Oklahoma's Fall Turkey Estimate Is Down 76.8% Since 1986

Oklahoma's Game Harvest Survey estimates that hunters took 10,755 turkeys in the fall of 1986 and 2,490 in the fall of 2024, a drop of 76.8%. Spring fell nearly as far, 76.5% from its 41,485 peak in 2006, in about half the time. Most of fall's decline arrived by 1988, and the fall estimate has been under 3,000 in each year from 2020 to 2024. All of these are survey estimates with wide error bars, and they cannot be compared with the state's county game-check counts.

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation surveys hunters every year and scales the answers up to the whole license base. Its estimate for fall turkey went from 10,755 in 1986 to 2,490 in 2024, a decline of 76.8% over 38 years. The spring estimate rose to 41,485 in 2006 and stood at 9,733 in 2024, a decline of 76.5% over 18 years.

Spring is the larger season in every year of the series, and fall's share of the two combined never reaches half. Fall's largest bump, 2002 to 2005, came while spring was climbing to its peak.

The fall decline is mostly a step. The estimate went from 10,755 in 1986 and 9,589 in 1987 to 5,054 in 1988, which covers 5,701 of the 8,265 birds fall has lost since 1986. From 1996 through 2001 every year fell between 4,429 and 5,406. The one spike, 13,930 in 1993, comes from an average bag of 1.10 birds per fall hunter that year, against 0.35 in 1992 and 0.21 in 1994. We treat it as an outlier and do not count it as a peak.

Then came 2002 to 2005, when fall estimates ran from 7,151 to 9,669. Every one of those years has a 95% interval sitting entirely above the top of 2024's interval, so the drop since the mid-2000s is larger than survey noise. The five years from 2020 to 2024 ran from 1,622 (2023, the low) to 2,783, and all five sit below every year from 1996 to 2001, so the fade is not only an artifact of the 1986 start. Before 2020 the estimate had dipped under 3,000 only in 1994, 1995 and 2015.

The starting year matters. Measured from 1988 instead of 1986, fall is down 50.7%. We use 1986 because it is the first year of the series, and the method note explains why the early years deserve extra caution.

Spring more than doubled from 17,714 in 1986 to 41,485 in 2006. The department's own write-up calls 2003 the banner year, and in our series 2003 (41,241) sits only 244 birds under 2006, with intervals that overlap almost entirely, so the exact peak year is soft. From there spring drifted down with rebounds (25,769 in 2010, 27,460 in 2016), reached 18,067 in 2021, then dropped fast: 12,002 in 2022 and 9,122 in 2023, the lowest in the series. The 2024 estimate is 45.1% below where spring stood in 1986.

The share column is the one to read slowly. Fall's share of the year fell from 37.8% in 1986 to 10.7% in 2020, then rose to 20.4% in 2024. That rise is not a fall recovery. The fall estimate went from 2,193 to 2,490 between 2020 and 2024, while spring dropped from 18,338 to 9,733. A share moves when either half does.

The survey also estimates hunters and average bag, and both help explain the drop. Fall turkey hunters went from 25,607 in 1986 to 12,449 in 2024, and the average fall bag from 0.42 to 0.20 birds per hunter. Both roughly halved. In spring, hunters went from 66,075 in 2006 to 40,961 in 2024 while the average bag went from 0.63 to 0.24, so most of spring's decline sits in birds per hunter. The survey cannot say whether that means fewer birds, harder hunting or something else.

The Wildlife Conservation Commission approved new turkey rules on June 28, 2021, and the department's July 1 release says they take effect from the fall 2021 season. Fall gets a one-tom limit for gun and archery combined and shotguns only for the gun season. Spring gets a one-tom limit and dates of April 16 to May 16. The March 2022 write-up cited above says the changes followed biologists' concerns about declining numbers, says spring 2022 would look different from recent seasons because of them, and puts the statewide population estimate at just under 100,000 in 2016 and 70,000 in 2022.

Spring was already sliding, from 27,460 in 2016 to 18,067 in 2021, and stepped down to 12,002 in 2022, the first spring under the new limit. Fall's drop from 4,878 in 2019 to 2,193 in 2020 came a year before the fall rules. The survey cannot separate rules from bird numbers from hunter choices.

Fall has no county table in our analysis, but spring does. The state's game check system recorded 8,413 spring turkeys across 77 counties in 2025. Roger Mills County led with 541, 197 ahead of Woodward with 344, and the top ten counties account for 2,668 of the total, or 31.7%.

This is a count of birds that were checked, for a different year than the survey series, which ends in 2024. It is a different kind of number from the estimates above, and the two should not be subtracted from each other. We wrote up the same split for deer in our paper on registration counts and survey estimates. For a state where county counts carry the story, see Kentucky. For seven states whose spring 2026 numbers all rose, see our regional comparison.

The 2024 report rests on 2,509 completed surveys from a sample of 6,000 license holders. Each hunter reports days hunted and birds taken for each species, and the department scales that to every license holder. Its 95% interval for the 2024 fall estimate runs from 1,240 to 3,740, based on 62 sampled fall turkey hunters, and spring's runs from 7,335 to 12,132. That table covers resident license types. The report says small samples "have traditionally been a problem for less-popular game seasons."

Two limits reach back into the trend. The 1986 to 1994 turkey estimates carry no intervals: an earlier correction factor was judged inappropriate and those years were recalculated without it, so our 1986 starting point sits in that window. And in survey years 2019 to 2021, tribal licenses were included in the statewide estimates.

That is why we read the trend and not any single year. The report lists 2024 fall as 54% above 2023, but the two intervals overlap, so we do not call it a rebound. The data also does not say why fall fell. Season length, bag limits, hunter interest and bird numbers can all contribute.

The survey found that 95% of fall turkey hunters used only private land, from a sample of 62. For 2026 the department lists archery from Oct. 1, 2026 to Jan. 15, 2027 and gun from Oct. 31 to Nov. 20, 2026, one tom regardless of method, with a map of gun-season restrictions.

The gap between seasons is mostly a gap in hunters. A fall hunter averaged 0.20 birds in 2024 against 0.24 for a spring hunter, though both estimates carry wide intervals. If you hunt fall, expect slow days and ask landowners before you count on public ground. The survey gives no way to pick a fall county; only spring has county evidence, and there Roger Mills leads by a wide margin. Check the regulations page each year, since the rules changed in 2021 and can change again.