Part 2 of Wildlife Proposals for the Coming Year

In part 1 we covered changes to the fishing rules and today I plan to talk about the proposed changes to turkey hunting. I’ll cover the less controversial changes first.

Changing the definition of a legal bird to include beardless gobblers, although rare on occasion gobblers are beardless and under current law if one strutted into your set up and you killed it you’d be in trouble. I think this is a good.
Open spring youth hunt on all game lands another good change that will hopefully get more young people afield. The next one deals with game lands as well and one I was not aware of, a proposal to make it legal to hunt turkeys on game lands with archery equipment. I wonder how many bow hunters know that they can’t hunt on game lands?

The last proposed change and certainly the most controversial one is to open the southern border counties a week early. This is the same proposal that has been brought up a number of times in the past and was part of a back door dirty trick political move last year by Steve Windham the then District 4 commissioner. Mr. Windham is now the Vice Chairman of the committee.

North Carolina wild turkey flock is a young and growing flock by opening the season any earlier will put undo stress on the flock. The setting of opening date of the season should be after all the hens have been bred; initially in the early 70’s Wayne Bailey was given the task of restoring the turkey population across the state. He advocated a 4th Saturday of April as the best biological opening day for the flock. I have not seen anything from him that suggests that his views have changed on this topic.

When Mr. Bailey retired Mike Seamster took over as the biologist responsible for the North Carolina flock. Mr. Seamster retired this past summer however he has been outspoken on this topic. I have a letter from him where he goes through why this is such a bad proposal.

Common sense tells one that, with a species like the wild turkey, the males shouldn’t be harvested before the females have been bred, just as a farmer shouldn’t slaughter his bulls before his cows are bred. The second principle is also based on the reproductive biology of the wild turkey. If the season is delayed until the hens begin incubation of the eggs (approximately two weeks after breeding), then the hens are spending most of their time on the nest and are less likely to be killed either accidentally or intentionally.

In his letter he also states that the Big Game Committee requested the biological staff in 2006 to “thoroughly review and evaluate the literature” on this topic. The recommendation they provided back to the committee was “the season should open a week later not earlier!” but so far that recommendation has fallen on deaf ears.

The NWTF as well as the North Carolina State Chapter is opposed to this change as well.

I got to believe that those who are the most responsible for the rebuilding of the flock have the best interests of the flock in mind when they oppose the change. When the political appointed commissioners choose to ignore the biologists who have the knowledge and the studies to back up their views and press on I’ve got some serious concerns. This is the same commissioners who a few weeks ago bobbled the Sunday hunting study by first coming out to support it and rescinding it after a brief recess. If nothing else we know by their actions how important public opinion is to them so I hope for the sake of the turkey flock that you join me in opposition to opening the season any earlier.

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