Arkansas pushes season back again

[arkrem870]

Arkansas moves the opener back to April 21
For 2025.

I thought the later season trend was losing traction..... apparently not

[3bailey3]

That unbelievable!!

[dirtnap]

They must be drinking the Kool-Aid some of the other states are.

I have never hunted Arkansas, never plan to, and am not chasing 49!

But I do like to hunt, have common sense, and don't agree with everything I hear from the government.  I am not a fan of the delayed season agenda.

[Greg Massey]

Our season was pushed back like this 2 years ago, and really it has not affected us still killing gobblers. It just means you have to hunt a little differently with a full green out of the trees and vegetation. You just have to adapt and hunt.. In my opinion the push back hasn't helped the turkeys have a bigger survival rate / breeding. IMO.... I'm in no way a fan of the push back season...

[OJR]

I do occasionally hunt in Arkansas. I really fell like this is just "do something for the sake of doing something".

[Ihuntoldschool]

You'll have more hens on the nest when the season opens. Gobblers will be very vulnerable early season with hens nesting and having not seen pressure yet.

It's not necessarily the "survival rate". It's designed to keep them around long enough that the majority of hens are bred before season. It will make hens less vulnerable.

Now, the surrounding states will see an increase in out of state hunters coming from Arkansas.

[paboxcall]

Very recent research from Tennessee disputes conventional wisdom regarding moving season dates back, and results argue moving seasons back has no positive change to reproductive rates or populations.

Title: Assessing wild turkey productivity before and after a 14-day delay in the start date of the spring hunting season in Tennessee.

Quehl, Joseph O.; Phillips, Lindsey M.; Johnson, Vincent M.; Harper, Craig A.; Clark, Joseph D.; Shields, Roger D.; Buehler, David A. Ecology and Evolution, May 2024, Vol.14(5).

Abstract
Ten state wildlife management agencies in the United States, including six within the Southeast, have delayed their spring wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) hunting seasons since 2017 by five or more days to address concerns related to the potential effects of hunting on wild turkey seasonal productivity. One hypothesis posits that if the spring hunting season is too early, there may be insufficient time for males to breed hens before being harvested, thus leading to reduced seasonal productivity.

We conducted an experiment to determine whether delaying the wild turkey hunting season by 2 weeks in south-middle Tennessee would affect various reproductive rates. In 2021 and 2022, the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission experimentally delayed the spring hunting season to open 14 days later than the traditional date (the Saturday closest to 1 April) in Giles, Lawrence, and Wayne counties. We monitored reproductive rates from 2017 to 2022 in these three counties as well as two adjacent counties, Bedford and Maury, that were not delayed. We used a Before-After-Control-Impact design to analyze the proportion of hens nesting, clutch size, hatchability, nest success, poult survival and hen survival with linear mixed-effect models and AIC model selection to detect relationships between the 14-day delay and reproductive parameters. We detected no relationship (p > .05) between the 14-day delay and any individual reproductive parameter. In addition, recruitment (hen poults per hen that survived until the next breeding season) was very low (<0.5) and did not increase because of the 14-day delay. The traditional Tennessee start date had been in place since 1986 while the turkey harvest increased markedly until about 2006 and more recently stabilized.

Our data indicate that moving the start of the hunting season from a period just prior to peak nest initiation to 2 weeks later, to coincide with a period just prior to peak nest incubation initiation, resulted in no change to productivity or populations in wild turkey flocks in south-middle Tennessee.


Turkey Hunter Podcast with Gagliano and Weddington interviewed two of the researchers on podcast episode #481 "Results from the TN Delayed Season Start Study. Excellent discussion, recommend anyone interested in this issue to tune in.

[arkrem870]

Season is 2+ weeks back from the traditional first of April opener we had for years.

[Tail Feathers]

Been dealing with a real late opener here for some years now.  They aren't very responsive to calls after the first week.  I've seen birds molting before season ends.  They sure aren't in breeding mode by the time it ends in mid May.
I asked a state biologist and his answer was "It's a late season or no season".

[Paulmyr]

The Wild Turkey Science Podcast just had an episode (#85) a few weeks back where results from a Ms study using hunter observation over years where season dates were set back in a WMA and compared the results to adjacent control properties where the season was earlier and came to the conclusion similar to Tenn where there was no change in hunter turkey encounters/observations between the properties.

The Ms biologists also crunched some numbers and did simulation modeling and came to the conclusion that gobbler harvest had no bearing on turkey populations. They found the main factor in determining turkey populations was hen survival and polt recruitment rates.

It seems there's growing data is showing Hen survival seems to be the main factor effecting turkey populations.

There's also a pretty good discussion about a study in Tenn showing a possible relationship to density dependence where more hens on the landscape showed a negative impact on hen survival and recruitment.

These guys do a very good job and if your interested in why turkey populations are failing in certain areas you should be listening to this podcast. They cover a wide variety of topics from habitat management, predations, hen mating preference, predation, and of course recruitment and survival.

[GobbleNut]

Personally, I am a bit surprised that the results of these studies have not demonstrated that setting season dates earlier, rather than later, are not having some impact on hens being bred successfully.  It just seems counterintuitive to me that disrupting the breeding cycle early in the season would not have some impact.  Having said that, if these studies are coming to that conclusion, so be it. 

However, my next question would be whether or not hunter density in any given area has been evaluated as to the impacts that might have on breeding early in the breeding cycle as compared to later, as well.  Another would be what that same impact would be in areas with high hunter densities and low turkey densities?  I have other questions that come to mind, as well, regarding this subject that I am not sure have been explored in these studies. Perhaps all of them have been...

The bottom line for me is that I am glad that, in declining turkey populations especially, that these questions are being asked and analyzed...and if those questions can only be addressed through modifications to hunting seasons and regulations, that is fine by me. 

Once those questions have been thoroughly explored and eliminated as possible reasons for turkey population declines, then such things as season starting dates and lengths, bag limits, and such can be set according to the desires and concurrence among hunters and managers.

Simply stated, however, in declining turkey populations, responsible management requires that every factor that might be a cause in those declines must be evaluated. Season starting dates are certainly one of them.

[Dtrkyman]

Well said Gobblenut. 

Arkansas has been in trouble for a while, if hunting pressure has any effect you guys should know quickly, not many folks are going to travel down there and pay 500 bucks to not hear any turkeys!

I see the effects of over pressured birds in a place I never expected to, the bird's are there still but they are quite savvy to pressure quickly, the birds are flocked up at the start of the season, they get bombarded and respond accordingly!

[Neill_Prater]

Some interesting stuff here. It's, IMO, too easy to blame hunting pressure on all the ills affecting the wild turkey. Missouri, as well as every other state I'm aware of, has tens of thousands of acres, public and private, never open to hunting. If hunting pressure was the primary culprit, logic says those areas with suitable habitat should be overrun with them. Most aren't.


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[Louisiana Longbeard]

I have a piece of land in south arkansas that I have the option of turkey hunting. I gained access to it about 4 years ago. It has a big pipeline that runs through it. The first year hunting it, i put cameras out on the pipeline. It was nothing to see 30 to 40 birds traveling the pipeline with several being jakes and longbeards. It was easy to kill a bird.
Fast forward to now, You are lucky to see a turkey on this piece of property let alone hear one. It is a sad sad deal.

[Kygobblergetter]

I was hoping the Tennessee study would put a stop to this trend... unfortunately it didn't even put an end to the stupidity in Tennessee.


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