A Game Warden’s Perspective

I sat atop a ridge on the opening morning of the 2022 North Carolina spring turkey season. Like many of you, I woke up hours before daylight, walked many miles up a mountain in the dark careful to not use a light, found the spot I was looking for, sat against a tree and waited. While most excited North Carolina turkey hunters were waiting for that heart-stopping first gobble of the season, I was waiting on something else.

I love turkeys and turkey hunting as passionately as anyone who considers themselves a true turkey hunter. If it weren’t for the demands of life, I would follow in the footsteps of people like Doc Weddle, who has completed the U.S. Super Slam multiple times, and start hunting in mid-March and not quit until June. I feel the same excitement and anticipation for my first hunt of the year as most of you. I scout year-round. I consume all the turkey hunting videos, books and podcasts I can get my hands on. I put a diaphragm call in my work truck in January to practice my calling while I am driving. I spend the offseason meticulously planning and researching states I am going to hunt the following spring. In the weeks leading up to the season, turkey hunting consumes my mind to the extent that I begin to dream about turkeys and turkey hunting; however, as a North Carolina wildlife enforcement officer, I view the upcoming turkey season through a unique lens.

From a work perspective, I see an extremely busy and stressful month ahead. I see a month that I won’t get to hunt nearly as much as I’d like. I see a month that will be filled with more phone calls than you can count, including getting called in to work on my days off to respond to reports. I foresee checking piles of licenses, writing a few tickets and warnings and talking turkeys with scores of sportsmen and women from across the country who have traveled to North Carolina to kill a gobbler. I do all this while doing my absolute best to present myself as a knowledgeable, personable, fair and all-around good representative of both law enforcement and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. I do these things hoping to make some small impact on the long-term effort to conserve wild turkeys in North Carolina.

Most of us who consider ourselves turkey hunters have at least a general understanding of what problems wild turkeys are currently facing. You have probably heard many times that there is no one “silver bullet” to addressing these issues, but that it is a multifaceted problem that must be addressed in many ways both by wildlife agencies and individuals. One of the main concerns is the loss of quality habitat. Other concerns include disease, season dates, predators, weather that is unfavorable to poult survival, bag limits and more. I don’t want to focus on any of these issues as they are better left to be analyzed and discussed by folks with much more education and expertise in these specific areas than me. Instead, I want to address the latter half of a phrase the NWTF uses frequently: Healthy Habitats. Healthy Harvests.

I tend to think of healthy harvests as decisions made at the state level that address things like season dates, sustainable daily and seasonal bag limits, legal methods of hunting and other decisions that are generally made by state wildlife agencies and adopted into law. However, healthy harvests are completely dependent upon the individual hunter to abide by these laws, even if they don’t always agree with them. We have a responsibility to ensure healthy harvest by only lawfully and ethically taking wildlife and reporting the unlawful taking of wildlife, aka poaching. I have no delusions here. I know for a fact that poaching is not the leading cause of the decline in wild turkey populations. In fact, it’s probably not in the top three reasons, but we cannot pretend that it does not exist. As ethical, involved sportsmen and women who aim to be an active part in addressing wild turkey population declines and the betterment of wild turkey conservation, we must ask ourselves, “What am I doing to address unhealthy harvest?”

I had been to the location where I was sitting a few days prior and found corn on the ground from a nearby feeder. There were large amounts of feathers, tracks and droppings around the bait pile, and there was a ground blind about 15 yards from the feeder. I had taken pictures, collected evidence and made my plans for the opening morning. About 45 minutes before legal shooting light on opening day, I heard what I was waiting for: footsteps on the logging road. I observed the hunter get into the blind constructed of fallen trees and brush and get settled in. I activated my body-worn camera and began to shake, unsure if it was from the cold morning or the surge of adrenaline. As dawn broke, a lone tom began to gobble about 150 yards away, and the hunter began to make soft tree yelps on a pot call. I noted the exact time of each call the hunter made. Just as the gobbler flew down, I made my approach to confront the individual to ensure the hunter was not able to illegally kill the bird. I picked my way down the ridge carefully and quietly, using large trees as concealment.

At a distance of about 20 feet, the hunter was still unaware of my presence. I took cover behind a particularly large tree and loudly and clearly announced myself as a North Carolina wildlife officer, then ordered the hunter to put the gun down and step out of the blind. This is the part that is always the most nerve-racking. How will the hunter react? Will they comply? Will they run? God forbid, will they shoot?

Regardless of money or resources, we are all equally responsible to actively contribute to healthy harvests.

Luckily, the hunter complied almost immediately once the shock of my unexpected arrival wore off. The hunter put down the gun and stepped out of the blind while I quickly secured the shotgun and took the suspect’s ID and hunting license.

I imagine many of you picture a “poacher” as some extremely rough looking, hillbilly of a man that you can tell just by looking is a shady, undesirable character. But in my experience, they are often well-put-together individuals who have never received so much as a speeding ticket — people who would be offended to be described using such an abhorrent word as poacher. They see themselves as just trying to find a little success. After all, they wouldn’t have to do such a thing, but they barely get any time off work. They would never dream of illegally killing a wild turkey, but they just can’t get up and down the hills like they could as a younger person. They wouldn’t do it, but baiting is the only way the birds use their property in the spring. I’ve heard many, many excuses.

On this morning, the subject I confronted was a nice, respectful individual who worked a full-time job, had a family and had never received a citation for anything besides minor traffic offenses.

As I issued the hunter a citation, they began to tell me a story that has become quite common across the Southeast. They explained how few turkeys were seen on their property compared to years past, and how they couldn’t believe that on this beautiful morning, and on this particularly “turkey-looking” ridge, there was only one bird gobbling. As the hunter talked, I silently wondered how many years bait had been on this ridge top and how many birds this person had killed over bait. I thought it was quite ironic that they couldn’t figure out what part of the problem was as we were standing in corn underneath a feeder, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

Healthy Habitats. Healthy Harvests. Let’s be honest. Most of us don’t have the luxury of owning land we can actively manage, or we don’t have the money to actively manage the land we do own. Most of us don’t have the ability or contacts to sway legislatures to pass conservation-minded bills. For the large majority of us, the most effective thing we can do to contribute to healthy habitats is continuing to donate our time and membership dues to the NWTF. Regardless of money or resources, we are all equally responsible to actively contribute to healthy harvests. If you want to be an involved sportsman or sportswoman who is doing real things to make a positive difference for conservation, you cannot sit passively by with knowledge of unhealthy harvests.