Though last year's relatively low bag of 10,573 turkeys is a bit of a below-average bummer, a good brood year or two is all it would take to rebuild and perhaps muster another record-setting season once again.

The past few years have brought flooding rains, cold and wet brood-rearing springs and mast failures that have dealt a terrible hand of cards to our birds. The high-elevation national forest counties of Tucker, Randolph, Pocahontas, Webster and Greenbrier have been particularly affected.

Ironically, these counties were the bastions for the birds that provided much of the Division of Natural Resource's (DNR) trap-and-transfer stock. These stockings helped to replenish the rest of the state, which now harbors better bird populations per unit area than where the birds were originally gathered.

In testament, an opening day Logan-Mingo county line gobbler shot by yours truly back in 1990 was a banded bird transplanted there from Tucker County a year or two earlier. Better turkey news may be on the horizon for 2006. At this point, most hunters would settle for just that in lieu of a new state-record season, which is not in the forecast.

The winter of 2005 was no slouch, but snowfalls were spread out as opposed to all at once. Major winterkills of deer or turkeys did not happen. And the brood-rearing month of June was not a cold, wet one.

The brood counts of last summer as received from the DNR's new compiler, Jim Evans, shows those numbers hovering around the five-year average. Considering the relatively low number of hens out there, this is great news.

Another plus is that the preliminary statewide mast survey reports for fall 2005 are decent. We do know that the fall 2004 harvest was the lowest on record since all but the first Mountain State spring gobbler season of 1966.

Other unknowns that can affect the harvest are last winter's severity and the number of birds that survived it, hunting weather in-season as well as hunter participation and interest, otherwise known as hunting pressure.

There is another factor we should not underestimate. And that's the first-ever youth spring turkey hunt of last year. Youngsters from 8 to 14 years old will get that same great opportunity this year with the help of a licensed adult. That is, a first crack at gobblers on their very own day, the Saturday (April 22) before the traditional fourth Monday of (April 24) the regular opening day.

Biologist Evans and his associate Bill Igo are taking on some of the varying research duties from their recently retired and senior turkey project leader Jim Pack. Other positive notes are the ongoing study of radio-harnessed gobblers.

Per the DNR staff, early results indicate that survival has been fairly decent in that many marked birds were not bagged last year (as well as a hopefully similar proportion of their unmarked brethren) and should be available for the 2006 hunt.

In a pre-retirement conversation with Pack, he was saddened by the poaching loss of marked turkeys during last year's firearms deer season. Poachers are, in fact, kicking our turkeys while they are down. Sportsmen should utilize the 1-800-NetGame to report the inexcusable poaching of turkeys.

For that ongoing turkey study that neighboring Virginia is nicely paralleling, Evans and Bill Igo are aided by a host of statewide staff. The state chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation has pitched in nicely with dollars or as Pack would say, "put their money where their mouth is time after time."