’s almost a miracle that turkeys maintain.
While maybe falling short of spectacular, the birds are doing the best they can, surveys suggest. The number of poults, that is, young turkeys, per hen seen during recent summers have been slightly above or at the long-term average of 2.8, the wildlife division reports.
Surviving poults become the next generation of adult birds on which the future hinges.
As for hunting prospects, it’s hard to beat the wooded and rolling eastern counties. Licking County, for example, accounted for more checked turkeys last year, 255, than did the six counties in central Ohio combined, 248.
All of the 19 counties that surrendered more than 300 turkeys during last year’s hunt lay in southern, southeastern and northeastern Ohio.
Counties with plenty of turkeys, moreover, might not provide room for scads of hunters. Nine of 10 turkeys taken a year ago were bagged on private land. Slightly fewer than one in 10 fell on public land.
Permit sales showed a slow decline after topping out at almost 95,000 in 2003, hitting a 20-year low of 61,000 in 2021. Sales dropped to about 49,000 after a one-bird limit went into effect in 2022 before increasing to about 50,000 in 2024 and to 51,500 a year ago.
Success rates among permit holders was about one in four a year ago and slightly higher, at three in 10, among youth hunters.
outdoors@dispatch.com
