Bonus Harvest Authorizations For Wisconsin’s Spring Turkey Season Now Available

Experts report that turkey hunting in Wisconsin is excellent, consistently ranking among the top states in the nation, with over 50,000 birds harvested in the 2025 spring season.

Hunters benefit from a roughly 20% success rate, abundant public land, and a robust, statewide population that has expanded from a successful reintroduction program into all 72 counties.

Now, as another spring turkey hunting season approaches in Wisconsin, the DNR has begun selling bonus harvest authorizations for 2026, with a designated sale date for each zone.

Bonus Harvest Authorizations For Wisconsin's Spring Turkey Season

Previously known as leftover permits, bonus harvest authorizations are available online through the Go Wild license portal and at all license sales agents.

According to the DNR, Sales will begin at 10 a.m. and run through midnight each day, allowing anyone still seeking harvest authorizations to purchase bonus authorizations at this time.

Bonus harvest authorizations are $10 for residents and $15 for nonresidents. Both residents and nonresidents have equal opportunities to purchase authorizations. Each zone will have a designated sale date, and hunters can purchase bonus authorizations at a rate of one per day until the zone and time period are sold out or until the season closes. Bonus harvest authorization purchases will not affect preference point status for future spring drawings.

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New this year, if hunters do not have a Go Wild user name and password, they will be required to create them. This is to add another layer of protection to Go Wild accounts.

The DNR highly recommends that hunters create their user name and password ahead of time, because they will not be able to make their bonus harvest authorization purchase without them, which may slow down the purchase experience.

Go Wild accounts must contain:

• User name: Must be between 5 and 20 characters – the system will display if that username is available to the user.
• Password: Must be between 8 and 20 characters and contain: at least one numeric character,

1. at least one upper-case character,
2. at least one lower-case character
3. and at least one symbol (except the “@” sign).
   Password and security answers are case sensitive.

Wisconsin Spring Turkey Bonus Harvest Availability

The DNR encourages hunters to check the turkey zone map and spring turkey bonus harvest authorization availability to see if harvest authorizations are available for the time period and zone they intend to hunt.

The scheduled sale dates for the 2026 spring turkey bonus harvest authorizations are:

• Zone 1: Monday, March 16
• Zone 2: Tuesday, March 17
• Zone 3: Wednesday, March 18
• Zone 4: Thursday, March 19
• Zone 5: Friday, March 20
• Zone 6: No bonus harvest authorizations available
• Zone 7: Friday, March 20

Any remaining bonus authorizations will go on sale starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 21.

The Go Wild system will use an online queue to randomly assign numbers to customers who enter the site between 9:45 and 10 a.m. each day. There is no advantage to entering the site before 9:45 a.m. Customers who join after 10 a.m. will enter the queue in the order of arrival.

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All spring turkey hunters must have a valid spring turkey license, a 2026 wild turkey stamp, and a valid turkey harvest authorization. If they have not already done so, hunters must purchase their spring turkey license and stamp authorization when purchasing a bonus harvest authorization

2026 Spring Turkey Season

The spring turkey season is comprised of six distinct periods, each seven days long and running from Wednesday through the following Tuesday. A total of seven zones will be open for turkey hunting in 2026.

The 2026 spring turkey season dates are:

• Youth Hunt: April 11 – 12
• Period A: April 15 – 21
• Period B: April 22 – 28
• Period C: April 29 – May 5
• Period D: May 6 – 12
• Period E: May 13 – 19
• Period F: May 20 – 26

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