Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by doctor Marcus Lashley to discuss
Speaker 2: the current concerning state of wild turkeys in North America
Speaker 2: and what we can do to help slow down recent declines.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and their Camera for
Speaker 2: Conservation Initiative. And today we're taking a break from our
Speaker 2: series that we kicked off last week, which is about
Speaker 2: the culture of hunting, and instead we are going to
Speaker 2: be discussing a different topic, which is Turkey's We're talking
Speaker 2: turkey today because it is Turkey Week here at Mediator
Speaker 2: and across all the media to platforms. That means anywhere
Speaker 2: return it's gonna be turkey. Go to the media to
Speaker 2: podcast turkeys, Go to the media to YouTube channel turkeys.
Speaker 2: Go to the media website. You're gonna see turkey hunt articles.
Speaker 2: You can see turkey hunting or not Turkey hunting recipes,
Speaker 2: but turkey recipes. You're gonna see a turkey calling contest actually, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, if I am somehow still in the
Speaker 2: turkey calling contest, it is a miracle and you should
Speaker 2: vote for me just because of the novelty of somebody
Speaker 2: like me being in a turkey calling contest and actually
Speaker 2: winning it.
Speaker 3: I am not qualified.
Speaker 2: But all this is going on when it comes to
Speaker 2: the Mediator Turkey week, and that means also here at
Speaker 2: the wire Hunt podcast, we're talking turkeys. So today we're
Speaker 2: talking turkeys. In all this week, you probably have hopefully
Speaker 2: seen Foundations episodes with turkey hunting, know how Tony's been
Speaker 2: talking about how to kill more turkeys, And today we're
Speaker 2: not gonna necessarily talk about something will help you kill.
Speaker 3: More turkeys in the short term, but we are going
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 2: Discussing something that should help you kill more turkeys in
Speaker 2: the long term. And that's because we're talking turkey conservation.
Speaker 2: There has been a concerning decline in turkey numbers in
Speaker 2: many many states across the country in recent years and
Speaker 2: has caused a whole lot of buzz about what's going on.
Speaker 2: And so today I'm joined with from Joined by doctor
Speaker 2: Marcus Lashley of the University of Florida to discuss that
Speaker 2: very thing. What exactly is the state of turkeys today
Speaker 2: in the country, What kind of declines are we talking about?
Speaker 2: And then why are we seeing these declines?
Speaker 3: What's happening here?
Speaker 2: What's leading to many states seeing diminishing turkey populations? Is
Speaker 2: this because of habitat? Is this because of predators? Is
Speaker 2: this because of hunting pressure and things that we're doing.
Speaker 2: Is there something else going on? What the heck is
Speaker 2: happening that is causing what was at one point a
Speaker 2: huge success story when we talked about the restoration of
Speaker 2: wild turkeys. Why is it all of a sudden becoming
Speaker 2: a story of concern, a story of worry. That's what
Speaker 2: I want to discuss with doctor Marcus Lashley today. And
Speaker 2: he's the guy to talk to because he is a
Speaker 2: wildlife biologist himself and he is involved in a number
Speaker 2: of turkey related studies. He's also a tremendous communicator about
Speaker 2: these issues because he is the host of the Wild
Speaker 2: Turkey Science podcast, in which himself and a co host
Speaker 2: have been discussing this very topic with a number of
Speaker 2: different subject experts over the last year and really been
Speaker 2: you know, I think covering this better than anybody else.
Speaker 2: And he is also the creator of the University of
Speaker 2: Florida Deer Lab YouTube channel that is an acronym deer
Speaker 2: deer that stands for disturbance, Psychology and ecological restoration. And
Speaker 2: he's also found on Instagram at doctor Disturbance and all
Speaker 2: of this is you know, these are all different places
Speaker 2: to find his content related to wildlife biology, the wildlife
Speaker 2: habitat improvement, turkey science, deer science. He was on the
Speaker 2: podcast years ago where we talked about wildlife habitats, specifically
Speaker 2: more deer habitat, but today turkeys is the main topic.
Speaker 2: Marcus has got a lot to share. He helps give
Speaker 2: us some solid answers, points us in the right direction
Speaker 2: on some different questions and concerns, and gives us some
Speaker 2: real substantial ideas about how we can make a difference
Speaker 2: moving forward, to make sure that there are thunder chickens
Speaker 2: around to chase for many more string springs to come,
Speaker 2: because I know that's what I want and I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure that's what you want to The turkeys are really cool,
Speaker 2: they taste really good, and I want to keep them
Speaker 2: around out there. And it's not gonna be a guaranteed
Speaker 2: thing unless we are part of the solution, if we
Speaker 2: can be part of making sure the conditions on the
Speaker 2: ground are those the turkeys need moving forward. So that's
Speaker 2: the game plan for today's episode. I want to give
Speaker 2: you guys one more quick heads up before we get
Speaker 2: into the show with Mark, and that is related to
Speaker 2: the Meat Eater Live Tour. We've got another round of
Speaker 2: Meet Eater Live events coming up here in April, late April,
Speaker 2: I believe it's starting, and this is gonna be a
Speaker 2: more Western coast, Rocky Mountain West tour, So the events
Speaker 2: will be kicking off on let me get these dates
Speaker 2: correct here for it. April twenty third is the first
Speaker 2: show and they're gonna run all the way through May fifth,
Speaker 2: and there are gonna be stops in places like Mesa, Arizona,
Speaker 2: San Diego, Anaheim, and Sacramento, California.
Speaker 3: We got a Salt Lake.
Speaker 2: One, we got a Boise one, Missoula, Montana, Spokane, Portland,
Speaker 2: and Tacoma, Washington. You can get your tickets, you can
Speaker 2: learn more anything you need to know over at the
Speaker 2: meat eater dot com slash events. So there's your heads up,
Speaker 2: and now let's get to our show with doctor Marcus Lashly.
Speaker 2: All right, here with me now on the line is
Speaker 2: doctor Marcus Lashly. Marcus, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, happy, happy to be here. I appreciate it. Mark,
Speaker 4: thanks for the invite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been I should have went back and seen,
Speaker 2: but it's been a good number of years since I've
Speaker 2: had you on the show. Last I think when I
Speaker 2: talked to you last on the podcast was when the
Speaker 2: mineral stump thing was just kind of hitting the ground
Speaker 2: and people were really talking about that, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of interest in that. I remember we had some
Speaker 2: really interesting conversations. Aroun it came to to deer habitat.
Speaker 2: But you're also a Turkey guy, which makes you the
Speaker 2: perfect guest for us today here because here on Mediator
Speaker 2: it's Turkey Week across everything Mediator. This week we're celebrating turkeys, gobblers,
Speaker 2: all the good stuff they bring with them. And uh,
Speaker 2: you're down there in Florida these days, so I gotta ask.
Speaker 2: First off, I know some seasons are open there in Florida.
Speaker 2: Have you been out turkey yet?
Speaker 4: Well, Uh no, it's I didn't get drawn in several
Speaker 4: places that I put in for down to the South season,
Speaker 4: and it's access is down there is pretty tough, even
Speaker 4: you know, even though I work with turkeys, it's still
Speaker 4: tough for me. But I also during the early season,
Speaker 4: in particular, for example, this morning, I am basically hunting
Speaker 4: turkeys because I have one going research where we're tagging
Speaker 4: turkeys and part of our research we're actually trying to
Speaker 4: get observations of them in the field. So essentially hunting
Speaker 4: turkeys and trying to keep up with them and not
Speaker 4: be known to them, and that, as you might imagine,
Speaker 4: it is quite fun.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like catch and release hunting, you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's I'm getting to fulfill that same desire and
Speaker 4: and also get some really cool data on turkeys at
Speaker 4: the same time.
Speaker 3: So that's great. That's uh.
Speaker 2: I've started to do that with my sons. So I'll
Speaker 2: take my boys prior to turkey season opening up, and
Speaker 2: it's just like turkey hunting with them. We just try
Speaker 2: to call on a bird for them to get excited,
Speaker 2: and uh, that's a blast. And one year, my son,
Speaker 2: when he was I think three, we we were out
Speaker 2: and he was carrying on an umbrella with him for
Speaker 2: some reason and pretending and it was a gun, and
Speaker 2: so we actually called in three gobblers into range and
Speaker 2: he held up his little pretend umbrella gun and like
Speaker 2: talked it all through with them. He helped perfectly. Still,
Speaker 2: and those gobblers came in a range. He said, Dad,
Speaker 2: can I take him?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, go for it. He goes.
