This Laurens County bird is one of the reasons this has traditionally been a solid turkey-hunting spot in South Carolina. Photo by Ron Sinfelt

While most veteran South Carolina turkey hunters will usually decide not to shoot jakes, it’s looking like that won’t be a decision many of us will have to make in the 2007 season. That’s because for the second straight year we’ve had a poor recruitment season.

Charles Ruth, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) Turkey Project supervisor, put it in proper perspective.

“We had an excellent recruitment season in 2004 and it showed well in the 2005 season. In 2005, we had the second highest turkey harvest ever in South Carolina. For the 2006 season, we’re down a couple thousand turkeys harvested. But there were still plenty of 2-year-olds in the population from the 2004 recruitment season,” he said.

“However,” he added, “with the poor recruitment in 2006, we’ll be entering the 2007 season with two consecutive poor years for adding gobblers to the population. What that translates to hunters is, first, there will be fewer jakes whether they want to shoot jakes or not. Second, and this is the big picture for most hunters, I think, there will also be fewer 2-year-olds because of the poor recruitment in 2005. The birds remaining from the excellent 2004 recruitment will now be 3 years old. Not only will these birds be tougher to harvest because they are older, but they have now been hunted for two years.

“I hate to make a forecast that hunting success will be more difficult in 2007, but based on the above with poor recruitment and wise older gobblers in the woods, it is certainly fair to say it could be challenging,” Ruth summarized. Ruth added that it doesn’t mean hunters won’t be successful or that hunters should not hunt. It’s simply that the population dynamics are in a down phase right now. Hunters will hunt and gobblers will gobble and there will be successful hunts for sure. But it may require tactics that are a bit different from the typical ones that work well on aggressive 2-year-old gobblers.

Ruth did note, that for the second straight year, the survival of poults did have one bright spot in the state, and it’s the same place for the second consecutive season.

“The area in the Berkeley, Williamsburg and Clarendon counties sector seemed to have higher reproduction and survival success both in 2005 as well as in 2006. So, for this area, which will probably overlap a bit into surrounding counties, I will say the prognosis for the 2007 season is good. But on a statewide basis, the numbers are definitely down,” he added.

According to Ruth, the problem seems to be linked to the number of hens seen during the summer reporting season that have no poults.

“The average number of poults seen with hens on a statewide basis in 2006 was about 3.39, which is very close to the 2005 figure. So the average brood size is actually a pretty good figure. However, in both 2005 and 2006 poult surveys, a very high number of hens, right at 50 percent, did not have any poults. This brings the overall recruitment ratio, the key index for the population, to about 1.7 for the 2006 season. The recruitment ratio was about 1.6 for the 2005 poult count. Both years are considered poor,” Ruth said.