On Jan. 3, 2008, I was sitting in a tree stand inside the Ozark National Forest, not all that far from my home in Red Lick.

Seeking to better brood production and gobbler carryover, the AGFC has implemented shorter, later spring turkey seasons. Photo by T.C. Flanigan.

It was about 8 a.m. when I heard a gobbler sound off about two benches below my position. A few seconds later another tom joined him, and for five minutes or so they carried on an animated discourse while I sat there hoping that they'd head on down the hill rather than come up where I was. I like seeing and hearing turkeys, but the sharp-eyed son-of-a-guns have ruined more than one deer hunt for me over the years. Luckily, they worked their way on around the side of the ridge and out of earshot.

I was sitting at home that night when it hit me: Those were the first turkeys that I'd heard during that entire deer season -- this in an area in which the big birds have been common for decades and seeing flocks of a dozen or more isn't that unusual. Or wasn't.

By now, most Arkansas hunters know that the quality of the turkey hunting is down in the Natural State. According to Arkansas Game and Fish Commission figures, we killed 9,724 birds during the 2008 season, down 12 percent from the 11,069 taken in 2007. By some accounts, as many as 400 harvested birds were actually left out of the 2008 figures, but even if you add those in, the number was still lower than in the preceding season. In fact, 2008 was lower than 2007, which was lower than 2006, which was . . . well -- I think you get the picture! The fact is that our harvest numbers have declined annually since 2001.

As a result of this decline, the AGFC instituted a shorter season in 2005, and then followed that up by deleting even more days in 2007. The agency also opened the season later, in hopes that more hens would be bred before hunters hit the woods.

I don't know how well that last change worked from a management perspective, but I do know that the later opening date drastically cut down on the amount of gobbling in the areas I hunted. I have heard hunters from many other areas say the same thing, and since most of the serious gobbler chasers live to hear toms "sound off," hunter numbers fell off drastically after the first week or so. For the last decade, one particular National Forest Service road here in Johnson County would be lined with pickups and campers throughout the entire turkey season. But this past season I drove the entire five-mile length of that road during the second week of the season and saw not a single person other than a farmer tending his cows.

Unfortunately, those changes in season length may have come too late. According to the AGFC management staff, gobbler carryover began to decline when those longer and earlier seasons were first initiated back in 2001.

(Editor's Note: Two definitions are key to any discussion concerning turkeys. "Gobbler carryover" refers to mature birds that make it through from one season to the next. "Brood production" refers to the number of poults that are hatched and survive within any given year.)

According to AGFC turkey biologist Mike Widner, those initial changes to season length for 2005 and 2006 weren't enough to reverse the trend in poor gobbler carryover from previous seasons. Add that to the fact that brood surveys have indicated a decline in young turkey production over the last six years, and you begin to see how we got where we are.