The evolution of turkey hunting in Utah has not been a good one...This will be my 7th spring there...The 1st year I thought I had died and gone to turkey haven...Gobbles everywhere I went and it was all public...And, the best part was, I didn't see a single other hunter...The 2nd year, I started to see a few road hunters, but they make/made little difference...Still plenty of birds...By the 3rd year, there were guys starting to actually turkey hunt, but again, no problem finding birds...In 2020, the PLAN-demic hit and there seemed to be someone behind every tree, bush, trailhead, and the amount of "Drive by" shooting had increased 10 fold...2 years ago, I started noticing turkeys were getting pushed farther and farther off the beaten path...At the same time, the drought was hitting Utah pretty bad...The pure turkey numbers were starting to fall and birds were getting much harder to find...Hell, I couldn't even get a single gobble in places that used to be a complete gobblefest...And, that was on public and private...Oh, did I mention that they added a fall season and you could shoot up tp 3 hens...This was supposed to be on private property only, but talking to locals, that wasn't the case...And, you could use rimfire rifles.
Then there was last spring...I drove 100's of miles, hunted even farther north, and walked miles on two 7 day trips...Didn't hear a gobble with the exception of opening morning on the one piece of private I have...Tom flew down and apparently some drive by saw him, snuck up, and shot him as he was coming to me...Finally called another bird in on the 13th day, and he hung up behind some oak brush...Gobbled his fool head off, but wouldn't give me a clear shot from 25-30 yds...That was that and canceled my 3rd trip over...One other troubling observation...Never saw a jake on public or call one in...That never happened in the past.
Utah is 75% public (some of the best is private)...So, there's tons of places to go, but that's part of the problem now...Fewer birds with canyons and good habitat everywhere...You can only walk and hunt so many places...Hopefully, the numbers will increase with some good wet springs...They also dropped the fall hunt to 1 turkey either sex.
