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Arkansas turkey hunters checked 13,591 turkeys during this year’s official turkey hunting season, which ended Sunday night. According to historical data, this is the highest spring turkey harvest since 2006.
“Arkansas had a good amount of mature gobblers on the ground this year, thanks to conservative seasons during the last few years promoting high gobbler carryover. This was complemented by good weather two years ago that enabled the birds to take advantage of improved habitat in many pockets across the state,” Allison Fowler, assistant chief of wildlife management for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said. “We also saw a change in our season structure this year that offered split opening weekends, and we’re analyzing those results to see if it played a large role in the harvest.”
Although this is the highest harvest since 2006, Arkansas’s record turkey harvest was in 2003, when hunters checked 19,947 birds. A quick dive into the comparison reveals that this year’s harvest isn’t too far off that mark when accounting for a few major differences in season structure.
In 2003, hunters shot 4,610 jake turkeys. Nearly a quarter of the harvest was made up of these immature male birds. Only 15,225 mature gobblers were taken that spring.
“We established the ‘No Jakes Rule’ in 2011,” Fowler said. “Since then, only youth hunters can legally harvest an immature gobbler, and they may only take one per season.”
Fowler said even though youth hunters can take a jake, most still opt for a mature bird if they have the choice, and this year’s harvest of just over 300 jakes is a testament to that. “We had a good amount of mature birds out there gobbling, and the youths have the first shot at the birds, so we saw less than 3 percent of the harvest made up of jakes this year. That hopefully translates to decent numbers of adult gobblers available for hunters next year.”
The remaining 112 turkeys counted in the 2003 harvest were bearded hens, which were also legal to harvest at that time. The legal harvest of bearded hen turkeys was eliminated in 2021 to maximize reproductive success in Arkansas’s flock.
“Hunters really self-regulate themselves when it comes to hens, so the hen harvest never was very high, but the elimination of the bearded hen harvest reinforces the idea for hunters that their decisions in the woods matter to the population,” Fowler said. “2003 also had an earlier and longer season. Hunters had 37 days to take a bird in most of the state in 2003. This year, Zones 1 and 2 were open for 21 days each, while our more restrictive zones were only open for nine days. The previous liberal structure was not favorable when poor weather during the nesting and hatching time period saw decreased reproduction success.”
This year’s new split-season structure may have played some role in the increased harvest, as hunters could hunt opening day in the southern zones (zones 2 and 2A), then harvest their second bird on the opening day of one of the northern zones (zones 1 and 1A).
“We’re still analyzing just how many people engaged in this sort of zone-hopping, but many hunters only stick to one or two hunting locations each year, especially those who hunt private land,” Fowler said. “Turkey hunters are a bit more mobile than deer hunters, traditionally, but I think the great weather we had during the majority of this year’s turkey season was also responsible for the increased success.”
AGFC biologists are cautiously optimistic that Arkansas’s turkey population is still in good shape following the season.
“Our poult surveys last year indicated less reproductive success than in 2024, and we know harvest rates are tightly linked to the reproduction two years prior,” Fowler said. “Just like this year benefited from higher than average reproduction in 2024, next season may see a decline because of moderate reproduction in 2025. We still have a lot of jakes on the landscape that will be adults next year, and we should see a decent complement of this year’s adult gobblers surviving. Still, a slight decline next season won’t be shocking; you really never know until the season is here.”
