How long can North Carolina turkey hunters expect to see expanding spring-gobbler harvests?
“I don’t know,” said Evin Stanford, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s wild-turkey project leader. “The state’s available habitat for wild turkeys still isn’t full (of birds), so it’s not something you can predict.”
However, Stanford said biologists from other southeastern states predict the trend will start to decline at some point.
“Habitat is the key,” Stanford said. “When you start losing turkey habitat to development, you start losing turkeys.”
So that probably leaves several years until North Carolina witnesses wild turkey numbers and harvests beginning to drop.
“We’re 10 years behind the rest of the southeast because we got started late in turkey restoration,” Stanford said. “So it could be 10 years or 50 years. Nobody really knows.”
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