Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993 TAG: 9304050242
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
HUNTERS OUT TO COOK A TURKEY'S GOOSE
HUNTERS CAN look forward to a record-setting spring gobbler season, but trophy-book toms may be scarce. Even so, the hunter who killed the top turkey in Virginia last season believes he knows where there's a bigger one.\ This is the time of year hunters start scouting hardwoods that are just beginning to respond to the yeast of spring, listening for what many consider the most spine-tingling sound of nature: A tom turkey gobbling.The big question for many sportsmen is where to search for the boss of the ridge tops as the April 17 opening of the season approaches.
That won't be a problem for Sonny Norford of Charlottesville. He simply plans to return to the patch of Albemarle County woods where he hopes to put his sights on the tom that whipped the gobbler he killed last spring.
Norford's last-season trophy was no slough. It was the top turkey at the 1992 Virginia Big Game Contest in Harrisonburg, scoring 79 2/16, which placed it second in the state record book. It lacked just a fraction of matching the all-time champ, a 79 4/16 Holston River-area bird killed the season before by Mike Shaffer of Scott County.
If you think Norford's trophy was one of those beautiful, iridescent gobbler you see in full strut on the cover of outdoor magazines this time of year, you are wrong.
"He was the ugliest turkey I'd ever killed in my life," said Norford, 54, who has been a gobbler hunter for more than 25 years.
The tom looked as if it had been in the battle of its life. Its fan had only five tail feathers, giving it a snaggle-tooth look. Each wing had two to three feathers broken off about 4 inches from the base. When Norford decided to have it mounted, the taxidermist had to use feathers from another turkey to overcome the bird's beat-up look.
"I guess he had been fighting other turkeys," said Norford. "I'd like to see the one that knocked his tail feathers off. That's where I will be hunting."
This should be a productive spring turkey hunting season - very likely a record year - predicts Gary Norman, the upland game bird research biologist for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Over the past decade Virginia's turkey kill has been increasing an average of 8 percent annually, a trend that Norman expects to continue. The kill hit a record 8,940 last spring.
"We had real good production in the spring of '91, so I think the population out there is good," said Norman. The 2-year-old toms provide much of the spring action for hunters.
Bagging a record-book turkey, however, could prove to be a bigger challenge than it has the past two seasons, when the record book was rewritten. A trophy turkey is scored on a formula that includes body weight, length of beard and length of spurs. Norford's gobbler weighed 23 pounds, 8 ounces, had a 11 9/16-inch beard and spurs that measured 1 9/16 and 1 11/16 inches.
This season, the toms may come up a tad short in the weight category. The fall mast crop was poor, leaving less than an abundant winter food supply. That may have sent turkeys through the cold-weather months into the breeding season in poorer physical condition than normal. It didn't help when winter's hardest punch came just as spring appeared on the calendar.
"One of the hens we trapped [for research purposes] weighed 1 1/2 pounds less this year than the same time last year," said Norman.
But as far as game officials are aware, there has been little weather-related mortality.
"We have no evidence of problems," said Norman, who keeps tabs on a number of turkeys that are equipped with radio transmitters. "Our radio-equipped birds did well during the blizzard. Some birds, surprisingly, were out moving during the deep-snow days."
There's always the chance that gobblers will be less vocal during a spring that follows a lean winter, just as deer don't rut as aggressively during poor food years, Norman said.
"I think they still are going to gobble; it is a matter of the intensity of the gobbling."
Gobbling has started, although most toms and hens appear to be moving about in flocks and have not separated for breeding and nesting, Norman said. He has monitored vocal toms this spring while conducting research, and hunters also have reported hearing an occasional bird.
"I suspect that this will quicken very soon," he said.
Gobbling is a function driven more by the length of the days than the weather patterns, he said.
Norman sees a bright future for Virginia's wild turkeys.
"I think we have a long way to go with our harvest total," he said.
One thing that has helped boost the population is a new regulation that prohibits the killing of turkeys in many central-mountain and piedmont counties during the first week of the deer season, he said. That's when hundreds of hunters are in the woods after deer, and turkeys become a frequent secondary target. The regulation is sending more hens into the breeding season.