Photo by Tony Kalna Jr.

In more ways than one, trying to predict the quality of Missouri's 2008 spring turkey season is about as easy as predicting the weather: You simply never know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the next day will bring.

Despite that uncertainty, there are ways to shed some light on what the future may hold. Apply a few sound scientific principles, and you'd be surprised how close a prediction can come to reality.

So it is with hunting Missouri longbeards. The science behind our state's turkey flock suggests that turkey populations behave much like a rollercoaster. Some years, the population peaks; other years, it drops into valleys. According to Jeff Beringer, turkey guru and chief resource scientist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, 2008 has most of the attributes of a valley.

"We don't have as many turkeys as we used to," said Beringer, who is in charge of managing the state's turkey flock. "We just haven't had any good hatches the past couple of years."

The reality behind Beringer's words -- and the scientific principles upon which they are based -- is that Missouri's turkey hunters may be in for a challenge during the 2008 spring season.

"We've got about 500,000 wild turkeys in Missouri," Beringer said. "That's just a ballpark figure though, because we cannot really count the birds. The assumption is that we're killing about 10 percent of our population each spring."

Turkey hunters killed a total of 48,343 birds in the spring of 2007. By Beringer's estimates, Missouri's turkey population now stands somewhere around 483,430 birds.

"In years past, we've had spring harvest numbers pushing 60,000 birds," Beringer said. "So our overall population is down."

Hampered by tumultuous weather during nesting and brood rearing seasons, Missouri's turkey flock has suffered from lower-than-usual poult production in recent years. Too much rain and hard frosts in the 2007 spring have hindered turkey productivity.

"Our poult-to-hen ratio this year is 1:1, or one poult per hen," Beringer explained. "That's the second-worst poult-to-hen ratio we've ever seen in Missouri."

The MDC enlists a large group of volunteer observers from across the state to record the number of poults spotted with hens. This gives the department a solid idea of the success or failure of the corresponding spring's nesting season.