Turkey Season Summary - Arkansas Game and Fish Commission

2007-08 fall turkey regulationsFall turkey seasons and the turkey planThe Strategic Wild Turkey Management Planguides turkey management in Arkansas. Fallarchery/crossbow hunting is mentioned brieflyin this plan:“Because fall archery/crossbow seasons havehad minimal if any impact on populations inArkansas, these seasons should be allowablestatewide, except under special circumstances tobe determined on a case-by-case basis.”123Three criteria are included in the plan for fallfirearms seasons:The previous year’s spring season harvestshould be used to determine openseasons. Turkey zones recommended foropen seasons should have maintaineda harvest more than 0.5 turkeys persquare mile of forest for the twoprevious spring turkey seasons.Combined fall harvests should notexceed one-third of the previous springharvest during any year in any giventurkey zone.A majority of hunters (greater than 50percent) should indicate that their fallturkey season satisfaction level wasexcellent or good and the majority ofspring and/or fall turkey hunters shouldsupport fall turkey seasons as determinedby hunter opinion surveys.Preliminary recommendationsInitially, only turkey zones 2, 3, 6 and 17 wererecommended for open fall gun turkey seasonbased on spring harvest. All turkey zones metcriterion two, with 2005-06 fall turkey harvestranging from 0 to 7 percent of 2006 springharvest. No hunter opinion surveys have beenmade since 1998, so no data were available todetermine if the third criterion above was beingmet.T U R K E Y C O N S E R V A T I O N I N A R K A N S A SPublic meetingsMeetings were held Jan. 9, 2007, at 11 sites inArkansas, and had very poor attendance. Only ahandful of comments on fall turkey seasons – afew for and a few against – were received at thismeeting, or later as season recommendationswere being made, distributed by the media andreviewed by the public.Final recommendations andseason approvalWildlife Management Division staff metand reviewed public comments and preliminaryseason recommendations Jan. 11-12.Additionally, a meeting was held with U. S. Fishand Wildlife Service refuge managers to coordinateseasons on national wildlife refuges.The final season recommendations weremade by the chief of the Wildlife ManagementDivision to the Commission at the Februarymeeting. A re-analysis of forested acreage byturkey zone was completed, and resulted in somecorrections to data that had been used previously.The new data resulted in turkey zones1, 2, 3, 5B, 6, 7 and 17 meeting the minimumspring harvest per forested acre criterion. A fallgun turkey season was proposed for Oct. 22-28,2007, in turkey zones 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 17. Thisseason was passed by the Commission at itsMarch meeting.Illegal kills and crippling losses around cornfeeders from archery season were discussed in anopen Commission meeting during fall 2006. Inthe final analysis, the recommendation for thisseason was left unchanged. The Commissionapproved a statewide season for Oct. 1, 2007-Feb. 29, 2008.2 0 0 6 - 0 7 T U R K E Y S E A S O N S U M M A R Y 2 5