“Lack of recruitment success is typically associated with bad weather, which is normally cold and wet weather for turkeys during nesting and brood-rearing season,” he said. “Also, another factor is the wild land habitats are continually changing in South Carolina. Although timber management activities stimulated the growth in South Carolina’s turkey population in the 1980s, considerable acreage is currently in even-aged pine stands that are greater than 10 years old. This is a habitat situation that does not support turkeys as well.

“In fact, just when I thought we’d seen rock bottom in terms of recruitment ratio for turkey poults, we will probably hit an all-time low for the 2007 recruitment period,” Ruth said. “While the complete assessment is not finished at this point, I have compiled the data as it comes in and have a strong overall assessment of the trend, which is not good at all. I think we can make a very accurate prediction at this point.”

Although wild turkeys nest primarily in April and May in South Carolina, the survey does not take place until late summer. Thus, the survey statistics document poults (young turkeys) that actually survived and entered the population going into the fall.

“With two poor reproductive seasons in 2005 and 2006, we really needed a strong year in 2007,” Ruth said. “No one is really sure what happened. Normally, we watch for lots of rain and late-season dips in temperature as the culprits for poor survival. However, this year, overall we were not too wet in general, although I think we may have had some ill-timed thunderstorms that may have hurt the population in some specific areas.

“Some hunters are concerned that the real cold snap in early April caused eggs to freeze,” Ruth said. “I really do not believe that is a player in this scenario. First, I think it was way too early to have much of an impact on eggs. Studies have demonstrated that cold has very little influence on turkey eggs. If the hen is setting and incubating eggs, there’s no problem anyway. But also, there are a lot of states that get much colder than we do and frequently have cold snaps during the nesting season. Typically, there are no real negative issues with that. Cold and wet on young poults can be disastrous, but during early April, it’s way too early for that to be the problem.

“In the Southeast,” Ruth said, “Mother Nature often plays a big role in turkey populations with heavy rainfall or cool temperatures during the spring nesting and brood-rearing season leading to poor reproductive success. However, that did not appear to be the case in 2007.”

Comparing climatic data from this year with historic data indicates that temperatures were at or above normal and rainfall was below normal during the nesting and brood-rearing period. In other words, Ruth said environmental conditions were such that reproduction in turkeys should have been better.

“Perhaps we have reached a point in time where the relationship between the turkey population and habitat is simply not as good as it was when turkeys were expanding across the state”, Ruth said.

What does poor reproduction by turkeys for three consecutive years mean for the spring turkey hunter?