Photo by Michael Skinner.

If memory serves, I saw my first wild turkey back in the fall of 1967.

It was a cool October afternoon, and I was heading in to my deer stand, which was on a long bench deep within the Ozarks, to do some bowhunting. I must have just about stepped on the bird, which was hiding just within the edge of a small thicket, and the thunder of wings combined with the crashing of branches as it exited the brushpile certainly let me know that my heart was in good shape! It was a gobbler, and I stood there open-mouthed as he soared down the hillside, his beard clearly visible against the late-afternoon sky.

Until that day, I’d heard others talk about seeing the big birds, and I had even once or twice heard them calling in the distance, but that was my first up-close encounter with the bird that I’d chase for the rest of my life.

The heyday of gobbler hunting in the Natural State occurred in 2003, which saw 19,947 birds checked during the spring season, capping a run of consecutive record harvests dating back to the late 1950s. At the time, it was common to see large flocks feeding through the woods, and information provided by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission told us that turkeys had returned to and were increasing in about every part of the state. Numerous magazine and newspaper articles trumpeted Arkansas as becoming a new turkey hotspot, and several outdoors shows were shot here. Apparently, everything was rosy in the turkey world.

Fast-forward to the present, and something -- maybe a combination of things -- has changed that. The state turkey harvest fell in 2004 to 16,969 birds, dropped again in 2005 to 14,576, and declined yet again in 2006 to 13,598.

Taking notice of the alarming downward spiral, AGFC commissioners voted to alter the season structure substantially prior to 2007. The overall season was cut by one week and moved one week later in an effort to reduce hunting pressure on the flock. The two-bird limit stayed the same, with only one of those allowed to be a jake.

But all that came to naught as the 2007 total harvest fell yet again, this time to 11,069 birds. Perhaps even more illuminating, not one single Arkansas county established a new harvest record in 2007, and only 18 counties out of 75 reported higher kill figures than in the previous year.

Even by the AGFC’s own admission, only a small part of that decline can be explained by the reduction in season length. Management staff expected the numbers to decline because turkeys have not reproduced well in the state since 2001. One or two bad hatches typically won’t have a major impact on either numbers or harvest; five in a row can be catastrophic.

Weather also was an influence. It was unusually cold during the two-day youth hunt in 2007 (April 7-8), and on opening day the temperature was 15 degrees below average. Again according to AGFC figures, the overall harvest was down 10 percent for the youth hunt and 38 percent on opening day, indicating that the weather did have something to do with the final numbers.