I got off to a shaky start last turkey season. The gobbling was sparse and it seemed there was a shortage of 2-year-old birds in my Spencer County area. I also knew that the long streak of consecutive record harvests had ended the previous spring. I wondered if the poor hatches of previous years were playing a role in my unlucky start. My worries stopped when a longbeard made a fatal error just a few days before the season ended. The late-season turkey made me remember the old cliché: “Better late than never.”

There were plenty of hunters who didn’t bother running it to the wire last spring. Consider Woody and Mark Williams. They headed into their area long before first light with high hopes. Their dreams of tagging a bird soon became a reality. By midmorning, both had cashed in on a Warrick County gobbler and made their contribution to yet another Hoosier record harvest.

Is 2004 the beginning of another long record-harvest streak, or simply a fluctuation of harvests? After all, Indiana’s wild turkey biologist Steve Backs has stated in recent years that we are “leveling off.”

Before going there, let’s first analyze the statistics of recent years. In case you didn’t know, Hoosier turkey hunters enjoyed 21 consecutive record harvests from 1982 to 2002. The streak ended in 2003 when hunters fell short of the previous harvest and bagged 10,366 turkeys, compared to 10,575 the previous year. But last year, hunters bagged a new record harvest of 10,765 turkeys!

Backs said that the 2004 harvest decrease was speculative at best. He claims that counties with older, more established turkey populations (that traditionally have the higher harvests) were generally the counties that had decreases in their harvests last year. Other factors, such as the leveling off theory, the cool/wet 2002 and subsequent poor hatch, accumulative hunting pressure, inclement weather and combinations of all of the above, remain unclear.

Consider, too, many of the record harvests that occurred in the 1990s included major increases when compared to the previous year, and many don’t compare to the enormous harvests of recent years. For instance, in 1995, hunters took nearly 1,000 more birds than they did in 1994. Another major jump took place in 1998 when hunters harvested 6,384, and in 2000 when the harvest exceeded 7,800. However, the 2004 harvest jumped to 10,765. This currently stands as an all-time high, but nonetheless is a mere 4 percent increase over the 2003 season’s take.

Why did another record harvest occur last spring when it seemed that harvests were finally on the downside, or at least stabilizing? “I think this was typical fluctuation,” Backs noted. “We only went up 4 percent. If you look at 2003, we were down a little for the first time in years. I think now, we’ve just gotten back on course.”

Many hunters have wondered about the effects of all-day hunting, which was initialized a couple of years ago. Backs claims that this provides additional opportunities for young sportsmen, and for some who work mornings and can’t get into the field until late in the day. However, he added that 80 percent and more of the last year’s harvest occurred before noon. Keep in mind, too, that many hunters who were successful in the afternoons might have taken a morning bird — if they didn’t previously kill a turkey in the afternoon. In other words, you can’t say that the 20 percent who shot birds late in the day would reduce the overall harvest if all-day hunting weren’t allowed.

Although I was fortunate to have taken a late-season bird, most successful hunters take their bird during the first few days of the season. In 2004, 56 percent of hunters took their bird during the first five days of the season. It’s also true that more than 20 percent of the total harvest occurred on opening day, which always falls on a Wednesday. Thirty-three percent of sportsmen enjoyed success on weekends.