Seventy years ago, Arkansas turkeys were almost extinct. The surviving birds were restricted to a pitiful few small flocks hanging on in the most remote bottomland regions, with maybe a few birds in the most rugged parts of the Ozarks and Ouachitas. Today, thanks to improved habitat, restocking efforts and an ever-growing base of knowledge about managing them, wild turkeys are present in all suitable habitat in the Natural State. Gobblers are legal game during the spring season in at least part of every county.

UNCONTROLLABLES
However, no matter how much wildlife biologists learn about managing turkey populations or how skillful they become at putting that knowledge to work, there are things beyond their control that can hurt turkey populations. Two of those things are weather and politics. Unfortunately, both have been in play in Arkansas in recent years.

The results showed up last spring. Despite excellent weather throughout most of the season all over the state, the kill for spring 2004 was 16,969. That sounds like a lot of birds, but it represents a significant turn in the wrong direction.

"The 2004 harvest was down 15 percent from 2003's record of 19,947," said Brad Carner. "The decrease was pretty evenly spread across the four major physiographic regions, ranging from 13.6 percent in the Ouachitas to 18 percent in the Gulf Coastal Plain."

Over the past three years, brood-survey data reveal below-average poult production, and it's almost certainly no coincidence that these last three years have also been marked by above-average rainfall during the nesting season (late April into early June). North Arkansas hunters in particular will remember the torrential 10-inch rainfall that came over a three-day period in mid-April last spring. That sort of rain certainly doesn't improve turkey nesting conditions, or the survival of early-hatched poults.

"Since AGFC started conducting brood surveys, the long-term average brood size has been 3.5 poults per hen," Carner said. "But for the past three years, the ratio has been well below that long-term average. In 2004, for the second consecutive year, the poult-per-hen ratio was only 1.7. That's 51 percent below the long-term average."

Of course, there's not much you can do about the weather except to provide habitat offering turkeys the best chance of finding cover suitable for keeping them out of the worst of the wet stuff and, thus, healthy. The trouble is that newly hatched poults don't start growing feathers that will shed water until they're a week to 10 days old. If a down-covered poult gets wet, that poult is a goner. Either wet, rainy weather or flooding during nesting and hatching season will be a make-or-break factor for successful turkey reproduction.

By analyzing the age of poults seen during the summer brood surveys and back-dating to determine the average hatching date, average onset of incubation date and average breeding date, Arkansas biologists have known since the 1980s that the onset of the peak period of turkey breeding occurs around April 10. Cooler-than-normal or warmer-than-normal springs may shift that date a few days in either direction, but since the onset of breeding is linked more to day length than to temperature and weather, annual variation is slight.

"Turkey brood survey data from 1992 through 2003 indicate that the peak breeding dates for turkeys in Arkansas lie between April 10-15," Carner wrote in a hand-out for a public meeting last September, "with 85 percent of all successful hens during that 12-year period being bred on or after April 10."

Furthermore, he stated, very little difference could be discerned in the timing of peak breeding dates in each of the four major physiographic regions. In his words: "(T)here is a negligible difference in peak breeding dates from north to south across the state."