Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504080014
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' proposal to increase the wild turkey population by reducing the fall hunting season took some shots Thursday during a public hearing in Roanoke County that attracted about 175 sports enthusiasts.
"I think you are taking a little too much away from the turkey hunter," Leon Turner of Fincastle told game officials. Turner is a past board member of the department.
"You didn't address the quail or grouse season," he said. "That's where the problem is. We don't have a problem with turkeys."
State game biologists say that Virginia's turkey population is growing at a rate of 6.6-percent annually, but it could double in five years and quadruple in 10 years if hunters would agree to reducing the fall kill by 57 percent. Few who spoke at the hearing appeared willing to do that, which would mean reducing the season by as many as four weeks.
"My brothers and I, when we killed our first turkey, it was during the season you're taking out," said Michael Pauley of Daleville, a junior at Lord Botetourt High School.
"Don't cut out our youngsters," said Larry Journell principal of James River High School. "Our traditional hunting time is Thanksgiving time."
Game officials have proposed a season that would open the last Monday in October, run for two weeks, close for four weeks, then reopen for three additional weeks. That would remove turkey hunting from the first two weeks of deer season.
It also would give turkey hunters a week in the woods before the muzzleloader hunters move afield, but John Byrne, a veteran turkey hunter from Bedford County, said October is too early to hunt turkeys.
"Game will be smaller," he said. "The extra foliage will also detract from the hunting quality."
Byrne recommended closing the turkey season during the two-week western deer season and limiting the muzzleloading season to deer only.
Support for a shorter fall season came from Gerald Duncan of Newport, president of the Virginia Chapter of the Wild Turkey Federation. Duncan said the federation had contributed "close to $200,000" to support a five-year game department study that states if the fall hunting season is reduced by 57 percent, the turkey population would increase by 312 percent.
"We need to take the resource into consideration, not our personal agenda, not our personal ideas," he said.
Under a shorter fall season, the turkey kill would decline initially, but in 10 years the fall kill would increase by up to 77 percent and the spring kill by up to 382 percent, officials said.
But Richard Pauley, a life member of the turkey federation from Daleville, said that even with an unrestricted limit "you can't kill as many turkeys as you are saying."
Pauley wanted to know who would be held accountable if the promised increase in the turkey kill isn't realized after fall hunters have sacrificed their time afield.
"I am going to live 10 years. I am going to blame somebody," he said.
Gene Dew asked for a straw vote on the turkey proposal, but game officials said that wasn't the purpose of the meeting. When Dew insisted, Bob Ellis, assistant chief of the department's game division, said, "If this gets out of hand, we will close the meeting."
Several hunters spoke in opposition to a proposal to put scopes on muzzleloading guns.
by CNB