Storm might hamper youth day turkey hunters as season begins
There is nothing fairly like the joy and anticipation of the primary day of any searching season.
That would be the case once more on Saturday because the season begins with Fall Youth Turkey Day. However this 12 months, the opener possible will include some added challenges.
With Hurricane Lee bearing down on the Maine coast and scheduled to deliver rain and excessive winds to some areas, circumstances are more likely to be lower than optimum.
Youth hunters and their supervising companions are inspired to make use of warning in the event that they plan to go afield. Whereas a floor blind can supply safety from wind and rain, hunters ought to attempt to arrange away from older bushes or people who have useless branches that would come down in excessive winds.
Hunters additionally must be conscious that the storm could create flooding in areas vulnerable to holding water, so waterproof boots could also be mandatory.
The climate points will kick off what’s already anticipated to be a more difficult fall turkey season.
“Now we have 600 information of turkey observations and the take-home is that brood numbers are in all probability down like 20, 25 %,” mentioned Kelsey Sullivan, sport chicken biologist for the Maine Division of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
The moist climate final spring lowered turkey copy, which suggests there aren’t as many kids within the combine. Teams will probably be smaller when the birds flock collectively.
“There will probably be turkeys within the fall, however there will probably be fewer,” Sullivan mentioned. “There will probably be fewer juveniles, however I feel folks will nonetheless have alternatives.”
And a few of the younger birds will probably be smaller, as a result of they possible hatched throughout a second try after some hens’ preliminary nesting tries failed. In additional regular seasons, turkey poults born within the spring can have reached the scale of a hen by the autumn.
Maine’s common fall wild turkey searching season begins in most areas of the state on Monday and runs by way of Nov. 7. However there isn’t a searching in the course of the fall in Wildlife Administration Districts 1-5 and 9, the place populations are typically smaller to start with.
Bag limits range considerably — from one to 5 — relying on what WMD you’re searching in. And each female and male turkeys are truthful sport within the fall.
One important change for fall turkey hunters is the registration course of. All wild turkeys harvested in Maine, whether or not within the fall or the spring, should be registered.
Hunters could tag their birds at a neighborhood registration station or they could self-register their turkey utilizing the state’s on-line system — which was rolled out within the spring — utilizing a cellphone, pc or different digital system. There isn’t any cost to register a turkey on-line, whereas tagging stations impose a $2 agent price.
