WHAT’S HAPPENING TO OUR TURKEYS?

One morning in the early 1990s, Dad let me skip school to go on my first turkey hunt. When a gobbler came strutting in to our setup, I missed—but the overall effect was like setting a match to gasoline. I came into my own as a turkey hunter during the early 2000s, when turkey populations were at their modern height. I’ve since hunted across North America and a few other continents for a variety of critters. But there is still nothing I’d rather hunt than a spring gobbler.

Plenty of turkey nuts feel the same, and it’s because of that passion that we are growing increasingly worried. In places, there just aren’t as many turkeys as there once were. I filled my share of tags last season—but I also spent more days without hearing a gobble than I did in the