Movement Ecology of Spring Wild Turkey Hunters on Public Lands in South Carolina, USA

Abstract

Wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo spp., hereafter turkey) are the second most pursued big game species in the United States. Turkey hunting occurs primarily during spring, and on publicly owned lands managers often monitor hunter numbers and harvest as components of managing hunter opportunity and satisfaction. Contemporary research has shown that hunting activity on public lands can influence male turkey behavior; hence, research detailing hunter behaviors is needed to better support informed management. We allocated 1,500 Global Positioning System units to hunters pursuing male turkeys during the spring hunting seasons of 2014–2018 on the Webb Wildlife Management Area Complex in South Carolina, USA. Mean number of unique hunting bouts per hunter per day was 2 (SE = 0.03, range = 1–8), whereas average time spent hunting was 230.1 minutes (SE = 4.6, range = 11.3–872.6)/hunter/day. Hunting effort was focused during the first half of hunting season, with 70.2% of the total time spent hunting occurring during the first 2 weeks of the season (~1–15 Apr). Mean distance a hunter traveled was 2,171 m (SE = 38.1, range = 10–20,685)/hunting bout. Almost 90% of hunting activity occurred between 0500 and 1200, 76% occurred before 1000. Access to roads appeared to be the primary driver of hunter movements, with 40.1% of all hunter locations <25 m from the nearest main or secondary road. On average, hunters were 480 m (SE = 0.5, range = 0–2,132) from main roads that allowed vehicle traffic, but only 123 m (SE = 0.3, range = 0–1,990) from secondary roads allowing only foot traffic. Hunters spent 54.3% of hunting bouts actively hunting and 45.7% stationary. The amount of time spent active decreased as the hunting season progressed. Hunter effort decreased significantly as the hunting season progressed, indicated by a decline in numbers of hunters and total time spent hunting. Understanding how and when turkey hunters move about the landscape is important for effectively managing hunting access and opportunity on public hunting lands. © 2020 The Wildlife Society.

Gobbling across landscapes: Eastern wild turkey distribution and occupancy–habitat associations

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that prolonged periods with deep snow restrict turkey movements (Kane et al, 2007;Porter, 1977;Roberts et al, 1995) and may lead to significant overwinter losses (Roberts et al, 1995), but fields of standing corn or residual waste corn can mitigate impacts of deep snow and influence distribution of turkeys in northern latitudes (Haroldson, 1996; (Fredericksen et al, 2000) or hunting pressure. Recent studies have demonstrated that hunting activities and hunter behavior may influence male turkey movements (Gerrits et al, 2020), roosting behaviors (Wakefield et al, 2020a), and daily gobbling activity (Chamberlain et al, 2018;Wightman et al, 2019), but these conclusions have not been universal (Collier et al, 2017;Gross et al, 2015). Without a thorough understanding of the influence of hunting activities on individual turkey behaviors in our study system, we surmise that detection of a different individual during a subsequent survey would mask unavailability, whether via harvest or abandonment, of individuals from previous surveys.…”

Resource selection of deer hunters in Georgia's Appalachian Mountains

“…To filter hunter GPS data, we first omitted locations not associated with legal hunting hours. We erased locations falling within 150 m of campgrounds, picnic areas, and other WMA facilities (Gerrits et al 2020) and locations falling within 61 m of WMA check stations, which was based on the proximity of open hunting areas to those check stations. We clipped locations to a 610‐m buffer around the WMAs.…”

Influence of Landscape Characteristics on Hunter Space Use and Success

“…Given our objective to quantify space use during active hunting (Gerrits et al 2020), we censored locations as follows. We excluded camp locations by mapping hunter locations in ArcGIS (Esri, Redlands, CA, USA) and visually inspecting them to identify the centroid of clusters of each hunter's locations during night-time hours (defined as any locations outside legal shooting hours ±1 hr).…”

“…We determined that most stationary locations (i.e., consecutive locations in camp) were contained within a 200-m radius of the cluster centroid; thus, we excluded from analysis any telemetry locations within a 200-m radius of hunter camps. We further censored locations to exclude those obtained during the scouting period, outside legal shooting hours plus a 1-hour buffer before and after (Lamont et al 2020), within 300 m of the check station (Gerrits et al 2020), and after the day of harvest (successful hunters only; Plante et al 2017).…”