A shot at wild turkey.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

TILLER -Wild turkeys may be the most challenging prey a hunter can go after in North America.

In Oregon, however, the difficulty of calling a sharp-eyed tom to your dinner table pales in comparison to the difficulty many hunters have in finding a place to shoot the big birds.

That's because most wild turkey in Oregon spend much of their time on private property, and many hunters have been unable to obtain landowner permission to hunt.

For that reason, the most important possession for many turkey hunters is not a shotgun, special shotshells or even a call that can imitate any sound that ol' gobbler ever heard.

It's a large-scale map. One that clearly differentiates land owned by the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management from private farms and ranches.

Ten members of the McKenzie Long Toms chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation constantly referred to several maps Saturday while scouting for promising public places to hunt. The spring gobbler season opens April 15 and runs through May. Turkey tags cost $18. Hunters may fill two tags anywhere in the state, plus a third "bonus tag" in Douglas, Coos, Curry, Josephine, Jackson, Lane, Linn, Benton or Polk counties.

Members of the Eugene-area turkey club decided to look first in the Tiller Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest, which has one of the highest concentrations of wild turkeys in the state. They also scouted BLM holdings northeast of Roseburg.

McKenzie Long Toms president Ken Ngao of Eugene said club members hoped to locate a promising area where they could camp and hunt on a group outing. They also wanted to show new members how to go about scouting for turkeys on public land.

"It's very discouraging for new members to look around for places to hunt," Ngao said.

The club is 10 years old but has never had a group hunting outing - mostly because turkey hunters are so protective of their "spots."

By going out together in "neutral territory," Ngao said, no one would have to reveal any secrets.

One glance at the color-coded maps carried by several hunters made it clear why the issue of where to hunt can be so confusing in Western Oregon. Much of prime turkey country is a literal checkerboard of private and public ownership. That results from an early chapter in Oregon's history, in which the Oregon & California Railway was awarded alternating one-mile-square sections of land. After the company defaulted on its obligations, that land ended up in federal ownership. The intervening square mile sections were claimed by homesteaders.

"A lot of the habitat that turkeys find to be suitable is that kind of habitat that occurs on private land," says Dave Budeau, upland game bird program manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Turkeys prefer to feed in open meadows or fields, where they can easily see any predators that approach. Much of the public land in Western Oregon tends to be too densely wooded for them.

Participants in Saturday's scouting trip - after conferring at length over several maps - divided into three groups and headed into the hills in different directions. The task of deciding where to begin looking was simplified by the fact that one member of the group was familiar with the terrain.

"This south-facing slope ought to be good for turkeys," said Bill Dobra, who worked for the Tiller Ranger District before turkeys were introduced. While the hillsides are heavily timbered, he said, "you break out into more open grass as you get higher ... you come out in an open meadow where you'd swear you were in Eastern Oregon."

Tim White, who'd hunted turkeys in the Tiller area several years ago, recommended stopping and calling often.

Turkeys can hear sounds up to a mile away, and often respond to loud noises by gobbling. Imitating a peacock or hoot owl are popular "shock calls" used by turkey hunters. Gobblers will even respond to toots from a portable air horn.

If the turkeys aren't talkative, veterans in the group said, look for feathers, droppings or tracks in the mud. All can be evidence of birds in the area. No such sign of turkeys could be found in several areas checked by the scouts.

But one group did come back to the noon regrouping with a favorable report - and unusual bit of turkey "sign."

"I found this turkey egg right on the edge of the road," White said, holding up a brown-speckled egg. White said he noticed the mud-spattered egg while driving along looking for tracks. He speculated that a "ripe" hen, perhaps startled by something, had "dropped" the egg.

A little farther down the road, White said, "I got two gobbles, and saw one hen run across the road."

White said the area showed a lot of promise. "If we had another hour or so, we could have kept going. It was nice, and getting better as we went. If a guy came down here that first weekend. ..."

By the end of the day, Ngao later reported in an e-mail to members of his board, "we found several great turkey hunting sites." He proposed organizing a group hunt based near Tiller in May.

Other hunters who do their scouting homework should find plenty of turkeys this season, state biologists say.

"There's nothing to suggest that turkeys are not continuing their upward population trend," said Budeau. "In 2003, we saw the harvest of spring gobblers go over 4,000 for the first time."

"Turkey hunting should be good to excellent," said Tod Lum, the ODFW's district wildlife biologist based in Roseburg.

He said the unusually warm weather early this year could work to hunters' advantage.

"People are reporting seeing single hens off alone going into the brush," he said. That's a sign that the hens are nesting earlier than usual, which "is not a bad thing for hunters because it means toms are available and looking for lonesome hens."

Meanwhile, wild turkeys continue to wear out their welcome on private lands in many areas of Western Oregon.

The ODFW trapped about 600 birds in response to nuisance and damage complaints over the past winter, Budeau said. Virtually all of those were "translocated" to northeast Oregon, where vast tracts of public land are available.

Anyone who can't find a place to hunt on the west side should contact the ODFW offices in La Grande, Baker City or Enterprise for recommendations on where to hunt in those areas, he said.

In the future, the ODFW plans to do less turkey trapping and transplanting. Instead. biologists will rely on hunting pressure to scatter troublesome flocks of birds.

"Next fall we'll have some other ways to deal with" problem birds, Budeau said "Fall turkey season is going to be extended through December." (It now ends Nov. 30.)

December and January, when turkeys gather in large flocks, "are the worst months for damage," Budeau said, and extending the season through December should allow for hunting to be focused in problem areas.

In addition, Budeau said, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is being asked to add wild turkeys to the "emergency hunt" program. Currently, emergency hunts are authorized only for game mammals that are causing damage.

In the emergency hunt program, ODFW biologists arrange with the complaining landowner for a certified "master hunter" to be granted access. That usually results in dispersing the problem animals.

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Bold text and this is light text and this is more light text Mike Stahlberg / The Register-Guard Bold text and this is light text and this is more light text Top: Three members of the McKenzie Long Toms use binoculars to scan open areas on public land for signs of wild turkeys. Above: Maps show the checkerboard of private and public land in Western Oregon. Turkeys prefer less heavily wooded private land. Right: Two tom turkeys strut their stuff on a private driveway near Tiller in Southern Oregon.