But five minutes later, two explosive gobbles erupted directly behind me in the woods adjoining the field, and I decided that I had to risk pivoting toward them, even though they might glimpse me doing so. The repositioning luckily accomplished, momentarily, I saw a trio of longbeards emerge from the woods and move toward the creek bottom and myself.

The trouble now, though, was that I had no cover between the turkeys and myself and thus no way to raise my 12 gauge and level it on one of the group. For some five minutes, the threesome remained, periodically staring, albeit not overly interested, at the decoy, waiting for the fake hen to move toward them.

Then two of the entourage began to stroll away and disappeared and the third member was about to do the same, moving behind a small hump next to the creek. I quickly made a half pivot, leveled my shotgun and then fired when the third gobbler came back into view. After the shot, the tom disappeared into the creek.

I charged toward the gobbler and found him doing the “death flop” in two feet of water. Now you know why a 2-year-old tom with the requisite 7/8-inch spurs for his age could weigh some 30 pounds, although his dry weight was very likely less than 18 pounds.

My spring Virginia season came to a successful end, but many state sportsmen understandably struggled, as the 2007 harvest was 14,090, down considerably from the 2006 tally of 17,915.

West of the Blue Ridge, the total was 4,910, down 20 percent from the 2006 mark of 6,126. East of the Blue Ridge, the kill declined 18 percent from 11,069 to 9,180. Indeed, the stars, fate, weather and, most important, biology seemed to line up against us Commonwealth turkey chasers as we faced everything from a rainy opening day to a blustery first few days of the season to fewer turkeys being present.

Perhaps the most important biology-related factor was that the 2005 hatch was a poor one. Gary Norman, Wild Turkey Project leader for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF), explains why the kill declined in 2007.

“Poor recruitment in 2005 was a factor,” Norman told me. “I had expected no change or a small decline, so yes, I was surprised by the (percentage of the) decline. But most states in the region also showed similar declines.”

The VDGIF has kept track of poult production by means of analyzing feathers removed from turkeys checked in the previous fall. This analysis results in a lengthily named chart called the “Annual Poult/Adult Hen Ratio Determined from Feathers of Harvested Birds.”

The lengthy name aside, this chart provides the best indicator of whether a future season will be a good one or not. That’s because in any given season, 2-year-old toms are the ones most likely to gobble lustily and come to calling, whereas 3-year-olds will be far less likely to do so (feeling that by nature all they have to do is gobble a few times on the roost, strut and wait for hens to come to them), and jakes will, as always, be totally unpredictable concerning how they respond.