The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission emailed me a questionnaire last week seeking my opinion about my turkey hunting experience in the Cornhusker State.
I can't complain for lack of opportunities. I had chances to work gobblers for two days on public land. I called up a gobbler I didn't kill on private land and worked another that eluded me. Joe Volpe and I zeroed in on a couple of gobblers on the public area, and we would have had a legitimate chance to get one or two had we hunted there a third day.
On the second morning of the public hunt, I sat on a high bank above a lake listening wistfully to big fish slamming the surface. The lake is stocked with striped bass and hybrid stripers. All I could think about was how much fun I would have if I had brought a kayak and a couple of fishing rods. Volpe, an avid angler, admitted to the same yearnings. I might not hunt turkeys again in Nebraska, but I would return there to fish.
The questionnaire focused on my satisfaction as a nonresident hunter. It was OK, but it didn't match its billing. Admittedly, I visited late in the season. Gobblers were not especially vocal, and hunters had taken their toll. Residents with whom I conversed in Custer County said that turkey numbers were way down.
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation is anxious about the collapse of its turkey populations. Rio Grande turkey numbers are down as much as 80% in parts of western Oklahoma. When I worked for the ODWC from 1998-2000, and for a good many years after, "Rios" were so plentiful that the ODWC didn't require hunters to check turkeys killed west of Interstate 35.
Now, Oklahoma is experiencing the same situation as Arkansas. To promote gobbler carryover and greater nest productivity, the ODWC is considering reducing the annual limit to two gobblers starting the season April 16. Oklahoma's 2021 spring turkey season began April 6. Surprisingly, many Oklahomans want the season limit reduced to one gobbler. The Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Commission is reluctant to take that drastic of a step.
Oklahoma is the latest state to endorse delaying the start of its spring turkey season, after a maximum number of hens have been bred and are tending nests. Arkansas has opened its spring season late for years. Results would be good if deluges during the nesting and hatching season didn't continually depress turkey reproduction.
More to the point, wildlife managers and hunters need to examine their perspectives. It comes down to respect. Nebraska is a great example of a state that doesn't respect its turkey resource, as was Arkansas in the early 2000s. A nonresident can buy as many as three spring turkey permits in Nebraska. Oklahoma has a season limit of three gobblers, with a maximum of two in one county.
Nebraska promotes its generous limit, and the National Wild Turkey Federation -- which should know better -- touted Nebraska this year as the nation's best turkey hunting state. It is irresponsible for a conservation organization to direct national attention and hunting pressure to a limited resource in a specific locale.
That's not conservation, and such a high level of hunting pressure is unsustainable. Add a disease outbreak or a couple of unseasonably wet, cold springs, and Nebraska's population will crash, too, as it has at every other "Come kill 'em!" hotspot.
State wildlife management agencies owe it to the resource and to their resident hunters to regard wild turkeys with the same respect that they afford to elk, deer and, peculiar to Arkansas, waterfowl. For too long, states have managed turkeys with the objective of maximum kill. The objective should be managing hunting with the objective of maximum sustainability.
Arkansas is finally there, but it was a long journey. I recall Game and Fish Commission meetings in 2006-08 when the agency's objective was getting back to an early, month-long season when gobblers were hunted for the duration of the breeding season. Mike Widner, the AGFC's turkey biologist at that time, was the lone voice calling for moderation.
It took years for the commission to finally accept that our turkey boom has past, and that conservative management begets good hunting.
Likewise, my complaint about Nebraska is that Nebraska does not respect its turkeys, which deserve as much respect as its elk, pronghorns, mule deer and whitetails. I want to see and hear a lot of turkeys, but I would be happy to kill just one, and a one-gobbler limit would not dissuade me from traveling. It might give me an extra opportunity to do a little fishing.