Ohio
Not available
Wild Turkey Population
Easterns
Turkey Subspecies
51,530
Number of Licenses Sold Annually
$50.20
Hunting license, $19; spring turkey permit, $31.20
Cost of Resident License and Permit
$217.96
Hunting license, $180.96; spring turkey permit, $37
Cost of Non-Resident License and Permit
Photo by Fiona M. Donnelly.
After a couple of down years, poult production in Ohio has been at or higher than the long-term average for four consecutive years. Hunters should encounter good gobbler numbers during Spring 2025. In 2024, Ohio hunters took 15,536 bearded turkeys.
The ODNR began an extensive program in the 1950s to reintroduce turkeys to the Buckeye State. Ohio’s first modern turkey season opened in 1966 (nine counties). That season, hunters checked a dozen birds. Populations continued to increase. In 1984, the number of harvested turkeys topped 1,000 for the first time. Spring turkey hunting was opened statewide in 2000. The record Ohio turkey harvest occurred in 2001, when hunters checked 26,156 turkeys.
Ohio has some excellent public hunting opportunities, with more than 651,000 acres available in national forests and various wildlife management areas.
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. As such, 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
