Page 38 - Outdoor Oklahoma Magazine Mar-Apr2023

Spring turkey hunting is a popular
PUBLIC DOMAIN pursuit for hunters in Oklahoma and
nationwide; in fact, the wild turkey
is second only to deer as America’s
most-hunted game animal. In Oklahoma
in 2021, an estimated 60,000 hunters
harvested about 19,000 wild turkeys
during the spring hunting seasons.
The banner year for turkey hunting
in the Sooner State was 2003, when an
estimated 75,000 hunters took about
42,000 birds.
But the state’s severe drought in
2011 and 2012 negatively affected tur-
key numbers, especially in the western
part of Oklahoma. The turkeys failed to
rebound, and in the past five years or
so, turkey numbers have gone dropped
even more.
Turkey declines are being seen
nationally, not just in Oklahoma.
Biologists estimate the turkey popu-
lation has dropped to about 6 million
birds in the U.S., which is down about
MAJOR 15 percent from the historic high seen around 2010. Many states are in the same

situation as Oklahoma, trying to figure out what is driving the decline in wild tur-
RESEARCH key numbers.
In Oklahoma, wild turkey populations have declined over the past three years
INTO STATE in all five regions where surveys are conducted. Those three-year declines range
from 2.7 percent in the Northeast Region to a whopping 67.1 percent in the
TURKEY Southwest Region.
Some estimates put the total number of wild turkeys at 30,000 birds at the begin-
PLIGHT ning of the last century — for the entire continent! By 1930, most Oklahomans would
say there were no wild turkeys to be found here. the statewide population was prob-
ably less than 1,000 birds.
UNDERWAY In 1948, the Wildlife Department embarked on an ambitious program to re-estab-

lish the wild turkey to its former range By the early 1970s, America’s population of
wild turkeys was about 1.5 million.
By Don P. Brown,
Marcus Thibodeaux, the Wildlife Department’s Rio Grande wild turkey project
Communication and coordinator, said the estimated Oklahoma turkey population was just under 100,000
Education Specialist
in 2016. Today, the estimate is 70,000 birds statewide, a drop of about 30 percent
in a span of six years.
After several years watching and monitoring the surveys and hunting harvests,
state biologists decided in 2020 that ODWC needed to act. The first goal was to
immediately address the decline by tightening hunting regulations. The next goal
was to conduct scientific research to learn what is causing the decline and what can
be done long-term to best manage wild turkey populations.

36 OUTDOOR OKLAHOMA