ARKANSAS SPORTSMAN : Flooding tough on turkeys in southeast Arkansas
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/222678/
On Wednesday and Thursday, a friend and I toured a section of southeast Arkansas in turkey zones 4, 10 and 17.
Basically, the wildlife habitat in that part of the world is underwater. Deer, turkey and other game animals have sought refuge wherever they can find dry ground.
On one island between the levees, the lowlands were under about 10 feet of water. The Mississippi River extended all the way to the access road and flowed across into a neighboring field in two places. The next day, the river crossed in two more places and flowed considerably faster than the day before.
That property has a number of ridges that rise 3-5 feet above the floodwaters, and that’s where all the deer, turkey, coyotes and bobcats are. Most of these little islands are about 5 acres, but some are separated by narrow gulfs. High water had driven the deer from their lowland thickets, and they were everywhere. Some tried to hide by simply lying down in fields of high grass.
Over about seven hours, we saw 32 wild turkeys, of which about two-thirds were gobblers. Six of those were mature toms. We saw two gobblers strutting, but both were on large parcels of ground that were adjacent to the mainland. We only heard one gobble. We saw hens, but none made a sound. We did call up a flock of seven jakes. They flew, one by one, across a 30-yard stretch of water, but even they did not make so much as a peep.
I guess they know they’d better be quiet in the presence of so much danger.
Of course, floodwater also concentrates competition for food. All the foraging animals are trying to beat each other to a small amount of the same stuff. The squirrels we saw spent all their time in the treetops eating buds.
Except for a few ridges, the White River National Wildlife Refuge is also underwater. East Lake and other oxbows are almost level with high ground. The lowlands in Zone 9 are the same way. In fact, the Saline River bottoms from Prattsville to Poyen are inundated. Even in the woods, the current is very swift.
The Ozarks are also saturated. As of Thursday, Bull Shoals Lake was at 88 percent capacity, but the Corps of Engineers has to let in water from Beaver and Table Rock lakes. The Corps opened the floodgates at Norfork Dam by 2 feet Thursday, which means water will come down the swollen White River for some time, even without new rain.
Regrettably, this all comes at the peak of the turkey breeding and nesting season. That probably means no turkey reproduction this year in the Delta or in the major drainages of the Gulf Coastal Plain. The Delta might actually experience a net loss of turkeys because of abnormally high predation and malnutrition. Turkeys can fly to dry ground, of course, but they’ll mostly find open agricultural ground where there’s not much there for them to eat right now.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was right to close turkey season in much of eastern Arkansas. The downside is that displaced hunters will go to public ground in the Ozark and Ouachita national forests, increasing pressure on the turkeys in those areas. That also means more hunters competing for the most accessible areas.
These events could not have converged at a worse time for a state whose turkey population is on the mend.
On the other hand, the high ground across the state is in gorgeous condition. Even in the flooded areas, dry ground was emerald green. All of the grasses and weeds had full, plump seed heads.
Better still, we avoided the late freeze that wiped out the state’s red oak acorn crop last spring. Red oaks have already set their acorns in many places, so our statewide mast crop should be a lot better than it was last autumn.
FANTASTIC FELLOWSHIP My boys and I attended a wild game supper last Saturday at Central Baptist Church in North Little Rock. The guest speaker was Jon Paul Moody of Harvest Ministries in Paris, Tenn. Moody showed some coyote hunting videos and gave turkey hunting tips, followed by a stirring devotional message. Another highlight was getting to visit with Thurman Booth of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Booth bagged a couple of Alabama turkeys a couple of weeks ago, then came home to have heart surgery. That’s what I call dedication.