Arkansas does it again---more season changes

[Spurs]

Just a little rant here.  Arkansas has changed their season approximately 20 times in the past 30 years.  We have changed once again.

April 19-May 9
Limit of 1 turkey the first week
Limit of 1 turkey during youth hunt
Limit of 1 turkey on WMA Quota Hunts

I have 3 major issues with this setup:
1.  Limiting 1 turkey the first week seems to open a huge door for unregistered harvests.  I was totally behind a proposal for closing hunting at 1 pm during the first week to lower the first weeks harvest...and it would be much easier to locate outlaws.
2.  Limiting Youth Hunters harvests simply disgusts me.  We (all hunters) have heard the stories of low license sales, hunter numbers dwindling, and kids needing to be taken hunting.  I want kids to have more opportunities at unmolested turkeys...sure, there are times that youth hunts are taken advantage of, but this is a situation were the good outweighs the bad to me.
3.  With the continuous changes to the Arkansas season schedule over it's lifetime, how in the world can any change be justified?  I'm no math expert, but it seems that with a data pool saturated with a continuously changing time-frame, there could be no solid reason behind those dates.

Anyone who hunts Arkansas knows that the turkey situation here has been a sinking ship for quite some time.  They are claiming that these changes will be unchanged for the next 5 years, but we heard that story a few years ago...just to have them changed again. 

Sorry for the rant, but dang this commission burns my backside!!!

[Spitten and drummen]

Whats wrong with youth having a one bird limit? I think youth season should be done away with personally. You want to talk about outlaws , Woods are full of dads toting 4 year olds and killing birds themselves. The kids are covering alot of illegal activity. Not all but several. The rest I agree with you.

[VaTuRkStOmPeR]

Your state has a serious turkey population problem and they are clearly trying to adjust their approach to address the issue.

I wish more states were like AR, swiftly passing and implementing changes aimed at benefiting the wild turkey instead of the hunter!

[fallhnt]

So 1 the first week. Then what's the limit after that?

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[fallhnt]

Whats wrong with youth having a one bird limit? I think youth season should be done away with personally. You want to talk about outlaws , Woods are full of dads toting 4 year olds and killing birds themselves. The kids are covering alot of illegal activity. Not all but several. The rest I agree with you.

Why do away with youth? Do away with gun hunting.

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[TonyTurk]

Some of my favorite memories are of youth hunts with my son.  He killed his first three turkeys on youth hunts.  I am glad the youth get a chance at them before the regular season starts.

[Greg Massey]

Interesting, i see changes in the future for several states. Just remember if you agree and want less for your state , it's always harder to get those thing's you gave up back ...

[GobbleNut]

Your state has a serious turkey population problem and they are clearly trying to adjust their approach to address the issue.

I wish more states were like AR, swiftly passing and implementing changes aimed at benefiting the wild turkey instead of the hunter!

Agree with this sentiment.  If your state has a problem, try to fix it before the turkey population gets run completely into the ground.  If the turkey population in AR is as bad as everybody keeps saying it is, the state probably should have gone to much more restrictive seasons and harvest long ago. 

At some point, consideration for the well-being of the resource must take precedence over long seasons and bag limits.  I suggest focusing your attention more towards recovery of the turkey population first and once it recovers its health and numbers, then start looking at going back to liberal seasons and limits. 

I'll preach this one more time:  Being a hunter means being a conservationist as well as being good at killing stuff. 

[Spurs]

Your state has a serious turkey population problem and they are clearly trying to adjust their approach to address the issue.

I wish more states were like AR, swiftly passing and implementing changes aimed at benefiting the wild turkey instead of the hunter!

Agree with this sentiment.  If your state has a problem, try to fix it before the turkey population gets run completely into the ground.  If the turkey population in AR is as bad as everybody keeps saying it is, the state probably should have gone to much more restrictive seasons and harvest long ago. 

At some point, consideration for the well-being of the resource must take precedence over long seasons and bag limits.  I suggest focusing your attention more towards recovery of the turkey population first and once it recovers its health and numbers, then start looking at going back to liberal seasons and limits. 

