Left Over Permits are Posted

[charlie elk]

Finally they are up as of 2:40 Monday afternoon and there is a lot of them this year and some early seasons!
http://dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/cs/springturkey/
Good Luck Hunters.

[Treerooster]

Charlie...I'm glad you are here.

Then I don't have to watch for the leftover permits. I know they will be posted on here within 2 minutes of the WDNR posting them.

Makes it easy on me.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

Boy they must of posted them just after I was on there. Good to see a bunch of tags still left, and a few in the northern zones that were hard to get even in the first draw.

[turkey junky]

thanks again for all the WI tag up-dates charlie & for all ur help answering my questions i hope to be able to get at least 2 tags for my-self for season D & i'm sure my dad will try for the same paying 98.00$-100.00$ bucks for 2 non resident tags is a good deal for us guys...

[arrowsonly]

WOW, we have more leftovers than the state of MN issues for the whole season darn near...
Any way we can ship some of those birds over to MN ?
It looks like there are several options for the 2012 season

[turkey junky]

they did open up the last month of the MN season to a unlimited amount of hunters witch a don't agree with or like at all but that bumps up the numbers of MN hunters/tags available a tad???

i wish MN would have handled the left over tags like WI dose now instead of up & change n everything up & taking away the need to apply for the last month season that jams everybody who wants a quality draw tag hunt in MN into choosing 1 of 4 hunt periods the 1st 4 hunt periods that is... our system in MN is a JOKE NOW!!!

[dewey]

By my math there are 97,025 tags left over. WOW!!! For comparison sake MN had 45,983 permits issued in 2011 and 49,010 permits issued in 2010 for a two year total of 94,993 hunters in two years and WI has that many left over in one year, WOW!

Granted the estimated population in MN is ~60,000 birds according to a 2007 MN DNR Long Range turkey report and 2011 goal of 75,000 birds. I also saw that the MNDNR long range population plan for 2025 is 100,000 birds. I would say they are pretty accurate on the forecast from the numbers I have seen.

WI is ~320,000 birds, HOLY CRAP!!!

MN turkey population information link.
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/recreation ... n_2007.pdf

WI population information link.
http://www.travelwisconsin.com/article_ ... icleid=374

What I found very interesting was that in WI the wild turkey was reintroduced in 1976 and MN had wild turkey releases from 1971 and 1973. Obviously the wild turkey has done much better in WI. Pretty obvious why WI has so many tags available as they have 4-5 imes as many turkey as MN.

Dewey

[turkey junky]

yes sir dewey wisconsin has it going on for high numbers of eastern turkeys i seen that they issue more tags in one hunt unit then we have in are hole state of MN!!! so i had to join the club & head to wisconin my self this will be my 1st year jumping the border into WI for turkeys... hope it works out for me & my dad...

good luck to all this season

[charlie elk]

WI has become a turkey hunter's paradise especially for residents although compared to other states NR coming to WI get one heck of deal on license fees. Depending on unit selected particularly 1&3 where permits have not sold out for the last 2 seasons any hunter can kill as many turkeys as they want, no limit except you can only purchase one tag per day. Of course you could stock up in advance if you have are really large pro turkey hunter ego.

As a young man living in MN I was one of the many volunteers helping with the turkey reintroduction. WDNR likes to rewrite the history a little by making it seems they the government workers came up with trading geese for turkeys with MO. However, it was volunteer citizen hunters in Forest Lake, MN who hatched that idea and began the stocking program with wild birds. MN agreed to trade geese and grouse for turkeys. The geese were easy to catch so MDNR and FWS took care of that part. The grouse well not so easy that task fell to some of us younger volunteers. Ever try and catch a grouse alive? Very labor intensive I think MN still owes MO quite a few grouse to this day. I worked on the grouse catching crews thereby earning my chance to release some turkeys in Houston.
Years later my most satisfying hunt ever; my very first turkey hunt in the hills of Houston, MN hunting for the descendants of the turkeys I released. Would love to claim that hunt culminated with a tagged gobbler but alas I had a lot to learn about turkey hunting. Took me 5 hunts before I figured it out but since that 5th hunt I have killed a turkey on every hunt since with few exceptions. But I digress.

Back to turkey paradise here in WI. Depending on who is estimating WI has more turkeys than any other state or at least it is in the top 3.
WI fields the fewest hunters of all the top turkey states. In 2011 there were about 126,000 turkey licenses sold this is very light hunting pressure statewide. The number of turkey hunters has been going down each year and turkey population going up except for 2011 due to a severe winter in the areas I regularly peruse I think we lost about 30% of the turkeys(WDNR strongly disagrees with me on this.), even with that loss there is still plenty of birds.

Now that there is so much turkey hunting to had as a resident of WI I no longer travel out of state like I once did. I have hunted turkeys in 21 states offering up a wide variety of hunts from swamps, prairies to mountains.
If you travel around WI you can get a wide variety of hunts from river lowlands, swamps, prairies, bluffs, farmland and the big woods. Over in the Clark County Forest you can call in wolves with your turkey calling. There is nothing that adds much more adrenaline to calling session than a wolf staring at you from a few yards wondering where the turkey dinner is.

I am very curious as to why WI has so many more turkeys than MN. No one has really studied that. WDNR after all these years has finally began some new turkey studies hopefully they will shed some light on this disparity. WDNR has not nor does it now manage the turkeys instead they manage turkey hunters. I highly doubt the management of turkey hunters has much to do with the high turkey numbers. MDNR has also managed their turkey hunters even more so than WI and as Dewey points out there is a huge difference between turkey numbers in the 2 states. Has to be habitat; but exactly what about the habitat in WI?

So to all my Non Resident friends come on over and enjoy the good old days of turkey hunting right now.

[Treerooster]

So to all my Non Resident friends come on over and enjoy the good old days of turkey hunting right now.

I'll be right there.

Interesting Charlie. I would like to know more on how you caught the ruffed grouse.


Speaking of wolves & turkey hunting...

I was scouting on a Tues one morning and heard a gobbler sounding off. I just wanted to figure where he was heading and was standing on the side of a road. I looked over and saw something coming...so I got down...



It was 20 feet away!