re: Turkey Popul. Decline Explained

That's what our Georgia state turkey biologist says too. 26 minute video of her saying the same thing.

LINK

quote:

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It doesn’t help, but predators are a symptom not a cause. Changes in agriculture, invasive grasses, and timber management have dramatically reduced habitat. Herbicide and no-till drilling has replaced fire and mechanical site prep.

Turkey science podcast discussed this extensively and summed it up as such; poult rearing cover is practically nonexistent, adult quail and turkey poults are the same size and need the same things. We don’t have wild quail in any abundence, so do the math. You can eliminate every predator in the state, and still see high brood failure if there’s not a place for poults to feed and grow past the point of being able to thermoregulate.

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Bingo.

People harp on the predator issue too much. Our habitat is mediocre at best, and that's why our game populations (and wildlife populations in general) are not strong.

Good habitat grows big deer and healthy turkey and quail populations, regardless of predators. And all that trapping accomplishes is changing which predator is more prominent, and I dont oppose trapping or predator management at all, but its not the silver bullet people make it out to be. Nature is going to find a balance one way or another.

I don't think the natural contraction hypothesis gets nearly enough attention, though. Turkey population trends have been the same everywhere, just on different timetables. But whether it's Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, or Louisiana, the population curve has largely been the same--a sharp rise following reintroduction/stocking, followed by a decline, with an eventual "equilibrium" being reached.