When Seamster was advising the commission about closing the spring gobbler season in different areas around the state to restock birds trapped out of state or in turkey-rich counties in the northern Piedmont or northwestern mountains, he never closed down the areas along the river. His feeling was that as the turkey population grew, birds would use drainages to expand away from the river, populating the entirety of those counties.

That feeling proved incorrect, and Seamster was forced to close areas away from the river for restocking. That restocking worked.

"We never actually closed hunting along the river, but we closed portions of the county elsewhere so we could restock. We found out that when we put birds close to the river, they really didn't expand away from the river," Seamster said. "Birds that were hatched along the river, that habitat offered them the most protection, and they just didn't expand away from it."

About 10 years ago, biologists stocked six sites in Northampton that were away from the river, and the turkey populations really took off. Biologists then went away from the river and stocked them along other drainages, around smaller creeks in the best habitat they could find. Today, hunters are enjoying the results.

"Most of the releases we made down there -- in Martin, Bertie, Halifax and Northampton -- were in the '90s, and those birds are doing real well," Seamster said. "Now, those river counties have the potential to have Caswell-Alleghany-Ashe kinds of numbers (in terms of total turkey population density). There are birds all across those counties."

When Seamster got around to stocking sites in Halifax, Bertie and Northampton that were away from the river, he made sure he brought birds in from other areas of North Carolina or other states.

"We didn't want to trap them on the river and just move them five miles; they'd probably find their way back," he said. "We didn't have to keep them closed for long. By then, we were making such quick, accelerated progress in our restocking program over what we had been doing before. In the '70s and '80s, we were maybe stocking one or two sites a year in a county. By the '90s, we were stocking three, four or five places in a county in a relatively short period of time. So we only had to keep those areas closed for three or four seasons."

Seamster explained that the Roanoke River counties have the best overall habitat in the state, comparable to the northern Piedmont and northwestern mountains. There is a near-perfect mixture of heavy, wooded areas that offer protection, plus the open fields that provide the great "brood range" that young turkeys need to flourish -- the insects on which they thrive in the poult stage.

"The public and private lands along the river system are excellent turkey habitat," he said. "There are high ridges in the swamp, and edges where not all of it is flooded when the water's up in the spring. There are many mature hardwoods in the river bottom where the birds have protection, and it's wet, there are swamps, and a much of it hasn't been logged.