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Wisconsin Turkey Season 2025 Harvest Summary

We made it through the winter and turkey season is upon us.


Wisconsin’s general Spring Turkey Season (not including Youth) is broken into 6 one week periods across 7 zones. Each harvest authorization is specific to a week and zone to help disperse hunting pressure, increase safety and more effectively manage the turkey populations. Hunters need to apply the prior year for first dibs and then any leftover tags go on sale in early March online first come first serve.


It can be a little stressful to apply for a specific week or unit to hunt months in advance. Plans can change, weather can be tough to predict along with the turkey behavior. By breaking down the 2025 Spring Harvest and historic trends, hopefully we can shine some light on reasons to be optimistic about your tag and help you prepare for the application for next year.


2025 Spring: Season Summary



In the 2025 Spring Turkey season 229,135 harvest authorizations were given resulting in 50,291 turkey harvests being recorded a 21.9% success rate across all periods (including Youth and Learn-to-Hunt). This was down slightly from 22.6% in 2024 but above the 5-year average of 19.6%.


Similar to 2024, Period A showed the highest harvest rate at 28.8% and the last period F the lowest at 16.4%. Personally having hunted A period 3 times (with a 66.7% success rate) in the past five years it does somewhat surprise me that it is has had the highest success rate and harvest numbers by a noticeable margin because it is still cold with mornings in the 30s and 40s and breeding season has not reached a peak with gobbling and vocalizations being hit or miss. But being the first week the flock is at its largest and hunting pressure not yet being a major factor.


F being last is logical with forty-five thousand Toms haven been harvested at this point in the season, peak breeding passed and many tags being acquired via leftover they may not be a hunters primary period and overlap with a holiday weekend may see lower utilization.


2025 Spring: Zone Summary



Zone 1 had the most turkeys harvested in 2025 with 13,813 recorded and Zone 2 had the highest harvests per square mile (1.90). Zone 7 had the lowest harvests both in measure of total (726) and per square mile (0.14).


Zone 2 benefitted from the highest amount of authorizations per square mile at 8.80, while Zone 7 saw the lowest at 0.85.


2025 Spring: County Summary


TOP 10 Counties by Harvest per Square Mile

Looking deeper at the county level Waupaca was the winner for most turkeys harvested per square miles at 2.34, with Marquette (1.98) and Waushara (1.72) following on the podium. Milwaukee (0.05), Iron (0.07) and Sawyer (0.15) finished last in the rankings.


TOP 10 Counties by Total Harvest


When we compare the Top 10 Counties by Harvest Per Square Mile vs. Total Harvest. Only 4 remain in each ranking (Waupaca, Shawano, Sauk and Iowa). I like to use the Harvest per Sq. Mile for Density as County sizes can vary drastically and change the results. The total list of counties in rank order from Highest Turkey Harvest per Square Mile to lowest at the end of the article.


2025 Spring: HEATMAP



The Heatmap is based on Turkey Harvest per Square Mile. There are a lot of similarities between this heatmap and the 2024 Deer Heatmap (article link below). With the center of the state being a hotbed of productivity (Waushara, Marquette, Waupaca, Shawano) and the north lagging being a cold zone. The biggest difference from the Deer map is there is greater productivity in the southern portion in counties like Green, Walworth and Dane and southwest (Vernon, Crawford, Sauk, La Crosse).


In general the turkey distribution appears to be more even with 43 counties of 71 with recorded harvests having a greater than 1.0 harvest per square mile. It may be worth a deeper dive in a future article to do a head to head comparison of deer and turkey harvest by county but hopefully the above map gives you some confidence that where ever you are in Wisconsin you are not too far away from finding a Tom.


Good luck out there!



Notes/Citations


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