I'll preach this one more time:  Being a hunter means being a conservationist as well as being good at killing stuff.

I should have been clearer regarding my opinion, but I am 100% for altering seasons, bag limits, or anything else IF there is data to back it up...problem is, that they've messed with the season so much (sometimes yearly) that it's impossible to know if the changes worked or not.

I honestly think a mid April season start for AR is pretty solid.  Hens should have time to get on the nest, toms are starting to get lonely, afternoon hunting usually gets good, and the heat/bugs/snakes keep some hunters outta the public ground. 

Also, we have had a super restrictive season for the past decade or so.  If my memory serves me correct, we were down to a 10 day season at one point.  Which brings me to my next point; we haven't seen any great results from these restrictions.  Quite the opposite, the harvest results (which is basically all you have to judge a population) is been decreasing steadily since the mid 2000s.

[Spitten and drummen]

Whats wrong with youth having a one bird limit? I think youth season should be done away with personally. You want to talk about outlaws , Woods are full of dads toting 4 year olds and killing birds themselves. The kids are covering alot of illegal activity. Not all but several. The rest I agree with you.

Why do away with youth? Do away with gun hunting.

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Why not?? My opinion is my opinion. It breeds greed and plenty of adults use it. When I came up season opened the same for everyone. Still killed my birds and deer.

[SinGin]

Have  to agree with you. I never had a huge season either. And I'm sure there are a lot of youth tags that are being filled while the kid is still at home in bed.

Missouri has only one turkey for the first week also. So I don't know what the problem is there.

As far as closing at 1 PM there was a lot of times that we had tornado type weather in the first half of the day and then beautiful the rest of the day. So we didn't get to hunt when it was nice. The reason they closed at 1 o'clock was to keep hunters from scaring hens off the nest. But it doesn't stop mushroom hunters from stopping around looking for mushrooms.

But at the rate that Arkansas does change their laws you may need an attorney to interpret them for you before season starts to make sure you're on the right side of the law

[Spurs]

Have  to agree with you. I never had a huge season either. And I'm sure there are a lot of youth tags that are being filled while the kid is still at home in bed.

Missouri has only one turkey for the first week also. So I don't know what the problem is there.

As far as closing at 1 PM there was a lot of times that we had tornado type weather in the first half of the day and then beautiful the rest of the day. So we didn't get to hunt when it was nice. The reason they closed at 1 o'clock was to keep hunters from scaring hens off the nest. But it doesn't stop mushroom hunters from stopping around looking for mushrooms.

But at the rate that Arkansas does change their laws you may need an attorney to interpret them for you before season starts to make sure you're on the right side of the law

While I did state my opinion about people breaking the law, I do understand that laws cannot take into account how many people will break them.  I love the youth hunt in AR that give kids an opportunity at unmolested turkeys.  I was able to call in a bird for my 14 year old this season on an extremely heavy hunted area near my home...absolutely no way I'd be caught dead in this particular place during the regular season, especially with my son.

Whats wrong with youth having a one bird limit? I think youth season should be done away with personally. You want to talk about outlaws , Woods are full of dads toting 4 year olds and killing birds themselves. The kids are covering alot of illegal activity. Not all but several. The rest I agree with you.

Why do away with youth? Do away with gun hunting.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Why not?? My opinion is my opinion. It breeds greed and plenty of adults use it. When I came up season opened the same for everyone. Still killed my birds and deer.

I also grew up without a youth turkey season, but I honestly couldn't care less about the guys who abuse the season...I only care about the kids who get the extra opportunity.  Also, I honestly think the good outweighed the bad during the youth hunt.

[Marc]

I certainly can sympathize with such reductions.

But having children myself, I do am not nearly as concerned with the youth hunting...  I have always felt that one bird is plenty for a turkey youth season...  Are they not allowed to hunt with mom & dad during the general season?

We have a youth hunting season for ducks as well, and very often it is an unrealistic account of duck hunting.  While I think it is important to provide some degree of success for youths, I also feel that they should learn that sometimes things are earned...  Through work and determination.

