West Virginia's Best Spring Turkey Counties: Mason Has Led 8 of 11 Years

Hunters checked more spring turkeys in Mason County than in any other West Virginia county in 2026, 523 birds, and Mason has finished first in 8 of the 11 seasons from 2016 to 2026. Statewide, hunters checked 12,006 birds, up 12.3% on 2025 with 47 of the 55 counties higher, yet the total is still 281 below the 12,287 of 2018. Where hunters go and how large a county is shape these counts too, so Mason's run is a good reason to scout there and says little about the size of its flock.

Mason County's hunters checked 523 turkeys in spring 2026, the top count in the state and 87 above Preston County (436). Jackson County came third with 404, then Harrison (372) and Marshall (335), the same five counties in the same order as the state Division of Natural Resources (DNR) gives in its 2026 release.

Mason's lead is a habit. Across the 11 springs our county records cover, Mason finished first 8 times and Preston 3, and no other county has led once. Restrict the count to the last ten seasons and the split is 7 to 3, so every one of those ten springs went to one of the two.

Mason's ten-season total of 4,613 birds is 365 ahead of Preston's 4,248, and Preston in turn is 311 clear of third-place Jackson (3,937). The DNR's spring 2020 release, which used preliminary counts, lists the same top three in the same order: Mason 457, Preston 434 and Jackson 402.

The DNR sorts counties into six districts, and its 2026 county table puts Mason in District 5 with eight others. In each of the five springs that table covers, 2022 to 2026, Mason's hunters checked between 25.2% and 26.4% of the District 5 total: 351 of 1,392 in 2022, 559 of 2,148 in 2023, 501 of 1,897 in 2024, 476 of 1,889 in 2025 and 523 of 1,981 in 2026. Preston County's share of District 1, which has twelve counties, ran from 14.7% to 17.3% over the same years.

The one break in Mason's run inside that window came in 2022, the lowest season in our series, when Preston's 357 edged Mason's 351 by six birds. In the four springs since, Mason's count stayed between 476 and 559.

Here are the 15 highest counties for 2026, beside their 2025 counts and their five-year averages.

All 15 finished above their 2021 to 2025 averages. Mason's cushion was 73 birds (523 against 450), while the largest gains in proportion came in Randolph (318 against 244) and Marion (286 against 226), at 1.30 and 1.27 times their averages. Fayette and Randolph tie at 318. The ten leading counties hold 30.1% of the state's birds, and 47 of the 55 counties gained on 2025 while 7 fell.

The statewide line has three peaks above 12,000: 12,287 in 2018, 12,217 in 2023 and 12,006 in 2026. Every other season from 2016 to 2026 stayed below 11,700, and the low was 9,366 in 2022. Between 2023 and 2025 the total slid 1,523 birds to 10,694, and the 2026 rise of 1,312 won back most of that while leaving 2026 281 birds short of 2018. The DNR's release sets 2026 above its five-year average of 10,812 and its ten-year average of 11,243. West Virginia's 12.3% gain ranked sixth of seven in our Southeast comparison.

The DNR has explained one of the low years. Its spring 2021 release says field staff saw relatively low turkey production in 2019 and that most spring birds are 2 years old, so the 2021 harvest of 10,134 reflected that low production. The releases we read give no reason for the low of 2022, and a county table would not settle it either.

The counts rest on West Virginia's mandatory game check, summed by county in the DNR's table. The table covers 2022 to 2026: its title reads 2021-2025, but its column headers run 2022 through 2026, and we used the headers. The state totals in the table match ours in all five years (9,366, 12,217, 11,650, 10,694 and 12,006). Our 2021 and 2020 totals, 10,134 and 11,320, match the DNR's 2021 release, while the 2020 release itself gave 11,314 as a preliminary count, six below the revised figure.

The youth season sits inside the county totals. The 2026 release puts the two-day youth harvest at 875 birds, 7.3% of the total, and says it is included with the county figures. One district number in that release looks like a typo: it lists District 4 at 1,983, but the county rows in the DNR's own table add to 1,938, and only 1,938 makes the six districts sum to 12,006.

Hunter effort, access and county size all feed these totals, and none of them is adjusted out. Mason's total says where hunters checked the most birds, which may or may not be where turkeys are densest.

Use Mason as the benchmark and Preston as its only proven rival. Seven counties sit in both the 2026 top ten and the 2017 to 2026 top ten: Mason, Preston, Jackson, Harrison, Marshall, Fayette and Greenbrier. Randolph, Nicholas and Raleigh reached the 2026 top ten without a place on the ten-season list, and Wood, Kanawha and Upshur are on the ten-season list without a 2026 top-ten spot. Wood is the clearest of those: 12th in 2026 with 289 and fifth over the decade with 3,124.

If you cannot get onto ground in Mason County, choose from the seven with a long record and give the three risers a second look after next spring's table. Virginia shows a different pattern: two counties there traded the top spot and finished 16 birds apart in 2026, as our Virginia paper explains, while West Virginia has one dominant county and a single rival. Whichever county you pick, ask who owns the ground first, because a game-check total cannot tell you which acres are open.