The North Carolina General Assembly recently enacted legislation that will enhance opportunities to hunt on Sundays. This legislation provides immediate changes for hunters on private lands and gives authority to the Wildlife Resources Commission (Commission) and other public landowners to implement new options for Sunday hunting on public lands. READ MORE

Turkey season in the Old North State came to a close this May with hunters taking home a record-breaking number of gobblers.

“This season has been the most successful turkey harvest to date, with 18,919 turkeys bagged,” said Christopher Kreh, the Commission’s upland game bird biologist. “The highest previous record was 18,409 birds reported in 2013.” READ MORE...

 

The recovery of the wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, is one of North Carolina’s greatest wildlife success stories. But it was a long road to get our wild turkey population back to its current level. Wild turkeys were historically plentiful in our state, but unregulated hunting and large-scale deforestation caused their population to plummet in the early 1900s. Early recovery efforts were undertaken from 1928–1946, which involved releasing pen-raised birds and eggs into the wild. Unfortunately, those birds weren’t accustomed to predators and extreme weather conditions. The birds perished, and the wild turkey population continued to crash. READ MORE

Earlier this year, wildlife commissioners approved three regulations that redefined youth as “anyone under 18 years old” for the purpose of allowing youth to participate in the youth-only hunting and fishing seasons. As we begin the youth turkey season for 2017, some constituents have expressed confusion as to whether or not these new regulations apply immediately. 

To be clear, the new regulations regarding the definition of youth do not go into effect until Aug. 1, 2017. READ MORE

Here’s a photo of my 12-year-old son Cody and his first turkey.  Cody and I went turkey hunting in Nash County on opening day of Youth-Only Turkey Season last Saturday (April 4) just outside of Nashville, N.C. We were hunting on a 300-acre farm we leased through Hunt NC Farmland Program of the NCDA&CS. I scouted the property a few days earlier for turkeys just before season opened and with the owner’s information and help, I learned the loose patterns of the turkeys wanderings on the farm. Cody and I made a plan for opening morning and I patterned his gun a few days before. On opening morning, we gathered our gear — tent-style blind, two turkey decoys, two chairs, snacks, water, calls, shotgun, etc. Then, we walked in with all of this on our backs through the pastures to the spot we wanted to hunt. But, we saw it was full of cows that morning, so we changed plans and started to another spot further down the pastures. The cows then decided to get up...