2025 Spring Turkey Harvest: A Successful Year Despite the Rain

CONTACT:
Dan Ellingwood: 603-352-9669
Andy Timmins: 603-271-1742
July 17, 2025

Concord, NH – The New Hampshire 2025 spring turkey harvest saw a modest rebound from the year prior despite a particularly rainy May, which may have decreased hunter effort. Hunters harvested 4,845 turkeys this spring, an increase of +6% from last year’s total of 4,562 birds.

The 2025 harvest was comprised of 18 (<1%) bearded hens, 1,616 jakes (33%), and 3,211 toms (66%). The heightened juvenile-to-adult gobbler harvest ratio (0.5 jakes to 1.0 toms) reflects a productive nesting season in 2024 combined with the residual effects of a poor nesting season in 2023 that reduced the total abundance of 2-year-old birds on the landscape this spring.

Young hunters registered 422 birds during the special youth weekend that took place April 26 and 27. This represented 8.7% of the total spring harvest and is comparable to the number of birds harvested by youth hunters over the past 5 years.

Since 2019, hunters have been permitted to harvest two birds during the spring season in select Wildlife Management Units (WMUs). Out of the 3,953 successful hunters this spring, 892 hunters (22%) registered two birds. The percentage of hunters who harvest two birds during the spring has remained consistent at 21–24% annually.

The towns with the largest harvests included: Gilmanton (73), Barnstead (63), Concord (61), Sanbornton (58), Alton (56), Loudon (55), Deerfield (55), Claremont (54), Strafford (53), and Cornish (53). At the individual WMU level, turkey densities remain at or above the objectives specified in the New Hampshire Game Management Plan in most WMUs.

The summer 2025 Online Brood Survey is now underway. The results of this survey will help to set expectations for the population’s growth trajectory in the year ahead. You can help by reporting sightings of hen turkeys and their poults online by visiting www.wildlife.nh.gov/wildlife-and-habitat/wild-turkeys-new-hampshire/turkey-surveys.

Wild turkey management in New Hampshire is funded, in part, through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Restoration Program.