Kentucky
300,000 to 400,000
Wild Turkey Population
Eastern
Turkey Subspecies
144,450
Number of Licenses Sold Annually
$57
Annual hunting license, $27; spring turkey permit, $30; or sportsman’s license, $95 (adult resident, youth, senior or disabled).
Cost of Resident License and Permit
$270
Annual hunting license, $160; spring turkey permit, $110.
Cost of Non-Resident License and Permit
Photo by Danita Delimont.
Kentucky has secured a reputation as a premier turkey hunting destination, and rightfully so. The state offers mountainous big-timber hunting in the east, rolling pasture and farm country in the heart of the state and river-bottom birds to the far west. And if you like to explore, you can find quality turkey hunting in every region.
Although 95% of the state is privately owned, there are some good wildlife management areas and public spots where you can turkey hunt, both on national forests and state WMAs. Hunters took 33,460 turkeys during the 2024 spring hunt.
Editor’s Note: Articles about public hunting are always popular with Realtree.com readers, but we’re public-land hunters, too, and we recognize that technology has made it more difficult than ever to keep a great hunting spot secret. With that in mind, we have made some edits to this piece to trim out specific mentions of some public tracts. The information is still out there and easy to find for anyone who wants to do the research, but we’ve decided that with a platform of our size, it’s best not to share all the secrets. — Team Realtree
