Kentucky has had a spring wild turkey season since the mid-1970s, but for the first decade only limited areas were open. The fall season today is held in 42 counties - Adair, Anderson, Allen, Barren, Boone, Bracken, Bullitt, Butler, Caldwell, Carroll, Crittenden, Cumberland, Edmonson, Franklin, Gallatin, Grant, Grayson, Green, Hardin, Harrison, Hart, Henry, Hopkins, Larue, Logan, Marion, Mason, Metcalfe, Muhlenberg, Nelson, Ohio, Owen, Pendleton, Robertson, Shelby, Spencer, Taylor, Todd, Trimble, Warren, and Washington. Kentucky's wild turkey flock has grown rapidly in the last decade, and is now estimated to number about 150,000, with a good hatch this spring. Shotgunners are restricted to No. 4 shot or smaller. The biological justification behind a fall firearms season is that many young birds, especially hens, won't make it through the winter.
Young birds are most likely to be taken by hunters.
The fall harvest last season was 1,156 birds. Fall turkey hunters have several proven strategies for getting a gobbler or hen within shotgun range. One is busting up a flock and then calling them back together, and another is patterning daily movements and waiting for turkeys to appear at a food source. You need to scatter birds in all directions, not just chase them off. A hunter does this by getting close to a flock of birds in the dark when they are on the roost, then when it gets light enough to see, running towards the tree, screaming and waving arms, alarming the birds so much that they scatter.