As always, Ruth noted, whether discussing deer or turkeys, there will usually be some isolated areas (hotspots) where the population will be somewhat better in an area that overall is down. And, of course, there will still be some 2-year-olds and jakes in the huntable population in 2007. But the overall prognosis is there won’t be as many as we’re used to. It may take more planning and pre-season scouting than normal to find the better populations or areas where gobblers are concentrated.

From that standpoint, we’ll also take a look at the areas that have been producing some of the better hunting over the past couple of seasons. Because of a major change in how the harvest numbers are handled, the 2006 harvest figures were not available when this issue went to press, so we’ll have to rely on data from the 2004 and 2005 season harvests. However, since 2004 was the last excellent recruitment year, this will likely help point you in the right directions for finding gobbler hotspots. This guide will be in addition to the three-county area noted earlier (Berkeley, Williamsburg and Clarendon counties) that should provide outstanding hunting. If you live in that neck of the South Carolina woods, staying close to home might be the best advice we can give you for 2007.

To begin our search for the top potential turkey-hunting areas for 2007, let’s examine the top producing counties. We’ve researched the 2004 and 2005 harvest figures and we’ll identify the counties that made the top 10 harvest list for both years.

We’re looking at total harvest figures in this data. However, in 2005, SCDNR began measuring turkey harvest in terms of the number of acres-per-turkey-harvested category as well. Ruth said this might be a better indicator of the turkey population as seen by a hunter on the ground than would the overall county harvest. An acres-per-turkey-harvested also gives wildlife biologists a better “apple-to-apple” comparison of the harvest across county boundaries.

It’s not difficult to figure out the top spot for total harvest figures: That would be Williamsburg County. Williamsburg County has led the state in total harvest in every year since 2003. Plus, the recruitment in that county has been good for the past two years. It is one of the three-county block that fared somewhat better than the remainder of the state in that department.

Williamsburg County is a large county in land size, but it also supports a relatively dense turkey population: in terms of acres-per-turkey-harvested, it was ranked eighth in 2005. That’s a high figure. The acres per gobbler harvested were not computed in previous years, so we can’t make further comparisons. But suffice to say, Williamsburg has plenty going for it.

Colleton County has been the No. 2 county in both 2004 and 2005 in terms of total harvest. Colleton County’s harvest rose from 643 gobblers to 686 in 2005. Despite the fact that recruitment was down in 2005, the harvest was still up and that is a positive indicator. In the 2005 acres-per-turkey-harvested category, Colleton was in 16th place on a statewide basis.