The story of the opening of the spring turkey hunting season last weekend was one of mixed messages coinciding with the mixed weather conditions - cloudy and windy Saturday vs. calm and sunny Sunday.
The shift from poor to good gobbling and calling conditions was reflected in reports from area sporting goods stores.
"The hunting was awful on Saturday, but Sunday was a much better day," Larry Aggus reported Monday from Southtown Sporting Goods in Fayetteville. "We checked several big, nice gobblers that hunters got on Sunday."
The report was similar from Outdoor America in Springdale, where a half-dozen gobblers were checked.
"The hunters who killed birds said the gobblers responded as soon as they yelped on their calls," said Aaron Weiss. "They said they didn't even have time to put their decoys out before the birds came running."
As expected after a mild winter and a bountiful acorn crop, turkeys in excellent health got started early with their breeding and nesting season. Gobbling has been heard since mid-March, and by Saturday some hunters were already seeing single hens going to their nests.
However, the preseason reports were about as mixed as the hunting results, according to Bob McAnally, a Russellvillebased regional wildlife supervisor with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
"I've been pleased with the gobbling and nesting activity being reported, but I've also heard that the gobbling is thinly spread in a lot of places of the [Northwest Arkansas] region." McAnally said.
He believes the thinly spread presence of gobblers in some areas is the result of several years of sparse hatches in the Ozarks.
"In a lot of places, there are plenty of hens to go around for the available gobblers, which makes them hard to call," McAnally said. "What [hunters] need to find is an area with gobblers of different ages, the old birds that corral the hens and the subdominant birds that are left on the sidelines and are easy to call."
It's only a guess, but the hunters who had gobblers running to their calls were probably hunting in areas with a supply of wannabe boss birds.
Nevertheless, whether the gobblers are thick or thin in any particular area, the best hunting is most likely still to come toward the latter part of the spring season, which continues through April 21 in Zone 1A and May 5 in other Northwest Arkansas zones.
With the hens off to an early nesting season and already in egg-laying mode, it won't be long before they are setting their eggs and the breeding competition gets tough for gobblers.