The general spring turkey season opens Friday and runs through May 31. State Fish and Wildlife Department game program manager Mick Cope in Olympia said it should be a good hunt this year. State turkey populations had a very good nesting season, Cope said, and there should be plenty of birds available in all the usually productive areas.
The best area, he said, will again be the northeast corner of the state, followed by the Blue Mountains in the southeast corner.
“There’s no better place to hunt wild turkeys in the spring season than northeast Washington,” said state biologist Dana Base, who is based in Colville. “Over 65 percent of all the state’s spring turkey harvest occurs here.”
The winter turkey survey in the area, which included 180 transect miles, showed an average of 6.1 birds per mile of transect. The highest densities were in the Clayton transect of Game Management Unit 117 with 18.7 birds per mile, and the Douglas transect in GMU 108 with 9.5 birds per mile.
Base said the lowest densities were in the Kelly transect in GMU 105 with no turkeys, the Deer Valley transect in GMU 117 with 0.3 birds per mile, and the Daisy transect in GMU 121 at 1.5 birds per mile.
Other good spots in the Spokane area include the Sherman Creek, LeClerc Creek and West Branch Little Spokane wildlife areas, and GMU 124 (Mount Spokane). Unit 124, according to biologist Mike Atamian, has one of the highest turkey densities in the state, with a typical yield of more than 800 birds per year. The Unit is predominantly private land, however, so securing landowner permission is critical.
In the southeast, where 15 percent of the state harvest occurs, popular hunting spots include the Asotin Creek, Chief Joseph and W.T. Wooten wildlife areas.
In Okanogan County, Department of Fish and Wildlife district wildlife biologist Scott Fitkin said spring turkey hunters may have to solve a couple of troublesome factors. Access may be difficult because of a lingering snowpack in some areas, particularly at middle elevations in the Methow watershed. They also should be aware that large tracts of turkey habitat in GMUs 204, 215 and 233 burned in the Tunk Complex and Okanogan fires last year.
“On the flip side,” Fitkin said, “habitat conditions have rebounded significantly since the Carleton Complex fire of 2014 in GMU 239, which has traditionally been a good turkey producer.”
Most hunters and turkey managers agree that the enhancement programs of the mid-1980s and early 1990s were a resounding success, but not west of the Cascades. Plants of Eastern-strain turkeys, birds tolerant of a wetter climate, did not flourish. “They didn’t take off as we had hoped,” Cope said.
There is still a scattering of birds taken on this side of the Cascades, he said, with the best bet being north Lewis County and south Thurston County, around Skookumchuck Reservoir.
Derbies
Here’s a list of the remaining salmon derbies associated with the Northwest Salmon Derby Series. The events offer participants a chance to win a fully equipped 22-foot Hewescraft Ocean Pro, donated by the Northwest Marine Trade Association, in a random drawing when the season is over:
Bellingham, July 8-10; The Big One, July 27-31; South King County PSA, Aug. 6; Gig Harbor PSA, Aug. 13; Columbia River Fall Derby, Aug. 20; Willapa Bay, Sept. 3; Edmonds Coho Derby, Sept. 10; Everett Coho Derby, Sept. 24-25; Bayside Marine, Nov. 5-6; Friday Harbor, Dec. 1-3; and Resurrection Derby, Dec. 2-3.
Perhaps the most interesting of these is the new kid on the block, The Big One Salmon Derby, to be held on Idaho’s Lake Coeur d’Alene over five days in July. That’s correct — a freshwater chinook derby sponsored by the Lake Coeur d’Alene Anglers Association. Can it carry its own weight when in the ring with known saltwater stalwarts? Absolutely. Participants in the 2014 event weighed 86 chinook averaging 14.8 pounds, and last year, 54 chinook were weighed, averaging 17.6 pounds.
In your face, Puget Sounders.
Chinook were introduced into the big lake years back, apparently both to furnish a new fishery and to help control a large population of small kokanee. The same thing was tried in Lake Chelan, with little success.
Maybe no derbies
Most of the above events are, of course, dependant on seasons being approved by user groups, the state, and the federal Pacific Fisheries Management Council in the “North of Falcon” negotiations, which are currently under way. The seasons may or may not have been decided as you read this, but trust that they will make for ugly reading. Forecasts for poor runs of a number of salmon stocks to Puget Sound and its rivers have triggered a figurative brawl of proportions never seen before in the North of Falcon process.
Charter owner Gary Krein of Everett said tribal representatives have been asking for complete closure of a number of sport fisheries with impacts on coho, including Puget Sound rivers, but apparently are not willing to curtail their commercial fishing to match.
“We’re plowing new ground,” Krein, a longtime sportfishing activist, said Wednesday. “The process has become very contentious.”
Several recreational fishing representatives, Krein said, have told the Department of Fish and Wildlife that a bad deal is worse than no deal at all, because it would set precedents for the future, and that this may be the year to “pull the plug” on Puget Sound salmon fishing and go to court if necessary.
For more outdoor news, read Wayne Kruse’s blog at www.heraldnet.com/huntingandfishing.
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