2013 Spring Public Land Gobbler

[Z7Mcclain92]

My 2013 Spring Gobbler, 19 lbs,5 inch beard, 1 inch spurs, shot him at 25 yards on La Due Resevoir Public Land

[hortontoter]

Congrats on the gobbler. Ever try Dorset WA. Lots of birds there if you can find some dry land. Very wet there most springs. Was LaDue pretty crowded with turkey hunters? Thats a big chunk of land so one should be able to get away from the crowd.

[Z7Mcclain92]

No I have never tried Dorset WA, I mostly only hunt La due and private land in carroll county. La Due had a decent amount of turkey on its land just about finding where they are and where the Hunters usaully go hunting. Yes so far this year there has been a good amount of hunters out there about maybe every other parking spot. But I hunted ever morning last week besides wensday. I never heard more then 2 different people shoot in the morning. I always leave a little earlier in the morning and I will drive around the patch of woods that I am hunting and see if there is anyone else parked and hunting near me, I never turkey hunt where there is someone else hunting especially public land. I have about 6 spots on La Due Public Land For Turkey and they all have good potential and most are not over 500 yards from a road.

[Big_Holla]

Great job on nailing a public land bird like that!! Congrats and thanks for sharing it with us!!

[hortontoter]

Thanks for the info Z7. I do my turkey hunting in Stark and Carroll County. So far this season has been uneventful. The birds seemed to have disappeared from my favorite spot. How I could see from 150-200 birds three weeks ago to seeing three birds in four mornings has me baffled. I've yet to hear a gobble this spring.

[ghunter]

Awesome job Z7!! That's a nice bird let alone on public land.

[Z7Mcclain92]

Thanks Big Holla and ghunter. Hortontoter the birds I hunt in carroll county have never changed for the past 12 years they still roost in the same trees and usaully at least 3 or 4 gobblers that stick around all season. I hunt on a property right off of Route 9 on the outside of Augusta, and another property that is near the Carrollton Airport. That is strange how your birds dissapeared like that especially at that number of birds to see.

[hortontoter]

OK fellas heres the scoop. I've hunted the same farm for a few years during spring turkey season. My dad and I keep a close watch on the resident flock of 150-200 birds. These birds live in about a 1 X 2 mile rectangle. But, most of the time the majority hang around the large farm we hunt on.

About a month ago large piles of black "dirt" were being dumped along the lane we drive to the back of the farm on. More and more piles were arriving daily. We drove to the head of the lane one day and there was a no trespassing sign posted by the EPA. The signed warned of the use of BioSolids. If you don't know about biosolids, it is recycled human waste from sewer treatment plants.

Four days before the opening of turkey season these piles were spread on all the field on this farm. Once it rained the whole farm stunk to high heaven. Our turkey season has been a bust. The farm owner did plow most of the so called fertilizer under last weekend. We hunted there yesterday and the stench has dissapated somewhat.

We usually see lots of birds every hunt. This season we have seen 4 in 4 days of hunting. And even on evening scouting trips we have seen not one bird. The birds disappeared as soon as the biosolids were spread. My dad is convinced that the birds ate this crap and either died or were sickened. I thought this was farfetched, but from what I'm seeing I'm beginning to wonder myself.

After reading the following I think I should maybe hunt elsewhere.

Biosolids, also referred to as treated human sewage, is a term used by the waste water industry to denote the byproduct of domestic and commercial sewage and wastewater treatment. These residuals are further treated to reduce but not eliminate pathogens and vector attraction by any of a number of approved methods and then trucked and land appied to a farm field.[38] Low levels of constituents such as PCBs, dioxin, and brominated flame retardants, may remain in treated sludge.[39][40]

Recent conclusion of thorough review of literature and 20-year field study of air, land, and water in Arizona concluded that biosolids use is sustainable and improves the soil and crops.[41] Other studies conclude that plants uptake large quantities of heavy metals and toxic pollutants that are retained by produce, which is then consumed by humans.[42][43][44][45][46][47]

One of the main concerns in the treated sludge is the concentrated metals content; certain metals are regulated while others are not.[48] Leaching methods can be used to reduce the metal content and meet the regulatory limit.[49] The U.S. divides biosolids into two grades: Class B sewage sludge, and Class A treated sewage sludge. Class A sludge has been treated to reduce bacteria prior to application to land; Class B sludge has not.[50]

Depending on their level of treatment and resultant pollutant content, biosolids can be used in regulated applications for non-food agriculture, food agriculture,[50] or distribution for unlimited use. Treated biosolids can be produced in cake, granular, pellet[2] or liquid form and are spread over land before being incorporated into the soil or injected directly into the soil by specialist contractors. It used to be common practice to dump sewage sludge into the ocean, however, this practice has stopped in many nations due to environmental concerns as well to domestic and international laws and treaties. In particular, after the 1991 Congressional ban on ocean dumping, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) instituted a policy of digested sludge reuse on agricultural land. The EPA promoted this policy by presenting it as recycling and rechristening sewage sludge as "biosolids", as they are solids produced by biological activities.

