TOP HARVEST SPOT, BY FAR
Not surprisingly, Northeast Washington, or Turkey Population Management Unit (PMU) 10, is the state's top harvest spot for turkeys by a wide margin. "It's something like 5,095 birds harvested statewide last season," Cope points out, "with 3,333 birds coming from the northeast. It also means a lot of hunters are going there. Roughly three-fifths of all our state's turkey hunters are centered in that area in the spring and fall."

Washington hunters have set records for turkey harvest in the past two consecutive years. Cope says more than 10,000 hunters participated in the spring 2004 turkey season alone.

The sport has never been as popular in the Evergreen State, as evidenced by the 1,632 tags sold, for example, in 1991 and the 27,000 tags sold in 2001. Harvest numbers have also climbed. Compare the 194 birds killed by hunters in 1991 to that 5,095 figure used by Cope to describe success in the 2004 season.

PRIVATE LANDS
Statistically, the best units last season were Huckleberry (1,035 birds harvested); 49 Degrees North (555 turkeys); Mt. Spokane (396 turkeys); Roosevelt (318 turkeys); Sherman (277 turkeys); Douglas (253 turkeys); Kelly Hill (163 turkeys); and Selkirk (109 turkeys).

But this is big country, and chances are you'll find turkeys ranging anywhere from the valley floors all the way up to 4,200 feet come spring. And, chances are at the higher elevations, you'll probably also encounter some lingering snow. Cope says he's seen snow in this area regularly in the spring, as he's also seen turkeys scattered at all elevations no matter what the weather is doing.

ACCESSING PRIVATE LANDS
"Overall in the state of Washington, 56 percent of our lands are in private ownership. So that leaves 44 percent that's publicly owned, where people can freely go out and hunt," says Cope. "But a lot of the hunters who are successful are hunting on private land. To me, that means doing the legwork necessary to get on private land if you can. And in this part of the state, it may not be as hard as you think so long as you do your work ahead of time."

The wildlife agency has been working hard the past few turkey seasons to improve and enhance programs to assist hunters with accessing private land. There are some little-known programs that are available to help, but they aren't very well publicized, admits Cope. "We've got one program that's been in place since 1948," he says. "It's the Farmer's Sportsman's Program, which was designed for hunting agriculture lands in eastern Washington. It offers three options to help hunters and landowners work together. First, there's the Feel Free To Hunt option, where people can go in on the area without receiving further permission. The next one is a Register To Hunt option, where there's a centralized parking area with a requirement to sign in and sign out. Then there's a Hunt By Written Permission program, where landowners can get signs from WDFW and put them up. Hunters then contact them to get written permission."

Of these, there are some Hunt By Written Permission lands in northeast Washington. But, and it's a big but, the lands are not publicized, there are no maps to them, and WDFW does not actively promote them. To locate these parcels, the only option (at the moment, anyway) is to drive the areas you'd like to hunt, look for these signs, and then contact the appropriate landowners. Such properties do exist, and they can open up some really good hunting country.

"We're really working on this," Cope explains. "We know that hunters want us to improve public access to private lands, and so we want to try to expand some of these existing programs. We also, in particular, want to add new programs of interest to large forestland owners who've traditionally been closing their gates over the last several years due to vandalism and property damage."

Next, Cope says one of the hottest kinds of things to look for where you've got a good chance at finding birds is in valley bottoms adjacent to the turkey's cherished forestlands. You can only do that by driving, hiking and scouting, says Cope, who adds, "and always look for the Feel Free To Hunt or Hunt By Written Permission signs. Drive the areas and look for those signs, do that scouting. That's a big part of being successful."