ELKINS, W.Va. — For the first time in generations, West Virginia has a fall turkey hunting season in all 55 counties. For some of those counties the season has already opened and closed, but for others–including those traditional fall hunting counties along the Virginia border, the season opened this week. There are a couple of reasons state game managers have decided to open up the season a little wider.
First, the numbers of turkeys in West Virginia are very health, particularly this year, but secondly is it’s doubtful there will be very much pressure. Fewer and fewer hunters in West Virginia participate in fall turkey hunting.
“That’s one of the primary reasons why we moved this season to all 55 counties,” said Keith Krantz, Biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “Our perception is most of our fall hunters are bowhunting, many of them are sitting in tree stands trying to kill a deer. The number of people squirrel hunting or fall turkey hunting are far lower than they used to be.”
That’s too bad. The turkey population in West Virginia is in solid shape, but it’s also a credit to the wide variety of hunting opportunities the state now offers. Those opportunities were all created with the help of sportsmen who dutifully buy the license and hunting and fishing gear every year to fund management plans.
The numbers of turkeys in the state this fall is particularly high because of a huge boost in easy food over the summer in some parts of West Virginia.
“Any place you had the 17 year cicadas, you have really good fall abundance,” said Krantz. “In two years, we’ll have a really good harvest provided they overwinter okay. Our brood counts in those counties that had the cicadas were up by 323 percent.”
The noisy, meaty insects were heavy on the limbs during the summer months and the turkey were picking them off non-stop, but Krantz said it was even better than that. In some cases, birds found them well before we heard them singing.
“I’ve got pictures from Preston County of a turkey killed on youth day that had 13 of those larvae in its crop,” he said. “I would guess as those cicada larvae migrated to the surface in preparation to hatch out, I would guess the turkeys became pretty adept at digging them up.”
The cicadas were largely in the Upper Ohio Valley and North Central West Virginia. Krantz said that seems to correlate with the findings of this year’s brood count, translating to a better nesting season.
“We had guys telling me in Lewis, Upshur and up through Harrison County they had seen just tons and tons of poults this year,” he explained. “I attribute that to the abundance of food.”
It should make the 2019 spring gobbler season one amazing year since typically the two year old birds are the most vulnerable in the spring. But if you’re hunting turkeys in the fall, the strategy is vastly different. There is calling involved, but you’re not trying to lure an enamored gobbler to you instead you’re trying to become the beacon for lost and wayward members of a broken family unit.
“If you do it correctly, it’s not a bushwhack hunt. You’re supposed to find the large family flock, break up that flock, and then wherever you broke the flock up sit down and call them back to you. They’ll generally reassemble in about the same place they were broken up,” he said. “That’s how fall hunting is supposed to be done.”
The season runs through Saturday in Brooke, Hancock, Marshall, Mason, Ohio, Preston, and Wood Counties. The season runs through November 12 in Berkeley, Grant, Greenbrier, Hampshire, Hardy, Mineral, Monroe, Morgan, Nicholas, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Randolph, Tucker, and Webster Counties. The rest of the state’s fall season has already opened and closed earlier this month.