Hunters checked nearly 45,000 turkeys during the three-week Missouri spring turkey season.

Although that number still is impressive by most states’ standards, weather conspired to keep the spring turkey harvest well below last year’s figure.

Hunters shot 44,949 turkeys during the regular spring turkey season April 16 through May 6. Last year’s figure was 51,018.

When combined with the harvest during the youth season March 31 and April 1, the 2007 spring turkey harvest is 48,476. That is an 11 percent decrease from last year’s figure of 54,712.

The record spring harvest occurred in 2004, when hunters killed 60,744 turkeys in the youth and regular seasons combined.

State official Jeff Beringer said weather and a poor hatch two years ago are to blame for this year’s harvest dip. The most immediate effect was from record-breaking hot and cold weather days apart in late March and early April.

Unseasonably warm weather throughout March and the first three days of April pushed turkey nesting ahead of normal. Beringer said some hens already had laid half their eggs by April 4, when temperatures plummeted into the 20s and teens at night several nights in a row.

Turkeys’ weather woes do not seem to be over yet. In addition to the possibility that eggs were lost to freezing in April, heavy rains in early May caused widespread flooding in low-lying areas.

Many turkeys that had the bad luck to nest in those areas almost experienced nest failures and will have to renest if they are to regain lost ground.