It was a relatively successful spring turkey harvest for Missouri hunters and — importantly, according to state conservationists — an improvement from recent years.
Preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Conservation noted 41,970 gobblers that were checked during the spring turkey season that concluded Sunday, the highest total since 2016.
Combined with the youth spring turkey hunting weekend in April, there was a total harvest of 44,536 birds.
That amounted to a 23% increase over the 2022 spring season, when just 36,243 turkeys were taken.
MDC biologist Nick Oakley, who said this year's spring harvest was 19 percent higher than the average for the previous five years, pointed to multiple reasons for the increase.