SPRINGFIELD - Turkey hunting is a sit and wait affair in Central Illinois, where forest habitat is scarce.

Dressed in camouflage from head to foot, hunters sit motionless, their backs pressed against the hard bark of a tree as they try to fade into the woods.

They use a variety of calls to imitate the sound of a willing hen to lure a gobbler within the range of their 12-gauge. Any movement at the wrong time spells disaster. Turkeys are strong flyers with keen eyesight. They vanish at the first sign of trouble.

"It's the challenge," said Jim Pierceall, Woodford County sheriff and president of the Woodford County chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

He'd hunted pheasant and deer before, but he became a turkey fanatic 10 years ago after reading magazine articles about how wary turkeys are.

"They will gobble like crazy in the tree, but when they hit the ground you don't hear another thing. … Sometimes, it's frustrating when you get outsmarted by a bird …" he said.

But, Pierceall said, turkey hunting gets him outdoors in spring when the forest is coming to life after a long winter. He once abandoned a morning hunt to harvest three morels that ranged from 15 ounces to 24.5 ounces.

"It's a great time to be out," he said.

Hunters in the southern portion of Illinois face a different kind of challenge. Their hunting ground offers a wide expanse of forest canopy broken only by isolated clearings. They use locating calls that sound like a hoot owl or the call of a crow to entice a gobble from a distant turkey.

They may hike miles in the early morning chill before one will answer. Then, they rush in the direction of the sound hoping to get close enough to set up a decoy or two behind a rise out of sight of their target. Only then does their hunt resemble the waiting game played out by their friends who hunt farther to the north.

But whether the bird comes to the hunter or the hunter goes to the bird, the pursuit of turkeys is an experience unlike any other kind of hunting.

"The main difference is the interaction with the animal," said Paul Shelton, forest wildlife manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. "Rather than just trying to find something, or flush it, or set up and quietly wait, you have this interaction where you're trying to call it in and trick it and bring it into your gun. It's the eastern states' closest version to elk hunting."

Illinois' spring turkey season began April 9 in the south zone. Hunters in the northern zone, including the Pantagraph area, begin hunting on Monday.

The fact the United States has turkey hunting at all is a conservation success story. Credit goes to the National Wild Turkey Federation and natural resource agencies committed to restoring the bird Ben Franklin lobbied to have named our national symbol instead of the bald eagle.

Turkeys were nearly wiped out from over-hunting. DNR thinks the birds disappeared from Illinois by 1910. Reintroduction efforts began here in the late 1950s. The first attempts used domestic turkeys and failed. They simply could not adapt.

But the program got on track when about 65 wild birds were trapped in Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia and released in Shawnee National Forest at Illinois' southern tip. As that flock grew, birds were trapped, transported elsewhere in the state and released. Eventually, about 4,800 turkeys were distributed to 300 sites with the assistance of the NWTF. Turkeys have done the rest of the job by repopulating adjacent areas.

Shelton said eggs hatch from the first part of May through June. Survival depends on predators and the weather. A cold wet spring can reduce the number that live through their first weeks. Surveys show last year's reproduction was "pretty good," he said. He expects hunters to see some older birds and many "jakes," which are birds in their first year.

Southern areas just north of Shawnee, places like Jefferson and Randolph counties, have good turkey populations. Jo Daviess County is exceptional followed by west-central counties, including Pike.

Central Illinois hosts good turkey populations.

But less habitat means birds are far more concentrated, Shelton said. The most productive spots feature trees with creeks or rivers running through them and clearings where decoys are set, he said. Success can be spotty as a result. Turkeys are nearby or they aren't. But Shelton said that should be less and less the case as turkey numbers rise in coming years and they expand their territory.

Turkey numbers are increasing based on harvest numbers alone. Hunters bagged just 25 birds in Illinois' first modern season in 1970. In 2006, hunters took 15,628 turkeys during the regular seasons and another 512 during the two-day Youth Turkey Season. That compared to 14,951 wild turkeys during the regular spring seasons and 458 during the youth hunt a year earlier.

"It's a far cry from that handful of birds we took in that first season," Shelton said.

Nationally, the NWTF estimates the United States had just 1.3 million birds in 1973 when the organization was formed. Today, the estimate is 7 million.

Still, odds of a successful turkey hunt in Illinois are only one in five because of the wariness of the bird. But the difficulty turkey hunting poses isn't deterring people from trying. DNR issued about 47,400 turkey permits in 2000. That rose to 73,000 hunting permits for spring turkey season last year.

Hunters are joining the NWTF to continue efforts to conserve turkeys and expand their range. Founded just three years ago, the Woodford County chapter of NWTF boasts 200 members. Pierceall said the chapter lures young people to the sport by holding special events, including an annual tradition called the President's Hunt, when the chapter's leader takes a young person on a turkey adventure during the state's youth turkey hunt.

"It is just about as satisfying to see a kid pull a trigger as doing it yourself," he said.

Shelton said permits also have risen, in part, because the birds have dispersed to more places offering more opportunities to hunt. But he gives more credit to the challenge the bird offers and a willingness for more hunters to test their skill.

"Once you get out there, it's a blast," Shelton said. "It's unlike any other kind of hunting we have."

"It's more addictive than deer hunting," agreed Pierceall.