Wisconsin Turkey Hunters Notch 5th Best of 43 Spring Seasons

   If one of my grandchildren pursues a career in wildlife management, I hope they sign on as Wisconsin’s chief turkey biologist.

   They would likely enjoy little stress and enduring job satisfaction, given the happiness turkeys inspire among hunters. This spring, for example, Wisconsin hunters registered 50,287 turkeys, the fifth best total since our inaugural turkey season in 1983. That kill was only 447 shy of 2024’s total of 50,734, and only 2,593 (5%) below the record 52,880 shot in 2008.

   Seasons like these consistently make Wisconsin No. 1 for turkey hunting, even ahead of more traditional states like Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.

   Turkey hunting isn’t all about body counts, of course. Within hours of the season’s closure at sunset May 27, the Department of Natural Resources again invited 10,000 randomly selected hunters to take a 5-minute survey about their “effort and experiences.”

   The DNR conducts this survey annually to learn turkey hunters’ thoughts on the spring hunt, and pinpoint potential troubles. It’s too soon to know how hunters rated the ’25 season, but surveys the past two decades suggest it will earn a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. Annual ratings have ranged from 6.6 to 7.3, no matter how low the harvest: 37,266 in 2021, or high, 50,734 in 2024.

Wisconsin’s turkey hunters registered over 50,000 birds during this spring's 6-week season, the fifth time in 43 seasons the harvest exceeded 50K.   — Patrick Durkin photo

   In fact, those surveys consistently find 80% of Wisconsin's turkey hunters are OK with the season’s 20% success rate. In 2024, for example, 20% of hunters rated the season’s quality as low, but 34% rated it “average,” 24% rated it “very high” and 22% rated it “fairly high.”

   So, unlike deer hunting, turkey hunting won’t become a political campaign issue anytime soon. Hunters don’t demand the DNR fire its top turkey biologists, and lawmakers don’t mimic such annoying chants, as then-Assemblyman Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, did in July 2012 by issuing a press release demanding the DNR sack its entire deer-management team.

   Tiffany doesn’t hunt, but he knows deer hunters are chronically grumpy and easily agitated. Consider the November 2000 gun season: Despite shooting a record 528,494 deer and a second-best 171,753 antlered bucks (only 138 fewer than the 1995 record), only 28% of Wisconsin’s deer hunters rated the 2000 season’s quality as “high” while 31% rated it “low.”

Apparently, success rates of 25% on antlered bucks, 51% on antlerless deer, and 76% overall trigger poor job reviews for deer biologists. And judging by Tiffany’s snit, 2012’s success rates of 19% on antlered bucks, 24% on antlerless deer, and 43% overall justify mass firings.

   Tough crowd, eh?

Taylor Finger, the DNR’s chief game-bird ecologist since 2022, occasionally hears turkey-related criticism, but it’s mostly minor tweaks, not major overhauls. In 2021, for example, hunters registered 37,266 turkeys, the lowest kill since 1999 when they killed 33,168. Sure, folks worried, but we didn’t trigger alarms or suffer panic attacks. After all, spring turkey kills were stable, hovering just below 40,000 four out of five years from 2018 through 2022.

   And then the kill jumped over 36% from 2021 to 2024.

   “We had people calling four years ago to say something was wrong with our turkey population, and suggested ways to fix it,” Finger said. “Since then, we’ve seen the harvest go over 50,000 two straight seasons, so now we’re hearing we’ll have high turkey numbers forever so let’s get rid of the six hunting periods and hold one long, continuous season. Either way, we try not to make changes based on short-term memories.”

   Finger attributes the turkey’s ongoing population surge to good weather the past three years, including three straight non-winters across much of Wisconsin. Likewise, turkey broods enjoyed mostly dry, mild-temperature nesting conditions in May and June the past three years. Conditions this spring have also been good, overall.

   Strong nest survival rates inject more hens, jakes (1-year-old males) and mature gobblers into the flock. That helps explain why adult toms made up 91% of this year’s statewide kill, and at least 90.7% of the kill in all seven turkey zones. That’s the first time since 2014 that gobblers made up over 90% of the total kill. These conditions also portend another good hunt in 2026, given 90% annual survival rates for mature toms not killed by hunters.

   “If they don’t die from a load of tungsten, copper-plated lead or a bad winter when 3 feet of snow keeps them from foraging, most Wisconsin gobblers survive the year,” Finger said.

   When hunters start applying for spring 2026 permits, Finger urges them to increase their odds of success by picking a later period for their second choice. Hunters who list Period A as their first choice and Period B as their second choice risk drawing neither because many hunters apply for those periods. That’s especially true for zones 1 and 2, which offer the most permits, but include the state’s largest cities and hunting populations.

   Besides, later periods offer solid hunting. Yes, this spring’s harvest totals show a modest drop-off in kills after Period B, but the totals for periods C, D and E were similar. Period A delivered 23.6% of this year’s kills, while Period B produced 18%, Period C, 14%; Period D, 13.9%; Period E, 13.3%; Period F, 8.6%; and the youth-only weekend, 7.9%.

Here are some other highlights from the spring season:

   -- Hunters age 15 and younger shot a record 3,981 turkeys during the April 12-13 youth-only weekend hunt. That’s only three more kills than the previous youth-only record in 2024, and only the fifth time the past 16 youth seasons that the kill exceeded 3,000.

   -- The DNR offered a record 246,068 permits this spring, and sold 78,478 of them as $10 bonus tags after allocating 150,098 through the annual winter drawings. Of the 42 total hunting periods (seven zones, six periods), only four didn’t sell out: Zone 1 had 1,890 leftovers for Period E and 8,211 for Period F, while Zone 3 had 874 leftovers for Period E and 6,555 for Period F. With roughly 17,500 leftovers, only 7% of the permits weren’t sold.

   “(In mid-May), our licensing folks thought we would sell out Period E, but then the license sales slowed way down,” Finger said.

-- Although permit numbers differ by zone, the total available for each hunting period is always the same. This year’s distribution was 41,012 tags per period for A and B, and 41,011 tags per period for C, D, E and F.

-- Over 12,000 more hunters applied for permits during 2025's initial draw than in 2024.

-- Heading into Memorial Day weekend during the final 7-day period, the harvest was tracking 1,000 behind 2024’s totals. Hunters cut that total in half during the three-day weekend to push past 50,000, led by a kill of 1,371 in Zone 2.