Mercer and Summers counties are perennial turkey hotspots on the southern front. Note that the tiny counties of the Northern Panhandle (Hancock, Ohio, Marshall and Brooke) may be skewed somewhat by turkeys wandering in from Pennsylvania and Ohio, but rest assured there is no border patrol trying to stop them! These counties are also skewed due to each being relatively small areas with a lot of birds.

If you haven’t seen your favorite county yet, how’s about the top 10 in sheer numbers alone? On harvest numbers alone, the following rate as the top 10: Mason, Wood, Preston, Jackson, Ritchie, Mercer, Monongalia, Marshall, Greenbrier and Hardy.

Hardy County’s turkey kill astoundingly more than doubled last year over the prior season. Folks who have written it (and many other national forest counties) off may be missing out.

After all, turkeys are rebounding in the eastern national forest front. That may be one of the best-bet tips going into 2007 barring a severe turkey-killing winter.

No one needs to look any farther than the nearest filling station to check on gas prices. Everyone’s been staying a little closer to home in that regard. Good thing that there is at least good hunting within a short drive to just about everywhere in West Virginia. For distant hunts, car-pooling and more overnight stays can be employed to cut down on expenses.

On another issue, the Sunday hunting thing has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for West Virginia hunters. It has stabilized for the time being. And, yes, you can Sunday hunt in 14 counties on private lands -- only with written permission of the landowner. The 14 counties have a coal connection where many of the miners work a mandatory six-day week.

For those miners, Sunday hunting is the only chance they get. The 14 Sunday hunting option counties are: Boone, Brooke, Clay, Hancock, Jefferson, Lincoln, Logan, McDowell, Marshall, Mingo, Ohio, Wayne Wetzel and Wyoming.

Here are some public options by DNR district that hunters can consider. Rest assured they harbor good numbers of the big birds with plenty of elbowroom to operate. For District I, the 13,000-acre-plus Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area (WMA) produced 17 gobblers last year.

Moving over to the Eastern Panhandle’s District II, Sleepy Creek WMA’s sprawling 23,000 acres offered up 13 gobblers. This huge area will likely contain plenty of carryover birds this year. If you think the carryover thing is hogwash, out of the DNR’s 74 radio-harnessed gobblers just before last season, only 11 birds were harvested.

Think about that as we travel to the central part of the state’s District III. Braxton County offers the Elk River WMA and its vast 18,000 acres. Bass boat owners can slip in through Sutton Lake, which is at the heart of this U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project. Braxton County afforded my first West Virginia gobbler, so it’s near and dear (and turkey) to my heart.

The southeastern segment’s District IV boasts McDowell County’s 18,000-acre Berwind Lake WMA. The bass boats won’t help your access from this small lake, but there’s still plenty of walking turf. Berwind Land Corporation has graciously kept this parcel open to the public.