New Hampshire
45,000 (NWTF estimate)
Wild Turkey Population
Easterns
Turkey Subspecies
18,420
Number of Licenses Sold Annually
$48
Hunting, $32; turkey, $16
Cost of Resident License and Permit
$144
Hunting, $113; turkey, $31
Cost of Non-Resident License and Permit
Photo by Bruce MacQueen.
New Hampshire, as with neighboring Vermont and Maine, offers quality turkey hunting. Turkey population trends have increased steadily since the late 1980s. Overall estimates are up to about 45,000.
The total land area open to turkey hunting is good to excellent throughout the Granite State and widespread. According to the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, "Based on long-standing tradition, nearly all lands in the state of New Hampshire are open to hunting. All state, federal, municipal, county and private land is open to hunting unless it is posted against hunting." Still landowner permission is a nice courtesy. And it's often granted. New Hampshire has 117 state forests, 100 wildlife management areas, 63 "other tracts," and 41 state parks where hunting is permitted. New Hampshire hunters took 4,562 turkeys during Spring 2024.
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
