The Best Turkey Counties in Missouri: Franklin Led All 10 Springs

Franklin County is the best spring turkey county in Missouri by reported harvest: its hunters reported 8,728 birds across the 2016 to 2025 regular seasons, and it finished first among all 114 counties in each of the ten years, ahead of Texas County (7,491). The separate youth season has its own map, with seven counties in both top tens but a different order, and bearded hens make up only 1.11% of the spring birds reported. All of it counts birds hunters reported, so the lists follow hunter numbers and county size as well as turkeys.

Franklin's run is the most distinctive number in the data. In each regular season from 2016 to 2025 its hunters reported more birds than any of the other 113 counties, and in 2025 its 956 was again the state's highest. The Missouri Department of Conservation's 2025 harvest summary puts Callaway second that year (873) and Texas third (860). Across the decade, Franklin's total runs 1,237 birds past Texas's.

The margins were not always wide. The narrowest win came in 2018, when Franklin's 709 birds beat Texas's 696 by 13, according to the 2018 summary. The widest came in 2020, when Franklin's 900 finished 200 ahead of Callaway's 700 in the 2020 summary. Second place rotated: Callaway ran second in five of the ten springs, Texas in four, and Saint Clair once, in 2016.

Franklin's ten-season total is 2.2% of the 392,404 birds all counties reported, roughly two and a half times the 0.9% an even split among 114 counties would give each. Below it the list is packed. Callaway is third at 7,177 and Camden tenth at 5,850, only 1,327 birds apart over ten seasons, and Greene and Ste. Genevieve County tie at 5,788 for 11th. Maries, in 15th at 5,534, sits 316 birds behind Camden.

Franklin's streak ran through a wide statewide swing. Summed from county records, the regular-season total fell from 44,207 in 2016 to 33,359 in 2022, then rose to 46,569 in 2025, the highest of the ten springs and 13,210 birds above 2022.

The counts say what hunters reported and cannot say why the line moved. Weather, hunter turnout and turkey numbers all feed a reported count, and this record cannot separate them. What it can say is that Franklin stayed first through the whole swing.

Missouri holds a youth spring season ahead of the regular one. Under the department's 2026 rules it ran April 11 and 12 for hunters ages 6 to 15, with a limit of one male turkey or turkey with a visible beard, and the regular season followed from April 20 to May 10. The youth take is small. The department's 2025 tables list 4,449 youth birds statewide against 46,569 in the regular season. We ranked counties on ten years of youth birds separately, using the 111 counties that reported youth birds in all ten seasons.

Franklin is first on both lists, with 772 youth birds. Six more counties sit in both top tens: Texas, Callaway, Osage, Laclede, Gasconade and Miller. Three counties are in the youth top ten but not the regular one: Maries, Ste. Genevieve and Greene, which rank 15th, 12th and 11th in the regular season. Three regular-season leaders, Phelps, Macon and Camden, miss the youth top ten.

Miller County shows how far the two maps can part. It is 9th for regular-season birds (5,997) and 2nd for youth birds (714), which works out to 11.9 youth birds for every 100 regular-season birds, against 8.5 in Texas County (636 of 7,491). Miller also led the youth season outright in 2020, 2021 and 2022, with 74, 73 and 87 birds. Nothing in these records says why. Where young hunters live and where they have permission to hunt are possible reasons, and we did not test either.

A short season makes ranks jumpy. Over ten years, the gap between Maries in 7th (595) and Greene in 10th (531) is 64 birds. In 2025 alone, Gasconade led the youth season with 107 birds, Osage followed with 106, and Franklin, the ten-year leader, was fourth with 89. Across the whole decade, five counties held or shared first place: Franklin, Callaway (tied with Franklin at 105 in 2016), Miller, Osage and Gasconade.

Missouri's spring rules turn on a beard. The department's 2026 turkey page lets residents take two male turkeys or turkeys with a visible beard, and its species notes say some females carry one. A hen is therefore legal in spring only when bearded, and the department's harvest tables carry a Bearded Hen column.

Over the ten springs the county rows add up to 4,363 bearded hens among 392,404 regular-season birds, or 1.11%. The count fell while the harvest rose between the first and last springs: 528 bearded hens in 2016 and 371 in 2025. County shares stay low too. The highest, Lawrence County, reached 1.87% (64 hens among 3,420 birds), so no county tops 2%. In Franklin's 956 birds in 2025, the department lists 10 bearded hens. For a hunter the rule matters less as a target than as a check: the beard has to be visible before the shot.

Every figure is a count of birds hunters reported. Missouri requires hunters to check each turkey through Telecheck by 10 p.m. on the day of harvest, and the department publishes final totals by county and season portion. We summed the regular spring season and the youth season separately, for all weapons, from 2016 to 2025. All 114 counties reported regular-season birds in every year.

A county total reflects how many people hunt there and how much ground they can hunt, along with the size of the county and its turkeys. We did not adjust for county area or public land, so Franklin's lead is a statement about reported birds and nothing more. One column problem needed fixing. In the department's 2021 regular-season table, the county rows list the juvenile and hen columns in the opposite order from the table's header and its statewide total row. We matched the county columns to the total row, and after that the county hen counts add up to the state figure in all ten years.

If you want one county, take Franklin: first for ten springs, first in ten-year youth birds, and 956 birds in 2025. Beyond it, the seven counties on both top-ten lists (Franklin, Texas, Callaway, Osage, Laclede, Gasconade and Miller) make the safest starting set for either kind of hunt. For a youth hunt, look first at Miller, Gasconade and Osage, which reported more youth birds per 100 regular-season birds than Franklin did (11.9, 10.9 and 10.3, against 8.8).

Past the first few names the gaps are small, so let access break ties. The department's 2026 season page lists shooting hours that end at 1 p.m. on public land and at sunset on private land, which matters if the ground you can reach is public. Franklin also appears in our paper on Missouri's two deer regions among the counties whose deer harvest leads year after year, so by harvest it is a steady county for two species. A count of birds tells you where hunters had success. It does not tell you where a landowner will let you in.