Brandon Sheely, the author's son, packs out an opening-day tom that came to a decoy. Photo by Terry W. Sheely.

I'm stuck. Caught flat-footed in Chewelah. I'm in the open, 20 steep yards downhill and frozen in the black eye of a gobbler that simply materialized out of the brush on the bench above me. It's a good bird, big, mature and in full strut, but all I can see is the head and neck stretched high and looking down the hill straight at me. The bird's iridescent body is hidden behind the lip of the bench, and all that I can see is the wrinkled red neck, blue head and the ivory tips of a large tail fan.

I'm in full camouflage but hunched over, right leg above the left, unbalanced, holding a 12-gauge pump in my left hand that's somewhere around my knees, squinting through the face mask, sweating. The tom cocks its head, and that's when I stop breathing.

I'm hunting on the second day of Washington's spring season, and have been working this tom for an hour with seductive hen mews and purrs. The tom would answer with thunderous gobbles. But he was firmly hung up with hens. If I wanted a crack at him, I knew I'd have to go to him.

Which is how I wound up pinned down in a little clearing between ponderosa pines on a steep hill smack in the heart of the hottest turkey corner in the Northwest, some say the country. I don't know about that, I haven't hunted all of the country. But I do know that in the 50-by-80-mile wedge where Washington pushes against British Columbia on the north and Idaho on the east, a rancher complained when a flock of 350 aggressive birds chased his cattle out of a pasture.

Flower gardens are on a precarious line between landscaping and turkey fodder here. Wheat fields are cropped down to putting-green lengths. Hunter success runs 43 percent in the spring with another opening in the fall. A good hunter could take six turkeys a year, seven if he hits western Washington for an Eastern subspecies. (Continued)

A whopping 58 percent of Washington's turkey population is found in this hot corner of the state, said David Danilson, regional director of the Evergreen State's 23 chapters of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

According to state records for 2006 (the last year counts are available), of the 5,187 turkeys taken in Washington, 3,613 were killed in the northeast corner.

During the long April 15-May 31 spring season, hunters are allowed two turkeys -- either Merriam's or Rio Grande subspecies -- in the northeast corner but are limited to pulling the trigger on birds with visible beards. Fall hunters can put hens in the freezer.

Neither Danilson nor Mick Cope, upland game bird manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, is the least bit worried that the seemingly generous seven-bird annual statewide limit will undercut turkey numbers in WDFW's bird-heavy hunting units 101-124.

"We've got the birds to support it, no doubt about that," Danilson said. "It's being able to hunt them that's the problem."

TOO MANY TURKEYS
According to the regional turkey expert, 26 percent of the hot corner's turkey population grow fat and numerous on private lands, where despite rising landowner complaints, many landowners are reluctant to grant hunting permission.