David Hale, turkey-calling expert and manufacturer of Knight and Hale Game Calls, bagged a nice Michigan gobbler. Photo by Greg Keefer.

"We had a good nesting year and a lot of jakes in the spring of 2007," said Al Stewart, the DNR's upland game specialist in Lansing.

"Turkeys are spread out over most of the southern third of the Lower Peninsula and there really aren't any spots to hunt that are better than others. We now have birds in 79 of the state's 83 counties, with most of them in their native range south of a line drawn between Muskegon and Bay City. Simply put, we have a lot of birds."

Michigan's efforts to reintroduce gobblers throughout the state have been one of the Division of Wildlife's finest success stories. According to Stewart, 80 percent of Michigan is open to turkey hunting in 2008, covering 48,000 square miles. Twenty percent of that land is open to public hunting and most of it has turkeys.

The first turkeys reintroduced into the wild in Michigan found a home in Allegan County in the 1950s. The DNR continued restoration efforts in the 1980s with trapped birds from Iowa, Missouri and Pennsylvania. These birds adapted beautifully, even in the northern Lower Peninsula where they weren't native. Today, there are viable populations of turkeys in sections of the state where they never existed before.

Michigan's first fall turkey season was held in 1965 and was soon followed by a spring opener in 1968. In 1969, more than 3,000 hunters went afield during the spring season and a total of 50 birds were harvested. Our inexperience at chasing big toms was embarrassing. Only 2 percent of the hunters that year put a bird in the bag. In 1989, more than 22,000 hunters set up in the woods and took 6,195 birds. In 20 years, the hunter success rate jumped to 28 percent and it was clear that turkey hunting was here to stay.

Michigan now ranks No. 5 in the nation for turkey-hunting opportunities, Stewart said. Last spring, 97,000 hunters bagged 39,000 birds. We've come a long way and it's only getting better.

Here's a look at where you can bag your turkey in 2008.

Huron-Manistee
National Forest
The Huron-Manistee National Forest is the largest single public landholding in the state. Tracts of the federal forest lie scattered across parts of the L.P. and total nearly a million acres of prime turkey country.

This can be some rugged, lonely country, just the kind old toms love. There is good road access and at times, the hunting pressure can be high, but birds abound and there's plenty of room for gobbler hunters to spread out.

Bagging a spring turkey takes plenty of skill and a whole lot of being in the right place at the right time. There may not be another animal in the woods that is more wary than a big gobbler, and anyone who can talk a turkey into shooting range has earned some bragging rights.