Why Do We Still Shoot Hen Turkeys?

Harvest studies from the 2025 spring turkey seasons are rolling in, and in lots of states, like Ohio, the numbers are still behind long-term averages. Though the Ohio Wildlife Council has already authorised an either-sex turkey season for the approaching fall, The Columbus Dispatch studies that considerations round hen populations have re-opened debates about whether or not hunters must be capturing any hens within the fall.

The Buckeye State isn’t the primary to grapple with questions round hunter harvest. Hunter harvest isn’t the one issue impacting turkey populations, however is the one one which wildlife companies can totally management. Over the past 10 to twenty years, many state companies (together with the ODWR) have lowered bag limits, pushed again spring season dates, or tweaked different laws (just like the ban on reaping that was simply enacted in South Carolina) within the title of turkey numbers. Others have taken the extra drastic steps of proscribing or eliminating their fall turkey seasons altogether, which have historically allowed hunters to take birds of both intercourse. The reasoning shared by some managers is that if we’re making an attempt to stem or reverse inhabitants declines, we should always preserve as many egg-laying females on the panorama as attainable

“There actually is not any organic justification for taking a hen out of a inhabitants. It both doesn’t matter, or it does, or it’s someplace in between,” says Dr. Mike Chamberlain, a professor of wildlife ecology and researcher on the College of Georgia, and one of many foremost specialists on wild turkeys at the moment. “However we all know there is no such thing as a profit.”

This uncertainty is as a result of biologists are nonetheless making an attempt to know the correlation between hunter harvest and turkey populations as they proceed to analysis how populations ebb and circulation. Biologists know, Chamberlain says, that the variety of poults per hen is a primary indicator of future hen numbers, and {that a} small minority of hens are liable for a lot of the reproductive success in a given inhabitants. State harvest information additionally reveals that in lots of circumstances, the low variety of hens being taken every fall is negligible on the inhabitants stage. However that hasn’t stored hunters from arguing about whether or not it’s moral.

Learn Subsequent: Why Are Wild Turkey Populations Declining?

“You might most likely survey 100 completely different turkey hunters and also you’re prone to get 100 completely different opinions,” the National Wild Turkey Federation’s nationwide director of science and planning Mark Hatfield tells Outside Life. “It’s only a very troublesome factor to tease aside.”

Hunters Aren’t Killing Sufficient Fall Hens to Drive Statewide Populations

The true impression that U.S. hunters have on wild turkey populations is tough to calculate, and it’s the topic of a number of ongoing research, Hatfield says. On the similar time, we don’t even have precise turkey inhabitants figures for states.

“To cite my good pal [and biologist] Brett Collier, ‘It’s a scientific wild-ass guess,’” Turkeys for Tomorrow CEO Jason Lupardus tells Outside Life. 

The 2 primary drivers of turkey recruitment, in response to biologists, are climate and habitat. Pure predation is one other necessary issue — Hatfield and Lupardus are each proponents of trapping — however predation charges of turkeys are additionally affected by climate, habitat, and different variables.

“When we’ve cicada occasions, for instance, the populations of birds and predators develop. And subsequent yr, in these states that had a big cicada hatch in 2024, I’ll wager you no matter you need to wager that they’ll have a better turkey harvest,” Lupardus says. “As a result of the turkeys had loads of meals. But in addition, all of your raptors, your foxes and coyotes, all the things else was filling up on cicadas, too. And with that shift within the predator-prey dynamic we are likely to have very excessive recruitment.”

In eventualities like these, the place situations are useful to breeding and nesting, and habitat is plentiful, hunters can take a comparatively massive variety of birds with out impacting populations. This is named compensatory mortality: the concept these birds would have died of pure causes, and hunters are merely changing these causes by way of harvest. And searching on the harvest information from states that also maintain fall seasons, it doesn’t seem to be hunters there are killing sufficient turkeys within the fall to have a noticeable impression on their general numbers. (There are 41 states with fall turkey seasons, however solely two of them explicitly prohibit hen harvest in the course of the fall: Alabama and Tennessee. For a whole record of fall looking alternatives throughout North America, go to the NWTF’s 2024 Fall Hunt Guide.)

A nationwide research that was put collectively for the twelfth annual NWTF Symposium in 2022 in contrast inhabitants estimates and harvest information from the 2013 to 2014 fall and spring seasons with the 2018 to 2019 seasons. Primarily based on the info collected from 29 state companies, the research confirmed a roughly 28 p.c decline within the variety of fall turkey hunters, and the same 31 p.c decline within the variety of turkeys harvested within the fall.

Kansas, for instance, reported a fall harvest of three,600 either-sex birds in 2013-2014, in comparison with simply 1,275 in 2018-2019. Kansas has 105 counties, and for those who unfold that harvest throughout the state, it’s negligible — even when we think about that every one these birds have been females.

“So hunters there killed 12 birds per county [that fall],” Hatfield says. “Trying on the information, you possibly can see how this doesn’t drive a organic or population-level response.”

The Reasoning for Limiting Statewide Harvest

Statewide, Kansas’ turkey inhabitants dropped by roughly 60 percent between 2008 and 2021, triggering large reductions in bag limits in 2017. However as hen numbers stored sliding, some needed the company to take extra motion by additional limiting harvest. So in 2023, the Kansas Division of Wildlife and Parks suspended its fall turkey seasons for the foreseeable future.  

