Take into account - the most pre-season killing I can ever remember according to the bragging and chirping - continued lack of respect for the dcnr - no fear of an invisible enforcement staff - and nobody scared of the consequences anyway -
It would be absolutely impossible to extrapolate, calculate, or multiply by percentage - any accurate numbers of any kind. Just my take.
And that's exactly what I predicted would happen when they announced mandatory GC. A random sample is way more accurate than a system that requires every turkey when it's going to be impossible to know about every turkey. It sure looks like the population is increasing based on the GC numbers, but it's entirely possible that the increase is mostly due to more hunters participating in GC. My perception is that the harvest probably is increasing, but it's just a guess and nobody knows. They took a system that worked and replaced it with one with no chance of working.
It is concerning to see those counties on the eastern side where the harvest is declining. I hunt some in one of those counties and that place has followed the trend down. But it's not any great mystery why; it's all about the habitat. We used to be surrounded by forests; now we are surrounded by 5 yr old cutover and 10 acre home lots. The turkey population goes down when that happens.
