What To Expect This Year

Spring 2025

Aritcle and Photos by Jimmy Jacobs

Spring is here and along with it, Georgia’s wild turkey hunting season is upon us. The season opened on March 29 and will run through April 5, 2025. On the first weekend of the season, it is likely that the bulk of the state’s estimated almost 39,000 turkey hunters were in the woodlands. That would be a 3 percent increase from 2024, but a drop from the 54,509 hunters in 2021. It is worth noting that changes in the regulations in 2022 caused expected drops in hunter participation and harvest numbers in the following years.

What kind of action can those hunters expect this year? According to the Wildlife Resources Division game managers, it should mirror conditions from the previous 2024 action. For that reason, last year’s statistics can give us a hint of what it will be like to chase these birds across the Peach State in 2025.

In total the estimated number of hunters was 38,810, with those individuals harvesting 11,924 turkeys. That harvest number was an 11 percent increase from 2022, when the last end of season survey was conducted. Of the birds bagged, 793 or 7 percent were jakes.

Breaking down the harvest by region, the Piedmont was most productive having registered 37 percent of the turkeys killed. Next was the Upper Coastal Plain with 32 percent. From there, the percentages dropped. In the Lower Coastal Plain, just 14 percent of the harvest was taken, followed by 13 percent in Northwest Georgia’s Ridge and Valley Region. At the tail end of the pack, the Blue Ridge Mountains produced just 4 percent of the turkeys taken.

One concerning fact is that the Hunter Satisfaction was at just 63 percent, which was a sharp drop from previous seasons. That was based on hunters who described the 2024 season as Excellent, Good or Satisfactory.

The harvest on the state’s wildlife management areas was little changed from 2023. A total of 12,032 hunters made use of the WMAs, with a harvest of 706 gobblers. Of those 92 were jakes.

The percentage of hunters bagging a turkey was 5.9 percent, which was a 1 percent increase from the previous year. On the down side, hunter satisfaction among those using the WMAs was jus 52 percent.

Oddly enough, the top five WMAs for turkey harvest in 2024 were in either the Ridge and Valley or Blue Ridge Mountain regions of north Georgia.