If your goal is to observe wild turkeys so that you can get a feel for the health of Maryland’s population, it would help to have 1,228 eyes, right?
Counting his own, that’s how may eyeballs Bob Long had on duty in July and August looking for and charting wild turkeys from Friendsville to Crisfield, from mountain to coast, from Almost Maryland to Pert Near Virginia.
There were 614 interested people who took part in the annual Wild Turkey Observation Survey during the summer of 2024.
Long is the wild turkey project manager for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. It used to be that triple digits were not needed to count the number of observers. From 2014 to 2020, the greatest number of eyeballers happened in 2018 when 99 individuals participated. Then, in 2021, the survey was announced online and citizen observers could easily click their sightings to the wild turkey mother ship at Long’s office on the Eastern Shore.
Voila! Suddenly, Long had 737 onlookers on board. That’s still the observer zenith.
Participants this year reported 1,123 observations. “The large number of observations provides high confidence in the accuracy of the results,” Long wrote in the annual report. During those 1,123 observations, people reported seeing 7,930 turkeys. Observers are asked to report the number of gobblers, hens and poults they see. If the viewer cannot determine that a bird fits any of those categories, the animal is reported as “unknown.”
The agency identifies five regions throughout the state for wild turkey management. The Western Region comprises Garrett, Allegany and Washington counties.
An average of 2.8 poults were observed per hen in the region, higher than the past two years and on par with the historical average, according to Long. Seventy-one percent of the hens were seen with broods, an indicator of good nesting success.
“Populations in the Western Region have been strong for many years with poult-per-hen ratios consistently above 2.0. The production seen this year should help keep turkeys abundant throughout the region,” Long wrote.
Maryland’s fall turkey season is open only in the Western Region. The dates are Nov. 2-10.
Participation in the fall hunt has declined significantly, not only in Maryland, but throughout the range of the game bird. From 2016 to 2022, the harvest in Allegany County ranged from 22 to 38 turkeys. It is legal to shoot any turkey during the fall hunt. The Garrett County numbers ranged from 30 to 55. In Washington County, the range was 16 to 33.