The Pennsylvania Game Commission is seeking citizen input on wild Eastern Turkey sightings.

The PGC attempts to complete surveys on the health of wildlife populations to determine their status for setting hunting seasons lengths and zones open to hunting. The survey can be found on the PGC website as the Wild Turkey Sighting Survey.

The survey is quite simple to complete and is not too long of a survey to complete. It includes an interactive GPS coordination to be pretty specific which WMU that the turkey sighting was made.

I was not expecting much of a turkey hatching this summer due to the number and severity of the summer storms and rainfall. For the longest time, I hadn't even observed one flock of poults and a hen. Then, to my surprise, numerous hen turkeys showed up with new hatchlings and the total numbers of young turkeys was quite impressive.

Without exaggeration, the numbers in my area could easily be between 50 and 100 new hatchlings. How many will survive to adulthood is a whole new question to answer. According to the PGC, there are five significant environmental factors that affect the turkey population from year to year. These are: landscape habitat changes in their daily travels and living areas, unpredictable weather such as floods, ice storms, extended cold snaps and heavy snow cover, predator densities, unforeseen effects from disease, and hunter mortality rates.

Of all the environmental factors that turkeys face, the only one that is controllable by the PGC would be the hunting season length for each WMU. The seasons for WMU's vary from year to year and can be several weeks to a closed season.

The plan is to address low survival rates getting stronger by reduced hunting pressure and to allow longer hunting periods in the areas with an abundance of birds. The 2D WMU in Butler County appears to be a healthy sample for turkey populations.

I was checking out the antlerless deer drawings for both 2D and 1A WMU's and it appears to have been successful for any hunters putting in for the drawing. In fact, both areas have enough licenses left in their allotment to allow a second round of license sales on Aug. 5. Remember, the licenses are accepted on Aug. 5 through the U.S. mail and will be declined if sent in too early or hand delivered.

The PGC is reporting issues with the On-line computer purchased hunting license sales. Some type of snafu has many hunters waiting past the 7-Day turn around period and missing out on the usual mail-in application deadlines.

The PGC requests that you contact them if you are experiencing these types of problems and they will try to make it right for you. I learned my lesson with the automated license system a few years back … in fact, I'm still waiting for that license to arrive. Yikes! I had to do it the old-fashioned way to get my business taken care of correctly.

We have been fishing Lake Erie steadily for the past few weeks and the fishing is awesome, to say the least. It took me a bit, but I finally figured out the proper presentation for a drift fishing approach to catching the Erie Walleyes.

Generally, fishermen don't share their secrets, but I am grateful for the success I have had and I am going to pay it forward for you to try. No guarantees, but it has worked for me!

We have been fishing in the 45-55 feet of water range just off the bottom. With 20 pounds of braided line, I have tied on a 1-2-ounce weighted bottom bouncer, then to the bottom bouncer I have tied on a worm harness with a 2-3 hook spinning rig along with a night crawler.

The crawler has to be fully stretched out with no big gob of worm knotted up on it. The spinner blades need to be a number 3 or 4 size with the colors of choice for the blades to be gold, green tones, copper and purples. The beads on the set-up seem to favor green, red and purple.

Drop the set up slowly to the bottom until you feel it hit solid. Wind it up a few cranks and start a slow jigging motion to keep the blades flashing. The fish can hit lightly or like a freight train, but either way, keep on your toes for a chance at a prize keeper fish!

Until we meet again keep your slack out of the line and keep a net handy!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle