re: Turkey Popul. Decline Explained

Forget the habitat. We looking for a reason.

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Forget the habitat. We looking for a reason.

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I never thought Id say this, but I agree with you. The habitat people just blame everything on habitat, and that is truly a factor. My point is that it isn't the only factor. It's not the Patient Zero factor that people claim. There are other things happening. And the water gets muddier because people will say "on my property we have more turkeys than ever!".

Do you want my personal theory?

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I live in Alabama and my backyard borders the national forest. For the last 3 years in the month of April, the leptons in charge decide to control burn half the mountain. I guess they think the hens can pick up their nests, and eggs, and move away from the fire.

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Georgia did this last year, maybe the year before, in one of the best Turkey WMA's in the state. They admitted it would pretty much kill off the turkeys on that WMA, but long term, they said it would be better habitat and the turkerys would be better than ever. Total insane bullshite. If you have a WMA with turkeys all over the place, leave it alone. If you have a WMA that sucks for turkeys, and you want to do a burn experiment, then fine. People in charge of things are so fricking stupid.

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Yes

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I am not a wildlife biologist or any kind of biologist, but I read what they write and listen to what they say, and also hunters and landowners that the biologists claim to "listen to" also, and have my own experiences at the very bottom of the totem pole.

Without writing an essay, I can sum it up with this:

Land management practices affect all wildlife, from squirrels to lightning bugs to turkey. This goes in the Habitat category.

Raptors used to get shot on sight by farmers and others before they got protected by federal law 30+ years ago. As a kid, it used to be a rare thing to see a hawk, dad would stop the car so we could see one. Now they are perched on every power line.

Trapping/hunting coons and opossums is a dead art. Not dying, but dead. There's probably a total of 500 people in the whole country who still do it.

Feral pigs and coyotes.

People can say habitat all day long but when every single predator of turkey and their poults has exponentially increased by any official metric, and the experts keep repeating "Habitat" is just rings the bell of "bullshite" for me.

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I live in Alabama and my backyard borders the national forest. For the last 3 years in the month of April, the leptons in charge decide to control burn half the mountain. I guess they think the hens can pick up their nests, and eggs, and move away from the fire.

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Unless they are idiots, chances are the areas they burned had little to no turkey nests.

Plenty of research out there that shows nesting drops off significantly in areas 3 or more years removed from a burn--that is, the areas most often targeted for burns.

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People can say habitat all day long but when every single predator of turkey and their poults has exponentially increased by any official metric, and the experts keep repeating "Habitat" is just rings the bell of "bullshite" for me.

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You’re entitled to your opinion but this song is played out. Most prey species rely on the ability to flood predators with more young than they can eat over a short period of time. Habitat makes the young more healthy, and makes it harder for the predators to be effective.

Look at the raptor example. Good poult rearing habitat covers them overhead, provides food and scratch, and makes it a lot harder to be picked off. You’re looking at the symptom and thinking it’s the cause. The habitat changes that are bad for turkeys are good for coons, possums, skunks, foxes, coyotes, raptors, and crows.

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Feral pigs

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I can only speak for my property in SW Mississippi but there absolutely appears to be a relationship between increasing hog population and decreasing numbers of turkey.

Nobody has mentioned heavy rains which has effect on eggs hatching.

I will say this brother there is a lot of coonhunters out there. But the Louisiana Wildlife Department needs to let us hunt coons longer on the WMAs. They let us hunt them in some place’s just for a couple of weeks. They need to give us from November 1st to March 31st. After a few years of this the coon pops would start to balance out. In some of these WMAs the coons are like ants. Some nights we can take out 25- 30.