TURKEY KILL NUMBERS UP AFTER SLOW, RAINY START

JEFFERSON CITY -- A mixture of rainy and fair days resulted in a mixed bag of success for hunters during the first week of the spring turkey season, according to Larry Vangilder, wildlife research biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).

The opening day harvest was almost as dismal as the weather. Amid soggy conditions, hunters bagged 6,869 birds, 923 fewer than on opening day in the 1995 spring season. Sunshine throughout most of the following week helped hunters to rebound, bagging 24,393 birds. That's only 300 fewer than last year's first week harvest.

Those figures caught Vangilder a little off guard. He had thought the heavy rains would prevent hunters from going afield and push harvest numbers down. He says, "Flooding in the southern part of the state was really bad on opening day, and over the weekend there was a lot of rain in northern Missouri.

It looks as if the hunters in the north were able to get out early in the week and hunters in south Missouri did well after opening day." Vangilder says based on the first week harvest, he looks for a total spring season harvest of 35,000 to 37,000 turkeys.

The top three counties in numbers of turkeys taken during the first week were Franklin County with 605, Texas County with 577 and Macon with 508. Regionally, north-central Missouri led the state with 4,160 birds bagged. Northeastern Missouri followed with 3,356 and central Missouri with 3,292, east-central with 3,114, northwest with 2,731, the Ozarks with 2,641, west-central with 2,608, southeast with 1,420 and the southwestern region with 1,071.

The best news of the season, so far, is that hunters are way off pace for the number of hunting accidents when compared to last year. Two hunting accidents were reported in the Ozark region. Neither was fatal. The first week of the '95 season saw one hunting fatality and nine nonfatal accidents.