Seeing the expansion firsthand has been particularly pleasing for McCutcheon.

"One of the first wildlife jobs I had was restocking turkeys in the Skyline area of Jackson County back in 1980," he reminisced. "I believe that some kind of disease had gone through the flock at that point, because we didn't have any turkeys to speak of in Jackson County then."

McCutcheon helped to bring in turkeys from the Stimpson Preserve in South Alabama. The turkeys took in a big way.

"Shortly before I left Jackson County a few years ago, I counted 76 turkeys in a 40-acre picked cornfield one day," he said. "The turkeys have flourished."

Jackson County isn't the only place where this has happened. The scenario has been repeated in too many counties to name.

Even in northwest Alabama where the gobbler population has traditionally lagged, the birds are doing better, and on some WMAs there, seasons are expanding this year. The more southern reaches of the state have had abundant turkeys for years, and flocks in those areas continue to thrive as well.

All in all, it's a good time to be a turkey hunter in the Heart of Dixie.

WEATHER & TURKEYS
Ron Eakes is the District 1 biologist in northwestern Alabama. He and Steve Barnett in District 5 serve as the turkey specialists for the Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.

Even though Alabama has solid turkey numbers, ups and downs in the population cycle can have a profound impact on the quality of the hunting.

"How well our turkeys do depends a lot on the weather," Eakes said.

The kiss of death is a lot of wet weather in the late spring or early summertime.

"It directly affects the survival rate of the poults," Eakes explained. "They're covered with fine down and they can't regulate their body temperature for the first two or three weeks of their lives."

If they get wet, a lot of them die of exposure.

The effects of a wet spring like that aren't immediately noticed by hunters. Since 2-year-old turkeys do a lot of the gobbling and make up a big part of the harvest, the impact of a wet spring is usually felt two years after it happened.

We had just such a wet spring last year, so the 2007 spring gobbler season may suffer

"I can't remember what the weather was like two years ago," Eakes admitted with a laugh.

Other environmental factors also play a direct role in how the turkey population fares. Just as it can be too wet, it can also be too dry, particularly if that drought hits late in the growing season, drying out the ground-level vegetation and causing a mast failure. Such a lack of foodstuffs has dire consequences for turkeys.

The survivors come through the winter in poor condition, and the ensuing breeding season is somewhat subdued.

"We had just such a year back in 2000," the biologist said. "It was the worst year I've seen in 49 seasons. At the checking stations, we saw 3- and 4-year-old birds brought in that weighed just 15 pounds apiece."

He also said turkeys under tremendous physical stress like that aren't as interested in breeding.

When there are such dry years, good places to look for turkeys are around water sources where the mast producing trees and other vegetation should have fared better than in the uplands.