The statewide wild turkey season opens this weekend on Saturday, Nov. 1. While the season opens everywhere on Nov. 1, the length of the season can be from four days to three weeks depending on the Wildlife Management Unit where you are hunting. In addition, eight WMUs will have an extra three-day Thanksgiving season on Nov. 26-28. Here in our region, the season in WMUs 4A, 4B and 4D will be Nov. 1-15 with no Thanksgiving extension. The season in WMUs 2C and 2E will run Nov. 1-21 and will include the extra three days around Thanksgiving. Sundays that fall during the first and last days of the season will be open to hunting. For the turkey season dates of other WMUs, consult the 2025-26 Hunting and Trapping Digest or the Pennsylvania Game Commission website, PGC.pa.gov.

Both male and female turkeys are legal game during the fall season. Wild turkeys are actually classified as big game animals in Pennsylvania and must be properly tagged immediately after the harvest and before the bird is moved. Successful turkey hunters are also required to report harvests to the Game Commission within 10 days, either by going online to www.HuntFish.PA.gov, calling toll-free to 800-838-4431 or mailing in a prepaid postcard found within the 2025-26 Hunting & Trapping Digest.

Fall turkey hunters are not required to wear fluorescent orange while hunting but the Game Commission encourages hunters to do so, especially when moving. It’s also a good idea in the interest of safety to post an orange band or flag near your stationary position when calling turkeys. And for those who might not be hunting turkeys in the coming weeks, remember that you could be sharing the woods with some camouflaged hunters. The number one rule of hunting safety is never shoot unless you can positively identify your target and what is beyond it.

Wild turkeys are a common sight in just about every forested area of Pennsylvania. That hasn’t always been the case, however, and the current distribution of these great birds is a wonderful conservation success story. Some of the earliest efforts at managing wild turkeys came in 1897 when the Game Commission set a daily bag limit of turkey at two and prohibited the sale of wild turkeys and other game birds.

Until the 1930s, wild turkeys in Pennsylvania were found only in the mountains in the southcentral region of the state. Turkeys prefer mature forests, and extensive cutting of forests all over the state had eliminated much potential turkey habitat. As Pennsylvania’s forest began to mature again, turkeys started to expand their range into northcentral counties. By the early 1950s, hunters were taking large numbers of wild turkeys in Cameron, McKean and Elk counties where there had been no turkeys just 15 years before.

To give nature a helping hand, some well-meaning wildlife managers of the time established a turkey farm in Juniata County in 1930. This facility was then moved to Lycoming County in 1945. Raising animals in captivity and then releasing them with the intention those creatures will somehow adapt and acclimate themselves to the wild sounds like a good idea, but it almost never works very well. It is also a phenomenally expensive exercise for the meager benefits it produces. But any time an effort was made to shut down the turkey farm, it was met with resistance until 1981 when the farm was finally closed.

Realizing that stocking pen-raised turkeys was a losing proposition, wildlife managers turned to what we know as trap-and-transfer to establish wild turkey populations in new areas. This procedure of taking a few birds from existing wild flocks and moving them to suitable habitat that held no turkeys proved to be an ongoing success. The 1960s was a boom year for trap-and-transfer in Pennsylvania. Suring that decade, about 650 turkeys were trapped in the northcentral region with most of those birds going to Bedford, Franklin, Fulton, Juniata and Perry counties. By 1967, wild turkeys were established in about 50 percent of the forest land in Pennsylvania. In 1984, wild turkeys had been successfully established in most areas that provided suitable habitat, and trap-and-transfer operations were discontinued.

As the range of Pennsylvania wild turkeys expanded, so did the opportunities to hunt them. In 1954, Pennsylvania had its first statewide turkey season in 25 years. In 1959, the turkey season was closed again in a few counties, and 1960 brought staggered seasons of four weeks in counties with high populations of birds and two weeks elsewhere. The first spring turkey season for Pennsylvania was held in 1968 after a groundswell of support from hunters for such a season.

Whether you enjoy the chance to call in a big gobbler during the month of May or seek out a flock of birds in the autumn woods, turkey hunting is a popular sport that most Pennsylvania hunters can participate in close to home.