Eagle Times Staff
Concord, N.H. – Turkey hunters in New Hampshire harvested 5,580 wild turkeys during the spring season.
The harvest was very similar to the record harvest of 5,725 turkeys taken in spring 2022 and 2023 marked the fifth consecutive year that the spring turkey season has exceeded 5,000 birds.
This spring’s total includes 483 birds taken during the special youth weekend that took place April 29 and 30. This represented 8.6% of the total spring harvest and was a slight increase over last year’s youth harvest of 428 turkeys, which represented 7.5% of the total harvest.
The total spring harvest was comprised of 9 bearded hens, 1,410 jakes and 4,161 toms. This was the fifth year hunters could harvest two birds during the spring season in designated Wildlife Management Units. Out of the 4,526 successful hunters this spring, 3,472 hunters registered one bird and 1,054 hunters registered two birds. Of the 1,054 hunters who registered two birds, 968 were adults and 86 were youth under the age of 16.
This spring was the fourth year that hunters had the option of registering their harvested birds online or in person at a physical registration station. There was an increase in online registration use this year with 54.1% of birds being registered online versus 45.9% that were registered in person.
The towns with the largest harvests included: Claremont (79), Alton (77), Plainfield (72), Concord (70), Westmoreland (69), Loudon (68), Gilmanton (67), Newport (67), Cornish (64), and Belmont (62). Seven of these towns were in the “top 10” last year, and the year before as well. Seventeen towns registered 50 or more male turkeys this spring.
Wild turkey management in New Hampshire is funded, in part, through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Restoration Program.
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