Speaker 2: It was the best turkey out of my life.
Speaker 3: So I get the enjoyment.
Speaker 4: They can never turn back now exactly, you've already you've
Speaker 4: already put him on that path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's good stuff.
Speaker 2: So, uh So these studies that you're working on right
Speaker 2: now in which you're observing and trying to you know,
Speaker 2: have those syps of interactions. What's what are you in
Speaker 2: particular looking at of that study.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually a multifaceted study and we have various
Speaker 4: things going on, but in particular we so we're tagging
Speaker 4: hens and gobblers on a few study areas. The primary
Speaker 4: goal actually the project is just to get baseline vital
Speaker 4: rate information, so like, you know, the typical things that
Speaker 4: people are seeing coming out, you know, across all these
Speaker 4: different projects in different states are the hen survival, nesting
Speaker 4: success Poult rearing success and the reason that we focus
Speaker 4: on those is because it allows us to project what
Speaker 4: populations are doing, because those are the important vital rates.
Speaker 4: But there are some other interesting things going on in
Speaker 4: the Turkey world related to males. And you know, typically
Speaker 4: when we model populations, we don't even include the mail
Speaker 4: in it, especially when you know something like Turkey's or
Speaker 4: deer where one male can potentially breed many females. It's
Speaker 4: pretty common that we would project a population the male
Speaker 4: survival isn't even incorporated. So you know, some of the
Speaker 4: work that we're doing now we're trying to to get
Speaker 4: that side of the coin as well, I guess with
Speaker 4: with male survival and behavior, and you know, I have
Speaker 4: a strong interest just inherently with Turkey behavior. So that's
Speaker 4: what we're trying to document things that the gobblers that
Speaker 4: we have tagged are doing just on a daily basis,
Speaker 4: and trying to you know, get almost like a personality
Speaker 4: in print of what these individuals are acting like. And
Speaker 4: you know, we we have many things planned and I
Speaker 4: don't know where it will go. It really is funding
Speaker 4: dependent and things. But that's sort of like a passion
Speaker 4: project for me as I'm trying to get more of
Speaker 4: an idea of what the identity of the individual is,
Speaker 4: and then we can start to relate his survival and
Speaker 4: you know how his habitat use on the landscape is
Speaker 4: a function of you know, his personality, which even when
Speaker 4: you capture him, you can tell like the individuals or
Speaker 4: individuals just like people. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 2: We talk about that so often with deer these days,
Speaker 2: but I've never heard that discuss with turkeys. Is that
Speaker 2: something that's been studied before in that kind of way.
Speaker 4: That what we're doing is different than some of the
Speaker 4: previous work. But there certainly has been a lot of
Speaker 4: behavioral work, and they have looked at it from various things.
Speaker 4: Some of it is just basic biology trying to understand
Speaker 4: what the mating system is like. Some of it is
Speaker 4: looking at what traits males like the snood or the
Speaker 4: fan or the airdest sence, you know, those kinds of
Speaker 4: traits how females select males for to mate with. Uh So,
Speaker 4: there's been a fair amount of behavioral work, but not
Speaker 4: really looking at it from a from a an individualism standpoint.
Speaker 4: I don't know what the right word for it. That
Speaker 4: is but like the personality of them and how that's
Speaker 4: translating into their success in their day to day life
Speaker 4: has not been looked at very much, and I thought
Speaker 4: it would be interesting. It's sort of a tack onto
Speaker 4: the ongoing project so that we can get some data
Speaker 4: and try to figure out is this worth some worth
Speaker 4: pursuing further.
Speaker 3: Hmhmm. That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: So is it fair to say that there has been
Speaker 2: a significant influx of attention and or funding to turkey
Speaker 2: research in the last few years?
Speaker 4: I would I would say that's an understatement. Yeah, right now.
Speaker 4: And I've heard some of the you know, the Turkey
Speaker 4: researchers that have been around the longest of our currently
Speaker 4: active turkey researchers, they say the same thing. Right now,
Speaker 4: we have more ongoing turkey research across the range of
Speaker 4: turkeys than ever has been the case and the history
Speaker 4: of turkey research. Wow, And it's not even close. So
Speaker 4: we have ongoing research programs and I don't know how
Speaker 4: many states, but it's definitely more than thirty. So you know,
Speaker 4: wherever your listener, you know, whoever you are, wherever you're from,
Speaker 4: you probably have an active project going going right now
Speaker 4: in your state. In your backyard.
Speaker 3: Wow, So.
Speaker 2: Turkeys the story of turkeys in North America. Maybe most
Speaker 2: people don't know this story. Could you give our listeners
Speaker 2: the like the one minute cliff notes version of how
Speaker 2: we got of how we got to hear today? Maybe
Speaker 2: a couple of minute story of how we got to where.
Speaker 4: We are today.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But but what I really want to get at is,
Speaker 2: so I wanted that quick cliff note of how we got.
Speaker 3: To where we are today.
Speaker 2: But then part two of my question then would be
Speaker 2: I would like to get your take on what our
Speaker 2: situation is today as far as a you know, if
Speaker 2: if this was like a physical with the doctor and
Speaker 2: you sat down with the doctor and he's he's taking
Speaker 2: a look, and say, what's the health our health situation
Speaker 2: right here? Where do things stand? There's there's a lot
Speaker 2: of buzz within the world of turkeys right now. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of articles popping up here and there. There's
Speaker 2: definitely red flags being waived. Even the average deer hunter,
Speaker 2: I think is aware of that, but I'm not sure
Speaker 2: they understand the detail. So, so could you give me
Speaker 2: the quick update of how we got here? And then
Speaker 2: what is here?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, and honestly, is it's kind of remarkable that
Speaker 4: we have turkeys to worry about, to be honest with you,
Speaker 4: when we when you know, through the eighteen hundreds, we
Speaker 4: were we kind of had this perception that wildlife or
Speaker 4: an inexhaustible resource, and this idea that we could you know,
Speaker 4: over harvest them or you know, market hunting could lead
Speaker 4: to declines, or you know, anything like that was even possible.
Speaker 4: It was kind of, you know, a weird thought back
Speaker 4: in those days. Now, you know, it's hard to believe that,
Speaker 4: but that, you know, it's kind of how it was portrayed,
Speaker 4: and we kind of get on the brink of extinction
Speaker 4: for quite a few species, turkeys being one of them.
Speaker 4: We had you know, almost extirpated them from a large
Speaker 4: portion of their range, and that along with several other species,
Speaker 4: some of which we didn't save, like the passenger pigeon.
Speaker 4: It led to a seer trees of legislative acts in
Speaker 4: the United States and led to the North American model
Speaker 4: for wildlife management that has been extremely successful not only
Speaker 4: in establishing sustainable use but also recovering a lot of species.
Speaker 4: It also built financial pillars that fund that research or
Speaker 4: research and conservation, and a lot of that is tads
Speaker 4: directly to hunting. So we have hunting licenses, we have
Speaker 4: bag limits, we have a duck stamp, we have you know,
Speaker 4: financial pillars associated with hunting. The Pittman Robertson Act as
Speaker 4: an excise tax on hunting related products that then goes
Speaker 4: back into the conservation of hunted species. But what that
Speaker 4: usually entails is management of systems that then benefit many
Speaker 4: of the non game. So the fact of the matter
Speaker 4: is the reason we have turkeys now is because we
Speaker 4: almost lost them along with some other species, and that
Speaker 4: wasn't acceptable to people, you know, that loved the resource,
Speaker 4: and it was kind of led us to this legislation,
Speaker 4: this really successful model, and for turkeys in particular, we
Speaker 4: started restocking them pretty aggressively. We saw the birth of
Speaker 4: the National Wild Turkey Federation that was focused on restocking
Speaker 4: turkeys across the range. And we sort of went through
Speaker 4: this phase, especially in the seventies and eighties and nineties,
Speaker 4: where we had this almost exponential growth in populations across
Speaker 4: the range, especially in the easterns, but in much of
Speaker 4: the range of wild turkeys, and that kind of got
Speaker 4: us to where we are now, where we had historic
Speaker 4: levels of turkeys in like the two thousand in most
Speaker 4: places at vary some based on where you're at, but
Speaker 4: we had these really high populations and then we started
Speaker 4: to see some symptoms of decline. And that's really led
Speaker 4: us to now where people know what the heyday with
Speaker 4: turkeys when they were, you know, super abundant across the landscape.
