The catchword among local spring gobbler hunters was “tough.”

The hunting was tough and the harvest for the April and May season was down 26 percent in Botetourt County from a year ago, according to statistics released by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF).

The harvest was also down statewide, but by comparison, only 14 percent.

According to the DGIF report, hunters in Botetourt checked 213 gobblers this spring compared to 288 that were checked a year ago.

Across the mountains in Bedford, it was bit of a different story. Bedford hunters checked 511 gobblers this spring, still down 4 percent from the 532 checked in the spring of 2017, but within a lower percentage of the 5-year average of 524 gobblers taken in the spring.

Botetourt’s 5-year average is 291.

Across the state, the DGIF reported a total of 16,186 turkeys were harvested in Virginia during the 2018 spring gobbler season. Bedford was the top county followed by Pittsylvania and Franklin with 393 birds each.

County harvest totals and harvest per square mile of suitable habitat are available on the Department’s web site at the following link: https://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018-spring-gobbler-harvest.pdf.

Botetourt’s kill-per-square-mile-of-forest-range was .56 bird, and kill-per-square-mile-of-suitable-habitat was .43 bird— both below the .65 and .44, respectively, for counties West of the Blue Ridge; and the .65 and .45, respectively, statewide.

While the harvest dropped, turkey populations are not dropping.

“The statewide wild turkey population is high and stable,” noted Gray Anderson, DGIF Chief of Wildlife, in a news release,  “and the 14 percent decrease in harvest is normal annual fluctuation we would expect in a healthy managed population.”

DGIF Wild Turkey Biologist Gary Norman said a drop in the harvest was not unexpected and cited two reasons for the decline.

First, he said, the recruitment of young turkeys in to the state’s turkey population was low in 2016. The low recruitment in 2016 resulted in a decrease in the number of 2-year-old gobblers available for hunters to harvest in 2018.

Norman pointed out that 2-year-old gobblers normally gobble a lot; a characteristic of gobblers that DGIF surveys indicate is an important expectation of spring turkey hunters. In addition, younger gobblers are typically not with hens as much as the more dominant, older birds, and thus, they are more likely to respond to a hunters calls.

Norman noted, “Virginia has experienced a long string of years with low recruitment of young turkeys into the turkey population; we’re over-due a good hatch like the one we had in 2011.”

He also noted, “Unfortunately, turkey recruitment in 2017 was lower than 2016, so hunters may be facing another challenging year in 2019 as the number of 2-year-old gobblers will once again be lower than normal.”

Weather was the second reason Norman provided for the decline in the spring turkey harvest.

“Hunters faced challenging conditions with extended stretches of very hot days, cold and windy days, or rainy days; all of these conditions typically result in poor hunting success rates,” he said.

Poor hunting conditions were especially prevalent during the Youth and Apprentice weekend of April 7-8. The weekend’s harvest (465) was 26 percent below the 2017 harvest of 627 birds.

Hunters participating in the department’s 2018 Spring Gobbler Season Survey remarked that gobbling was poor during the first and second weeks of the season. The harvest during Week 1 and 2 of the 2018 season was about 20 percent lower than the same weeks of the 2017 season, seeming to confirm that observation.

Better gobbling and harvests were seen in Weeks 3 and 4 of the season. However, rain was heavy over most of the state during the last week of the season when the harvest fell once again.

Management of wild turkeys in Virginia is guided the Department’s Wild Turkey Management Plan. That plan can be read at the following link: https://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/turkey/management-plan/.