Turkey winter mortality-spring abundance-seeing more or less in your zone than last year?

[Sinker]

Hunted west-central WI. during the 2nd season and just started the 4th and definitely am seeing less turkeys than 5-6 years ago. Haven't found any dead ones but I haven't seen one jake. Hens in small groups or alone and toms here and there. Less gobbling in the morning. Still out there though. Came close this morning when a hen and a tom came to a hayfield from the roost but no dice. I'm sure there are pockets of better numbers but the properties I hunt are down, where a few years ago you would see birds all day.

[DonBo]

I just got back from W Central WI also, and you're right, far fewer than 5-6 years ago. Don't believe this last winter took the population down any, just as many as last year.

Still a decent population though, 2 of us filled our tags in 2 days.

[brittman]

After day one and two of Season E I would have said birds were down in 508 north of the metro.

Today we heard more gobblers than we have ever heard hunting this property. The weather was perfect - starlit and relatively calm after a nasty, windy, rainy day - yesterday. We pinpointed at least 8 separate gobbler points in the 360 degree circle around us. Two were multi-group.

I did notice that this year the birds were really using areas that you could not see from the road. Walking or driving back into areas really resulted in us see a lot of birds.

Saw more gobblers and jakes this year than hens, which is not that common for us.

[Borch]

2,560 birds killed during A season. Up from 1,723 last year.

Outside of Wednesday's blizzard, the weather was beautiful.

Where do you find the numbers at. Just looking for them to see where we're at compared to last spring.

[sticknstring]

Outdoor News posts harvest numbers every week. Should have an update to post tomorrow. Last I read, every season was up from last year except, C & E.

[Hoyt4]

Our zone 4 in WI Eau Claire area was hit very hard. Land owners found many dead birds from the winter. This was on 5 different farms. bird numbers were really down. The land oweners are also trail groomers and work on many different farms they lease out to farm. They were maybe seeings one bird or none. Our hunt was very tough this year.

MN I found scounting 7 dead birds from the winter this is in the Forest lake area. When hunting I even found more birds that were lost. Count went up to 15 just on 80 acres I was hunting. Not many around on a few lands that i hunt. LUcky to get a bird but the numbers are really low.