Spring turkey season ended Tuesday, and it was my best ever.
I hunted Missouri in its glory days, when hunters killed more than 58,000 gobblers in the spring. I enjoyed some spectacular hunting in Missouri from 2000-2004, and I tagged out in 2004, but my 2019 Arkansas season surpassed them all.
It was a season of bests and firsts. I tagged out for the first time in Arkansas, having bagged a season limit of two mature gobblers. I came close in 2017, but I blew a chance at my second bird on the last day of the season.
This year, I killed a gobbler on opening day in a storybook hunt. That bird had an 11-inch beard, the longest I've ever taken. My previous best was 10¾ inches on a 2013 gobbler.
I got my second bird three days later in a brief hunt that paled in drama to the first hunt, but is memorable for its unconventional script. I called the bird in while writing a column on a laptop, for goodness sakes. That bird had 11/8-inch spurs that looked like scimitars, the longest of any bird I've killed.
On opening day, I heard four different gobblers at dawn. I called up two hens, including a bearded hen, and I saw four immature gobblers, or "jakes." I called in a fifth gobbler away from a hen late on opening day and tagged it.
I killed the only gobbler I heard April 11, but again, I was in the woods for only a couple of hours.
Federal magistrate Joe Volpe and his son John had their most memorable season as well. They both tagged out in Arkansas, and then they both killed big gobblers in Kansas on Saturday. They killed three of their gobblers in Grant County.
When the season ended, hunters checked an unofficial tally of 7,910 turkeys, including 92 hens. It is legal to kill bearded hens.
According to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's online harvest report, hunters checked more than 300 turkeys in two counties. Fulton County led the overall talley with 306 turkeys, but eight of those were hens. Union County led the state in gobblers with 302.
Hunters checked between 200-300 turkeys in four counties. Izard County (285) led that group, followed by Cleburne County (239), Sharp County (232) and Drew County (225).
Hunters checked between 150-199 gobblers in 15 counties. Baxter County led that tier with 196 turkeys, followed by White County (190), Stone County (185), Clark County (184), Dallas County (183), Independence County (180), Grant County (179), Newton County (179), Ouachita County (176), Ashley County (173), Van Buren County (170), Saline County (164), Searcy County (154), Montgomery County (154) and Bradley County (153).
Two things stand out from the preliminary numbers, the first being the consistent production of the Gulf Coastal Plain. Four of the top 10 counties, including Drew and Clark counties, are in the top 10. Dallas and Grant counties are in the top 15.
Three other counties hover just beneath the 150 mark, including Cleveland County (146), Calhoun County (143) and Columbia County (142).
Mike Knoedl, former AGFC director, often said that there are a lot more turkeys in southern Arkansas than brood survey data suggests. Numbers are improving due to intensive logging activity in that region, including clearcutting and thinning of mature pine stands.
It also helps a lot that the overwhelming majority of the Gulf Coastal Plain is leased by hunting clubs, so most of it is behind locked gates and is inaccessible to non-members. The clubs are primarily deer-hunting organizations, and few of their members hunt turkeys. Hunting pressure is low, allowing turkeys to breed in relative peace while maximizing gobbler carryover.
That might explain why the preponderance of gobblers I see in the Gulf Coastal Plain are mature birds. They are always in the 21- to 23-pound range, with long, thick, "paintbrush" beards.
The prohibition on adult hunters shooting jakes also has improved gobbler quality. Just as the three-point rule shifts the annual deer harvest to 2.5-year-old bucks, the No-Jake Rule also shifts nearly the entire turkey harvest to gobblers ages 2.5 years and older.
The other thing that stands out is the relatively low numbers of turkeys checked in the Ouachita Mountain region. Montgomery and Saline counties were the best by far, but Polk (138), Scott (136), Garland (132) and Hot Spring (132) counties were consistent.
Sports on 04/25/2019