Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 9, 1995 TAG: 9503090064
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They get eaten by predators. They get shot by hunters. They get killed by poachers.
Few die of old age.
Some of the most fascinating figures to come out of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' five-year turkey study pinpoint the huge toll of predation and poaching on hen turkeys.
Forty-seven percent of the mortality is the result of the teeth and talons of predators. Twenty-four percent is illegal hunting.
That leaves 26 percent for legal hunting and 3 percent for all other causes, which include disease, old age and harsh weather.
Maybe some people aren't surprised that nearly as many turkeys are killed by poachers as by legal hunters, but that was a troublesome finding for Gary Norman, who directed the study. He is the game department's forest game bird project leader.
``We knew it [illegal hunting] was happening out there, but the degree and significance of it was really surprising to us,'' he said.
Norman was in Vinton on Wednesday to conduct one of several meetings being held across the state to acquaint hunters with the findings of the study. He is asking sportsmen to give up some of their fall turkey hunting in order to provide flocks an opportunity to multiply.
Norman would like to see hunters accept regulations that would reduce the fall kill by 57 percent. If they do, that would result in as much as an 88 percent increase in the turkey population in five years and as much as 312 percent in 10 years, he said.
Although Norman isn't saying how that 57 percent decrease in the fall kill would be accomplished - most likely by removing turkey hunting from the first two weeks of the deer season - he has been receiving better-than-expected support. Lacking any massive opposition, board members of the game department are expected to propose a change in fall turkey hunting regulations next week when they meet in Richmond.
The fall regulations are about the only parameter biologists have for making adjustments in turkey populations, Norman said. Not much can be done about predation.
``Predation is part of the ecology,'' he said. ``That is going to occur in hunted or unhunted situations.''
The study revealed 87.7 percent of the predation is of the mammalian type, with foxes, bobcats and raccoons - especially foxes - among the critters involved. Twelve-and-a-half percent is avian predation, which involves hawks and owls.
Like predators, poachers also are a problem. While hunters can help by reporting violators, it is impossible to hire enough game wardens to squash the problem, Norman said.
A large chunk of the illegal hunting occurs during the early squirrel season, he said.
Several poachers were surprised to find wardens knocking at their door during the turkey study. The violators had taken home birds that had been equipped with radio transmitters for research purposes. A signal from a tiny transmitter can be picked up by game officials 20 miles away.
Some poachers apparently didn't know what they were, while others buried the transmitters or tossed them into streams.
``These things are watertight,'' Norman said, ``so we are able to retrieve them in a lot of instances where people thought they were hiding them,'' Norman said.
by CNB