SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — According to preliminary data, West Virginia hunters harvested 11,314 birds during the spring turkey season, a slight increase over the 2019 harvest of 11,215. 

The 2020 spring turkey harvest is close to the five-year average of 11,344 and 9 percent above the 10-year average.

“We had a good harvest this year thanks to a great youth turkey season,” said Mike Peters, wild turkey biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “The youth turkey season expanded to two days this year and it appears our young hunters took advantage of the additional opportunity.” 

Youth hunters harvested 643 gobblers during the two days — 368 on Saturday and 275 on Sunday — representing a 37 percent increase over last year’s youth harvest. Those numbers are included in the table below with county totals.

Districts 4 and 5 reported slight harvest increases over last year’s totals. The remaining districts harvested slightly fewer birds than last year.

District 1 harvested the most birds (2,749), followed by District 6 (2,284), District 5 (2,131), District 4 (1,617), District 3 (1,521) and District 2 (1,012).

The top five counties with the highest turkey harvest were Mason (457), Preston (434), Jackson (402), Wood (344) and Harrison (339) counties.