Preliminary data after Missouri’s firearm hunting season shows that 1,857 turkeys were brought in by Missouri hunters during the firearms portion of the fall turkey season. That’s 363 fewer turkeys than last year.
Research points to warmer weather and lack of interest from hunters for decreasing turkey harvest numbers.
Nick Oakley, a Missouri Department of Conservation biologist, partially attributes warm and dry October weather to a decrease in harvest. That means there’s an abundance of insects — that turkeys are spreading out to hunt — and a lack of green vegetation, leading to fewer turkeys in their usual haunts.
This also means there are fewer hunters waiting in the heat for birds.
“Spring turkey hunting has sort of taken over in the popular sort of narrative as kind of the more appealing turkey hunt to do,” Oakley said. “It's really kind of conversational between you and the bird. You're calling, the bird, the birds responding, and it's pretty exciting.”
Over the last five years, fall firearm turkey harvests averaged around 2,000 birds a year, but that number has been declining.
Oakley also said hunters are shifting their focus from turkeys to deer. The deer archery harvests this year are already greater than 20,000.
“We’ve seen our fall archery participation continue to climb and climb and last year was a record participation year,” he said. “People like to get out into the woods.”
University of Missouri Fisheries and Wildlife Specialist Robert Pierce said a change in turkey habitat over the years has also led to a declining turkey population.
“We have more dense forests, and they're not managed so that they have open ground conditions that turkeys nest in,” Pierce said. “The habitat that turkeys require has been lost, in many cases, because we've lost a lot of the shrubby cover that is good for nesting.”
Turkeys are therefore more dispersed while they search for food in other areas, making it harder for hunters to find them in one area.
An MDC report released in 2021 suggests that a decline in turkey harvest trends means there could be an overall decline in turkey populations across the state.
The MDC is asking hunters to mail in turkey feathers to help create research models to monitor turkey population trends and estimate state-wide turkey numbers.
According to the Missouri Conservation Heritage Fund, wild turkey research is highly valued in Missouri because it helps track changes to the landscape, which, in turn, affects turkey populations. States like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma are also experiencing sharp decreases in turkey populations.
Oakley is working with the MDC to create habitat management workshops for Missouri residents with wild turkeys on their land. There is an extensive guide that will be released in Spring 2025.
