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By Shirley Grenoble
sports@altoonamirror.com
Spring gobbler season opens Saturday with the youth season having already opened up last weekend.
Yet many hunters have been voicing their wishes that the spring season would start a week earlier than it currently does. It truly seems that the gobblers and hens have abandoned their romantic notions by then.
I support that idea. Like many others, I don't much enjoy hunting the last week of the four-week season.The foliage is so thick you can't see or hear well, and it's pretty tough to get a gobbler in the clear to get a shot by the end of May. This could contribute to anxious hunters shooting at movement and sound, but any such change in seasons has to be biologically sound.
When the state's Game Commission instituted spring gobbler seasons, the hours were from dawn to 10 a.m. The thinking was that hens stayed on their nests until mid-morning when they left their nests to feed. They wanted hunters out of the woods so hens would not become targets. Experience proved this an unnecessary worry.
We now know that hens may be about at any time. If you have hunted gobblers more than two seasons you know that gobblers have hens with them all day long. Not all hens go to nest. The hunter's biggest hunting problem is how to deal with hens that stick to gobblers all season. Yet few hens are shot during the gobbler season.
We learned that closing hours have little impact on hen populations so the Commission stretched the hunting hours to noon.
Many states allow spring gobbler hunting all day and have little hen mortality as a result. I've hunted in several states where you could hunt all day and I must say that afternoon spring gobbler hunts are a lot of fun.
Years ago, season starts and endings were calculated to make sure we were not hunting during the prime nesting season. Things have changed.
Birds seem to be starting earlier to gobble and breed and many hunters report finding just-hatched poults during the season. Hunters want to hunt gobblers when they are most susceptible to hens calls rather than when the breeding season is nearly over, and gobblers are beginning to get back together and not answering hen calls.
Some have suggested the gobbler season open the same day as trout season or the next Monday. Who says the opening day has to be a Saturday, except that is the only day many hunters have off to hunt? Others have suggested that, just as there are special youth seasons created for youngsters for squirrels, deer and pheasants, why not start the season a week earlier and have the first few days set aside for youth gobbler hunting?
I do know that if I have a few days off that time of year, I would love to be able to hunt gobblers in the morning and take advantage of the best trout fishing period in the afternoons.
Allowing Pennsylvania hunters to be allowed to harvest two gobblers per spring season was a welcome addition. Some hunters complained, which was expected. There are pro and con arguments to this, but it has been proven biologically that this would not hurt the turkey population at all. Frankly, many gobblers die of old age in our woods.
There is a tremendous amount of hunting pressure in our woods in gobbler season and if we could take two gobblers per year, the pressure would never abate. The dynamics, or just how you would implement a two-bird season, still needs some perfecting.
But, it's not impossible. In Missouri, which has only a two-week season, hunters can harvest one gobbler each week. However, if you do not get a bird during the first week, you cannot take two during the second week. Naturally, everyone wants to get two birds so by the end of the first week, some hunters seem to take risky shots because they are desperate to get birds in both weeks. A situation like that in Pennsylvania would be really bad news considering we have double the hunters Missouri has. I was exstatic when Pennsylvania allowed hunters to bag two gobblers during the spring season. This one was long overdue.
It has proved to be a pleasant addition to the spring season.