http://dnr.wi.gov/files/PDF/pubs/WM/WM0585.pdf


A great and successful WTMP. Very detailed. Will be hunting Zone 2 myself this year with other fall turkey dog hunters. And will be headed there next spring.

One of the better State turkey management plans I have reviewed. Love the way they break it down into zones and permits.

Their 2016 spring harvest was 45,000 vs VA 17,000 if I looked at the stats correctly.


Earl

Wow, that is a fancy book. Guess you are doing a road trip. Good luck.

An observation abut the Wisc turkey plan. As i understand it, much of Wisc public land is under a no timber harvest status . A lot oft he private land is held by large land owners (plum Creek etc) and they are not logging either. ... thus mature forests abound. The grouse hunting(requiring second growth ) is going downhill due to the timber practices. The turkeys have great acorn sources in the mature oak forests and lots of high protein corn and bean production to nurture them…turkey hunting is a revenue sport so Wisc is smart to jump on it. I was surprise dot see their hunter success rate so low, given the number of birds that are in that state. Maybe I misread it, but it looked like maybe 101-15 % hunter success on the permits drawn?

Some say Wisc has abandoned the grouse to to focus on turkeys. To some extent their DNR hands are tied on the timber cutting prohibition front, so the grouse are going to have to fend for themselves.. …,having grouse hunted in Wisc for years and seen it deteriorate I must say Im not really to happy about the turkey explosion but no much I can do about it.

Yes the no timber harvest for WI sucked. But with the passing of the 2014 Farm Bill and 2014 Federal Appropriations Act authorizing the Good Neighbor Act hopefully will turn things around for the grouse. In fact WI just had their first big cutting on the 2 big forest lands and according to my connections up there many more cuttings are planned on state land.

They were told by the State that the grouse are in that low cycle (9-11 years) which started around 2011. But they said yes that no cutting they have seen a 40% decline in the south western area. But breeding pairs were up in 2015 (central 32% and 20% northern) and the 2016 study is going on now for the State.

TURKEY: The low percentage hunter success rate (which I thought was also low). But according to the State and some friends up there the way they do the permit sales is that a lot of bowhunters (fall) and others get the permits due to the fact they are out there and hope a turkey may come buy which leads to a not so accurate percentage hunter success rate. And spring the number of over the counter permits that are sold as needed and not used. The State says their success rate in the spring is 15-30 percent. According to the State however they calculated it the spring (2016) success rate was 23%.


Hopefully WI and other States including VA will Act on those 2014 Acts to help with the wildlife in our continuing decline of managed State lands.


Earl