Speaker 4: And frankly, I understand why it is not acceptable for
Speaker 4: them to be rare. I mean, it's not acceptable for me,
Speaker 4: as a turkey hunter to go back. You know, I
Speaker 4: don't want to give up any ground. I want them
Speaker 4: to be abundant in it, you know, to to hear
Speaker 4: many gobels every time I go hunting. You know, I understand.
Speaker 4: But we have a really passionate group of people that
Speaker 4: you know, are concerned because there were some there's some
Speaker 4: indicators of decline, especially in the range of easterns.
Speaker 2: So these declines, what to what degree of decline are
Speaker 2: we actually seeing? Can you put put some numbers on it.
Speaker 2: I've seen some pretty high numbers at state by state level.
Speaker 4: Can you say that depends a lot on where you're
Speaker 4: talking about. Some states are seeing inclines, some states are
Speaker 4: relatively stable and others are seeing some declines that usually
Speaker 4: is a over the last fifteen or twenty years. It's
Speaker 4: somewhere in the neighborhood of ten percent to twenty five percent,
Speaker 4: maybe on the upper end, So you know this slow
Speaker 4: trend of decline over time. Mississippi is a good example
Speaker 4: where I think they kind of from their peak declined
Speaker 4: to maybe twenty percent lower of that peak, and then
Speaker 4: it's been relatively stable for about a decade now. So
Speaker 4: it varies a lot. One thing that seems to be
Speaker 4: evident is the trend in populations in many places seem
Speaker 4: to be on a timeline that's very similar to when
Speaker 4: they were restocked. So that important implication. So for example,
Speaker 4: some states like Mississippi were among the first to be restocked,
Speaker 4: and we see about a pattern where's twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: thirty years later where we hit this peak and then
Speaker 4: we start to see this decline and now Mississippi is
Speaker 4: relatively stable. Other states like North Carolina or a couple
Speaker 4: of the other ones that were really late in that
Speaker 4: restocking where that was happening, like in North Carolina, I
Speaker 4: think it was all the way into the early two thousands.
Speaker 4: They're still inclining based on the state level metrics.
Speaker 3: So what do we what do.
Speaker 2: We read into that is that? Is this something that
Speaker 2: that is that these declines are more of like a
Speaker 2: recalib like a recalibration or a resetting equilibrium, like the
Speaker 2: initial stocking efforts happened, the population booms, and then it's
Speaker 2: maybe too high for the habitat and then it's kind
Speaker 2: of retreating back to what that natural level should be.
Speaker 2: Is that was happening or something else.
Speaker 4: So that's a great question. Uh. The initial paper that
Speaker 4: tried to address that, uh, and it really wasn't connecting
Speaker 4: it directly to the restocking dates. I don't think they
Speaker 4: had that in the paper. But Mike Byrne was working
Speaker 4: with Mike Chamberlain and Brett Collier and a couple of
Speaker 4: other scientists and they kind of looked at the broad
Speaker 4: scale and they published a paper on density dependence and
Speaker 4: that all that is is a fancy term to describe
Speaker 4: what you just said. You kind of overshoot how many
Speaker 4: turkeys can be carried sustainably, and then you see a
Speaker 4: correction where density starts to negatively affect the individuals, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe through competition for resources or something and you start
Speaker 4: to see as you increase the number of adults, you
Speaker 4: decrease the productivity of nest or pulse or survival of
Speaker 4: the adults. So there's this negative relationship between density and production.
Speaker 4: So that usually happens or we you know, we see
Speaker 4: we I guess another way in ecology, we expect that
Speaker 4: pattern when you have some sort of caring capacity relationship
Speaker 4: that's that is affecting it. But the fact of the
Speaker 4: matter is we have some competing hypotheses right now that
Speaker 4: could all explain that pattern in different ways. So it
Speaker 4: could be that we've overshot carrying capacity of habitat. But
Speaker 4: what you would expect to happen in that case is
Speaker 4: that it to relatively stabilize like you see in Mississippi,
Speaker 4: where you know, sort of fluctuate around some number of
Speaker 4: turkeys that can be carried. But a lot of the
Speaker 4: states we're sort of seeing this slow decline. So instead
Speaker 4: of it staying stable at that level, there's this decline.
Speaker 4: So it could start to imagine some factors that could
Speaker 4: play into that. Right, Well, we're developing habitat into you know,
Speaker 4: infrastructure for people, right We're building houses, we're building developments
Speaker 4: we're building roads, all those sorts of things. So the
Speaker 4: amount of habitat available is declining, and it's doing that
Speaker 4: more rapidly in some areas than other areas. But if
Speaker 4: you imagine that relationship that was just talking about, as
Speaker 4: you decrease amount of turkey habitat available, you should decrease
Speaker 4: what that stable level should be over time. So that's one, uh,
Speaker 4: one factor that has been brought up. Another factor that
Speaker 4: has been brought up is, you know, we when we
Speaker 4: had that incline in all all those turkeys, we also
Speaker 4: had an incline and interest in hunting turkeys. And you
Speaker 4: know that that's been proposed that maybe hunting has gotten
Speaker 4: to some inflection point that starts to drive that same
Speaker 4: sort of pattern where we'd see this steady decline because
Speaker 4: the hunting, you know, the productivity of the populations is
Speaker 4: not keeping up with the hunting pressure. The issue with
Speaker 4: that that hypothesis is that if you look at the
Speaker 4: harvest rates now and compare them to what they were historically,
Speaker 4: they're the same. So that immediately tells me, Okay, there's
Speaker 4: the only way that works is if hunting. You know,
Speaker 4: about thirty percent of gobblers on average across studies. Usually
Speaker 4: about thirty percent of gobblers get harvested each year. So
Speaker 4: if that's a problem now and it wasn't, then why
Speaker 4: And the reason that would be is because of productivity.
Speaker 4: So it wouldn't be that hunting is causing a decline
Speaker 4: in productivity. It would be that productivity is no longer
Speaker 4: high enough to sustain that that level of harvest. So
Speaker 4: that's one hypothesis. There's various people working on aspects of
Speaker 4: that idea as well. And another one that's very popular
Speaker 4: is that we have we don't have as many trappers anymore.
Speaker 4: For trappers, and you know, as we declined our pressure
Speaker 4: on thing, you know, things that eat nests in particular,
Speaker 4: or eat turkeys just at any life stage. As we've
Speaker 4: declined the pressure on those species, they've vinclined and become
Speaker 4: more abundant. So people think that it's you know, blaming
Speaker 4: on predators changes that that has some issues too. I
Speaker 4: think it's really interesting to kind of unpack these things
Speaker 4: because they're also not independent on one another. So, for example,
Speaker 4: with the predator aspect, a real problem with that is,
Speaker 4: first of all, we have some studies showing that you
Speaker 4: can aggressively trap something like raccoons, and they can recover
Speaker 4: from like a ninety percent decline in one season, so
Speaker 4: that wouldn't be a slow process like that. You know,
Speaker 4: we'd see an abrupt change in predation and that that
Speaker 4: isn't what the data suggests. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: it couldn't be related to predators, because there's another thing happening.
Speaker 4: As you degrade the quality of habitat for turkeys, you
Speaker 4: increase the habitat quality simultaneously for several all of their predators,
Speaker 4: particularly nest predators. So as habitat for nesting gets poorer,
Speaker 4: habitat quality for nest predators gets better at the same time.
Speaker 4: So you could you see how that could really affect
Speaker 4: the role of the predator. And it's actually a habitat
Speaker 4: problem in that case, because the habitat quality is declining
Speaker 4: for your target species and inclining for the non target
Speaker 4: and it's causing the predation problem. It's not the predator,
Speaker 4: it's the habitat. But you have the same symptom, you know,
Speaker 4: which is higher nest predation. So you know that's the
Speaker 4: problem with this is we want to immediately fix it
Speaker 4: by trapping predators when actually it's a symptom of bad habitat,
Speaker 4: which most people don't want to hear that, but it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then there's a disease factor that comes in that's
Speaker 4: being postured. We have some new diseases that we didn't
Speaker 4: know were things, some that LPDV we think got introduced
Speaker 4: relatively recently from the poultry industry. You know, it's been
Speaker 4: common in poultry, and we think maybe that's where it
Speaker 4: came from. So there are hypotheses related to disease, but
Speaker 4: the same thing is true. You know, if you change
Speaker 4: habitat quality, it may make individuals more vulnerable to disease.
