How I managed to turn completely around, re-position my 12-gauge against my shoulder and take the shot before the bird melted back into the safety of the forest, I'll never know. But a few seconds later, I was thanking the wild turkey gods and affixing my kill tag to the leg of my 19-pound gobbler.

It was just after 3 p.m. It was a tough hunt, but well worth the effort. For me, it was one for the books, and most definitely the hunt of a lifetime.

With excellent populations of wild turkeys across much of Michigan -- and with cooperative weather this spring -- our 2006 turkey hunters should have excellent chances for their own hunt of a lifetime.

"Barring any disasters, we're in pretty good shape for this spring," said Michigan Department of Natural Resources upland game-bird specialist Al Stewart about Michigan's wild turkey numbers. "I expect to see another good turkey season out there."

According to Michigan DNR estimates, more than 165,000 Eastern wild turkeys now inhabit more than two-thirds of our state, thanks to pro-active stocking efforts in the 1980s and 1990s, supplemental winter survival wild turkey feeding programs, and habitat-management programs undertaken by the DNR, U.S. Forest Service and a variety of conservation groups.

Thanks to those efforts, wild turkeys are now thriving in areas where the state's sparse population of native birds never existed previously, such as most of the northern Lower Peninsula and the western Upper Peninsula. Best of all, most of those same areas are now open to spring turkey hunters. More than 50,000 square miles of the state, much of it public land, now offers spring turkey hunting opportunities.

"There are now even excellent spring hunting opportunities for turkey hunters very near major metropolitan areas, like Detroit, where the hunting is very good in Lapeer, Oakland, St. Clair, Livingston, Monroe and Washtenaw counties, as well as near Grand Rapids and Flint," said Stewart. "That's quite an improvement over the 4,049 acres initially offered to the handful of turkey hunters we had in the late '60s when spring turkey hunting first began in Michigan."

And with the expansion of spring turkey hunting across all of Iron County in the western U.P. this year, turkey hunters should find more opportunities in Michigan than ever before.

As hunters have become more informed on the wily ways of the spring gobbler, success rates have also soared.

"With more birds, which has led to increased opportunities over a larger portion of the state, combined with longer seasons and more informed hunters, we've been averaging a success rate of 30 percent for the last few years, one of the highest rates in the country," noted Stewart. "Last year was no different, with a success rate right around 38 percent. Compared to other turkey hunting states such as Missouri and Iowa, which each have an average success rate of 20 percent, that's pretty remarkable.