A 2004 survey of 48 individuals near affected sites found that most reported irritation symptoms, about half reported an infection within a month of the application, and about a fourth were affected by Staphylococcus aureus, including two deaths. The number of reported S. aureus infections was 25 times as high as in hospitalized patients, a high-risk group. The authors point out that regulations call for protective gear when handling Class B biosolids and that similar protections could be considered for residents in nearby areas given the wind conditions.[51]

Khuder, Milz, Bisesi, Vincent, McNulty, and Czajkowski (as cited by Harrison and McBride of the Cornell Waste Management Institute in Case for Caution Revisited: Health and Environmental Impacts of Application of Sewage Sludges to Agricultural Land) conducted a health survey of persons living in close proximity to Class B sludged land.[52] A sample of 437 people exposed to Class B sludge (living within 1-mile (1.6 km) of sludged land) - and using a control group of 176 people not exposed to sludge (not living within 1-mile (1.6 km) of sludged land) reported the following:

"Results revealed that some reported health-related symptoms were statistically significantly elevated among the exposed residents, including excessive secretion of tears, abdominal bloating, jaundice, skin ulcer, dehydration, weight loss, and general weakness. The frequency of reported occurrence of bronchitis, upper respiratory infection, and giardiasis were also statistically significantly elevated. The findings suggest an increased risk for certain respiratory, gastrointestinal, and other diseases among residents living near farm fields on which the use of biosolids was permitted."

—Khuder, et al., Health Survey of Residents Living near Farm Fields Permitted to Receive Biosolids[52]

Although correlation does not imply causation, such extensive correlations may lead reasonable people to conclude that precaution is necessary in dealing with sludge and sludged farmlands.

Harrison and Oakes suggest that, in particular, "until investigations are carried out that answer these questions (...about the safety of Class B sludge...), land application of Class B sludges should be viewed as a practice that subjects neighbors and workers to substantial risk of disease."[50] They further suggest that even Class A treated sludge may have chemical contaminants (including heavy metals, such as lead) or endotoxins present, and a precautionary approach may be justified on this basis, though the vast majority of incidents reported by Lewis, et al. have been correlated with exposure to Class B untreated sludge and not Class A treated sludge.

A 2005 report by the state of North Carolina concluded that "that a surveillance program of humans living near application sites should be developed to determine if there are adverse health effects in humans and animals as a result of biosolids application."[53]

In 2009 the EPA released the Targeted National Sewage Sludge Study, which reports on the level of metals, chemicals, hormones, and other materials present in a statistical sample of sewage sludges.[54] Some highlights include:

Silver is present to the degree of 20 mg/kg of sludge, on average, a near economically recoverable level, while some sludges of exceptionally high quality have up to 200 milligrams of silver per kilogram of sludge; one outlier demonstrated a silver lode of 800–900 mg per kg of sludge.
Barium is present at the rate of 500 mg/kg, while manganese is present at the rate of 1 g/kg sludge.
High levels of sterols and other hormones have been detected, with averages in the range of up to 1,000,000 µg/kg sludge.
Lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium are estimated by the EPA to be present in detectable quantities in 100% of national sewage sludges in the US, while thallium is only estimated to be present in 94.1% of sludges.
Recent studies (2010) have indicated that pharmaceuticals and personal care products, which often adsorb to sludge during wastewater treatment, can persist in agricultural soils following biosolid application.[55] Some of these chemicals, including potential endocrine disruptor Triclosan, can also travel through the soil column and leach into agricultural tile drainage at detectable levels.[55][56] Other studies, however, have shown that these chemicals remain adsorbed to surface soil particles, making them more susceptible to surface erosion than infiltration.[57][58] These studies are also mixed in their findings regarding the persistence of chemicals such as triclosan, triclocarban, and other pharmaceuticals. The impact of this persistence in soils is unknown, but the link to human and land animal health is likely tied to the capacity for plants to absorb and accumulate these chemicals in their consumed tissues. Studies of this kind are in early stages, but evidence of root uptake and translocation to leaves did occur for both triclosan and triclocarban in soybeans.[59] This effect was not present in corn when tested in a different study.[56]

A PhD thesis studying the addition of sludge to neutralize soil acidity concluded that the practice was not recommended if large amounts are used because the sludge produces acids when it oxidizes.[60]

Sounds like the Ohio EPA ought to rethink things.

[hortontoter]

I hunt in the area around Perrysville. I hunt on land that I own and a couple other farms in the area. Seems the turkey population in that area has dwindled over the years for some reason.

Has the drilling effected your hunting areas yet?

[Z7Mcclain92]

O the drilling has definetly affected me the property I hunt is owned by the Hawks (Carroll County Commissioner) they own over 1000 acres, but they care more about money then their land and now about 75 percent of their woods has been timbered out and are now all clear cuts.And they have multiple drilling rigs on their properties. Thats one of the reasons I dont go down to Carroll county that much anymore. They love groundhog hunters also they will give just about anyone groundhog hunting permission, last year we took over 20 groundhogs from just one field of theirs.