rndc.key auth issues and rndc.key file

[Noah]

Hey there FreeBSD'ers,

So I am trying to figure out what is the best configuration for bind on 
my FreeBSD6.2 system.

# pkg_info | grep bind
bind9-9.3.4         Completely new version of the BIND DNS suite with 
updated D
# grep named /etc/rc.conf
named_enable="YES"
named_symlink_enable="YES"
named_program="/usr/local/sbin/named"

something keeps not ending up correctly configured.

I made an rndc.key file
# ls -l /var/named/etc/namedb/rndc.key
-rw-------  1 root  wheel  97 May  3 13:37 /var/named/etc/namedb/rndc.key

and then placed a copy of those contents in my 
/var/named/etc/namedb/named.conf file.

now when I restart (stop) named I receive an error:

# /etc/rc.d/named restart
Stopping named: rndc failed, trying killall: .
Starting named.

what on earth am I doing wrong?