If you can call turkeys in close enough to shoot with a shotgun, you should be able to distinguish between a hen and a young gobbler, especially if you have one of each for comparison. There's a significant difference. If you can't tell, let the bird walk. Of course, mature gobblers are easy to spot--shouldn't be any problem there. (I'm asssuming that we're talking about easterns, which are the only ones I have any experience with.)

From my experience working with wildlife agencies...the people working at the top of the chain are better at negotiating politics than they are at implimenting sound biological practices and using common sense.

According the the write-up on the website, the concern was about declining spring turkey harvests. That right there would cause me to look at two things immediately. First would be the weather from May-July for the previous 5 years, and second would be the number of licenses sold over the timespan of declined harvest. Wet springs means fewer turkeys a couple years down the line, and fewer tags sold results in fewer harvests. If they could find a direct correlation with either of those, and the declining spring harvest, they may save themselves a lot of the headaches associated with regulation changes and cancelled seasons.

From my standpoint, the reason they gave for closing the season seemed really weak, and the action was drastic and not very well thought out. It seemed like it was based on someones opinion, rather than sound science.