The ultra-rainy late spring of 2013 is coming back to roost for South Carolina’s population of wild turkeys.

Rainy weather in the late spring is always a bad omen for wild turkeys as it falls during their nesting and brood-rearing season.

“It was just unbelievable the rain we got that spring,” said Charles Ruth, Deer and Wild Turkey Program coordinator for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. “Most of the nesting, when the birds are real young, is going to be in May and June and we had record rainfall and rainfall events statewide for the better part of those two months in 2013.