Still, for the short term, Arkansas hunters must face up to the cold, hard fact that we're coming into the 2010 spring season on the heels of eight, count 'em, eight, consecutive below-average hatches across most of the state. When you're dealing with a species that has a relatively short life and a high mortality rate, a low reproductive rate doesn't bode well.

Here's a region-by-region look and our season prospects for 2010.

DELTA
Although it consistently ranks last in total harvest, the Delta region of eastern Arkansas is the only one of Arkansas' four major physiographic regions that showed an increase in the spring turkey kill last year. Quite an increase it was, too, to the tune of 36 percent. Delta hunters tagged 1,295 turkeys last spring. That was 12 percent of the statewide total. Fifteen of the 18 Delta counties posted harvest gains in 2009, and two counties (Cross with 42 birds and Mississippi with 47) set new harvest records.

Desha, Arkansas and Lee counties were the biggest contributors to the Delta total and accounted for more than 70 percent of the region's increase from last year. Desha County, for example, went from an anemic total of 19 birds in 2008 to 194 last year. Arkansas County increased its harvest from 99 to 143, and Lee County went from 67 to 101.

Spring flooding was the biggest reason those three Delta counties had such low harvests in 2008 -- much of the public hunting land was closed by emergency proclamation, and much of the private turkey habitat was flooded and unhuntable. But an improved hatch for the past two years over much of the Delta is another reason. The 2008 hatch was a little less successful than desirable because of the high water in many areas, but there was a hatch. And my personal observations and those of hunting friends throughout the Delta indicated that the AGFC survey might have been on the light side. Also, AGFC brood survey reports indicated average to slightly above average in most of the Delta in 2007. Those birds will be 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds this spring.

White River National Wildlife Refuge, St. Francis Forest Wildlife Management Area, and Cache River NWR were the top-producing public areas in the Delta region last year. Barring flooding, they likely will repeat the performance in 2010. Bayou Meto WMA also may provide decent hunting.

As already mentioned, the Delta consistently brings up the rear in total turkey harvest for Arkansas, but the numbers are deceiving. Most of the acreage is devoted to farming and aquaculture, and turkey habitat is largely limited to the overflow areas along the major waterways. Within those bottomland hardwood remnants, though, lies some of the most productive turkey habitat in the state. Give these birds two or three years of good nesting conditions, and they can blow out in a hurry.

OUACHITAS
Although this rocky, rough-country region led the state in turkey harvest through the late 1960s and all of the 1970s, it now consistently comes in third behind the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Ozarks. Last spring, though, thanks mostly to a 15 percent decline in the GCP tally, the Ouachitas almost regained second place in the standings. Hunters checked 2,444 turkeys in the Ouachita region in 2009, a decrease of only 2 percent from the previous year.

"Turkey populations in the Ouachitas haven't taken quite as big a hit in the past six years as other areas of the state," said Mike Widner, turkey program coordinator for the AGFC. "In 2006, the region's harvest was 2,718, and it's been holding its own at about that level."