The 2022 Georgia Turkey Hunting Special

You probably learned about the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates, in high-school history class. It’s safe to say that your teacher never mentioned his name in the same breath as Georgia turkey hunting. Nevertheless, the old doc coined a phrase that surely fits as the 2022 Georgia turkey season is set to begin.

Almost 2,400 years after Hippocrates death, his saying “Desperate times call for desperate measures” perfectly explains what Georgia turkey hunters will face this spring gobbler season.

Here’s some 2021 opening-week success for Russell Johnson in Gordon County. He said the birds were quiet for the most part, but he finally found one that would cooperate around 12:30 p.m. The bird had 1-inch spurs.

With the wild turkey population in Georgia in a scary decline, officials have instituted dramatic changes for the upcoming season. 

Those changes include:

• The statewide bag limit has been reduced to two gobblers per season, with a one gobbler daily bag limit.

• The bag limit on WMAs, VPAs and National Forest lands (outside WMAs) is one gobbler per area.

• On private and leased land, the statewide turkey season will open on April 2, 2022, 12 days later than normal.

• On WMAs, VPAs and National Forests, the turkey season will open on April 9, 2022.

Georgia wildlife officials and wildlife biologists are quick to point out that the changes are not a cure for the decline, but rather changes that they believe should help in slowing the downward progression.

“We’re not claiming that this will fix the problems causing this decline,” said WRD’s State Wild Turkey Coordinator Emily Rushton. “What these changes do is give us some control over the things that we can control.

“I think the root problem of the decline is a habitat issue. We have programs that assist landowners with managing wildlife habitat, but Georgia is a large mosaic of urban and wild spaces that are not managed for wildlife. Predators like raccoons and coyotes exploit that. What you get is a lot of sub-par nesting habitat that is easy for predation.”

The changes this season came about after plenty of input from scholars and respected wildlife biologists from Georgia and across the Southeast. They have studied the decline for years. They do not all agree on what factors have caused the decline because it varies from region to region, but they all seem to be on the same page as to the changes that can help the problem. There is a consensus that starting the season later will help. Emily says opening the season later would delay hunting pressure until more breeding takes place. That would allow hens to begin nesting during the peak incubation period.

Dr. Barry Grand, supervisor of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cooperative Research Unit at Auburn University, led a team that conducted a five-year study of the wild turkey decline across the southeastern U.S. The study was conducted in Alabama but was applicable to surrounding states. That study also focused on contributing factors and remedies. The study, initiated by the National Wild Turkey Federation, was thorough using radio-collared turkeys, poult counts and other study methods.

The final report recommended several changes, including starting the season later, that could help the wild turkey population. That recommendation was based on research that showed 26% of the gobblers taken in Alabama were taken the first week of the season and almost 50% of the birds taken during the season had been taken by the end of second week.

The study also recommended reducing the season bag limit. Based on the recommendation of the study and others like it, Alabama, like Georgia, adopted both of those changes for the 2022 season.

Noted Wildlife Biologist Dr. Michael Chamberlain of the University of Georgia, who is currently conducting additional turkey research in Georgia in conjunction with DNR, also recommended a later starting date for the season.

He said that in past Georgia turkey seasons, studies showed that most of the male turkeys were taken during the first few weeks of the season. He said those taken were typically the dominant gobblers that the females had chosen for their breeding partners. He said that throws the females in turmoil as they are forced to start the process over again, often having to settle for less dominant males.

He also recommended lowering the bag limit.

In neighboring Alabama, the bag limit was lowered from five birds to four, but Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries took additional steps that makes it unlawful to use decoys during the first 10 days of the season. Georgia did not take that step.

“We had no scientific evidence that using decoys was hurting the population or productivity,” Emily said.

Wild turkeys in Georgia and across the Southeast seem to have the odds stacked against them. First, they are ground-nesters, which make their eggs susceptible to predation. Turkeys are attracted to baiting, which makes it easy for predators to pattern them. Poorly placed bait near cover provides ambush points for predators like bobcats to hide. Urbanization hasn’t been kind to their habitat needs. Neither has changing land-use practices.

There are weather issues that can affect all aspects of a turkey’s life. A dry fall and dry winter do not bode well for the growth of greenery that both adult turkeys and poults need for cover in spring. Droughts in spring result in brown fields not conducive to insect production, a primary source of food for growing poults. A usually wet, cold spring is rough on young poults who have no escape other than cowering under their mothers wings.

There may be other factors that some turkey hunters swear by. Many believe that the presence of so many predators has trained many turkeys not to gobble in fear it will give away their location. Many believe that the growing season burns that come with the timber industry is destroying nests and eggs. Others blame fire arts, diseases from the chicken manure spread on fields and toxins found in moldy corn at baiting sites.

And on top of everything else, COVID came along. While turkeys can’t be infected with the disease, turkey hunters were put out of work and had more time to hunt. That put additional pressure on the birds.

Emily says that the majority of turkey hunters have come to understand that the turkey population is indeed in trouble and that DNR must take steps to address the problem using the tools at its disposal.

“We survey hunters every year and the last few years the numbers have steadily increased to over 50% of hunters who support a later start of the season and a reduced bag limit,” she said.

The most-recent DNR survey showed that 51% of the hunters approved of starting the season later, while only 20% strongly opposed the change. At total of 55% of the responders approved of reducing the bag limit to two gobblers.

The numbers and hunters’ experience in the field have for years pointed to a problem in the Georgia wild turkey world. In 2010, 47,275 Georgia hunters—almost 10,000 less hunters than the season before—took almost 7,000 more turkeys than the season before. The harvest success rate skyrocketed to 72%, a 24% increase over the season before.

Like investors making money hand-over-fist in 1928, Black Thursday was coming, however. Five seasons later in 2015, the statewide harvest had fallen to 26,000 birds and the harvest success rate was less than 50%. It would get worse. In 2016, the harvest rate dropped below 20,000 for the first time as just a little more than 16,000 birds were taken. Except in 2017 when the harvest jumped back to 25,702 birds, the harvest has remained below 18,763 birds each year.

There have been recent glimmers of hope, but they could just be anomalies or blips on the radar screen. Some things have seemed to stabilize in recent years. The harvest rate remained steady in the 17,000s during the 2018-2020 seasons and even jumping to 18,763 birds last season. Even the poults-per-hen statistics shows improvement with the statewide average rising to 1.8 in 2021 for the first time in recent memory.

Emily cautions that the numbers can be deceiving.

She said there seems to be some stabilization in some categories, but affecting last year’s increased harvest was the fact that almost 10,000 more turkey hunters were hunting than during the 2020 season. She noted that the hunter-success rate declined.

She said it was encouraging that poult production rose to 1.8 statewide last season, but said weather was likely a factor.

“We had a good, wet winter the year before and that put a lot of moisture in the ground that made for a good spring growing season,” she said. “That made for good ground cover for nesting and a good insect base for insects to grow in.

“You can’t say much about the numbers from just one year,” she added. “We really need to be closer to two poults per hen for a turkey population that can replace itself.”

How the changes this season will affect poult production and the turkey population in general is of great interest to DNR, but Emily says there are no plans to take a break from the overall goal of reversing the turkey decline. The research will continue.

“We are continuing our research,” she said. “We still have an ongoing project with the University of Georgia and Dr. Chamberlin. This project is taking places on WMAs in the Piedmont region.

“The monitoring of poults has been stepped up, they are banding birds, they are measuring gobbling, they are studying weather effects and studying nesting ecology. They are putting GPS collars on hens and putting GPS collars on coyotes to track their movements.”