The News Outside

Wondering if anyone has heard the harvest numbers for youth wild turkey season? I would like to see the numbers for the north zone. I bet they will be way down. I am betting the total harvest for all five seasons to be very low especially in the North Zone.

You should find this link helpful.

http://www.dnr.illinois.gov/hunting/Pages/IDNRHarvestQuery.aspx

Youth:  South Zone was 372 (388 in 2013); North was 409 (529 in 2013).
South Zone: 1st season was 1448 (1568 in 2013); 2nd season was 1200 (1374 in 2013)
North Zone: 1st season was 1848 (1742 in 2013).

thx for the info

Season numbers aren’t that bad in places.

Doesn’t look like I thought it would, my area the birds just are not there anymore don’t know what happened. Black flies ,Coyoytes, rough winter hard to say. I hunted first season they could have still been in winter mode who knows.

Strut, Turk #s are def down on acouple places we hunt….Its bad enough our deer are taking a huge hit but now its the turkeys also…

I don’t believe the numbers are down much in areas I hunt, but I do know for a fact the birds weigh a lot less after a hard winter.  Last year I shot an 29 pounder, which I thought was impossible as my previous heaviest bird was 25/26 lbs.  I have heard of multiple 3 year old birds shot this year in the 18-21 lb range, that’s an 8-10 lb drop, which is huge! Most of these birds having the typical 10-11 inch beard and nice spurs just no weight.