The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is inviting Tennesseans and visitors to take part in the Agency’s 2025 wild turkey summer observational survey. The survey is open to the public through Aug 31.
In the 2024 summer survey, data from all 95 counties showed 152 different TWRA staff and 1,418 unique public participants combined for 3,785 observations. The 2024 statewide results, which estimated an average of 2.4 poults per hen, were on par with the 5-year average (2.4 poults per hen). Productivity was similar across the state in 2024, except for the Southeast unit where production was much lower than the rest of the state.
“This summer survey has been very beneficial to help monitor our turkey population and gauge its annual productivity,” said Roger Shields, TWRA Wild Turkey Program Coordinator. “Results of the annual survey feed directly into our new adaptive management process, which helps us determine the optimal management decisions for meeting our objectives for wild turkeys. Without help from the public-the citizen scientists as they’re often referred to as-our productivity estimates would be much less complete and our understanding of the population dynamics incomplete.”…