Speaker 4: And we might see fluxes, you know, associated with populations
Speaker 4: that are symptoms of some other problem. And that's what
Speaker 4: really makes it difficult to figure out. You know, they're
Speaker 4: all interrelated and it's hard to figure out which one
Speaker 4: is actually the cause of what you see.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, given that there's all these different factors at play,
Speaker 2: and some of them may be compounding each other, how
Speaker 2: would you how would you make sense of what's most
Speaker 2: important or most impactful, Like, do any one of those
Speaker 2: in your mind seem to stand out as the number.
Speaker 3: One culprit or?
Speaker 2: The most impactful of these different challenges that might be
Speaker 2: facing turkeys right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, a lot of
Speaker 4: the work we are actively trying to quantify various parts
Speaker 4: of this complex thing I've laid out for you. But
Speaker 4: one thing that is very consistent, and I think it
Speaker 4: explains a lot of what we're seeing and also is
Speaker 4: probably one of the confounding factors in all cases is habitat.
Speaker 4: And I know a lot of people roll their eyes
Speaker 4: when they hear that, but when you look at particularly
Speaker 4: in the South, but it applies elsewhere. If you look
Speaker 4: at the landscape changes that have occurred, even in just
Speaker 4: the last two or three decades. For example, we didn't
Speaker 4: have round up ready crops until the mid nineties. That
Speaker 4: was a substantial change in the landscape because agriculture got
Speaker 4: way more efficient, right, so we could kill a lot
Speaker 4: of the weeds in agricultural crops. Those weeds are the
Speaker 4: same forbes that I'm trying to get people to promote.
Speaker 4: When they promote early succession for turkeys or other species
Speaker 4: that use it. We got really good at getting rid
Speaker 4: of those. We've also had intensification of pine plantations and
Speaker 4: a lot of those came to mature, I should say
Speaker 4: that a different way. Many of those were the pine
Speaker 4: plantations were started in the early nineties, and in the
Speaker 4: South in particular, those would start reaching close canopy conditions
Speaker 4: in the early two thousands. For a large swath of time,
Speaker 4: we would have them be the least usable for turkeys.
Speaker 4: We have also decreased the use of prescribed fire precipitously
Speaker 4: over several many decades. Through the nineteen hundreds, we have
Speaker 4: converted most of our early succession, this not in agriculture
Speaker 4: to a non native pasture grass. In my part of
Speaker 4: the world, that's primarily by haya. If you get up
Speaker 4: into the mid South, that's fescue, it could be braham.
Speaker 4: We've got, you know, all kinds of options depending on
Speaker 4: where you're at. But we've had this really strong conversion
Speaker 4: of areas that pulps would be using. And one thing
Speaker 4: that's been really consistent in studies is that we usually
Speaker 4: see a bottleneck on productivity of turkeys, particularly in that
Speaker 4: first two weeks of the poltse life. They're really vulnerable.
Speaker 4: They can't you know, when they're born, they don't have
Speaker 4: their feathers yet, they're growing really fast. They're eating exclusively insects.
Speaker 4: They're growing not just their skeleton but also their feathers,
Speaker 4: and before they are they reach flight, they can't thermoregulate well,
Speaker 4: so they can die from exposure. The community, the plant
Speaker 4: community structure is critical to provide that you know, that
Speaker 4: that buffer from the elements and predators and provide high
Speaker 4: production of insects. You know, if you start looking at
Speaker 4: all of those things and then what those changes would mean.
Speaker 4: For example, for nest predator abundance, we should expect things
Speaker 4: like raccoons and possums and foxes and various other coyotes,
Speaker 4: we should expect them to increase and abundance as a
Speaker 4: result of that change in plank commune because they have
Speaker 4: habitat too right and it's improving for those species. So
Speaker 4: to me, the factor that makes most sense that would
Speaker 4: also promote other aspects of this makes you know, it
Speaker 4: comes down to that habitat issue. And it's not just
Speaker 4: that we are losing the amount of habitat, but the
Speaker 4: connectivity of habitat is being influenced and also the quality
Speaker 4: of habitat. And even when you think about hunting, you know,
Speaker 4: we're still harvesting thirty percent of the males. But if
Speaker 4: habitat quality is poor and we have fewer nests that hatch,
Speaker 4: and then fewer of those poults that from the hatch
Speaker 4: nest survive, then we can support less hunting mortality. And
Speaker 4: that's not because hunting is the problem. It's because productivity
Speaker 4: in the population is the problem. I think to me,
Speaker 4: at the point we're at now, with the amount of
Speaker 4: information that we have, we know that the relative role
Speaker 4: of these factors is fluctuating substantially potentially across the landscape.
Speaker 4: But the common denominator that is consistent is that we
Speaker 4: are very limited on high quality nesting and brooding cover
Speaker 4: across the landscape. Every study that tries to quantify the
Speaker 4: proportion of the landscape that we would classify as high
Speaker 4: quality nesting and brooding cover doesn't matter what state you pick,
Speaker 4: it always comes out in the single digit proportion when
Speaker 4: you add them together. So I don't know how much
Speaker 4: of the landscape needs to be high quality brooding and
Speaker 4: high quality nesting cover, but it's probably more than a
Speaker 4: single digit percentage of the available habitat in an area.
Speaker 2: Why why does that when you mentioned habitat being the
Speaker 2: big issue?
Speaker 3: Why does that make people roll the rice?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't not what you want to say, Well,
Speaker 4: you know, it's easy. I think it's it's uh, I
Speaker 4: don't know. We've had this discussion before and there's lots
Speaker 4: of really interesting ideas, but we like to villainize predators.
Speaker 4: They're competitors with us, right Like, uh, I think it's
Speaker 4: easy to point a finger that this is clearly a
Speaker 4: predator problem. And then it makes sense when you look
Speaker 4: at the studies and pretty much in every single study,
Speaker 4: the leading calls of nest loss, the leading cause of
Speaker 4: polt loss, the leading cause of him mortality is always predation.
Speaker 4: And then it makes people look at that and say, oh, well,
Speaker 4: clearly predators of the problem. And the problem with that
Speaker 4: that viewpoint is what that data point actually tells you
Speaker 4: is that predators eat turkeys. We already know that, right Yeah.
Speaker 4: What you're not really understanding, necessarily, if you're not thinking
Speaker 4: deeply about it, is what would what would be the outcome?
Speaker 4: If you know, if I did a study in an
Speaker 4: area and I removed or allowed the the nesting cover
Speaker 4: to decline in quality substantially, we would lose more nests.
Speaker 4: Do you know why because more would get eaten. So
Speaker 4: if I took the same area and had high quality
Speaker 4: nesting cover available and I just continue to add more
Speaker 4: and more and more predators, we would lose more nests
Speaker 4: and it would be because more would get eaten. So
Speaker 4: if you see more nests get eaten, it doesn't actually
Speaker 4: tell you what the problem is. That the predation could
Speaker 4: be the cause or the symptom, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think we we latch onto some
Speaker 4: things that they just make intuitive sense at face value.
Speaker 4: And you know, we've we have been talking about habitat
Speaker 4: and nauseum for a really long time with a lot
Speaker 4: of wildlife management, and it's just people don't like to
Speaker 4: hear that for some reason. So I don't know if
Speaker 4: it's because we it's easy for us to villainize other
Speaker 4: potential causes, or you know, it's it's something that's not
Speaker 4: within the control of some people. It's something that's harder
Speaker 4: to understand sometimes. Uh, you know, we have plant blindness
Speaker 4: that's actually been quantified. There are all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 4: I really don't know, but I do think it's interesting,
Speaker 4: you know, if you take a step back. Even when
Speaker 4: I work with private landowners really commonly trying to help them,
Speaker 4: you know, develop high quality habitat for deer in turkeys.
