Page 28 - Mar/Apr 2022 Outdoor Okahoma Magazine

By Don P. Brown, Communication and Education Specialist

KELLY ADAmS/ODWC

Turkey Hunting

Rules Change

As Research

Examines Slump

By Don P. Brown,
Communication and Education Specialist

Spring turkey hunting season won’t be the same in As the days get warmer, many sportsmen and sports-
2022 as in recent years. New season dates and a new bag women embrace the opportunity to harvest a large
limit are in place across Oklahoma, changes made this game bird during a time when the budding landscape
past summer after Department of Wildlife Conservation and mild conditions make it a prime time to enjoy out-
wildlife biologists expressed concerns about declining door pursuits.
numbers of wild turkeys in the state. Spring turkey hunting is a popular pursuit for hunters
Hunters planning to pursue any of the three subspe- in Oklahoma and across the country; in fact, the wild
cies of wild turkeys that can be found in Oklahoma are turkey is second only to deer as America’s most-hunted
reminded of these new regulations: game. In 2021, an estimated 60,000 hunters harvested
about 19,000 wild turkeys during Oklahoma’s spring sea-
• The spring turkey season dates are April 16 to May sons. The banner year for turkey hunting in the Sooner
16, statewide. State was 2003, when an estimated 75,000 hunters took
about 42,000 birds.
• The spring turkey season bag limit is one tom turkey But it wasn’t always this way.
per hunter. A tom is defined as any bearded turkey.
Conservation “Poster Child”
• The youth spring turkey season will be the Saturday
and Sunday before April 16. A turkey taken during Wild turkey populations were robust in western
youth spring turkey season counts toward the regu- Oklahoma before the first land run in 1889 began open-
lar season limit of one turkey per hunter. ing large areas to settlement. In the ensuing decades,

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