I would wonder, if things are as bad as being portrayed, why not simply restrict hunters to 1 bird per season period until the populations show signs of improving?  Maybe a few special draw hunts to increase revenue (which is hopefully put back into programs to increase bird populations)....

My impression of hunting pressure, is that on good bird production years, hunting pressure has little to no effect on turkey populations...  But on low production years, with the combination of taking birds, and interrupting the breeding cycle, that hunting can indeed take more of a toll.

I have also noted that in areas that have little or no hunting pressure, that weather and habitat conditions drive the turkey populations.  I have lamented the reduction (or cessation) of CRP and similar programs, or programs in which farmers are given some money to leave corners and fence rows fallow for wildlife habitat.  I wonder what would happen if hunters took 10% of the money they spend per season on hunting (gas, shells, decoys, calls, etc.) and donated that towards habitat management...  How much of a difference would it make???

[El Pavo Grande]

I'm from Arkansas also. I understand the concept of allowing an adequate breeding period prior to removing gobblers from the population, thus the later season opener.  This is a problem biologists point to.  I hope it helps, but I'm not sold on the fact that this is our problem.  I believe we could shut season down entirely and other than a couple of great harvests in a row once reopened, nothing much long term would be gained.  My belief is the problem is not in the breeding, but rather the nest and hatching success of that equation.  And the biggest culprit in that is extreme wet weather during the nesting and brooding periods.  Consider that this weather pattern has become the norm over the last 15+ years.  In the years leading up to our peak harvest (2003), we had several consecutive solid hatches (2000, 2001, 2002), which just built on some good hatches in the mid to late 90s.  Once the weather patterns changed, a decline in annual hatch success compounded to a slowly dwindling population.  2012 has been our lone dry year, and the hatch was very good.... 2.80 poults per hen as compared to years of 1.8, 1.03, 1.40, etc.  From just one year we saw a bump in the population and an increase in harvest #s for 2014 and 2015, which also opened on April 19th (only 16 days).  But, the following years have been wet again and a decrease once again with the hatches, to bottom out at a few terrible years: 2017 (.86), 2018 (.95), and 2019 (1.13).  I just don't think season structure is going to be the magic component on a turnaround, but it is something that can be controlled, unlike the weather.  In my opinion as the weather was the major culprit of the decline, the effects of predators (especially nest predators) and habitat loss become even more damaging.  The turkeys simply can't get a solid foundation started to reverse this.  If we could string just a couple solid hatches in a row together, we would start to see a major step in the right direction. 

Think about this too.  Jakes were legal to kill and made up nearly 20%-25% of the annual harvest in the early 2000s.  I think one year was even around 30%.  In 2009, jakes were prohibited (except for 1 limit with youth hunters).  So, at our peak harvest in 2003 of close to 20,000 total, a decent portion of those were jakes.  Fast forward to 2014 with a harvest of a little over 12,000 (not many jakes), and that sold hatch of 2012 stands out.  It can bounce back. 

With all that said, Poult per Hen counts are not an exact science and I believe with an increase of clear cuts, pine thickets, and more gated roads, it's more difficult to observe and tally a true measure of hatch success than it might have been 20 years ago.  There are more turkeys in certain areas than many believe, but based on gobbling activity during season (many do not scout... at all) it does not appear that way.  But, it seems these higher population areas are very spotty, which is to be expected. 

Weather plays a role in gobbling, but typically with our seasons opening closer to the 10th, we have decent gobbling the first few days, then we hit a lull (mainly hens, some hunting pressure) with an upswing in gobbling later in the season.  Late season can offer some great hunting and often more older turkeys are killed then.  So, if we have somewhat decent weather the quality of hunting can be good.  We just need more turkeys.   

Pray for dry weather and kill as many predators as possible.  Otherwise, we probably won't see much of an improvement based on season structure alone.  Just my opinion.  I've hunted several states and love what each has to offer, but no place I'd rather hunt turkeys than in Arkansas. 

[Howie g]

I say kudos for at least the effort .  Louisiana needs to adopt " some " of these things also . Any help would be better then what currently happened.