LITTLE ROCK — For spring 2011, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s wildlife management division will propose a 20-day spring turkey season with a two-bird, no-jake bag limit at today’s meeting in Little Rock.
After considerable debate during Wednesday’s informal briefing, the three members of the Commission’s wildlife management sub-committee voted for a 20-day statewide season that will start Saturday, April 16 and end Thursday, May 5. This includes Zone 17, where the spring turkey season traditionally opened one week earlier than the rest of the state. The proposed bag limit will be two adult gobblers. Jakes will be off-limits during the statewide season.
The youth season will take place April 8-9. The proposed bag limit will be two birds, one of which can be a jake.
David Goad, chief of the AGFC’s wildlife management division, said he originally favored proposing a one-bird bag limit for 2011, but he changed his mind because limiting hunters to just one bird probably wouldn’t save a significant number of turkeys.
“Only 837 hunters killed a second turkey last year,” Goad said. “That’s a fairly insignificant number compared to the opportunity it offers the hunters. Law enforcement told me most of those folks are going to kill their second turkey anyway. They’re just not going to check it.”
On the other hand, protecting jakes might protect enough turkeys to matter. Widner said he’s never seriously considered the idea until now. He said he changed his mind because Arkansas has precariously few adult turkeys, but we appear to have a lot of jakes this year. Protecting jakes this year might help rebuild our statewide flock. He added that little evidence exists to suggest protecting jakes will increase large-scale gobbler carryover.
“Mississippi has prohibited killing jakes since 1996. Now they allow kids to kill one,” Widner said. “The turkey team has not supported a ‘no jakes’ rule because there hasn’t been much scientific information to come out of Mississippi to say whether it’s a good rule or a bad rule. However, we have a unique situation in Arkansas. The turkey team recognizes that we have one of the lowest gobbler carryovers that we’ve seen in decades.”
Turkey hatches were good in some parts of the state, especially along the Mississippi River. If conserved, enough yearling gobblers, or jakes, might serve as a nest egg to regenerate the turkey flocks in those areas.
“We don’t have many adult turkeys, but we do have a lot of jakes running around,” Widner said. “Our turkey team is fairly supportive of a no-jakes rule this year and perhaps several years in the future so we can start building turkey numbers again.”
Protecting jakes might accomplish that goal, he added, even though a one-bird limit would not.
“A one-turkey limit would not necessarily save many turkeys, but we checked 1,600 to 1,700 jakes last year, so we’ll theoretically save some jakes,” Widner added. “They will be available as 2-year old birds next year.”
The wildlife management subcommittee, which contains commissioners Emon Mahony, Ron Pierce and ex officio commissioner Fred Spiegel, debated whether to set the youth bag limit at two birds vs. one. Widner said limiting the youth hunters to one bird would probably not reduce the overall kill.
“A one-bird limit is probably not going to reduce the kill. It will just redistribute the kill,” Widner said. He explained that turkeys that youths don’t kill during their special season will probably be killed by adults a week later.
There was also a lively debate about folding Zone 17 into the statewide season framework. For a number of reasons, spring turkey season in Zone 17 traditionally started a week earlier than statewide.
Traditionally, several important turkey indices were better in Zone 17 than the rest of the state, Widner explained. That seems not to have been the case in the past 10 years, he added. The region has also seen some major habitat changes that have negatively affected turkeys. Therefore, there’s no longer a biological justification for an earlier season in Zone 17.
“There is a perception that people in Zone 17 get an unfair advantage,” Commissioner Ron Duncan said.
“I can show you any number of areas that have large groups of private landowners who would like to hunt earlier,” Mahony added. “The perception of favoritism is when you look out your window and your neighbor is firing up his car to go hunting a week earlier than you can.”
The Commission will vote on the turkey season proposals in October.
Sports, Pages 24 on 09/23/2010