The 2023 Arkansas spring turkey season begins with the annual weekend youth hunt today and Sunday.
Regular turkey season launches statewide April 17. The season in Zone 1 runs through April 25 while Zone 2 remains open to harvest legal gobblers until May 7.
Youths ages 6 to 15 may harvest one jake as part of their two-bird statewide limit. No more than one bird may be harvested during the special youth hunt.
Regulations introduced in 2021 remain in place for this year's harvest. Those include:
No more than one legal turkey (no jakes) may be taken during the first seven days of the regular season.
Bag limits on all individual wildlife management areas is one legal turkey.
A third important regulation has been in place for several years: No more than one legal turkey may be taken per day.
In regard to the reasons for such restrictions, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission turkey program coordinator Jeremy Wood explained how pushing opening day back later in the spring and limiting gobbler harvest during the first week lessens the likelihood of eliminating breeding Toms from the population before they have an opportunity to procreate.
Wood said, "We find that the bulk of hens laying their eggs peaks around April 19. We want to reduce excessive harvest of birds when hens are most receptive to breeding."
Wood addressed a few other regulation changes implemented for 2023.
"This year the penalty for hunting turkeys over bait has been raised to a class 3 violation which, upon conviction, results in immediate suspension of license and hunting rights for one year," he said.
"We have added a few permit hunts on Wildlife Management Areas where general hunting during the regular season was previously allowed without permit. This has been done due to complaints of overcrowding and poor hunting quality on certain places such as Cypress Bayou WMA."
In South Arkansas, Longview Saline Natural Area, Trusten Holder and Warren Prairie WMA's now require permitted hunting from April 17 through 19 before opening to general hunting on the 20th as has been done at Sylamore WMA for several years.
"These hybrid hunts were initiated due to similar concerns on hunting pressure, but attempt to balance quality limited entry hunts at the beginning of the season with open access for the remainder of the season," Wood explained.
In North Arkansas, AGFC has done away with the Ozark National Forest WMA due to confusion in hunter harvest reports mistakenly checking deer and birds taken anywhere encompassed by the overall Ozark National Forest boundaries as having been taken in the smaller area of the WMA. Some game harvested in other WMA's within the boundaries of the National Forest such as White Rock, Piney Creeks, Bearcat Hollow and Lee Creek got reported as coming from Ozark National Forest WMA, resulting in an inordinately high harvest count for that WMA.
"Dissolving the identity of that one WMA." Wood said, "will help us as managers improve our understanding of the distribution of harvest across that region."
Turning to the 2022 spring harvest report, Wood said, "Our total harvest count was 7,583. That's an 8% increase over 2021. We expect to see a bump in harvest when there is good hatch. It's a slow but steady climb.
"The highest count came from Union County." It being the largest county in the state land wise, that makes sense. "Union had 328 birds harvested, while Izard in second place had 246 and Fulton had 243 for the third spot."
"2022 was our highest year of reproduction since 2012-2013," Wood added. "We should see more jakes and hens on the landscape this season. We may not see a jump in big gobblers yet but can expect more to be around next year. The second year after a hatch sees jakes becoming mature birds. There should be plenty of birds running around for youth to get on this weekend."
Wood said, "Currently about 70% of the annual harvest on average occurs during the first nine days of the season (including the two-day special youth hunt weekend). A later season opener along with restricting the take of male turkeys during the first week should allow more breeding activity to occur. This effort to spread out hunting pressure prior to peak laying time gives turkeys as much opportunity to breed as possible."
Wood continued, "In an effort to try and balance out that late start to the season, we added days on the back end to give the hunter more opportunities to bag a bird into May."
Wood further stated how the turkey survey is also open to the general public. Anyone seeing birds on the landscape can go online to agfc.com/turkey surveys and report time, place, relative age, sex and number of turkeys observed in a given area.
"We highly encourage people to participate in our turkey survey program because the more data we have, the better picture we can construct of turkey populations throughout the state," Wood said.
The Spring Gobbler Hunting Survey offered by AGFC provides licensed hunters with a handy pocket notebook to record where and when turkeys are seen and heard prior to and throughout the season. Hunter participation could add from 50,000 to 65,000 additional sets of eyes and ears to monitor turkey numbers and location. This information better assists AGFC in making regulations to protect the resource.
To obtain a traditional paper survey book, contact Wildlife Management Division at (501) 382-3650 to be added to the mailing list.
Wood concluded, "We're looking forward to the season. Spring has arrived a little earlier than we've seen in recent years. With leaf cover filling out sooner, gobblers that may have been heard during preseason scouting will be more difficult to hear now. Not hearing birds that were heard before doesn't mean they aren't there. Hunters may just need to go deeper into the woods to find them."