There is another bad boy on the block that folks don’t like to hear about. Let’s call it habitat, habitat and habitat. On the landscape level, West Virginia may not have the turkey potential it had just five or 10 years back. Housing developments, highways and shopping malls along with coal, natural gas and timbering activities are all occurring at a substantial pace.

Permanent losses of habitat are rapidly occurring. Other large-scale though temporary habitat changes are occurring. Logging of mature timber stands is oft selected for the highly valuable and acorn-producing oak segment. Log trucks in northern parts of the state are now as common as coal carriers in the south. Large tracts of the million acres of national forest here are being managed increasingly for wilderness and roadless areas.

Huntable wildlife species are not getting the attention they used to get in that arena. A major national forest effort is for restoration of a red spruce climax forest on a sizeable (landscape) chunk of it. Red spruce is not a very turkey friendly feature.

Lest anybody get confused here, not all mining and logging is bad for turkeys. In fact, in the example of my own Logan County bird, gas wells provided much-needed brood-rearing areas, while log slash provides nesting habitat.

Unlike shopping malls and highways, logging, mining and natural gas are at least temporary incursions. All that being said, we can only hope that turkeys have a few more tricks up their sleeves and that they defy our predictions just as much as they fool us in the spring woods. If anything, that’s the only surefire prediction for turkeys.

Another certainty for 2007 is that some mighty fine gobbler hunting awaits this year’s hunters. The season and bag limit setups are along traditional lines. For starters, we have the youth hunt slated for April 21. Last year’s second-ever youth hunt was doused a bit by rain, but that’s a part of the game.

Unlike for deer, the spring turkey seasons and bag limits are as simple as it gets, and they are the same for the entire state. The regular season opens just after the youth Saturday and traditional fourth Monday of April and closes out Saturday May 19. The daily bag limit remains as one and the season limit is two bearded birds. Your second bird comes free, so to speak, with the normal license package.

For hunting success prospects, it always helps to examine the DNR’s Big Game Bulletin, which recaps the past five years worth of kills. For relatively short-lived wild turkeys, examining the prior year’s bag can be extra helpful. Even more specifically, the best index may be the prior year’s bag on a kill-per-square-mile basis.

And, on that basis, the Northern Panhandle and the Ohio River Valley provide some of our state’s richest turkey habitats. These areas have just the right interspersion of hardwood lots, hay and crop fields that produce the best turkey densities. The top 10 counties in this regard are: Hancock, Brooke, Ohio, Wood, Mason, Wirt, Marshall, Monongalia, Harrison and Mercer.