State officials say hunters across Illinois nearly set a record with this spring’s harvest of wild turkeys.
The turkey hunting season that wrapped up earlier this month resulted in hunters bagging 16,121 wild turkeys, up more than 2,400 from 2022.
This year’s total was just shy of the all-time record of more than 16,500, set back in 2006.
In Central Illinois, the county with the biggest harvest was Pike County, where hunters claimed 419 turkeys this spring.