"We have about 41,000 active turkey hunters," said Pitman. "We shoot about 34,000 birds total, and that includes harvest with the game tags (a second tag that hunters can purchase in addition to their first tag that's valid in the eastern two-thirds of Kansas)."

Approximately 20,000 hunters buy the second turkey tag, but the success rate drops from about 65 percent on the initial permit to about 50 percent on the second tag among hunters who use it, according to Pitman. "A lot of them just don't use it, and other hunters after they shoot one bird don't go after a second as hard," he said.

Kansas' success rate statewide on spring gobblers is likely the highest among Great Plains states in most years. Hunters in Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota do well, too, and better than other states in the Midwest, but they have far fewer active hunters at 28,581, 16,440 and 5,318, respectively. Wisconsin has roughly 200,000 turkey hunters, while Missouri has more than 155,000 spring turkey hunters, with a success rate of roughly 30 percent or so.

"If you look at success rates in states east of the Mississippi and the eastern United States, they're around 25 or 30 percent, so we have one of the best turkey hunting situations for turkeys in the country," Pitman remarked.

Pitman attributes the success to bird densities in the most popular hunting regions of Kansas and lower hunting pressure than in states to the east. "We've got a lot more birds per hunter," Pitman said.

Another reason cited by some for increased hunter success in Kansas is the state's subspecies of Rio Grande gobblers, as these birds are less wary than their eastern subspecies cousins. And the terrain in Kansas is linearly aligned along riparian corridors -- quite unlike the large block tracts of habitat back East. "Our birds are a little more concentrated, so there are several factors that play into it," Pitman said.

As far as turkey densities go, Pitman speculated, the areas of northeast and north-central Kansas have the highest, particularly considering the recent declines in southeast Kansas. No matter the densities, the Kansas turkey population attracts plenty of attention from non-resident hunters.

"About 20,000 of the 41,000 turkey hunters are non-residents," Pitman said of the state's draw for those beyond Kansas' borders. "The percentage of our total turkey hunters that are non-residents has been increasing every year."

Pitman noted that hunters coming from the East -- from states with some of the lower success rates -- can't believe how good it is in the Sunflower State. "Word spreads quickly," he said.