Where are New York's best spring turkey hunts? They are wherever you can be on a spring morning with a shotgun in your hands and a turkey call in your pocket -- practically anywhere in the state.

The 1986 wild turkey management plan focused on completing the restoration of the species and the management of a newly re-established population. Turkeys now have been successfully re-established into all areas of the state with suitable habitat. In fact, spring gobbler hunting is allowed anywhere in the state except for wildlife management units 1A, 1C and 2A.

One aspect of the newest wild turkey management plan is a different way of calculating harvests. Rather than reporting harvest figures based only on hunter reports, the new system calculates what is considered to be a more accurate figure based on surveys of hunters after the close of the hunting season. Also, harvests going back to 1999 have been adjusted using the new calculation model. This should give biologists a better indication of what to expect from year to year.

After several years of growth, the 2004 and 2005 spring wild turkey harvests were relatively flat. Reproduction appeared to improve last year, but gobblers hatched then will be only jakes now. Over the long term, the season should be comparatively good, but based on more recent standards, the reduced stock of older gobblers might make hunting more challenging this spring.

Spring gobbler hunters tend to hunt close to home. However, with the rise in the wild turkey population comes increasing popularity. More hunters are getting involved in the spring gobbler season. More are willing, even anxious, to travel to better hunting areas, or at least hunting areas that might provide more adventure, than they can find close to home.

Here are a few of the many places to find great spring gobbler hunting adventure in New York, with a good chance of calling in a bird:

CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY
It is fitting that we first look at a Chautauqua County hunt. Wild turkeys disappeared from New York because of habitat loss and unregulated sustenance hunting in the 1840s. They began their return in the late-1940s through dispersal from Pennsylvania, first appearing in the southwestern corner of New York. In Chautauqua County, you might be hunting the descendants of the first birds returned to the state.

It would be hard to find better wild turkey habitat than the Panama Management Unit and the surrounding countryside. This gently rolling terrain is a patchwork of wood lots with mature trees for roosting, overgrown farms, wetlands and agriculture. A few steep ravines with thick hemlocks and conifer plantations provide good winter thermal cover, and numerous spring seeps provide winter feeding areas. When the snow is not too deep, manure spread on farm fields provides winter forage. With ample food and cover, turkeys can survive even severe winters, although lake-effect snowstorms can take a toll on them.

The Panama Management Unit is made up of five separate tracts, including Brokenstraw State Forest, Panama State Forest, Hill Higher State Forest, Wellman State Forest and the Watts Flats Wildlife Management Area. All are in the southwestern part of Chautauqua County near Panama.