Turkey hunters need wild turkeys, and the Ohio Division of Wildlife needs both to help maintain a functional livelihood derived from the sale of licenses and permits.

As far as it goes, then, the end of the 2024 spring turkey season last Sunday suggests results could’ve been worse. They have been. Results could also be better. They have been.

While only the present actually matters, the turkey timeline stretches into a tangled past of cause, effect and numbers.

Hunters might not be as concerned with the statewide take as much as is each with his or her personal success, that being measured in the effort required to carry home one bearded bird in the spring. If one gets carried home.

Statewide results at season’s end additionally tell a partial story about overall turkey numbers and hunter enthusiasm.

Figuring totals from the April youth hunt, the South Zone season and the North Zone hunt, 15,535 turkeys officially were removed from the Ohio landscape during the season just passed.

That’s down a few from the 15,673 checked in 2023, but up considerably more than a few from the 2022 total of 11,872 birds and the 2021 count of 14,546.

All the counting invites comment from the field biologist who tracks these things for the wildlife division.

“The 2024 harvest fell in line with expectations,” turkey specialist Mark Wiley wrote in an email last week. “The poult indices from 2021 and 2022 were similar, which suggested 2-year-old gobbler numbers would be comparable in 2023 and 2024. The spring permit and harvest totals were similar across those years.”

Poults are spring-hatched turkeys whose numbers and survival form the basis of the future population. While chills and rain during the hatch is thought to cause high poult mortality, this year’s hatchlings enjoyed mostly favorable spring weather, Wylie said.

The take this year and last pushed past the 2021 spring total of 14,546, a 21-year low during a period of two-turkey spring limits and higher harvest averages. The limit was reduced to one in 2022.

One variable is the number of turkeys. Another is the number of turkey hunters.

Permit sales plunged from 61,135 in 2021 to 48,815 in 2022 when the one-bird spring limit was inaugurated. The number of sold permits rebounded to 50,174 in 2023 and to a slightly higher 51,530 this spring.

“The exact cause of the increase has not yet been determined, but it is possible we are seeing the return of spring hunters who may have taken a hiatus when turkey numbers dipped a few years ago,” Wiley noted.

What’s likely coming in 2025 rhymes with results in 2023 and this year rather than with either recent lows or past highs.

“The summer poult index was down slightly in 2023, so I expect spring harvest rates and totals to follow suit in 2025,” Wiley wrote. “I expect this will be a minor shift, with spring harvest rates falling only a percentage point or two.”

Probably unknowable is whether the annual spring turkey take has hit some new and more moderate normal at around 15,000 birds instead of the 20,000 or so averaged in the not-distant past.

A project involving Ohio State University that started last year is ongoing, although preliminary data from 2023 suggests hen survival is not an issue except for increased vulnerability during the period when they are incubating eggs.

When the dust settles,” Wylie said, “we may find that a focus on improved nesting habitat could improve rates of hen and nest survival.”

Ashtabula led Ohio counties with 470 turkeys checked.

outdoors@dispatch.com

The Ohio State Buckeyes are among the final contenders for one of the top linebackers in the 2025 class.

Per reports Saturday from On3’s Hayes Fawcett, Ohio State is one of four finalists for four-star 2025 linebacker Riley Pettijohn.

Pettijohn, a product of McKinney High School right outside of Dallas, Texas, will be deciding between Ohio State, USC, Texas and Texas A&M, meaning the Buckeyes will be up against some steep competition. He’s currently on his visit to Ohio State this weekend which will be followed by trips to Texas (June 14) and USC (June 21).

Pettijohn also received offers from programs like Michigan, Oregon, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma and Florida.

Over the past two years, Pettijohn posted 162 total tackles — which included 120 last season — to go along with 15 tackles for loss, six sacks, five pass breakups and one interception.

Per 247Sports’ composite rankings, Pettijohn, who stands at 6-2, 205 pounds, is the No. 4 overall
linebacker in the 2025 class and the No. 9 player in the state of Texas. His father, Duke, played on the defensive line at Syracuse from 1997-2000 and was a two-time All-Big East selection long before the Orange made the move to the ACC.

The Buckeyes have 12 commitments for 2025 after the decommitment of cornerback Blake Woodby. Ohio State’s class still features five-star cornerbacks Devin Sanchez and Na’eem Offord along with three-star safeties DeShawn Stewart and Cody Haddad. Sanchez and Offord are currently listed as the two top CBs overall in the entire 2025 recruiting class, per 247Sports rankings.

However, adding Pettijohn to the fold would give Ohio State its third commitment at linebacker alongside four-star Tarvos Alford and three-star Eli Lee.