Speaker 4: And it's really interesting to hear someone that's been a wrong,
Speaker 4: you know, for seventy or eighty years, and they say, well,
Speaker 4: nothing's really changed here, and then we go around on
Speaker 4: their property and it's like, yeah, I remember when this
Speaker 4: field we used to plant by hand and I had
Speaker 4: to go out there and pick weeds out of it.
Speaker 4: And this field over here, it wasn't even a field.
Speaker 4: It used to be this, you know, this old savannah
Speaker 4: and yeah, we didn't even have herbicides, so we used
Speaker 4: to just burn off all the brush everywhere. You know
Speaker 4: that they start naming all these different things that have
Speaker 4: changed right after they tell you nothing has changed, right,
Speaker 4: And it's a really interesting thing. But I don't have
Speaker 4: the answer to that, but I do see that that
Speaker 4: that response often where there's some people that they don't
Speaker 4: want to hear that this is a habitat problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, like you said, it seems to be the
Speaker 2: habitat is a limiting factor across so many different species
Speaker 2: of conservation concern, right, and then there's all these other
Speaker 2: ancillary things that can then become kind of symptoms. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: and then because habitat is lacking, then these other things
Speaker 2: can become more impactful.
Speaker 4: So, like you said, we start to see their effect magnified. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, hens in poorer body condition should be would
Speaker 4: we not expect them to be more vulnerable to disease?
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, Yeah, I think that. You also said another
Speaker 4: key thing. If we look at space, so let's think
Speaker 4: about turkeys I just told you nesting in brooding cover
Speaker 4: that's essentially shrubland or shrubby structure, and an understory that
Speaker 4: has an open canopy and a forest or brooding cover
Speaker 4: which is essentially a herbaceous dominated unity that is particularly
Speaker 4: dominated by forbes, not grass. Okay, the if we look
Speaker 4: at the species of conservation concern outside of turkeys in
Speaker 4: the eastern United States and we restrict that to the
Speaker 4: species that reside in uplands like turkeys mainly do, almost
Speaker 4: every single species on the list that's in decline and
Speaker 4: of concern is associated with early succession, prairie or some
Speaker 4: sort of broken canopy, frequent fire system, all of them,
Speaker 4: almost everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's incredible. So many, I mean all
Speaker 2: sorts of songbirds, pollinators, insects, so many different things seem
Speaker 2: to be trending down, and like you said, many of
Speaker 2: them seem attached to this this habitat need that.
Speaker 4: And it's not even unique here. There was a global
Speaker 4: analysis recently that showed, I think that that guild of
Speaker 4: species ubiquitously globally was the most or those species were
Speaker 4: in the most trouble or most decline across the planet.
Speaker 4: So it's not unique here. It's just we you know,
Speaker 4: things that we have started doing on the landscape tend
Speaker 4: to impact of early successional communities. I mean, it's that's
Speaker 4: the easiest to turn into agriculture, it's the easiest to develop,
Speaker 4: it's the easiest to convert to pasture grass. You know,
Speaker 4: it makes sense why we would see, you know, those
Speaker 4: species imperiled by that. But you know, then we turn
Speaker 4: and look at turkeys and people don't want to hear
Speaker 4: that this is a habitat issue when the bottleneck demographically
Speaker 4: for them are associated with that same you know, habitat structure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it shouldn't be a surprise, I guess when
Speaker 2: you look into that way.
Speaker 4: And to me, because it would magnify all these other problems,
Speaker 4: It makes a lot of sense that it would probably
Speaker 4: be the root of the issue. In most places. The
Speaker 4: problem is trying how do you change that at scale?
Speaker 4: That's where we're at, Like, how do we change habitat
Speaker 4: productivity for turkeys at scale to influence populations at state
Speaker 4: or regional levels. You know, that's a that's a different
Speaker 4: problem that we're you know, that we need to address.
Speaker 2: So Marcus, how do we do that? What's the solution?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that I think one of them is awareness. So
Speaker 4: this is one place where I think the deer community
Speaker 4: has excelled that the turkey enthusiast could take a after
Speaker 4: out of the playbook. And one of those is through
Speaker 4: cooperative land management cooperatives where you know, the deer management
Speaker 4: cooperatives are pretty common now and a lot of them
Speaker 4: are very successful. You know, where you have many landowners
Speaker 4: getting together and they get a plan together where they're
Speaker 4: all going to collectively manage their deer under this plan,
Speaker 4: and that can be extremely successful. I think the same
Speaker 4: thing could work for turkeys, and we do not see
Speaker 4: that very often, but that's one way, you know, you
Speaker 4: could collectively decide you know, hey, this is how many
Speaker 4: gobboyers we think, here's what we should do in terms
Speaker 4: of our you know, our harvest. Hey, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: we need to all try to increase the amount of
Speaker 4: brooding cover to some critical level. Hey, we need connectivity.
Speaker 4: So if I get a crew in to harvest this stand,
Speaker 4: do you think you could do this in the one
Speaker 4: and adjacent on your property? You know, those kinds of
Speaker 4: things can start to move the needle more at a
Speaker 4: local scale, and then they build out from there. I've
Speaker 4: also been extremely active in the fire community, and particularly
Speaker 4: in the South. I mean, almost all of those landscapes
Speaker 4: that I've been talking about that turkeys thrive in, I
Speaker 4: mean mark when you look at the historical records from
Speaker 4: various aspects, basically all of the eastern United States, nearly
Speaker 4: all of it was classified in some sort of woodland
Speaker 4: or savannah or grassland state. You know, almost none of
Speaker 4: that landscape is in that state now. But the reason
Speaker 4: it was in that state is because of widespread use
Speaker 4: of fire. So I think that's one tool that we
Speaker 4: are starting to implement at scale. There's barriers. People are
Speaker 4: afraid of it. On private lands, for example, there's liability
Speaker 4: of fears. A lot of people don't realize, especially in
Speaker 4: some of the southern states, that we have right to
Speaker 4: burn laws that help protect you from liability. We have
Speaker 4: prescribed burn associations that are popping up all over the
Speaker 4: place that are basically landown or cooperatives where they're all
Speaker 4: sharing resources and they're going and burning with each other.
Speaker 4: That's one aspect that I think is going to really
Speaker 4: help with this situation is just getting more fire use
Speaker 4: on the landscape that the artifact of that practice is
Speaker 4: better nesting and brooding cover for turkeys. So I think
Speaker 4: those are the kinds of grassroots initiatives that we can
Speaker 4: really start to move the needle. And if we have
Speaker 4: high enough awareness and we start to make policy changes
Speaker 4: like those right to burn laws that make it easier
Speaker 4: for people to do things, you know, that would benefit
Speaker 4: the species, uh, you know, we start to make real change.
Speaker 4: And there there are examples where groups of landowners or
Speaker 4: wm A complexes have gotten really aggressive with habitat management
Speaker 4: and they see really great success with that where the
Speaker 4: populations seem to flourish even even though they may not
Speaker 4: be elsewhere in the state.
Speaker 2: So let's zoom in just a little bit. So we
Speaker 2: just talked there about scale but let's now talk at
Speaker 2: like the individual level. So if I'm a landowner or
Speaker 2: a land manager of some kind, and I'm hearing you
Speaker 2: say that nesting and brooding covers the bottleneck, that's our
Speaker 2: that's our area of most need. It's also a habitat
Speaker 2: type that's disappearing across the country. It's also a habitat
Speaker 2: that's significantly important to many other species, and we don't
Speaker 2: have it.
Speaker 3: So it sounds like I need to make sure I've.
Speaker 4: Got a broody that one. Let me add one another thing.
Speaker 4: It's also a structure of vegetation that a lot of
Speaker 4: our predators don't like. Why is that? I don't know.
Speaker 4: I've got to asked that several times. But the state
Speaker 4: of the data, especially with prescribe fire, is very clear.
Speaker 4: We just we've recorded various episodes on various podcasts about
Speaker 4: this where we've covered several studies related to prescribe fire
Speaker 4: and like, for example, with a raccoon, if you put
Speaker 4: a tag on a raccoon and follow him around and
Speaker 4: get his home range, and then you burn a unit
Speaker 4: within his home range, you may as well made that
Speaker 4: thing of donut. He basically, I mean, in one of
Speaker 4: the studies that they did that they decrease the use
Speaker 4: of that area up to eighty percent within that burn unit,
Speaker 4: even though it's running the middle of his home range.
