Outdoors: Georgia's turkey hunting season starts on Saturday

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Georgia turkey hunters should enjoy this year's fertile crop of gobblers to harvest - because their good fortune won't last long.

This year is expected to have plenty of vocal 2-year-old gobblers available for Georgia hunters, thanks to a stellar reproductive rate in the summer of 2008. But the rainy weather from last summer means next year's turkey hunters won't be so fortunate.

For much of the last decade, adverse weather conditions during nesting season have negatively impacted the state's turkey population. But in 2008, the rains came at just the right times, allowing the young turkeys to reach their current status as 2-year-old gobblers - the ideal age turkey for hunters to attract.

"The problem with the last several years is the north half of the state's been in a drought and the south half had too much rain a lot of years," said Kevin Lowery, the wild turkey project coordinator for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division. "This past year, South Georgia was flooded during most of the nesting season - especially May, which is a peak time for turkeys to hatch. So it was kind of a washout because all the gains they made in 2008, they probably lost in 2009.

"The good news is the good hatch in 2008 is gonna put plenty of birds out there this year that are very vocal 2-year-old gobblers," Lowery continued. "The bad news will be next year when we have to pay the price of a bad 2009."

But the hunting this year will be good - and Georgia hunters will have one of the longest turkey seasons in the nation, from Saturday all the way to May 15, to reach their seasonal limit of three gobblers.

Turkey hunters across the state have been practicing their calls for weeks in anticipation of this weekend. And the conditions should be ideal, considering that 2-year-old birds are generally the most receptive to hunters' yelps and clucks.

"The older birds have been around the block a time or two and they don't take hunting pressure very well, so they kinda clam up when all the hunters get in the woods and start calling a lot," Lowery said. "So that 2-year-old bird is that good combination of inexperience and being reproductively active. They seem to be the ones that are most receptive to calls and they gobble the most, and hunters harvest more of those than anything, probably."

DNR data reflects that 67 percent of Georgia's turkey hunters pursue wild turkeys on private land, while 22 percent use both public and private.

But there are numerous public hunting areas, spanning 992,799 total acres, available in Georgia - including quite a few of t

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