The author bagged this two-bearded gobbler while hunting in the Jefferson National Forest in Monroe County last spring. One of the turkey’s beards measured 10 1/4 inches. Photo courtesy of Bruce Ingram

The tom was not going to shut up, but he was not going to come in, either. It was 7:30 a.m. last spring in Monroe County. I had been working this bird ever since he had greeted the coming of dawn. But the problem was that I was sitting against a red oak in the Jefferson National Forest, and the bird was 125 yards away on private land -- land that was across a road and a creek.

I thought about implementing brilliant strategies that I had read about in magazines, but I chose a more mundane game plan. I gave up. I ran down the mountain to my vehicle and took off down the highway. On the way down the highway, I saw "my" gobbler in the middle of a field and in the company of a hen.

I had made the right decision to leave the longbeard, for convincing him to have left a field with hens and to cross a stream and road would have been pretty nigh futile. However, would my follow-up gambit be successful? One of the things I like best about hunting the George Washington and Jefferson and the Monongahela national forests is that if the turkeys in one area of these public lands are not cooperative, it is a very simple matter to either drive or walk to somewhere else.

And so it was that I quickly drove to another parcel of the Jefferson in Monroe County. At 8:05 a.m., I parked my vehicle and uttered a hard cutt. A longbeard boomed back just 100 yards away and straight up the mountainside. I knew that if I ran up the mountain, the bird would see me, so I got back into the car and drove up the mountain until I was 100 yards or so above the old boy.

This time, I used a crow call to help me locate the tom and, cooperatively, he responded with a gobble. I ran 40 yards toward the sound and then hit the crow call again. Once more, a gobble rang out. The next time I employed the call, the turkey was just 75 yards away and directly below me and on the other side of a hump. It was time to set up.

Quickly sitting against a chestnut oak, I softly yelped. The tom again gobbled and a few seconds later sounded much closer -- he was on his way. Seconds later, a longbeard bobbed up over the hill so quickly that I did not have a chance to shoot -- even though I had shouldered the 12 gauge beforehand. A few seconds later, another tom crested the ridge, and I touched off the shotgun. The beautiful bird sported twin beards -- 10 1/4 inches and 3 1/2 inches.

Was the first tom the one that had been gobbling and the dominant bird? I'll never know and frankly didn't care. Proudly, I was on my way to a Monroe County check station.

In 2005, West Virginians checked in 10,804 birds, a tad higher than the 2004 tally of 10,573. The slight increase follows three years where the harvest declined each year, as the figures from 2001 to 2003 were 17,875, 13,385 and 12,535, respectively.

The top 10 counties (with totals in parentheses) were Mason (447), Summers (388), Preston (375), Ritchie (340), Jackson (333), Raleigh (325), Roane (297), Wood (283), Mercer (282) and Greenbrier (275). Overall, 29 of the Mountain State's 55 counties showed a harvest increase, with the southern counties being the trendsetters in that regard. District VI (2,337) led the regional brigade, followed by District I (2,298), District IV (2,102), District V (1,993), District III (1,228) and District II (846).