EASTERN WILD TURKEYS
G&F: With the upcoming fall turkey season, there was talk about hunter orange, and then there wasn't. What will the rules be next for the inaugural fall turkey season?

Lange: Hunter orange will not be a requirement. Everything else we talked about will govern a fall season. In terms of where gun or archery seasons will be allowed, we won't set that until after we see how the spring season goes. That was part of the thing that we would base the fall season on, how the turkey population is doing after the spring harvest.

The commission felt that there was enough opposition to the orange (requirement) that they left it out. They listened to what hunters had to say about hunting safety problems and they weighed that against what law enforcement wanted.

G&F: I know the department was experimenting with putting turkeys in areas previously thought poor turkey habitat. How are those turkeys doing, and why might this work?

Lange: As far as we know, they're surviving. We'll know more after a couple of years. We seem to be doing OK for the moment. We'll be looking at broods this spring. We'll be talking to landowners this spring where we released them. It's largely fragmented forest areas, even forest habitat along drainage systems, rivers and streams. We'll see if the birds can survive in that small of a forested habitat. There are no large tracts of forested areas in the area where we released these birds.

G&F: So has the DNR been actively trying to expand the turkey population?

Lange: We'll see what happens with this set of releases and see how well they do before we move on with any new releases. But I suspect we're at the end of any major releases.

G&F: What effect are you expecting the fall season to have on the overall turkey population?

Lange: We'll prevent anything negative from happening. The places that you can hunt in the fall will be adjusted every year. That's why we'll look at the spring harvest first.

INDIANA WATERFOWL
G&F: Is there a direct correlation between the amount of available wetlands habitat left in Indiana and the size of the duck population? And does this ultimately affect the length of our duck seasons?

Lange: I don't think so. Although we do produce some waterfowl in Indiana, and certainly the amount of wetland habitat helps that. But for the most part, the ducks present in our seasons are more dependent on habitat in other places. The length of the season is reliant on how well ducks do in other places.

G&F: Are we any closer to enacting extra seasons to bring down the number of resident Canada geese, which seem to be getting out of control?

Lange: We're certainly getting closer to the decision. We have another year of information to collect. We need to show whether they're resident birds or migrating birds. It's problematic on how to get to these birds because they're in urban areas. The federal government is trying to give more flexibility to the state on how we can manage those populations.

Just as soon as we collect all that information, we'll certainly move forward. We need information from about five years. We're into the last two years of that study. There may be some counties where we can have early seasons, and in other counties we won't be able to because the birds in those counties aren't resident birds.