ALBANY - New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis has reminded hunters that the 2009 spring turkey season opens on May 1, with the annual special Youth Turkey Hunting Weekend set for April 25-26.

The spring and fall 2008 turkey seasons saw slight declines in harvest from the previous year, accompanied by a large variation in nest and brood success due to wide dissimilarities in spring rainfall in different regions of the state. In winter 2009, DEC staff implemented the first standardized winter flock survey after a three-year pilot program, and completed a four-year banding study designed to assess turkey survival and harvest rates.

Based on brood surveys the last two years and harvest data, the spring 2009 season has the potential to be about the same as 2008 and close to the five-year average spring harvest (about 29,500 birds). An above-average 2007 hatch combined with a decent late-season hatch in 2008 should provide hunters with opportunities to harvest two-year-old birds as well as quite a few jakes. There is a lot of variation among regions of the state and even within a region. Northern New York, in particular, received above-average spring rainfall in 2008, so production was worse there than in other parts of the state. Unfortunately, that's two straight seasons with poor production in DEC Region 6, likely driving down spring harvest there.

DEC Regions 4 and 7 have had consistently good production the past few years, so harvest should be similar to or slightly better than last year with both young birds and adult birds available. The rest of the state may be similar to, or slightly below last year's harvest.