Although many fall turkey hunters will be seeking a prime gobbler like this as the focus of their fall hunts, there actually will be more opportunities to take juvenile birds or even hens, since either-sex hunting is allowed. Photo by John Trout Jr.

The new fall turkey season in Indiana seems like a dream come true. Many Hoosier hunters have anxiously awaited the arrival of such a season, and for good reasons.

Spring turkey harvests have boomed in recent years. Restoration efforts have been nothing less than spectacular for decades. We've seen great hatches and better-than-average numbers of poults per hen. Flocks have now expanded into regions we never expected them to be.

Many avid hunters are fully aware that officials have worked on getting us a fall hunting season since 1994. Now it's officially carved in stone. The season will debut this month and offer opportunities for both archers and gunners. However, there's more to the story. For instance, is the fall turkey season a "given" for years to come? Will it impact spring harvests? How will the harvest of hens affect flock growth? Can even veteran hunters adjust to the different tactics often used to harvest fall turkeys?

Before going there, let's first hear how the fall season came to be.

According to a report issued by Indiana's wild turkey biologist Steve Backs, a proposal was developed to initiate a fall hunting season after monitoring fall season results of other states, examining published research, and consulting with department officials from various agencies.

No doubt, fall hunting in areas of established and growing flocks increases hunter recreation and utilizes surplus hens. Like other states, Indiana will allow the harvest of only one wild turkey of either sex in the fall, regardless of the weapon used. However, the question on many hunters' minds concerns the harvest of hens and its influence on spring hunting.

"A lot of the poults that survive the summer are still going to undergo some mortality as sub-adults during winter," Backs noted, claiming that at least 30 percent of the juvenile birds suffer mortality before the breeding season. "The only time that the fall season tends to go toward what we call 'additive mortality' -- where it's removing potential breeders -- is when we have low production (poor hatch in spring). Then the hunters are focusing on more adults in the harvest."

Backs added that in most normal years of production, about 60 to 65 percent of the fall harvest consists of juvenile birds. He added that a percentage of these birds would have faced mortality anyway.

There is a good reason that juveniles make up the largest percentage of the fall harvest. These birds are more susceptible to come in to calling than adult birds. The strong desire to socialize and regroup makes the young birds much more vulnerable.

Backs recalls one state that tried a "gobblers-only" fall season. He believes that it was probably more of a political than a biological decision. Although hens were illegal, officials in the state had radio-collared several birds and noted that they lost as many hens during the fall with a gobbler-only season as they had when either sex was allowed.

Indiana's fall archery season begins Oct. 1 and continues through Oct. 23, while the fall firearm season runs Oct. 19-23. The archery deer season will be open during the fall archery turkey season, but Backs does not believe it will play a big role in the harvest. He said that although there will be some "incidental" killing of turkeys with bow and arrow, such as by those hunting deer that also purchased a turkey tag, the overall harvest by archers should be minimal.

Although a report provided by Backs indicates it is possible that fall hunting seasons have the potential to negatively affect population levels of wild turkeys, and could reduce subsequent spring harvests and hunter success, it isn't likely that archery hunters will be responsible. It showed that archery hunting has a negligible impact on wild turkey populations compared to gun hunting, and that fall gun hunting success rates are five to 20 times greater than archery success. Archery success typically averages about 2 percent. Thus, officials look at many avenues to reduce the possibility of impacting turkey populations, such as length of the firearms season (limited to five days in Indiana), the amount of hunting range open in fall and bag limits.