ORIGINAL: spoonchucker

"just over a 1/16 of turkey PSM"

No, that would be per LINEAL mile. If he traveled 1 mile north then turned and traveled 1 mile east, then 1 mile south, then 1 mile west to his original point. He would have encompassed a sguare mile, but still not have covered one.

My bad, understood. Very low numbers for a lineal mile. Winter must of took its toll over in Elk. SW has many turkey and fewer but still a fair amount in NW by what I can tell.

You can’t really evaluate turkey populations from one area to another based on just turkey sightings between two different areas and habitat types. You need to use the same survey methods over both a number of years and same areas to develop population trends based on what is typical for that particular area.
 
Turkeys, especially hens with poults, tend to be much more viewable in areas with more mowed fields than they are in wooded habitats. That is why just making population evaluations based simply on the number of turkey sightings can be very misleading. The reason I included all of the data over the ten-year period was so people could see the population trends for the same area over a longer period of time. Even with that though it is possible to have some slight, unintended and unpreventable bias in the data from year to year. As an example of that potential for some bias is the fact that in areas of largely forested habitats I generally see more turkeys, and especially hens with poults, on the forest roads after it has been raining and the ferns and under story are wet. It seems that the turkeys come out onto the dirt roads and travel them instead of the wet grass and ferns when the under story is wet. They probably do that because young poults are very susceptible to hypothermia, and thus death, when they get wet and cold so the hens probably bring them out to the roads to help keep them as dry and warm as possible.
 
This year we had fewer than normal wet, rainy days during the summer so I suspect that factor alone probably reduced the turkey sightings per mile as compared to some other years in my district.
 
If you look at the ten-year turkey sighting trends for the area I cover the numbers sighted this year are pretty much average or slightly higher than the ten-year average. The ten-year average for this district would be 0.042 turkeys per mile. This year’s sightings were 0.050 per mile, higher than average even with the possible bias of seeing fewer due too drier that normal weather, so it appears the Elk County turkey populations are still in good condition.
 R.S. Bodenhorn  

Are you the only WCO collecting data for your area ?

Are "YOU" the only one (WCO) collecting data in "YOUR" area ?

ORIGINAL: RSB

ORIGINAL: Outdoor Adventures

Are you the only WCO collecting data for your area ?

Every WCO in the state collects the turkey sighting data for their district during the months of June, July and August. They then report their turkey sightings of hens with poults, hens without poults, poults, gobblers and unknown for every day they work along with their day light travel mileage and separately for each WMU in their district each of those three months. They have been collecting the data every year for I think maybe my entire career. If not the entire time pretty near the entire time so they have a pretty good data bank on the population trends for each district of the state.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

Thank you. Why doesn't DWCO collect data ? What exactly do they do ?

ORIGINAL: Outdoor Adventures

Thank you. Why doesn't DWCO collect data ? What exactly do they do ?

 
Though deputies get involved in many and even most aspects of the agency they are not used for turkey surveys.
 
Deputies are the law enforcement arm of the Game Commission. WCOs are WAY to busy to do law enforcement most of the time.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

Got a hen and two chicks bout the size of crows again up in NY- Darn they hatched late-again.

ORIGINAL: BloodyHand

I have noticed a big increase in the turkey population where I hunt. My question is ( and I dont know how to talk turkey ), is it common for Hens to work together to raise their little ones? Or do they just happen to be hangin together?

 
Although you will often see just one hen with her poults it is also very common to see several hens with their broods all together. Turkeys are a gregarious species that prefer to be in a flock with the other turkeys using the same areas. That is why breaking their flock up then calling the birds back to you works do well in the fall.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

    Passed coupla hens out back - they still havent recovered their numbers yet so I wrote off the Fall season too- Hope for a decent spring hatch to get things started back to normal-- lousy mast crop here this year- hard to even find old scratching.
   Took enough over the years and wont hurt the future. Nice to have had the chance though.