Ralph Hensley

An eternal optimist would point out that Missouri's 2006 spring turkey season was one that hunters in many states would envy. What's more, 2006 was by no means a "bad" year even by Missouri's high standards. In fact, the season's 54,712-bird harvest was the seventh-highest on record, and 31 percent of permittees killed at least one turkey.

Conversely, a pessimist would note that the 2006 spring turkey harvest was the lowest since 1999. Furthermore, the hunter success percentage was the lowest since 1997.

So is the glass half-empty or half-full? The plain unvarnished truth is that the 2006 spring turkey season was one that most hunters -- including successful ones -- would just as soon forget. For openers, yet another early-spring greenup made seeing approaching gobblers difficult throughout the season in southern Missouri and during most of it even in the state's northernmost counties. It's impossible to say if hunters will face the same scenario this year, because it's impossible to predict Missouri's weather patterns even weeks, let alone months in advance. However, a change in the season structure makes it likely that 2007 will be another "green season" in the turkey woods.

Barring an unexpected last-minute change, opening day of this and subsequent spring turkey seasons will be the third Monday in April (the 16th this year) instead of the Monday closest to April 21. The MDC made the change in response to requests from southern Missouri turkey hunters for an earlier season. According to MDC resource scientist Jeff Beringer, the new opening-day system will create earlier opening days than the old system would have in eight years out of 20 and similar opening days in 12 out of 20. Far more important, Beringer's research indicates that opening the season earlier in the month will have no detrimental effect on either the turkey flock in general or Missouri's famous longbeards in particular.

Another thing that made for disgruntled turkey hunters in 2006 was the fact that huge numbers of gobblers simply ignored calling. Obviously, there'll always be days when the best caller in the state can't move an especially stubborn gobbler -- or even several especially stubborn gobblers. Likewise, there should be plenty of days when poor calling stampedes toms from two ridges in all directions. Last year, however, was a great equalizer. While pro callers did their best and amateur callers their worst, lone -- but apparently not lonesome -- toms quietly went about their business.

Theories explaining this phenomenon abound. One of the more popular holds that the early spring moved turkey nesting so far forward that natural breeding had ceased by the time the season opened. Beringer, too, has a pet theory: that several consecutive years of below-average recruitment have created a turkey flock with a high percentage of mature toms. As any veteran turkey hunter will attest, these wild old masters of the tall timber don't -- unlike their 2-year-old satellites -- come in on the run the first time striker meets slate.

Be all that as it may, the fact remains that a higher percentage of the 2006 spring turkey harvest was taken by sneak or by ambush than is normally the case. There's nothing wrong with either of those tactics, of course; truth be told, of this old ridgerunner's 84 Missouri turkeys, all but two of the bow kills and "several" of the firearms kills were taken using one or the other of them. It's just that hearing a gobbler respond to a call is big part of what spring turkey hunting's all about.

There's probably a rule written somewhere that says no writer should ever open an article on a sour note. I plead not guilty on the grounds that when we here in Missouri say we're "talking turkey," we mean we're telling it like it is -- head, hide, and all. Besides, when Jeff Beringer and I discussed the 2007 spring turkey season, we spent a lot more time looking ahead than behind; so will this article.

For reasons soon to become apparent, our look ahead to the spring of 2007 began with a look back at the spring and summer of 2006. One of the most valuable tools that management biologists have for predicting hunter success in an upcoming season is the poult:hen ratio (the average number of poults that survive their first six months of life per hen in the study area's breeding flock). Using a poult:hen ratio of 2.0 as the minimum number of poults needed to insure both a good harvest and an overall increase in post-season turkey numbers, biologists have noted subpar results in poult production across much of Missouri for the past several years.