Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcasting in you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: fog bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Get everyone today. We're joined by most
Speaker 1: prominently Becky Humphreys from National Wild Turkey Federation, who's been
Speaker 1: on before. N w TF. Um, we're talking to you
Speaker 1: a whole bunch. Before we do that, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: to our very own Joe Fairto. That's all. Well, I know, Joe,
Speaker 1: you were Italian. I know, but a lot of that's
Speaker 1: been lost, a lot of my Italian this has drifted
Speaker 1: fair Nado. Sure, I couldn't find your phone number my phone,
Speaker 1: but this is your first time you've ever been on this,
Speaker 1: first time you've ever stepped on, and you only here
Speaker 1: for a minute. The trial run, we did the reason
Speaker 1: Joe is here. Um, we did a if you write
Speaker 1: and if you write an email into us, Joe will
Speaker 1: likely reply or at least knows what's going on. Joe
Speaker 1: was the gate Joe's the gatekeeper. Uh. We recently did
Speaker 1: the thing where we were raising money. We we had
Speaker 1: we had my former fish shooting bow right and we
Speaker 1: told people, Hey, whoever promises to to whoever promises to
Speaker 1: send the highest amount of money to t r CP
Speaker 1: gets the fish shooting bow and Joe tell him what happened,
Speaker 1: some of the challenges we faced and how we handled him. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we had a lot of people writing in
Speaker 1: about it. Um my single not saying I'm not okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'm engaged. Yeah, he's heading out in the
Speaker 1: opposite I was gonna putting a little plug for you know,
Speaker 1: I'm good man. Okay, great, you can talk up that
Speaker 1: fair Tono guy. Go on. But yeah, So, I mean
Speaker 1: we had a lot of people right in, lots of
Speaker 1: good donation offers. Probably the biggest struggle is people donating
Speaker 1: the money before they received the bow, like a preemptive
Speaker 1: emptive donation, thinking that they were going to get in anyway,
Speaker 1: which I mean is awesome, but on on this next
Speaker 1: giveaway and make sure that you don't donate until until
Speaker 1: you realize that you're the one getting the bow. So
Speaker 1: if you want, you could certainly donate, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to, it's always no. And I think
Speaker 1: what they were trying to do was I don't think
Speaker 1: they thought they had got the bow. I think they're like, look,
Speaker 1: how serious I am here? It already is. But then
Speaker 1: we got another strange offer, another strange offer. It's twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars a month for the next fifty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was thirty five, to live till eighty five. He said,
Speaker 1: he's not planning to die until he was eighty five
Speaker 1: years old. Credit card's gonna keep the same credit card
Speaker 1: number for fifty years and then just donate a month
Speaker 1: for the next fifty years. And we spent a long
Speaker 1: time talking about that offer. Yeah, how did we fall
Speaker 1: in the end? Um, we fell on the U. Probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen, probably wouldn't be continuous throughout that fifty years.
Speaker 1: So we decided to do a lump sum right up front.
Speaker 1: Nothing to get. Nothing against that fellow. Nothing agains. Just
Speaker 1: a complicated process, very complicated legacy partner program which here
Speaker 1: at Mediator, and we're not really set up to facilitate. Yea,
Speaker 1: not really And tell them, um what that bow was,
Speaker 1: not the one in your hand, not the new give boy,
Speaker 1: the old fishbow, the oneida osprey. Yeah, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good fish left And here's the big thing. Left handed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: left handed, because you're you're a left and left handed osprey.
Speaker 1: Now explain the new bow. And this this is you
Speaker 1: have to because Becky's here, So honor Becky being here.
Speaker 1: You this bow. Whoever pledges to give the high US
Speaker 1: amount to n w TF gets the bow. Explain the
Speaker 1: boat because this is full. This is a ready to
Speaker 1: shoot bow, always left the quiverful world traveling the world
Speaker 1: travel bow. You could tell by the string needs a
Speaker 1: new string. It's we might actually cut that string before
Speaker 1: we send it to make sure you put a new
Speaker 1: string on it, so be prepared to have it arrived
Speaker 1: put no string on it. What do you think? What
Speaker 1: do you think? Do you think it's the real liability
Speaker 1: like that? No, I don't think it's gonna break. It
Speaker 1: just needs to be waxed. Okay, we're not cutting a string.
Speaker 1: This is a ready to shoot bow. And Joe was
Speaker 1: gonna walk you through the accessory package. Can I tell
Speaker 1: him what the bow is first? However you want to
Speaker 1: do it? Yeah, So he's trying to tell Joe. He
Speaker 1: was gonna be like Van of White, but Joe doesn't
Speaker 1: know who Van of White is. The age is Joe,
Speaker 1: I'm young, I'm sorry, but it's a white carbon spider
Speaker 1: left handed obviously, Um, it's got the spot hug. I
Speaker 1: believe it's called the hunter UM five pin side on
Speaker 1: it with the microadjust it is. It's a good site. Um.
Speaker 1: I've had it on my bows for many many years.
