Saw a few hens but not a single poult.

Our locals in my neighbors yard this morning. 2 hens and 9-10 poults

Only over the last two weeks have I begun seeing hens with their Poults.

Looks like the average clutch size is around 6 to 10 young per hen.

They look to be about the size of a small ruffed grouse locally.

Looks like there was a better than average nesting/hatching success
compared to the last few prior years.

Looks encouraging around here.

w

Seeing a few hens have not seen any poults

I have seen zero turkeys this spring and summer so far. Usually good turkey habitat.

Finally saw 2, out of a few doz hens...

My wife saw a hen about a half mile from my place a few days ago. This morning on my way to work I saw two hens together about a mile and a half in the other direction. None of them had poults, not good.

Saw 21 turkeys today. I'm guessing it was several hens with their broods, but they were all full sized or at least appeared that way to me.

Very dismal here.
Up until a couple years ago, hens with young everywhere.
I see one hen regular now that has 3 young with her. Plenty of hens with none.

North East Missouri seen maybe 8-10 hens without poults. I miss you Mr John Lewis. RIP. Best Turkey Biologist we ever had.

Hen with three poults - a rarity around here

Amen.
These clowns today are a joke

So what did I see today? I know next to nothing about turkeys. I live in MS which should be similar to Ark, but the pic above is of grouse sized birds and the ones I saw today were full sized.

Did I see 21 adult turkeys, or hens with full-size poults?

It would be very unusual for poults to look like full grown hens right now. At this point in summer, normally poults are easily distinguished from adults

So the pair of hens traveling together with the 2 poults the other day now have none... Turkey moms must have ridden the short bus....

I saw my first poults yesterday. 2 hens with 2 grouse sized poults (could have been more, I was being tail gaited by some Jerk)

I saw three hens feeding their way across the field on a nearby farm on my way to work this morning. No poults, not good. That’s five hens I’ve seen in the last week with no poults.

Saw ours at the house again yesterday. There is actually 17 of them. I had been seeing 13-14 but I guess there were some stragglers. They are coming along great and they are fast little jokers!

They did poorly around here this spring. I personally got too close with the tractor and mower to two nests, which eventually were taken by predators. Only saw one hen out of about 25 in our area that was successful in 2024.

Ran across some more today. These are a good bit smaller than the ones I have at home, these are probably grouse sized. There was something weird about this group though. There was a runt. One little fella the size of a quail. The rest were all the same size. Not sure what is going on there, but he looks much younger than the rest. All with the same hen. You can see the runt to the left