“Altering laws, or adjusting the construction and/or timing of seasons, is the one lever states have to drag. And in lots of circumstances I believe these companies are decreasing or eliminating their fall harvest to point out they’re listening to hunters, who can then say, ‘Nicely, a minimum of my company is doing one thing,’” Hatfield says. “I don’t suppose this transformation [alone] goes to unravel what we’re seeing by way of inhabitants instability and declines … however I do perceive their want to drag that lever.”

Learn Subsequent: Why Are Wild Turkey Populations Declining?

Lupardus cautions, nonetheless, towards trying too broadly at hen populations, and he says that as we attempt to study extra about inhabitants dynamics, we must be finding out them at a extra localized stage relatively than simply on the state stage. He says that is the place personal landowners and private-land hunters may also play an even bigger function in figuring out what a conservative harvest would possibly appear like for his or her space.

“There are a pair counties in northwest Alabama, the place I grew up, they usually have a few of the lowest populations within the U.S. and nobody actually is aware of what’s happening. Nicely, if we determine to go up there and do some fall harvest: Primary, it’s going to be onerous, and quantity two, if we do discover success, we are going to most likely severely impression the inhabitants,” he says. “However it’s possible you’ll go right down to the Black Belt of Alabama the place the turkey inhabitants is a little bit bit stronger, and guess what? The inhabitants is powerful sufficient that it may possibly deal with some fall harvest.”  

To clarify this nuance additional, Lupardus factors to the place he now lives in Kentucky, which permits for the harvest of bearded hens in the course of the spring season. (Taking pictures bearded hens within the spring can also be controversial, nevertheless it does simplify laws and enforcement since some newer hunters can mistake bearded hens for males.) Citing the info that simply got here out for 2025, he says hunters in Kentucky harvested a little bit over 30,000 birds this spring. Round 400 to 500 of these have been bearded hens, which he accounted for roughly .5 p.c of the general estimated statewide inhabitants.   

“That averages out to possibly three hens per county. And is that impactful? Perhaps not,” he says. “However at a localized stage, if these two hens have been in an space the place general hen numbers are low, then, hell yeah, it may very well be necessary.”

Many Fall Hunters Cross on Hens, However Few Hunters Need Much less Alternative

For his half, Hatfield says he wouldn’t select to shoot a hen within the fall, even the place it’s nonetheless allowed. Neither would Dr. Chamberlain.

Chamberlain factors out that making an attempt to correlate hunter harvest with altering populations is tougher with wild turkeys than different sport species, like deer. Whitetail does breed and reproduce fairly evenly throughout the board, and every doe will usually give start to 1 or two fawns every spring. However Chamberlain says his analysis has proven unequivocally {that a} small share of hens produce a lot of the poults in a inhabitants, and it’s these similar hens that discover success yr after yr.

“It’s due to their dominance hierarchies. We all know that dominant hens usually breed earlier, they nest earlier, they usually’re extra profitable,” Chamberlain explains. “So, it will get sophisticated whenever you begin taking hens out of a inhabitants and also you don’t know who you’re taking.”

Which implies, if we have been to handle turkey populations as conservatively as attainable, it could be simple to easily cease harvesting hens. Tennessee took this method starting in 2018 by proscribing (however not eliminating) its fall season to male turkeys solely, versus either-sex birds as earlier than. 

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In lots of different circumstances, hunters are already self-limiting to an extent. When Mississippi wildlife managers introduced in 2022 that they have been contemplating eliminating fall seasons, the state’s Division of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks opened the proposal to public remark, and 83 p.c of respondents supported the change, in response to NWTF.

A part of this shift is expounded to a change in values amongst turkey hunters. Chamberlain is a working example. 

“Turkey looking began out as a fall enterprise, and so the autumn seasons we’ve at the moment are, in some ways, relics,” says Chamberlain, who witnessed the shift towards looking gobblers within the spring as North American turkey populations grew within the 80s and 90s, and as state wildlife managers discovered methods to extend looking alternatives. “After I was rising up in Virginia and looking turkeys within the fall, it didn’t matter what hen we referred to as up — we shot it if it was a hen, or a tom, or a jake.”

Whereas Southern looking tradition has principally moved away from fall seasons, it’s nonetheless entrenched in locations like Illinois and Ohio, and the Northeast. Chamberlain and Hatfield say that so long as either-sex fall turkey seasons stay supported by science, they nonetheless assist them.

“Many states are attempting to maintain their fall seasons, as a result of what they don’t need to do is take away that chance — that custom — out of the state,” Hatfield says. “Whenever you take away a convention, it is vitally onerous to get it again. And if we’re not harvesting sufficient hens within the fall to impression inhabitants ranges, then why don’t we preserve these traditions alive and going?”

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In the end, modifications to bag limits, fall seasons, and harvest strategies will stay the important thing levers state companies can pull to affect hen numbers — even whereas realizing hunter harvest isn’t the primary driver of turkey numbers.

“It will get contentious anytime you begin speaking about altering or taking away alternatives as a result of all of us need the identical factor. I’m a turkey hunter, and I need to do that ceaselessly. I would like sustainable populations, and I would like as many turkeys on the market as attainable,” Chamberlain says. “I don’t suppose any of us [hunters] would say something completely different. However there are numerous viewpoints on easy methods to make that occur, and that’s one thing we always grapple with.”