Connecting hunt outcomes to the demographics, behaviors, and experiences of wild turkey hunters in Mississippi

Abstract

The ability to evaluate population trends through time is essential to successful conservation of wildlife. Directly estimating abundance of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) is difficult, with few practical options for wide-scale population monitoring. As a result, managers often rely on abundance indices derived from hunter harvest. Catchper-unit-effort (CPUE) is a commonly used metric which standardizes harvest totals and has been shown to track turkey abundance, but its use is predicated on an assumption of spatially and temporally consistent hunter efficiency. From 2015-2018, we surveyed avid turkey hunters in Mississippi to evaluate mechanisms driving harvest efficiency. We questioned each hunter about their demographics and behaviors, collected observations from their hunts, and used 2-stage hurdle models to relate these variables to individual CPUE. Hunter attributes had variable effects on hunt outcomes. Hunter age had a significant positive effect on the probability of harvesting at least one turkey (an approximate 2% gain in success per year of age) yet was only weakly associated with CPUE of successful hunters. When considering only successful hunters, the percentage of hunts in which a turkey was heard, and the standardized index of total turkey observations were related to CPUE. Additionally, we determined the tendency for hunters to miss a turkey during the hunting season decreased with increasing hunter age. Our results indicate individual characteristics subject to temporal change play a role in determining CPUE and thereby have the potential to mask

Inverse relationships between coyote and wild turkey population time series: Implications for future studies of predator–prey interactions

“…Wild turkey hunting is recreational in the US although hunters pay fees for annual hunting permits. Hunters may use different weapons to hunt wild turkeys; however, Butler and Wang (2022) found that the choices of weapons did not affect the success of wild turkey hunting.…”

Assessing wild turkey productivity before and after a 14‐day delay in the start date of the spring hunting season in Tennessee

“…Poults‐per‐hen ratios during that period in Tennessee, however, generally declined but have recently stabilized at <2 poults‐per‐hen (Byrne et al., 2016 , Figure 2 ). Harvest has long been used as one of the main indices of wild turkey population growth; however, harvest is impacted by factors other than just population size, including hunter effort and regulation changes (Butler & Wang, 2022 ; Diefenbach et al., 2012 ).…”