An Ohio history society is locked in a legal battle with a country golf club over prehistoric Native American earth mounds culturally ‘equivalent to Stonehenge’. 

Ohio History Connection (OHC) wants to re-open the UNESCO World Heritage Octagon Earthworks to the public, but the site is leased to Moundbuilders Country Club who have run a golf course on the prehistoric mounds for 114 years. 

The two groups cannot agree on a fair price to end the lease as the club says ‘the OHC either does not have or does not want to spend enough money to allow the club to move to another location’, leading to a lengthy ongoing court battle. 

The 50-acre group of sacred mounds were built between 1 and 400AD as ‘part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory’ and have ‘historical and archeological significance equivalent to Machu Picchu.’

John Low, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians told DailyMail.com: ‘It would be like having a mini golf course inside Stonehenge, it just doesn’t work.’ 

But the beloved community club told DailyMail.com that they have provided ‘care and protection’ for the mounds and without sufficient payment they will be forced to close. 

Ohio History Connection (OHC) wants to re-open the prehistoric Octagon Earthworks to the public, but the site is leased to Moundbuilders Country Club who have a golf course on the prehistoric mounds

The club – which serves as a social hub for the community – constructed a golf course around the mounds in the early 1900s, drawing in thousands of visitors over the decades to play the unusual holes. 

Golfers are fond of the monuments, nicknaming the largest ‘Big Chief’. 

A 1930 article in Golf Illustrated said: ‘The ancient Moundbuilders unwittingly left behind the setting for as strange and sporty a golf course as ever felt the blow of a niblick.’ 

But Native American representatives have long been vocal in their disapproval of the club, comparing it to putting a ‘country club on the Acropolis’. 

The mounds were painstakingly built with rudimentary tools approximately 2,000 years ago, to mark and measure the passage of the sun and the moon. 

Low said: ‘To people of Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes region who are most connected as descendants to the builders, it’s a place of pride that deserves protection.

‘It’s a place of UNESCO World Heritage inscription we want to share with the world. We can’t celebrate it with a golf course on top of it.’

The OHC told DailyMail.com that by ending the lease and resuming control of the site they want to ‘operate, protect, maintain, restore and share access to this Indigenous wonder.’

Currently they say they only have full access to the mounds four or five days a year. 

The club – which serves as a social hub for the community – constructed a golf course around the mounds in the early 1900s

President of the club’s board of trustees, David Kratoville told DailyMail.com that they don’t want to leave the site

The club – where membership starts around $1,000 a year – has a Williamsburg-looking brick clubhouse, a swimming pool and an 18-hole course

In a 2022 legal document, the OHC claimed ‘the country club had increasingly denied access to the public over the last 15 to 20 years, either directly or indirectly by rendering access impossible through inconveniently timed maintenance activities.’

But the club denies this and says they have maintained and protected the mounds for 114 years, and say if they are forced off the land without suitable compensation they will be forced to shut down. 

President of the club’s board of trustees David Kratoville told DailyMail.com that they don’t want to leave the site but they ‘would look to do so upon receiving a payment that would allow it to recreate its business on another site.’

The club – where membership starts around $1,000 a year – has a Williamsburg-looking brick clubhouse, a swimming pool and an 18-hole course.

The club is ‘woven into the local economy’, Kratoville said, and shutting down ‘would be felt in a variety of employment, social, economic, and community ways.’

He said: ‘The club is home for some local high school golf teams. The summer swim club is open to non-member kids of all ages. 

‘It is the only family social club within about 20 miles.’ 

John Low, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians told DailyMail.com: ‘It would be like having a mini golf course inside Stonehenge, it just doesn’t work.’

The ongoing court battle and upcoming jury trial will determine the value of the lease

Five years ago, Moundbuilders asked for $12 million for the facility saying it would take that to pay off its debt and create another golf country club of the same value.

But after an independent appraisal at the time, the OHC offered $800,000. 

Now the ongoing court battle and upcoming jury trial will determine the value of the lease and the size of the payment to the club. 

The OHC says they are committed to enabling ‘full public access to the Octagon Earthworks while ensuring the country club receives fair market value for the lease’. 

But Kratoville told Daily Mail.com: ‘There is no exact (single) dollar amount required as Moundbuilders doesn’t know where it will move to if it moves. 

‘Each potential new location site has different cost elements that need to be considered. It’s not a one size fits all situation.’

He added: ‘The amount paid will determine whether Moundbuilders can relocate or whether it ceases to exist after 114 years as a community institution.’