"We used to keep those state forests as special zones with license quotas, not so much to protect the turkeys, but to control the number of hunters so those hunters had minimal competition and could have really high-quality hunts," said Gosselink. "For the past few years we haven't sold out those license quotas. Our thinking is that our hunters like to have more flexibility in where they hunt, and restricting them with licenses to hunt only in a specific state forest was tying them down too much. So we'll open the state forests up this year, give more hunters a chance to hunt those birds, and see how it works."

This means that hunters in Des Moines and central Iowa now have the opportunity to make the one-hour drive to tracts of Stephens SF in south-central Iowa and take advantage of the prime turkey hunting in those areas.

"That wouldn't be a bad day's hunt," said Gosselink. "Go down in late winter or early spring, do some scouting, figure out where you want to hunt; then, on a nice spring day, take a day off from work and hit a couple spots you scouted."

The same play-hooky-from-work-and-hunt-a-state-forest strategy could work for hunters from Iowa City-Cedar Rapids who head for tracts of Shimek SF in southeast Iowa, or for hunters in Dubuque or Cedar Falls/Waterloo who take advantage of the turkeys in Yellow River SF.

"All our public areas see increased hunting pressure on weekends, especially close to parking lots and roads," said Gosselink. "But in those big timbers, hunters who make the effort to get a couple miles from roads and parking areas have a good chance to have multiple birds all to themselves even on weekends."

One part of the state where hard work and scouting may not provide privacy to turkey hunters is central Iowa. Ken Kakac, IDNR district wildlife biologist for Lake Red Rock and areas south of Des Moines, conceded that local turkey hunters do a good job of "covering" his territory.

"Turkey-hunting pressure is pretty intense," he said. "The hunters do a good job of scouting, and there aren't many places in the Red Rock area that don't get hunted. I used to think there were places back away from roads, places that are kind of hard to get to, that didn't get hunted, but there aren't many of those spots anymore."

That doesn't mean hunters in the Des Moines area won't have the opportunity to contribute to another year of success rates nudging the 50 percent mark. "The turkey population looks really strong around here, going into the spring seasons," said Kakac. "I saw a lot of broods in 2006, and all the turkey hunters I've talked to are really pleased with the numbers of birds in this area."

Biologists in other parts of Iowa offer similar optimistic reports on turkey numbers as the spring hunting seasons approach. Even Rick Trine, IDNR district wildlife biologist for Grundy County, reports seeing birds.

Grundy County is famed for farming but notorious for a lack of wildlife habitat. With forest habitat limited to narrow corridors along infrequent streams, and rare, small blocks of isolated timber, Grundy County is challenged when it comes to turkey-friendly habitat.

"To my knowledge, there is no resident flock of turkeys in Grundy County," said Trine. "But there are turkeys in the county -- in the timbers associated with some of the small streams. They're travelers, wandering up and down those streams, especially Wolf Creek, down in the southeast corner of the county. Somebody could shoot a turkey in Grundy County if they did some scouting and knew where those travelers were on a given day -- but it would be a challenge."