West Virginia hunters harvest 11,314 turkeys during spring 2020 season

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has released preliminary data on the number of turkeys harvested during the 2020 spring turkey season, which shows a slight increase when compared to last year.

The release from the DNR stated that according to the preliminary data, West Virginia Hunters harvested 11,314 birds during the spring turkey season this year, a slight increase over the 2019 harvest of 11,215. DNR officials said that this year’s spring turkey harvest is close to the five-year average of 11,344 and 9 percent above the 10-year-average.

“We had a good harvest this year thanks to a great youth turkey season,” said Mike Peters, wild turkey biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “The youth turkey season expanded to two days this year and it appears our young hunters took advantage of the additional opportunity.”

DNR officials said that youth hunters harvested a total of 643 gobblers during the two day youth turkey season, harvesting a total of 368 on Saturday and 275 on Sunday. This represents a 37 percent increase over last year’s youth harvest, according to the release. These numbers are included in the table below with county totals.

The release stated that Districts 4 and 5 reported slight harvest increases over last year’s totals. The remaining districts harvested slightly fewer birds than last year. District 1 harvested the most birds (2,749), followed by District 6 (2,284), District 5 (2,131), District 4 (1,617), District 3 (1,521) and District 2 (1,012).

The top five counties with the high highest turkey harvest were Mason (457), Preston (434), Jackson (402), Wood (344) and Harrison (339) counties.

Below is a table detailing the spring harvest of turkeys in the state over the last five years.