Photo by Kevin Dallmier.

The days are getting longer; another spring’s coming to the Peach State. In this season of rebirth, the forests will soon reverberate with the gobbles of turkeys seeking a mate. Thousands of hunters then slip into the woods hoping to take advantage of a wily tom turkey’s momentary slip in judgment and fool him into shooting range.

Always the wariest of creatures, the turkey’s drive to reproduce only slightly evens the odds in the battle of wits between hunters and hunted. But for those hunters who have the necessary skills, there’s nothing like locating a boss gobbler, determining his habits and then sweet-talking him into coming your way in search of what he thinks is a new girlfriend. It sounds easy, but a myriad of things can go wrong from start to finish. That makes turkey hunting one of the most challenging of outdoor pursuits.

Although Georgia hunters are blessed with strong turkey populations, it wasn’t always so. In fact, a time not so long ago saw the noble bird that founding father Benjamin Franklin preferred to the bald eagle as our national symbol virtually unknown in Georgia. Until the beginning of 20th century, wild turkeys were abundant. But changes in habitat and over hunting both for the table and the commercial market took their toll. For much of the 1900s, wild turkeys were rare in Georgia. A few isolated pockets of birds held on in the most remote and hard to reach areas of the mountains and swamps, but the populations were not nearly enough to provide the level of hunting opportunity that we enjoy today with wild turkeys found in every county of the state.

Restoring the wild turkey’s status from that of a bird that only a few lucky people had ever laid eyes on to that of a favorite big-game species of Georgia hunters from the mountains to the coast is one of the major success stories of the modern era of game management in the Peach State. Hit-and-miss restocking efforts using pen-reared birds had been tried over the years with little to no effect. In 1973, though, things began to change. The predecessor agency of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources began trapping and relocating wild turkeys to reestablish the species across its former range. By the time the statewide program was considered a completed success and discontinued, nearly 4,900 turkeys had been moved to new homes to provide the seed stock.

Along with restocking efforts came improvements in the habitat, the key to the program’s success on public areas. Food plots, prescribed burning, and other habitat management practices were key to giving the birds what they needed in their new homes. The habitat management strategies developed on public lands like wildlife management areas and national forests were transplanted through technical assistance and outreach to private holdings where the owners had an interest in improving their land for wildlife.

To see what 2008 holds for turkey hunters, let’s go to the experts of the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division. Wildlife biologist Chris Baumann chairs the state Wild Turkey Committee, which tracks the health of our turkey population. Let’s take a look at the committee’s latest report to see what the numbers tell us about wild turkeys in Georgia.

Statewide, the turkey population is currently estimated at 350,000 birds with an average of 8.9 turkeys per square mile of habitat. Population trends are monitored by hunter harvest and annual brood surveys. From 1997 to 2006 there was an average of 1.9 poults per hen. As a result, the statewide population has seen some fluctuations.