Fall Harvest Stats

[charlie elk]

The preliminary final harvest numbers compiled by WDNR are posted on charlie elk I am going to tease them a little here because I am attempting to help get the word out about the Talk'n Turkey Expo. What do the harvest stats have to do with the turkey expo? Well not a lot directly. However, by keeping the chart of age, sex and zone kill stats only on my site for the moment- the search engines should point to it whenever a turkey hunter searches for these stats and the Talk'n Turkey link is right below em.
As of now, I think, I am the only outsider with these stats, so please check them out for yourselves to help ticklishpro promote the expo.
Hope I am not irritating anyone too much, it is for a good cause.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

Great info, glad your posting these.

[charlie elk]

On Dec 12 the total was 5500 turkeys. Apparently there was a spike in hunter activity from the 12th of Dec to the 31st with an additional 1,433 turkeys in those 19 days.
21% of all turkeys killed in 2012 were taken in the last 19 days of a roughly 3 month long season.

[Gopherlongbeards]

Thanks for posting this charlie. Even with the increase, harvest is still so low its practically negligible. Less than 7000 birds total statewide. There were more LEFTOVER permits in many units (1, 3, 4) than that. Fewer than 4000 female turkeys statewide. I'd say you're right about your reasoning for the increase over last year, there were a TON of birds around this fall. I was also seeing large groups of this years jakes towards the end as well. Going to be a great next few years in WI :D

[charlie elk]

You got that right Gopher - According to WI biologists we could have a 60,000 fall harvest with no ill affects on the state's turkeys or the spring hunt.
Good comparison of the harvest to the number of leftover permits, I might steal that point for a future post or work it into my presentation at the Talk'n Turkey Expo.
I bet there are more turkeys lost before spring to natural causes i.e. eagles, hawks, owls, fox, coyote and weather than there are to the human hunter.
Interestingly, some of those fields where we were seeing hundreds of birds in down here are now turkey free. They apparently moved on. So walked a few of the fields to check how much waste grain was still there and found they were unbelievably clean. Like they had been raked and vacuumed.
Has anyone else noticed that in their area?

[Gopherlongbeards]

The large groups of birds (100+) seem to have broken up into smaller groups (20-30) and dispersed more now that the snow is mostly gone. More food to access so no need to crowd up I guess?

[charlie elk]

BTW, Thanks for your help and patience, it worked, the fall harvest post is on Google, Bing and Yahoo page one for the search "wi fall turkey harvest" which appears to be directing a lot of attention to the Talk'n Turkey event.
This thread on T&TH is also on page one so it is a double hit.