Iowa Turkey Counties: Spring and Fall Are Two Different Hunts

Clayton County leads Iowa's reported turkey harvest in both seasons, with 9,283 spring birds and 431 fall birds from 2007 to 2025, and six counties rank in the top ten for both seasons. The seasons have moved apart: reported spring harvest rose 33.2% between 2007 and 2025 while reported fall harvest fell 69.4%, so fall's share of the year's birds dropped from 10.6% to 2.6%. Reports from Iowa's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) show fall running on fewer licenses and a different style of hunting, so we read the two county lists separately.

Iowa's reported spring turkey harvest rose from 11,527 in 2007 to 15,350 in 2025, a gain of 33.2%, and reported fall harvest fell from 1,362 to 417, a loss of 69.4%. Fall's share of the year's birds went from 10.6% in 2007 to 2.6% in 2025.

Neither line moved smoothly. From 2007 to 2019 spring stayed between 9,527 and 12,173. It reached 14,689 in 2020, came back to 11,725 in 2021 and 11,946 in 2022, and has run at 14,843 or higher in each of the last three springs, peaking at 16,089 in 2024. Fall's slide is older. By 2018 fall had dropped to 413, which is 69.7% under 2007 (413 against 1,362), and it has stayed between 413 and 581 since, ending at 417.

One caution applies to the starting year. 2007 was the first year of mandatory harvest reporting for spring, and the DNR's report says compliance that spring was an estimated 74%, which it equates to nearly 4,000 birds unreported at first. Part of spring's 33.2% rise may therefore be better reporting, and the report gives a compliance estimate only for spring 2007.

The DNR's 2023 to 2024 turkey report describes a fall hunt that runs on a fraction of spring's licenses. In 2023 the DNR issued 7,714 fall licenses and 54,450 spring licenses, so fall had 14.2% as many, and 46% of the fall licenses were free landowner permits. Fall licenses were 11,024 in 2007. That is a drop of 30.0% to 2023, while reported fall harvest fell 57.3% over the same years (1,362 to 581 in our series). The share of fall licenses that reported a turkey went from 10.5% in 2008 to 7.5% in 2023, so fewer licenses and fewer birds per license both played a part.

Quota cuts fit part of the timing. The report lists lower fall quotas from 2009, when the quota in zone 4 went from 4,500 to 1,500, and reported fall harvest slid from 1,075 in 2008 to 912 in 2009 and 805 in 2010. Fall had already dropped from 1,362 to 1,075 in 2008, before that cut, so the quotas cannot be the whole story.

The style of hunt differs too. The report says fall techniques are different enough that spring experience has little effect on fall success, and that walking and flushing birds in small woodlots may work better in fall than the sit-and-call method of spring. It adds that many people may simply buy a fall tag while bow hunting deer, and that fall active hunters cannot be estimated under mandatory reporting, so a fall county count has no hunter count to divide by. The calendars differ as well. In 2023 the fall gun-and-bow season ran 54 days, while the 38-day spring window of 2024 was split into a 3-day youth season and four regular seasons of 4, 5, 7 and 19 days.

Fall is also a residents-only hunt. The DNR's turkey page says residents may buy up to two fall permits and nonresidents may not buy any, and the report says nonresidents have not been permitted to hunt fall turkeys in Iowa since 1990.

Clayton County heads both lists: 9,283 reported spring birds and 431 fall birds across 2007 to 2025. Allamakee (8,004) and Jackson (7,551) follow it in spring, and Appanoose (368) and Warren (367) follow it in fall.

The scale is what separates the lists. Clayton's fall total works out to about 23 birds a year (431 divided by 19), against about 489 a year in spring (9,283 divided by 19). The spring list also spreads wider at the top, with first place 1.8 times tenth (9,283 against 5,055), while fall's first is 1.3 times its tenth (431 against 328). Fall ranks are close: Harrison and Madison tie at 362, and Warren sits one bird behind Appanoose. Concentration is almost the same in both seasons. The ten leading counties hold 27.4% of spring birds and 27.0% of fall birds (63,217 of 230,695 and 3,567 of 13,231).

Clayton, Jackson, Warren, Harrison, Madison and Appanoose appear on both lists. Appanoose shows the widest split, seventh in spring and second in fall. Allamakee, Decatur, Fayette and Van Buren are top-ten names for spring only, and Marion, Lucas, Dubuque and Linn for fall only. Allamakee, second in spring, falls outside the fall top ten.

Both series come from Iowa's real-time harvest report, which sums the turkeys hunters are required to report, by county, for all weapons. We stop at 2025 for both seasons; spring 2026 exists in the data and is left out so the two lines cover the same 19 years. Against the DNR's annual tables, our spring sums match exactly in 12 of 18 seasons from 2007 to 2024, and no season differs by more than 28 birds (11,725 against 11,697 in 2021). Fall matches in 11 of 17 seasons from 2007 to 2023, with a largest gap of 3.

Reported counts reflect hunter numbers and license rules as well as turkeys, so the fall list in particular shows where a small number of licensed hunters reported birds: the ten leading fall counties share only 3,567 birds over 19 seasons.

For spring, use the spring list. Clayton, Allamakee and Jackson lead it, and even the tenth-place county totals 5,055 birds over 19 years, far more than any fall county. Nonresidents can hunt spring but not fall, so they have only that list to work from.

For fall, you are a resident working from a list where second and tenth are 40 birds apart over 19 seasons (368 against 328). Start with the six counties on both lists, because a fall county that also ranks in spring's top ten has more evidence behind it. Then ask about access, since reported counts cannot say which ground is open. Oklahoma keeps its spring and fall lines apart as well, and our Oklahoma fall paper shows that its two seasons fell on different timetables.