The next time I heard him he was 150 yards away and closing fast. I decided to turn my head away from him and uttered some soft yelps -- and then go silent for the duration. The decision was a logical one, for five minutes later the bird was 35 yards away and strutting. Surprisingly, a hen was escorting him and showing no signs of leaving the old boy's side.

For several long minutes, I waited for some distance to develop between the duo, and finally the hen moved off about five yards. The autoloader had long been trained on the tom, and I pressed the trigger. The 3-year-old gobbler featured 1 1/4-inch spurs, flaunted a 10-inch beard and weighed 18 pounds, 4 ounces. It would be a dandy tom anytime, but especially rewarding since he came late in the season and from public land.

Monroe is a District IV county, but the truth is that all of the state's six districts contain counties that have a solid potential to produce birds. Chris Ryan, a wildlife biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR), said much has to be considered when the topic is which county is best in a certain district. Just because a county has a high turkey harvest or even leads the district, said the biologist, does not necessarily mean that it is the best place to hunt in that district.

A better indicator is often the kill per square mile of wildlife habitat, according to biologist Ryan. But even that is not a perfect indicator, either. Suppose, for instance, that the county's landowners have leased much of their land, making that area off-limits for many prospective turkey hunters. Also, perhaps that county has plenty of turkeys per square mile of habitat, but little quality public land that hunters can visit.

Of course, some public land receives so much hunting pressure that the gobblers become very call-shy. The best, and my favorite kind of public land, is one that offers elbowroom and gives me the ability to escape from the masses. With all these factors in mind, Ryan offered the following counties as solid choices for each of the state's six districts.

DISTRICT I
Northern Panhandle And Northern Counties
"I think that any of those Northern Panhandle counties will be good," Ryan said. "They all have excellent turkey populations and some of the highest turkey densities in the state. However, if you were looking for a sleeper county in that district, it might be Tucker because of all of the available public land. Hunters have plenty of room to spread out, and while there aren't as many birds, hunters won't have to worry about getting permission to hunt because there's plenty of public land on the United States Forest Service (USFS) property."

The USFS property, of course, that the biologist refers to is the Monongahela National Forest. And, indeed, Tucker County contains a great deal of federal real estate in the form of several WMAs. Tucker shares the 58,978-acre Blackwater WMA with Preston County. As is typical of the mighty Mon, Blackwater features very mountainous habitat and vast expanses of oak-hickory and northern hardwoods and even some spruce/fir stands in the upper elevations.