Speaker 1: Um has the hoit ultra rest so it's just like
Speaker 1: the q A D ultra rest drop away. Joel is
Speaker 1: good at this, like knows the product names. He shoots
Speaker 1: a bowl. Yeah, I'd be like, it's gotta you know,
Speaker 1: uh flippy things, this thing that you lift up with
Speaker 1: your stay. No, it's a it's a it's a great
Speaker 1: rest uh in good condition. So you did a good
Speaker 1: job taking care of it. Um. Then it has the
Speaker 1: strings on it and yeah, like a little pulley things
Speaker 1: on there, little thing. Yeah, you know it's good. It's
Speaker 1: a sixty to seventy pound pound boll. Looks like it's
Speaker 1: not maxed out right now what you're pulling like sixty
Speaker 1: five Steve, Oh that's actually you know. Um. Then it
Speaker 1: has a two piece white quiver, the one that attaches
Speaker 1: straight to the bow. So it's not a removable quiver,
Speaker 1: but it's a great bow. It's an awesome GiB away
Speaker 1: And check this out when our new episodes uh roll
Speaker 1: up on Netflix. You'll see that bow used. That boat
Speaker 1: makes an appearance of quite a few. I was using
Speaker 1: that bowl and we did our like Nevada hunt with
Speaker 1: Roguan use that bowl and killed a real whopper of elk.
Speaker 1: And last year, which will be on a thing, use
Speaker 1: that bow down and I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: made it into the cut, but it was down in Guyana.
Speaker 1: Definitely the curse out. Yeah, hunting birds down in South America.
Speaker 1: Another episode where I miss um at point blank range,
Speaker 1: I miss the Sika deer or that bow. Not the
Speaker 1: bow's fault any mistakes you see, it would be like,
Speaker 1: not that bow's faulty. You know, you know what should
Speaker 1: you tell him? The draw links u UM. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: since you're a twenty nine in a link that this
Speaker 1: has said at twenty nine, and if it's not you,
Speaker 1: that's probably I think it. To be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I think so. Alright, So here's what you do. Tell
Speaker 1: them how to do it, Tell him how to do
Speaker 1: it that makes your life easier, and tell him what
Speaker 1: how long you're willing to field offers. So this podcast
Speaker 1: will drop on the Monday, and we'll leave that open
Speaker 1: for two days. Will decide Wednesday. I'll reach out to
Speaker 1: the person of the highest donation on Wednesday, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's how you'll get the bill one time donation, that
Speaker 1: one time donation. Don't try and finance your donations. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna do that. We're not gonna set up the
Speaker 1: legacy partnership with you. So do they send you like
Speaker 1: a like a receipt or they just sit send an
Speaker 1: email that says, hey, I'm going to pledge this much documentation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So once I reach out to them, I'll have them
Speaker 1: go forward and send the receipt back in so with
Speaker 1: confirmation that they don't make the money. They just send
Speaker 1: an email saying I'm planning on pledging this amount exactly.
Speaker 1: You have Becky here, have one of her people verify
Speaker 1: that they that it came through. Yeah, we want to
Speaker 1: make sure it's verified because we don't want to just
Speaker 1: send Steve's world traveling bow to somebody didn't donate the money.
Speaker 1: White carbon Spider, what do you I think We'll get okay?
Speaker 1: Going and went for quite a bit above retail. Quite
Speaker 1: a bit is the collector's item. This is a collector's item.
Speaker 1: It's a world traveling Carbon Spider. We're getting real QBC
Speaker 1: over here that he's been in the hands of Steve
Speaker 1: and Ronella. Yeah right, good, Yeah, I'm good, we got it.
Speaker 1: We gotta get a picture, oh with you with that bow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of pictures. Feel we'll get We'll
Speaker 1: get that all right, sounds dead, Ladies and gentlemen. Joe Ferronado,
Speaker 1: he said it right, Thanks Joe, and thank you. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Now here comes strapping on Joe's still warm headset is
Speaker 1: Spencer new heart. Okay, back in. We got a lot
Speaker 1: of stuffing on top. But I gotta tell you about
Speaker 1: something first. If you don't know all, that's fine, Okay.
Speaker 1: What is more diagnostic on a turkey in terms of
Speaker 1: age and all the time about is like Jake not Jake,
Speaker 1: so a one year old or older than what am
Speaker 1: I trying to say? Yeah? What is more diagnostic the
Speaker 1: tail fan in the length of the feathers relative to
Speaker 1: one another, or the spur. Well, we usually use the
Speaker 1: tail fan just because we know when they do replacement
Speaker 1: of those tail feathers. That's the most really, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the one that everybody uses to determine between the
Speaker 1: Jake and the adult Tom in terms of the tail fan.
Speaker 1: And it's the easiest to see at a distance too.
