The somewhat arbitrary line separating the Eastern and Osceola subspecies starts on the east coast in Nassau County, at the Nassau and Duval county line. The FWCC has drawn the line to follow the boundary of Duval County and pass through Bradford County. Then it generally follows the northern county lines of Union, Alachua, Gilchrist, and Dixie counties. To the south of that line, all turkeys are considered to be Osceolas; to the north, they're Easterns.

However, biology is never that clear-cut. You shouldn't assume that just because a turkey is on one side of that line, that it's really any different from its kinfolk on the other side of the line. The division between subspecies of any animal is somewhat subjective, and based mostly on physical appearance.

Turkeys in central and south Florida do look different enough from birds in the northern part of the state that early taxonomists designated them as a different subspecies. As you move north and west in the state, the appearance of the birds gradually changes.

Turkeys in the middle of the state have an appearance that's somewhere in between that of the turkeys in south Florida and turkeys in north Florida and south Georgia.

Biologists have drawn a dividing line for trophy purposes, but it's really the geographic location of any particular turkey that determines whether that bird is an Eastern or an Osceola turkey. Under this scenario, a turkey could be an Eastern on one day, and fly across the river and be an Osceola the next.

In fact, there's a lot of variation among birds within a subspecies, and hunters quite often can't tell the difference. If you put 100 Osceolas in one pen and 100 Easterns in another, even many biologists couldn't look at them and tell which pen is which.

What's the difference? Osceolas are generally darker in color overall. That's especially true on the long wing feathers, where they have more black than white on the wing bars.

The Osceola is more streamlined and "racy" in appearance than an Eastern. Osceolas actually tend to be skinny. Down on the Big Cypress, adult gobblers only weigh 12 to 15 pounds. North Florida Easterns regularly reach weights of 18 to 20 pounds.

WHERE TO HUNT
If you're fortunate enough to have private land to hunt on, you already know where you're going to look for your bird this year. But if you don't, then finding the right spot on public land can be a time-consuming challenge.

Based on 2006 harvest data from the state's Wildlife Management and Wildlife and Environmental Areas, Perrin suggested that the following tracts may be the best places to target during 2007. The figures he used are the number of birds killed on each area, as well as the man-days of hunting pressure on each area.