Luke Madoona, big game program manager for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, reviewed changes NGPC made to turkey permits and bag limits after a long-term population decline.

Madoona said NGPC instituted mandatory TeleCheck for spring and fall turkey permits, reduced spring permits from three to two per person, capped nonresident spring permits at 10,000, and set a daily bag limit of one bird. For the fall, the agency reduced permits to one per person and limited the season to October and November; the change reduced the effective maximum fall harvest per person from four birds to one bird.

The changes were prompted by a roughly 52% decline in the rural mail carrier population index from the 2009 peak, Madoona said. He added that brood-survey participation increased and that volunteers classified about 8,000 birds in 2024; brood results improved compared with the drought-affected 2023 season.

Madoona described an NGPC capture and telemetry study underway: staff and contractors began trapping in the days before the meeting, capturing about 75 birds and placing collars on roughly 25 hens to track nest success, movements and timing. He said preliminary nest success varied by region (about 50% in the Northwest and about 25% in the Southwest in prior monitoring years) and that nest initiation dates were later than staff expected.

The meeting included encouragement for continued public participation in the July–August turkey brood survey. Madoona said results and longer-term trend data appear in NGPC’s big game recommendation book and on the agency website.