Spring Turkey Overview
It’s hard to believe another Spring Turkey season hast passed. This year members traveled from 23 different states with Alaska being the furthest again. Missouri residents were the top state with 96 hunters, Arkansas was second with 24 and Kansas third with 18.
The total number of spring turkey hunters was down from 225 in 2018 to 191 during the 2019 season, but the success ratio remained the same at 1.4 toms per member. 191 members harvested 267 toms, which is the first season in 15+ years we have not harvested over 300 birds.
Below are 2 successful youth hunters that participated in the youth season.
Most of our spring turkey hunters are casual and utilize spring turkey season to scout land and become familiar with the map and reservation system. The average member only hunted 4 days, but we always have a group of die hard hunters that take filling tags very seriously.
The 2019 MAHA spring turkey Tough Man Contest went as follows:
151 hunters hunted one state, 33 hunted 2 states and 7 hunted all 3 states. The most days hunted without filling a tag was 14 days and the longest it took to fill one tag was 12 days. They were both local hunters. The most days hunted by a member was 22 and he harvested 2 toms. The quickest a member filled 4 tags was 4 days and the fastest a member filled 5 tags was 5 days. The heaviest bird was 27 1/2 lbs., the longest spur was 1 9/16”, longest beard was 12” and most beards was 4.
Out of the 7 members that hunted all 3 states 5 harvested 5 mature toms, 1 harvested 4 toms and the other harvested 3 toms. Good job guys, that’s a pile of turkeys!
We would like to thank everyone that responded to our email requesting harvest numbers to calculate a total of birds harvested during the 2019 season. This feedback is helpful when it’s time to renew leases. Success photos and stories are most gratifying. Keep them coming.
During the month of May the Midwest had record rainfall which caused a lot of flooding, especially the Missouri River bottoms. Many turkey hunters expressed concern the turkey hatch would be ruined so we called Jason Isabelle, the MDC Turkey Biologist for his opinion. In short, he said considering the big picture of how much land was not flooded it is not a major concern. With that being said, we need to cross our fingers the birds that were able to nest on high ground are having a successful hatch. We had above average reports of Jake sightings so the outlook for 2020 season is encouraging.
Spring turkey season has always been an easy season to manage. We have so much land and so many turkeys to work with there is always plenty of fresh opportunity for everyone.
Enjoy the summer months! Jon, Susie and Jon Jr.
