April 02, 2023 by Shawn Chittim
It has been a tough opener for us, our forecast for the 2023 California Spring Wild Turkey season has turned out to be pretty accurate. In our part of California we have been witnessing a decline in the wild turkey population since 2020. Last year we had virtually no hatch, we have a couple dozen trail cameras out on the ranches we manage and normally capture a lot of poults annually. However, after the spring of 2022 we noticed that we had only seen in person or on camera 1 set of hens with poults and that was on July 16, 2022.
All is not bleak, we adjusted the number of Spring Turkey hunts we offered to insure that our harvest was in alignment with our management goals and to protect enough toms for future breeding and bounce back. We knew we would have a descent carry over from the 2021 poults to have a good number of 2 year olds, what we didn't predict was that the winter of 2023 would deliver an amazing winter carrying all the way into April. The birds are quite still acting like it's early February and working tough.
We have hosted 3 turkey hunters and have sent them home with 2 Tom as of the end of the first week. We are hoping that when the weather breaks the turkey hunting is going to bust out and we are still expecting the best to come.
Stay positive and enjoy the greatest game bird America has to offer.
Posted in: California Spring Wild Turkey Hunting
