Florida turkey hunters have the best of two worlds. Without leaving the state, we can hunt two subspecies of turkeys, the eastern and Osceola. Hunters in the Northeast Region have it even better, since they can hunt both within a few miles of each other.

How do you tell one subspecies from the other? And where's the line between the ranges of the two?

Biologists say the line separating the eastern from the Osceola subspecies starts on the east coast on the Nassau-Duval County line and runs west along that boundary. The line then turns south along Duval's west side, continuing between Bradford and Clay counties. From there, it generally follows the northern borders of Union, Alachua, Gilchrist, and Dixie counties. Every turkey found south of that divide is considered an Osceola, with the eastern birds to the north.

The division between subspecies is somewhat arbitrary, and pretty much based on physical appearance. Turkeys in central and south Florida look different enough from birds in the northern part of the state to be designated as a different subspecies. As you move north and west in the state, the birds' appearance changes. Turkeys in the middle of the state have an appearance somewhere in between those extremes. It is arbitrary, but the geographic location of any particular turkey often determines whether that bird is called an eastern or an Osceola. Conceivably, a turkey could be an eastern one day, then fly across a river and be an Osceola the next day!

Sometimes hunters can't tell the difference either. If you put a hundred Osceolas in one pen and a hundred easterns in another, most biologists can just glance at them and tell you which pen is which. But if you have only a single bird, even a trained biologist might have trouble deciding which pen to put it in. There's a lot of variation, even within the same sub-species.

What exactly are the differences? Osceolas are generally darker overall, especially on their long wing feathers. They have more black than white on their wing bars. The wing patch looks pretty white on an eastern gobbler, whereas on an Osceola, it's darker.

Another characteristic is that the Osceola is more streamlined in appearance. To put it more bluntly, Osceolas tend to be skinny. Down on the Big Cypress, adult gobblers only weigh 12 to 15 pounds. In North Florida, the eastern toms routinely are 18 to 20 pounds.

Here's a thumbnail look at when and where you can find Osceola gobblers in the Sunshine State.