Photo by Ralph Hensley

Soon, tom turkeys all across Kentucky will be calling for mates. Hunters who are enchanted with this huge gobbling bird of the deep forest know that now’s the time to scout for turkeys. This is prime time to ramble through the tall timber of backwoods terrain to search for sign.

Once again, Commonwealth hunters did well in the turkey woods last spring. Although the numbers were down slightly from the previous year, primarily due to weather conditions, hunters still reported over 24,000 wild turkeys harvested for the spring 2007 season -- as compared to nearly 29,000 birds taken during the 2006 spring season.

“The drop in harvest numbers from the spring 2006 season and spring 2007 was exclusively a product of the weather,” said Steven Dobey, Turkey Programs Coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR).

“When you look at the harvest data for last spring’s season, in the first two days, the harvest was down 40 percent from the first two days of the previous year.”

Dobey noted that the cold, snowy weather conditions not only kept many hunters out of the woods, but also forced turkeys to seek shelter from the sleet and snow.

As for Kentucky’s wild turkey numbers for the upcoming season, he said, “The turkey population is in great shape.”

The top five counties reporting the most harvested birds during the 2007 spring season were:

• Ohio County, with 492 turkeys, • Hardin, with 468, • Muhlenberg, with 454, • Logan, with 450 and • Butler, with 443.

The breakdown according to hunting preference was firearms (24,019), archery (203), muzzleloader (83) and crossbow (15).

For hunters looking for a place to hunt wild turkeys -- or who just want to try someplace new -- our state offers numerous public-hunting areas from one end of the state to the other.

From large tracts of land with ideal turkey habitat within the Commonwealth -- such as Daniel Boone National Forest -- down to relatively small tracts, you have numerous wildlife management areas (WMAs) to choose from.

Now’s the ideal time to begin scouting for the upcoming spring hunt, which opens April 12, 2008 and runs through May 4.