Luke Yozze, 15, shot a 22.5-pound turkey with 1-inch spurs Saturday, the opening morning of the first youth spring turkey season, on private land in Will County.
The cool part is it ‘‘had two beards of 8½ and 9½ inches,’’ dad Bill emailed.
Illinois’ second youth spring turkey season is this weekend. Regular seasons open Monday in the south zone and April 14 in the north.
‘‘While all toms — adult male turkeys — have beards, nearly 10 percent of hens also have one, albeit a much stubbier, wispier version,’’ a National Audubon Society story notes. ‘‘Why only some females have beards is not known, but male beards are believed to be yet another tool for mate selection.’’
The NAS had these turkey-beard basics: They ‘‘start sprouting when youngsters are just five months old and continue to grow throughout a bird’s life, at a rate of nearly five inches a year. . . . One-year-old birds usually have beards measuring a few inches, while older males can have beards in the double digits.’’
Multiple beards, though rare, can be as many as 13.
From National Wild Turkey Federation records — NWTF doesn’t keep separate records of multiple beards — Stephen Knebel bagged an eastern wild turkey with the most beards (eight) recorded in Illinois on April 28, 2007, in Hardin County.
I found Joseph Winter recorded Illinois’ longest beard (16.0625 inches, April 26, 2009, White County) and Lance Krack the longest spurs (2.125 inches, April 5, 2017, Jefferson County).
It’s remarkable how wild turkeys spread after their reintroduction began in 1959 in Illinois. The 2024-25 fall archery season, open in all 102 counties, had a record wild-turkey harvest of 1,045 turkeys. The previous record was 851 in 2015.
‘‘For the fall archery season, we sell [about] 27,000 permits over the counter and another 25,000 [or so] are allocated to landowners,’’ emailed Luke Garver, the Wild Turkey Project manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. ‘‘So there are definitely a lot of hunters out there with tags in their pockets. However, I think archery turkey hunting is mostly an opportunistic endeavor for most hunters. Most are simply keeping an archery turkey permit in their pocket while they are deer hunting in case a bird walks by.’’
Spot-on.
‘‘We’ve seen archery turkey permit sales increase over the last few years after a long slow decline, and last fall was a record harvest, so I think we are seeing interest increase for the season,” Garver emailed. ‘‘As recently as 2010, the fall gun turkey harvest was higher than the archery total. But that ratio has steadily shifted toward archery, and now the archery season makes up close to 80% of the total fall turkey harvest.’’
Spring turkey seasons will open in 100 counties (Cook and DuPage are the exceptions). More hunters are using a bow in the spring, but those numbers aren’t known.
Wild things
Kyle Danhausen texted Friday from Kankakee County: ‘‘Last night I heard the chorus frogs, woodcocks are out, turkeys gobbling. Cubs win. Sox win. Bulls win. Officially spring!’’ The anomalies are the sports results. . . . John Vukmirovich emailed: ‘‘More goldfinches showing up and many in color morph.’’
Sea Grant
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s Lake Michigan Fisheries Workshop is April 10 at the Wilmette Harbor Club (virtual April 17). Details are at tinyurl.com/43k2k5jj.
Stray cast
Aaron Rodgers reminds me of fishing with a vintage black Jitterbug.