Speaker 4: So you know, another study from northern Florida that had
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of different areas all across the Panhandle
Speaker 4: all the way over to the Atlantic. They looked at
Speaker 4: how likely they were to detect a many of the
Speaker 4: predators of turkeys, both nest and adult predators, the mammals,
Speaker 4: and basically across the board and including of wild pigs
Speaker 4: that cause all kinds of problems if you increase the well,
Speaker 4: let me start, if the area that the cameras were
Speaker 4: in was not burned, and this was replicated remember across
Speaker 4: many sites. If the area was not being burned that
Speaker 4: the cameras were in, you were above seventy percent likelihood
Speaker 4: to detect all of them. And if you increase the
Speaker 4: frequency such that you were on a two year return
Speaker 4: intervoy fire, so frequent fire, which most of Florida historically
Speaker 4: did burn every two years, or even more frequently in
Speaker 4: some places, if you increased it to that two year frequency,
Speaker 4: you decrease the likelihood of detecting a whole suite of
Speaker 4: predators from above seventy percent across the board to below
Speaker 4: ten percent across the board. We're talking about substantial changes
Speaker 4: and predator use, and it's not that they're that much
Speaker 4: less abundant. What happens is they get relegated to the
Speaker 4: wetland basically the stream. You know that the wet areas
Speaker 4: that are not being influenced by fire, and a lot
Speaker 4: of those species are what we'd call music species. They're
Speaker 4: supposed to be associated with that drainage. Wow, they're just
Speaker 4: not when when fire isn't part of the landscape.
Speaker 2: So fire obviously is a big of the solution for
Speaker 2: those who can implement it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely is.
Speaker 2: In addition to that, though, what else could a landowner
Speaker 2: manager do to create more of this kind of habitat?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: Number one is prescribe fire. What else?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So a lot of the things that we recommend
Speaker 4: for people to do to improve their deer habitat apply
Speaker 4: two turkeys. I want to make that clear because I
Speaker 4: know that you have a strong deer oriented audience, and
Speaker 4: I do a lot of turkey and deer work, to
Speaker 4: be clear, and I focus a lot on habitat SO
Speaker 4: practices that are opening the canopy, and especially when they're
Speaker 4: adding fire that promote a developed understory, especially that is
Speaker 4: dominated by forbes. Those practices are going to be beneficial
Speaker 4: for both species. So that can include a commercial timber harvest,
Speaker 4: or if you're in a situation where you can't or
Speaker 4: don't want to do that, it could include forest and
Speaker 4: improvement where you go in and kill individual trees and
Speaker 4: try to, you know, get rid of things that are
Speaker 4: unwanted tree species you don't like, and do that in
Speaker 4: a way that promotes higher sunlight penetration. Other things that
Speaker 4: I think the deer community in particular can have a
Speaker 4: major impact if you're also interested in turkeys, is starting
Speaker 4: to manage your fall food pot program such that it
Speaker 4: turns into a high quality poult rearing program during the spring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, se some videos you guys published about that. Can
Speaker 2: you can you describe how exactly we could do something
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So in my experience, this works really well, particularly
Speaker 4: with crimson clover and wheat, but it can also work
Speaker 4: well with like airleaf clover and oats are right cereal rye,
Speaker 4: you know, some combination of those, and you could even
Speaker 4: have four or five of those species I just named
Speaker 4: in there, but those tend to work really well. And basically,
Speaker 4: let's just keep it simple with crimson clover and wheat.
Speaker 4: So if you plant let's say twenty pounds of crimson
Speaker 4: clover per acre and maybe a thirty pound rate or
Speaker 4: forty pound rate something like that of wheat, basically those
Speaker 4: two plants super attractive to deer during the fall. And
Speaker 4: I realize that this may not be applicable to some
Speaker 4: other parts of the country, but in the South, I mean,
Speaker 4: those things are those are really great plants, are well adapted,
Speaker 4: and they do really well, and the important thing is
Speaker 4: they're really attractive to deer. They're also really attractive to turkeys.
Speaker 4: Early in the breeding season, when you're getting a lot
Speaker 4: of the strutting, you know, you'll see a lot of
Speaker 4: turkey use of those areas. And then they start to
Speaker 4: the clover and the wheat starts to seness. So it
Speaker 4: basically dies right because those their annual plants. And when
Speaker 4: they die, because of the disturbance of the field, you
Speaker 4: start to get a lot of weeds come in. And
Speaker 4: if those weeds, if you take some care to make
Speaker 4: sure that you get rid of unwanted weeds, a lot
Speaker 4: of the weeds will be really high quality forbes, the
Speaker 4: things that you're trying to encourage in a brooding field.
Speaker 4: So what you end up with in that transition is
Speaker 4: it goes from that really high quality deer plot that
Speaker 4: becomes a really attractive turkey plot during a lot of
Speaker 4: folks turkey season, and then it transitions early in brooding
Speaker 4: into a really good structure for brooding because of the weeds.
Speaker 4: What most people, well, there's multiple problems that come that
Speaker 4: most people are not taking care of. One, if you're
Speaker 4: planting something like that and you don't deal with whatever
Speaker 4: grass problems or said problems that you have, which is
Speaker 4: almost certain that you do. If you don't take care
Speaker 4: of those, that will limit it from transitioning into that
Speaker 4: kind of structure. And down here that's rye grass. Every
Speaker 4: field that I go to almost has a rye grass
Speaker 4: problem unless they have they have tried to take care
Speaker 4: of it through some sort of herbicide regimen. So you know,
Speaker 4: if you take care of some of your weed issues,
Speaker 4: which often is going to be some sort of grass,
Speaker 4: then you know it can transition. There can be some
Speaker 4: problematic forbes. Don't get me wrong, We have plenty of them.
Speaker 4: Down here, you know, like sickle pod or you know
Speaker 4: some of the other invasive forbes like that can certainly
Speaker 4: be a problem. But if you take some precaution precautionary
Speaker 4: measures to make sure you deal with those issues and
Speaker 4: then let it transition into that forb dominated community in
Speaker 4: the dead you know, crimson and wheat, it can produce
Speaker 4: a really powerful system for you to balance deer hunting
Speaker 4: opportunity with turkey hunting opportunity with poult rearing cover. So,
Speaker 4: like that's a practice that could really help people that
Speaker 4: have a property that they're interested in both species.
Speaker 2: Now, for folks who are doing like a fall planting
Speaker 2: and a spring planting kind of rotation on a food plot,
Speaker 2: what's the time period where you need to make sure
Speaker 2: you're leaving that plot alone so that it can act
Speaker 2: as that brooding habitat? Is that something that is there
Speaker 2: a window where we need to make sure we leave that.
Speaker 4: That really So there are resources available to you, and
Speaker 4: if you're a turkey enthusiast, you might already know this,
Speaker 4: but what you really need to figure out is where
Speaker 4: you are When is peak nest initiation? So when are
Speaker 4: they incubating a nest and then project to when the
Speaker 4: majority of hatching is going to occur. All right, So
Speaker 4: for a lot of the country, that might be the
Speaker 4: middle two weeks of May, for example, when polts are
Speaker 4: going to be just recently hatched and they're going to
Speaker 4: be in that critical two week window. That window where
Speaker 4: whatever it is for where you're listening from, is the
Speaker 4: critical window. The beauty of turkeys is. It doesn't matter
Speaker 4: if you're in Oregon or Florida, or Pennsylvania or Texas.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter. The same general structure is needed. You
Speaker 4: might get there a little differently, but we need a
Speaker 4: FORB dominated community with a lot of bare ground underneath that. So,
Speaker 4: like you said, I had a video that I put
Speaker 4: on YouTube recently trying to show people that system, the
Speaker 4: Crimson cover with wheat system, and what that needed to
Speaker 4: look like to make sure that it was producing that
Speaker 4: poul room cover. So if you can get that two
Speaker 4: week minimum, you know period at a minimum, really you know,
Speaker 4: a four to six week window of time, you can
Speaker 4: really produce a lot of poles. The other thing that
Speaker 4: I will add a lot of those forbes that we're
Speaker 4: trying to produce in that system or thirty percent crew
Speaker 4: protein twenty five percent crew protein. They're just as good
Speaker 4: as what you would be planting for your deer, you know,
Speaker 4: summer plots right in many cases. So yeah, it really is.
