In an effort to increase information on the health of Mississippi's wild turkey flock, the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks is asking turkey hunters this spring to voluntarily report harvests through a new online system.
"Mississippi is one of only two states throughout the Eastern wild turkey's range that does not require hunters to report their spring harvests," said Adam Butler, wild turkey program coordinator. "While we are not legally requiring hunters to do so at this time, we strongly encourage hunters to begin using our new system to become familiar with the concept," Butler continued.
Hunters can report their harvests online at www.mdwfp.com/turkeyharvest.
The reporting process is easy and takes only a few moments. Hunters begin by creating a user account within the new Mississippi Game Check system.
Harvests can then be reported by entering simple information including the date and county of harvest, whether the harvest occurred on private or public land, and some basic measurements of the bird.
Several other southeastern states also have initiated harvest reporting systems for turkey and deer.
Moving toward these systems allows more detailed data on harvests to be gathered, which ultimately improves agency decision making. This technique has considerable advantages over older methods which estimate statewide harvests using the responses of a subset of randomly selected hunting license buyers.
Alabama is utilizing mandatory harvest reporting for the first time this spring, and Mississippi officials are carefully assessing their neighboring state's rollout.
"We're treating 2017 as a pilot year for the program," Butler continued. "We hope all turkey hunters will utilize the system and we fully encourage everyone to let us know what they like or do not like about this approach. If turkey harvest reporting eventually becomes mandatory we want to ensure we have done all we can to make it as user friendly as possible."
For more information regarding wild turkeys, www.mdwfp.com.