Turkey harvest numbers up from last year

Despite hor­rid open­ing week weather, Ohio hunters har­vested a pre­lim­i­nary total of 8,898 bearded wild turkeys dur­ing the first week of the spring turkey-hunting sea­son, which is open statewide through May 20, accord­ing to the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources’ Divi­sion of Wildlife. Last year hunters checked 7,744 wild turkeys dur­ing the first week of the season.

Top coun­ties for wild turkeys killed last week were: Ashtabula-315, Guernsey-276, Tuscarawas-269, Coshocton-266, Muskingum-265, Belmont-262, Meigs-223, Knox-221, Harrison-220 and Adams-213. Locally, Mor­row and Rich­land coun­ties were up as well with Craw­ford County expe­ri­enc­ing a slight decline from last year.

The Divi­sion of Wildlife esti­mates that more than 70,000 peo­ple will hunt turkeys dur­ing the four-week sea­son. Legal hunt­ing hours are one-half hour before sun­rise until noon from April 23 to May 6. Hunt­ing hours from May 7–20 will be a half hour before sun­rise to sunset.

Ohio’s wild turkey pop­u­la­tion was esti­mated at 180,000 prior to the start of the spring sea­son. A spe­cial youth-only hunt for hunters age 17 and younger was held statewide on April 21–22. Young hunters killed an addi­tional 1,632 birds statewide.

Only bearded wild turkeys may be taken dur­ing the spring hunt­ing sea­son. A hunter is required to check in their turkey by 11:30 p.m. on the day of har­vest. Hunters with the proper per­mits may take a limit of two bearded gob­blers dur­ing the four-week sea­son, but not more than one wild turkey per day.

• The ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife has issued a statewide direc­tive to its enforce­ment offi­cers to clar­ify guide­lines for enforc­ing a new rule that spec­i­fies the con­di­tion of fish fil­lets being kept or transported.

“Many Ohio anglers have expressed that they were con­fused about the fil­let rule so I asked our Divi­sion of Wildlife to clar­ify the rule so no inno­cent angler stands a chance of get­ting in to trou­ble when they are try­ing to fol­low the law,” said ODNR Direc­tor James Zehringer,

The rule, Ohio Admin­is­tra­tive Code 1501:31–13-08, states that it is unlaw­ful to pos­sess or trans­port a fish unless the fish is in the round or a com­plete fil­let with skin attached until a per­son reaches their per­ma­nent residence.　The con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the ques­tion of whether the skin had to be kept on the entire fil­let or whether a patch of skin to iden­tify the fish species would suffice.

Many Lake Erie anglers come to the lake for a few days or a week to sam­ple the world class fish­ery, and anglers may be bring­ing home sev­eral days’ lim­its of the var­i­ous species.

After a thor­ough review, a direc­tive sent today to wildlife offi­cers from Scott Zody, chief of the Divi­sion of Wildlife, spec­i­fied that the rule should be inter­preted to mean that only a patch of skin, enough to iden­tify the species of the fish is required to be left on the fillet.

Changes will be made this fall dur­ing the reg­u­lar rule-making pack­age to fur­ther clar­ify the require­ment in code. The rule is designed as a tool to pro­tect the valu­able Lake Erie fish­ing resource and to allow wildlife offi­cers to iden­tify fil­lets in an angler’s possession.

“Our goal was to pro­tect the state’s most valu­able fish­ery,” said Zody. “It was not our intent to cre­ate a hard­ship for anglers, who bring a tremen­dous eco­nomic ben­e­fit to the state.”

• If you are plan­ning a trip to Lake Erie soon, remem­ber that the daily limit for wall­eye returned to six fish per angler and the min­i­mum size limit remains at 15 inches. The best reports have come from trolling with crankbaits or worm har­nesses around the outer buoys of the Camp Perry fir­ing range and west of the Bass Islands.　Fish are still being caught with jigs on the Camp Perry fir­ing range reefs, but catch rates have slowed as the spawn­ing sea­son ends and wall­eye begin mov­ing off the reefs.

The daily bag limit for yel­low perch is 30 fish per angler on all Ohio waters of Lake Erie. The trout and salmon daily bag limit is two fish per angler through May 15.　From May 16 through Aug. 31 the bag limit returns to five fish per angler.

The min­i­mum size limit for trout and salmon is 12 inches. The daily bag limit for yel­low perch is 30 fish per angler on all Ohio waters of Lake Erie. It is ille­gal to pos­sess black bass (large­mouth and small­mouth bass) in Ohio waters of Lake Erie from May 1 through June 29.　The sea­son re-opens on Sat­ur­day, June 30 with a daily bag limit of five fish and a 14 inch min­i­mum size limit.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Rob Hamilton on May 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.