America's great national forests, and especially the wildlife that live within them, are in a bit of trouble.
Virginia turkey hunters killed 92 percent of their spring gobblers in 2014 on private land. The extent to which private land hunting success tops public land is astonishing.
Statistics compiled in 2014 by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries are telling. State-owned lands such as wildlife management areas have turkey kill ratios of about one bird for every 500 acres. National forest lands, consisting of some 1.8 million acres, have a disturbingly-low turkey kill ratio of one bird for every 1,900 acres.