Turkey hunting season info

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) reminds hunters of mandatory harvest reporting ahead of the season opener for Eastern Wild Turkeys.

Wild Turkey hunting season runs from April 22-May 14 and includes Cass county, along with neighboring counties Marion and Bowie–who all have a one-bird limit.

TWPD said hunters in these counties must report their hunting harvest one-bird bag harvest within 24 hours through either the My Texas Hunt Harvest app or the TPWD Website, tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/ hunt/.

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, the Eastern Wild Turkey used to be quite populous in east Texas, but quick changes in habitat and unregulated hunting harvest brought the wild game’s population down enough to uproot them from the area at the turn of the 20th century.

“Early attempts at restoration utilized pen reared turkeys and later the Rio Grande subspecies. Both methods failed to create a sustainable turkey population,” TPWD administrators reported. “TPWD began releasing wild, trapped eastern turkeys from neighboring states in 1979. By 2003, over 7,000 wild turkeys had been stocked into east Texas utilizing a block stocking approach.”

Reports from the administration show that block stocking called for the release of 15 to 20 birds per site with 5-10 release sites per country.

“These restorations were successful in several areas, but many more failed to create sustainable populations.” TPWD reports add.

TPWD funded research through Stephen F. Austin State University in 2007 to test a super stocking model for restoring turkey populations. After 3 years of research, this method has shown considerable merit. In 2014 TPWD reopened th Eastern Wild Turkey Restoration Program.