Mike Bleech: What season is this anyway?

Can you believe it's November?

And yet some area waterways had temperatures as high as 60 degrees just a week ago. Such unseasonable temperatures often spell hard times for fishing, but such does not appear to be the case here.

Now that air temperatures have declined, water temperatures are following, and things are getting close to normal.

Although it has been hard to tell what season it is, it is the season when there is more to do than anyone can possibly find time to do.

Wild-turkey season is here, and there is some good news for area turkey hunters, what few there are. Fall wild-turkey hunting has been declining. In 1995, Pennsylvania counted 261,395 fall wild-turkey hunters. From 1990-99, excluding 1998 because of faulty data, the average was 241,383 wild-turkey hunters. The number of fall wild-turkey hunters did not drop to less than 200,000 until 2006, when there were 182,233.

Meanwhile, the number of spring-gobbler hunters started to exceed the number of fall wild-turkey hunters in 2000, and it has stayed this way.

In the last reported year, 2010, the number had declined to 136,433 fall wild-turkey hunters in Pennsylvania.

Have so many Pennsylvania wild-turkey hunters lost interest in fall hunting?

It appears so.

The reason likely is the emphasis on tagging mature gobblers. The number of spring gobbler hunters for the past several years is about the same as the number of fall wild-turkey hunters before the 2007 seasons.

Another possible reason for declining fall wild-turkey numbers has been a declining wild turkey population.

However, this has not been anything but a settling of the population after peak years that resulted from the birds spreading into all available habitat through natural dispersal and the highly successful Trap & Transfer Program. The Pennsylvania wild-turkey population still is nothing less than excellent.

Fluorescent orange issues might have caused some fall hunters to quit.

Good news comes from Wildlife Management Unit 2F, which is primarily the Allegheny National Forest.

This is a primary wild-turkey hunting area for Erie County hunters. The wild-turkey population has been rising on the Allegheny National Forest, according to Pennsylvania Game Commission turkey biologist Mary Jo Casalena. The hatch in 2013 was above average.

During my extensive driving through the Allegheny National Forest this year, I saw more wild-turkey broods than usual.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission is in the third year of a hen study. This is being done in two areas, a northern area consisting of WMU 2F, WMU 2G and WMU 2H, and a southern area consisting of WMU 2C, WMU 2E, WMU 4A, WMU 4B AND WMU4D.

Part of the hen study involves leg-banding some wild turkeys, and fitting radio transmitters on a few.

"The are still some gobblers with leg bands, and for our hen study we're trapping birds and putting leg bands on all birds that we catch, even though it's a hen study," Casalena said. "And so all of those management units I just discussed, 2B, 2C and 2F, are part of our study, and we're always asking hunters if they harvest a bird with a leg band, call the 800 number."

Interesting news coming out of the 2013 spring gobbler season: Pennsylvania has a new record wild turkey, by weight.

"This past spring, we had a junior hunter down in Lancaster County call in a leg-banded gobbler that he harvested during the junior hunt, and it was at least eight years old," Casalena said. "But it could have been older, because when we banded it, it was already an adult, so it was at least eight years old. That is the oldest documented gobbler in Pennsylvania. And the coolest thing is, it was harvested within the same township where it was banded. It was banded on state game lands, and it was harvested on state game lands."

Even at that extended age the bird was still in good condition. However, it was not any bigger than many three year-old gobblers. It weighed 21.2 pounds, had a beard 101/2 inches in length, and a 11/4-inch spur.

"It was just an average- looking bird. It sounds like he was still in very good condition. He wasn't declining health-wise," Casalena said.

"That's old for any turkey anywhere. From our gobbler study, which was a study on gobbler harvests in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, the average of those gobblers was three years old. So this guy lived almost three times as long."

A common objective on the Allegheny National Forest is to break up a flock, then try to call them back in.

After a flock has been broken up, they tend to remain in the same area and are anxious for company, especially younger birds.