Speaker 4: It's a great way to balance those two species. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of the lot of the plants that that
Speaker 4: deer are going to eat, the wild plants that they're
Speaker 4: eating when they're trying to support peak lactation or antler growth,
Speaker 4: are the same plants that are producing lots of insects
Speaker 4: for polts to run around under and catch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so habitat is the greatest way we can probably
Speaker 2: make a difference as an individual by creating this kind
Speaker 2: of habitat making sure that bottleneck is not a problem
Speaker 2: in our local areas.
Speaker 3: But there's also been a lot of talk within the Turkey.
Speaker 2: Hunting community in recent years around you know, how we
Speaker 2: influence Turkey populations with our hunting itself, And you mentioned
Speaker 2: this on the topic is there any kind of hunting
Speaker 2: pressure related impact that we're making, So again back to
Speaker 2: what we as individuals can do. I know there's certain states,
Speaker 2: some states are starting to possibly pull back in some
Speaker 2: ways or adjust rights in some ways. There's been lots
Speaker 2: of speculation about different tactics that we should not allow maybe,
Speaker 2: or different things like that. But from your perspective, based
Speaker 2: on what you've seen, based on the research, based on
Speaker 2: the folks who've talked to. If I am an individual
Speaker 2: who's worried about turkeys in my area, are there any
Speaker 2: changes that I should make as a turkey hunter as
Speaker 2: far as how I hunt, as far as when I hunt,
Speaker 2: as far as anything like that. If I'm a concerned
Speaker 2: turkey hunter, are there any changes that I should be
Speaker 2: making to my hunting practices in or to the regulations
Speaker 2: that I advocate for that would help.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. That's one of the primary
Speaker 4: hypotheses that's been worked on. As I said earlier, So
Speaker 4: you know, I I think if you're worried about turkeys
Speaker 4: in your area, it makes sense for you to exercise
Speaker 4: some restriction, and you know, maybe you want to decrease
Speaker 4: the harvest pressure that you have on your population. Another thing,
Speaker 4: in many places, it is still legal to shoot a hen,
Speaker 4: either in the fall or a bearded hen or something.
Speaker 4: That hen is the most important fact. She is playing
Speaker 4: the most important role in what the population trajectory is.
Speaker 4: You think about that hen she is potentially producing nests
Speaker 4: and poults for nine or ten years. Right, If you
Speaker 4: take out a hen, you've taken out years worth of
Speaker 4: nests and poults potentially, So you know that. That's another
Speaker 4: way that if you're concerned, you know to on your
Speaker 4: property not take a hen. That makes sense. Some people
Speaker 4: have have been been concerned about the timing of hunting
Speaker 4: and when we're hunting. There is a study and it's
Speaker 4: in the publication process now. It was in Tennessee where
Speaker 4: they manipulated the timing of the season in a well, frankly,
Speaker 4: one of the strongest experiments has ever been done in turkeys.
Speaker 4: It was a before after control impact design. It's like
Speaker 4: the dream design best case scenario. They had a really
Speaker 4: large sample size. They went into five counties and monitored
Speaker 4: the reproductive success and survival and all that stuff of
Speaker 4: populations of turkeys in these counties and then took part
Speaker 4: of the counties. After they did that for a while
Speaker 4: three or four years, then they changed the season date
Speaker 4: to be later in those counties and then compared it
Speaker 4: to the other counties that they did not move it in.
Speaker 4: After they followed the populations for two more years, they
Speaker 4: looked to see or is there any difference in reproduction
Speaker 4: between the populations, and there was not. They didn't observe
Speaker 4: anything in Tennessee. But in that Tennessee study they did
Speaker 4: show a substantial change in productivity of turkeys as a
Speaker 4: function of habitat. So hens that were nesting in in
Speaker 4: Shreubland had a substantially higher nesting success than hens that
Speaker 4: nested elsewhere. And seven percent of the landscape was between
Speaker 4: brooding and nesting cover considered high quality in that study,
Speaker 4: and almost fifty percent of the nesting attempts were in
Speaker 4: that seven percent. Right, that's substantial selection, and it had
Speaker 4: conferred a really big effect on the success. And that's
Speaker 4: an example of where the selection is extremely strong for
Speaker 4: something that we could probably stand to produce a lot
Speaker 4: more on the landscape, certainly more than seven percent. And
Speaker 4: if we did that at the scale, we'd have a
Speaker 4: really big effect on population. And here I think is
Speaker 4: the important thing. If you change your poulp per hen ratio,
Speaker 4: so how many polts you're recruiting per hen from let's
Speaker 4: say one to four, you're so productive. All these other
Speaker 4: factors really don't matter that much.
Speaker 2: And that's purely a function of habitat, right.
Speaker 4: Not completely, but it's playing an incredibly important role and
Speaker 4: it's probably affecting a lot of these other factors, like
Speaker 4: how important the hunt, Like the hunting pressure on your
Speaker 4: property is strongly dependent on how many gabblers you're producing
Speaker 4: on your property, right, So if you can increase that substantially,
Speaker 4: and then it reduces the need for you to worry
Speaker 4: about the hunting pressure.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So you know, I think that's really where the rubber
Speaker 4: meets the road. We need to figure out ways. Another
Speaker 4: thing that is really commonly practiced is people trapped, and
Speaker 4: that I'm not discouraging people from doing that. I think
Speaker 4: it's a lot of fun. I think it's a great
Speaker 4: way to get people involved in things. But you know,
Speaker 4: the fact of the matter is the habitat should probably
Speaker 4: come first. And then if you want to also trap,
Speaker 4: that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. If you're doing
Speaker 4: that within your legal right, then you go have fun.
Speaker 4: But you know, the predator issue is probably linked to
Speaker 4: habitat first, and I think you know that's the way
Speaker 4: to think about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Marcus, if you were if you were some
Speaker 2: how elevated from your position at the University of Florida
Speaker 2: to instead become the turkeys are of the United States
Speaker 2: of America. You were granted, you were granted full access,
Speaker 2: full access to the resources you would need and the
Speaker 2: regulatory powers you might want or need if you had
Speaker 2: the magic wand.
Speaker 3: What would you.
Speaker 2: What would you do with that power over the next
Speaker 2: ten years to right the ship when it comes to turkeys.
Speaker 2: I think we can all make some assumptions based on
Speaker 2: what you've been talking about here, But walk me through
Speaker 2: the biggest thing you would do when it comes to habitat,
Speaker 2: the biggest thing you would do when it comes to
Speaker 2: hunting or regulation, And if there's anything else in addition
Speaker 2: to those two categories, what would that be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, that's a tough one to answer. I think
Speaker 4: we want. One thing that we have to do is
Speaker 4: we have to invest and this is gonna seem like
Speaker 4: a shameless self promotion or something that we have to
Speaker 4: invest in research because it research is at an objective
Speaker 4: attempt to try to gain the information we need to
Speaker 4: make this decision.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I think that's one thing we have to focus on.
Speaker 4: And you know, when I'm paying with a broad stroke
Speaker 4: when I talk about habitat, there are probably some listeners
Speaker 4: out there that have been, you know, killing themselves on
Speaker 4: their property to improve habitat, and they may have exceptional
Speaker 4: habitat that isn't what is on the landscape. But you know,
Speaker 4: there are landowners that are already doing all this stuff.
