2026 Turkey harvest pics

[Taudisio]

Tough season here in VA. Got this one evening during the last week of the season. No decoys, on private land and used my .243 at about 60 yards. God Bless.

I thought you could only use a rifle in VA in the fall on birds?

 

[DWinVA]

I thought you could only use a rifle in VA in the fall on birds?

Sorry, but you are mistaken.

God Bless.

 

[fatlander]

I thought you could only use a rifle in VA in the fall on birds?

One would certainly think in looking through sporting, safety, and sustainability lenses that would be the case. Sadly, I think the old dominion isn’t going to change their ways until they’re all gone.

Turkeys populations are the lowest they’ve been in my lifetime, and that sentiment is echoed by many guys I know that have been doing it for decades as well. Seeing a gobbler popped by a rifle the last week of a tough season that would have otherwise made it further cements my feelings on the unnecessarily broad definition of legal take in our state. We can’t keep waging war on turkeys and expect them to persist.


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[Q_Sertorius]

One would certainly think in looking through sporting, safety, and sustainability lenses that would be the case. Sadly, I think the old dominion isn’t going to change their ways until they’re all gone.

Turkeys populations are the lowest they’ve been in my lifetime, and that sentiment is echoed by many guys I know that have been doing it for decades as well. Seeing a gobbler popped by a rifle the last week of a tough season that would have otherwise made it further cements my feelings on the unnecessarily broad definition of legal take in our state. We can’t keep waging war on turkeys and expect them to persist.


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Take that nonsense out of here. If turkey numbers are low, it isn’t because someone shot one with a rifle at 60 yards.

 

[fatlander]

Take that nonsense out of here. If turkey numbers are low, it isn’t because someone shot one with a rifle at 60 yards.

The explosion of technology, technique, and equipment that makes turkey hunters more effective than they’ve ever been, coinciding with a nationwide of decline, has nothing to do with said nationwide decline?

There’s a hill I’m willing to die on, and this is it.

Case in point, there’s a turkey in this thread that died because of a method of take that doesn’t belong in the spring. It used to be okay if they turkey won, now we shoot them with rifles after a “tough season”. How many turkeys in this thread died over top of hype realistic male decoys or from someone crawling behind a fan? How many of those turkeys didn’t breed hens because of said methods? How many hens went unbred because the dominant gobbler was killed by one of these newfound methods that would have kept him alive until atleast May two decades ago?


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