Tag that bird. The state Game Commission is reminding successful spring gobbler hunters to file harvest reports within 10 days of a kill. The mail-in reports are not the only data used to manage wildlife populations, but research conducted by the agency found hunter reports are particularly important at the wildlife management unit level.
Nevertheless, the agency estimates that fewer than one-third of wild turkey harvests result in a hunter harvest report.
Population estimates use criteria including disease mortality, terrestrial and avian predation, traffic fatalities and weather. During recent rainy springs, many poults drowned. Those elements cannot be controlled by wildlife agencies.
Regulated hunting is the primary tool used by government to manage wildlife populations. The spring gobbler-only hunt is more popular among hunters than the fall season, but has less impact on turkey populations. Because toms are not monogamous, and the fall hunt includes males and females months before the hens lay eggs, hen mortality during the October-November season directly impacts spring poult numbers. Their survival largely determines the overall wild turkey population.
Nevertheless, spring gobbler hunters want to find gobblers. The return of spring harvest reports primarily benefits May turkey hunters, said agency staff.
Social surveys indicated that turkey hunters favored a large proportion of adult males in the population, and that hearing a gobbler, seeing turkeys and calling turkeys contributed more to hunter satisfaction than killing a bird. Commission biologists said keeping tabs on toms helps managers to set season starting dates, times and durations when lonely males are more likely to be calling and vulnerable eggs are less likely to be on the ground.
In a joint Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania study published in The Journal of Wildlife Management in 2011, biologists used recovered hunter harvest reports to estimate survival rates and investigate the geographic positioning, time and statistical variations of harvests. That information was used to “assess how harvest rates may be related to management strategies and landscape characteristics.”
The results confirmed long-held assumptions.
“We banded 3,266 male wild turkeys throughout New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania during 2006-09. We found little evidence that harvest rates varied by year or management zone,” the report stated. “Spring harvest rates of male wild turkeys influence the number and proportion of adult males in the population, and turkey population models have treated harvest as additive to other sources of mortality.”
Gobblers with the longest beards and spurs are the primary May targets. The study found spring harvest rates to be twice as high among adults than in younger jakes.
“We estimated the population of male turkeys in New York and Pennsylvania ranged from 104,000 to 132,000 in all years, and ranged from 63,000 to 75,000 in Ohio. Because of greater harvest rates for adult males, the proportion of adult males in the population was less than in the harvest,” stated the study.
“The high harvest rates observed for adults may be offset by greater recruitment of juveniles into the adult age class the following year, such that these states can sustain high harvest rates yet still maintain a relative high proportion of adult males in the harvest and population.”
Although licenses no longer have to be visible, all hunters must have a general hunting license and an accepted form of identification. In seasons when harvested game must be tagged, hunters have to be in possession of paper harvest tags. State law requires tags to be completed and attached to the animal immediately after the kill and before it is moved. Successful hunters are required to report their turkey harvests to the Pennsylvania Game Commission within 10 days. Mentored youths have five days to report.
Harvests can be reported by mail-in harvest report or phone, but beware of a change in the telephone number. The correct number, 1-800-838-4431, was activated after the printing of the 2020-21 Pennsylvania Hunting and Trapping Digest.
In the next license year, hunters in Pennsylvania will be permitted to carry digital licenses, Even then, they’ll have to attach paper tags before moving harvested big game and will be asked to report those kills.