Speaker 4: Like I've been on properties where I don't know what
Speaker 4: else they can do. You know, I think that's an
Speaker 4: important thing for you to consider. But trying to find
Speaker 4: ways to get that to scale up so that it
Speaker 4: is the the norm on the landscape instead of an
Speaker 4: oddity is what we you know, what we really need
Speaker 4: to get to. And I don't know, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: if I'm in that situation, yours our situation, if that
Speaker 4: needs to be some sort of incentive or penalty, I
Speaker 4: don't think that's the way to do it. We don't
Speaker 4: respond well to that that type of but you know,
Speaker 4: we we have responded well to incentive based programs to
Speaker 4: get land owners to take actions that might otherwise not
Speaker 4: be in their their self interest, right like retiring some
Speaker 4: of the agricultural land so that it can better filter
Speaker 4: nutrients from getting into waterways. You know, we we we
Speaker 4: incentivize things like that. So maybe some type of program
Speaker 4: that incentivize people to create, you know, better nesting and
Speaker 4: brooding cover could be a way to circumvent that. I
Speaker 4: know that the research is necessary. Having some sort of
Speaker 4: of modifier of behavior is probably a necessary point. And
Speaker 4: then the other part is awareness, you know, trying to
Speaker 4: focus programming to reach people so that they're aware of
Speaker 4: the issue and they're aware of how to they can
Speaker 4: help with the issue. I think that's an important part
Speaker 4: of the the the puzzle there. So you know, I
Speaker 4: don't know exactly, I'd have to probably plan a little
Speaker 4: better than that's fair up here, but you know, I
Speaker 4: think those three elements would be pretty critical to trying
Speaker 4: to write the ship, so something, Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, Marcus, I should have I
Speaker 2: should have set the stage back at the beginning of
Speaker 2: our conversation with this question. But I'll ask it now
Speaker 2: because late's better than never, Okay. I know you talked
Speaker 2: earlier that we're seeing anywhere from maybe ten percent to
Speaker 2: twenty five percent declines across parts of the United States
Speaker 2: when it comes to Turkey populations, Like, how how serious
Speaker 2: are those numbers? When you hear those numbers to you,
Speaker 2: is that like a five alarm, fire drill, like this
Speaker 2: is crisis mode or when you when we hear those numbers,
Speaker 2: is that like, well, yeah, this is concerning, but you know,
Speaker 2: populations fluctuate, these things happen. You know, this is something
Speaker 2: we need to be doing more research on. But let's
Speaker 2: not freak out, Like how how concerned should we be?
Speaker 4: Is this?
Speaker 2: You know, I guess on a scale of one to ten,
Speaker 2: ten being my hair's on fire, we should be really
Speaker 2: really worried about what's going on on a one to
Speaker 2: ten scale, what's your concern level?
Speaker 4: Uh, that's a great question. I have fluctuated on this.
Speaker 4: I think that we have calls for concern. We need
Speaker 4: to be aware. It has increased a awareness we're a
Speaker 4: part passionate group of people that want to do what
Speaker 4: they need to do to help. They're really they're willing
Speaker 4: to to take some loss, whether that be an opportunity
Speaker 4: or if they need to put more into practices or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I think that's great. The it's also initiated a lot
Speaker 4: of research which is really going to tell us the
Speaker 4: answer to your question, I think is how concerned do
Speaker 4: we need to be if it, you know, if it
Speaker 4: shakes out that this is a habitat issue that could
Speaker 4: be an issue because it's hard to change at scale. Right,
Speaker 4: we know how to do it, we don't know how
Speaker 4: to get it done, I think is the problem. And
Speaker 4: I'm more concerned if that's the issue, because it's so
Speaker 4: hard to deal with at scale.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: So, you know, I'm probably in the six or seven range,
Speaker 4: I guess, because I think there's reason more reason than
Speaker 4: not to be concerned. But I also don't. I think
Speaker 4: we are seeing the things happen, like investment in research
Speaker 4: and outreach that we need, uh you know, to to
Speaker 4: figure out what's going on and figure out a way
Speaker 4: to fix it. And we've already demonstrated in many places
Speaker 4: that the community is willing to change seasons if they
Speaker 4: if that's what it takes, or they are willing to
Speaker 4: aggressively start managing habitat. We're seeing that in some places,
Speaker 4: you know, people care about the resource and that that
Speaker 4: you know, That's why I'm not more concerned. I know
Speaker 4: that we have a group of people that we're ready
Speaker 4: to get this done. We just need to know what
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: So, Yeah, highly incentivized community, So that is that is
Speaker 2: a good thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I get it. I mean, I'm I am
Speaker 4: sitting here because of a turkey gobble. When I was
Speaker 4: a little kid. It was an experience with my dad
Speaker 4: hunting turkeys that set me on this path. So you know,
Speaker 4: think about that when you're taking your kid, like you know,
Speaker 4: it has made me dedicate my life to conserving this
Speaker 4: resource so that other people can have that opportunity.
Speaker 2: So so true, so important to remember that and keep.
Speaker 3: That in mind.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I can't beat that. Yeah, So, Marcus, uh,
Speaker 2: this has been a I think for a lot of folks,
Speaker 2: a really helpful introduction to where things stand today with
Speaker 2: their turkeys.
Speaker 3: For anyone who's been happily.
Speaker 2: Hunting them for years but maybe hasn't been as tapped
Speaker 2: into the news or the science of things, this is
Speaker 2: a great primer. But I know there's gonna be people
Speaker 2: listening to this who want more, who are interested in
Speaker 2: diving deeper, and you've got You've got the thing for
Speaker 2: people if they want that. Can you fill our listeners
Speaker 2: in on how they can connect with you and also
Speaker 2: get some more turkey know how from your podcast anywhere else?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Sure, Yeah, I appreciate that. Mark. So I'm a
Speaker 4: co host of the Wild Turkey Science podcast, and it's
Speaker 4: really that I mean it. It formed because there's concern
Speaker 4: about the species. We don't know what to do exactly,
Speaker 4: and it might vary based on where you're at. And
Speaker 4: there's all this research going on and a lot of
Speaker 4: people I'm guessing that are listening might not even know
Speaker 4: that there's active research going on in their own state.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The point of that podcast was not only to lay
Speaker 4: out what issues there are based on the published literature,
Speaker 4: but also connect people in near real time to the
Speaker 4: work going on in their state. We interview people from
Speaker 4: all over the US, a lot of researchers and wildlife
Speaker 4: biologists that are all focused on turkeys, and we have
Speaker 4: various topics. In fact, if you're interested in in learning
Speaker 4: more like I can't cover everything in an hour, right,
Speaker 4: but if you want some intense information on what you
Speaker 4: can do on your property to improve habitat or various
Speaker 4: other things, we have episodes episode twenty nine and thirty
Speaker 4: on Wild Turkey Science. We talk about how to manage
Speaker 4: fields for brooding cover. It's probably the best resource out
Speaker 4: there and we had the best person in the business
Speaker 4: on the show to talk about it. And it's about
Speaker 4: the you know, it will teach you how to make
Speaker 4: brooding cover fields. So we also have a YouTube channel.
Speaker 4: We put a lot of videos like the one you
Speaker 4: mentioned where we you know, if you don't know what
Speaker 4: nesting cover looks like, we have a video that will
Speaker 4: show you what every hen was nesting in and what
Speaker 4: it looked like and whether or not she was successful.
Speaker 4: So you know, there are resources through a YouTube channel
Speaker 4: at ufder Lab the I also have an Instagram account
Speaker 4: that I'm very active on it, and I share all
Speaker 4: kinds of of how to type information and science that's
Speaker 4: going on, especially on turkeys. Occasionally I share something about deer,
Speaker 4: but I focus a lot on turkeys. That's doctor disturbance.
Speaker 4: So i'd encourage you if you're if you're really interested
Speaker 4: in turkeys and you want to know how to manage them,
Speaker 4: or you want to understand the problem or what's going
Speaker 4: on in your state, you know, to tap into those
Speaker 4: resources because that's what we're looking for, is just to make
Speaker 4: it available to you. All.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't I can't recommend those enough.
Speaker 2: I've been very impressed with the podcast and what you're
Speaker 2: sharing there in the YouTube channel as well. I've spent
Speaker 2: a pretty decent amount of time checking that stuff out,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot so anyone, anyone who wants to
Speaker 2: dive in further, I have to second everything you said, Marcus.
Speaker 3: There's a wealth of information there for folks. So yeah,
Speaker 3: well that all said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just really appreciate you taking the time here
Speaker 2: on a Friday afternoon to regale me with our situation
Speaker 2: and to help I think, point us all in the
Speaker 2: direction where we can learn more and be a part
Speaker 2: of the solution.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, thanks for having me. I appreciate everybody out.
Speaker 2: There, all right, thank you for tuning in, Appreciate you
Speaker 2: being here with us. Make sure you study up more
Speaker 2: on what Marcus is sharing over at the Wild Turkey Podcast.
Speaker 3: He has much much more to share. I've genuinely enjoyed.
Speaker 2: What I've learned from him, and when it comes to turkeys,
Speaker 2: I think we all just need to stay up to
Speaker 2: date on what's happening, continue to follow the research, and
Speaker 2: continue to find ways that we can make sure that
Speaker 2: we do the right things to keep turkeys around in
Speaker 2: the long term.
Speaker 3: So thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2: Until next time, Stay wired, Talk