Speaker 1: I mean those those spurs and various you know, various
Speaker 1: um types of turkeys have different spur link too, so
Speaker 1: you've got to compare it to the other the other
Speaker 1: birds here in terms of that. So, but I told
Speaker 1: you that we shot a long beard. Okay, it's a
Speaker 1: Miriams like a seven eight inch beard on it, full
Speaker 1: tail fan, gobbling his space off. Who had one kind
Speaker 1: of spur and then one no spur. And then I
Speaker 1: says to my brother, Wow, that's where he goes. Not here,
Speaker 1: it's not because I've seen I got another one just
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, did you ever hear of that? Well,
Speaker 1: I've heard of it. Where you have anomalies like that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting you get gene pool in certain
Speaker 1: areas where you get some anomalies. Um last year I
Speaker 1: was in um Oklahoma, I guess it was, and the
Speaker 1: when the guy was hunting with it told me he
Speaker 1: had seen a bearded hen. And he saw this bearded
Speaker 1: hen that was actually um strutting. And then I wound
Speaker 1: up going out that day and we had a bearded hen.
Speaker 1: It was in full strut, beaten up on decoy for hours.
Speaker 1: That's so you get some anomalies that get in the
Speaker 1: gene pool where you know, you don't have spur development
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, and they persist. Now, obviously that bird
Speaker 1: is not in a situation where they're needing their spurs
Speaker 1: to fight an awful lot because that bird doesn't have them.
Speaker 1: He's going to be at a hindrance. But I presume
Speaker 1: it was an area where there wasn't probably a great
Speaker 1: density of turkeys. No, it's like a little island ecosystem, yep,
Speaker 1: So he could not literally an island, but but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: an island of habitat where they're they're around. So he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't. You don't even really appreciate how island eed.
Speaker 1: This island habitat is nuttill you look at satellite imagery
Speaker 1: and you're like, wow, these turkeys are just then they
Speaker 1: had to satellite in there, they had to air drop
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, there's just they probably don't run into
Speaker 1: turkeys that they haven't but they don't know. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they have their pecking order already established. They know what
Speaker 1: they That bird doesn't he have to fight all the
Speaker 1: time to maintain position in the in the flock or
Speaker 1: accepts it. That's the other thing. Um, I've heard that
Speaker 1: spur length can be dictated by the landscape they live on.
Speaker 1: So like a bird that lives on the mountains where
Speaker 1: there's very rocky soil or like real gravelly substrate, their
Speaker 1: spurs get worn down, so they're real short and nobody
Speaker 1: where's like a bird down south in the marsh, nothing
Speaker 1: wears on their spurs, so they grow longer and anything
Speaker 1: to that. I'd tell people that all the time too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there could be I mean, there could be
Speaker 1: differences like that. You see it between the various um,
Speaker 1: you know, subspecies of birds that they have various links
Speaker 1: of spurs, and down in Florida, those birds, those osciolas
Speaker 1: are real limb hangers. They tend to have really nice
Speaker 1: long spurs, and so that would go along with your theory.
Speaker 1: But they're also pretty sandy soils down there, so which
Speaker 1: is you know, if anybody has dog kind of knows
Speaker 1: if you're in sandy soils, you tend to that wears
Speaker 1: down anything like that in terms of nails or the
Speaker 1: rest of it. So you know, you know, so you
Speaker 1: think it might be more to do with the it
Speaker 1: might be more to do with the bird. The bird,
Speaker 1: the food that they're getting, you know that, you know,
Speaker 1: the keratin development on that for the subspecies of it,
Speaker 1: and then the age. Yeah. Man, I always tell people
Speaker 1: that I'm like reason, he's not a big limb hanger,
Speaker 1: as you say, can you explain what lim hangers? Lim hangers?
Speaker 1: Birds will hang by his up in a limb by
Speaker 1: his spurs because his spurs are so long? And uh,
Speaker 1: how many how much do you I know you work
Speaker 1: in turkeys? How much you actually hunt turkeys? Do you
Speaker 1: get the hunt a fair bit? Are you just too
Speaker 1: busy all the time? Some years I hunt more than others.
Speaker 1: This is one of those years where I've done less, Honey.
Speaker 1: I've only hunted South Carolina and now hunt a little
Speaker 1: bit in Michigan while I'm up there. But other years
Speaker 1: I try and get around. You know, we were really fortunate.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of great hunts. We have governor
Speaker 1: hunt some lieutenant government hunts around the country, and try
Speaker 1: and get out there with those folks, try and get
Speaker 1: some of our mentored hunters in. I always try and
Speaker 1: take out somebody hasn't hunted before. As one of the
Speaker 1: things that I do each season because I mean that's
Speaker 1: what you know. It gives you juice in this business.
Speaker 1: And and it's as much fun as as taking a bird,
Speaker 1: or even more fun taking your bird yourself. So some
Speaker 1: more funky, So the right person, it's more fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it varies from year to year. Sometimes I schedule
Speaker 1: myself for more hunts. This year I laid back on it.
Speaker 1: I just moved, I'm heaving into a remodel project, and
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of stuff going on at work.
Speaker 1: So with all that, I didn't schedule myself for as
Speaker 1: much hunt which gets me real itchy this time of
Speaker 1: year because we're fast approaching. I mean the seasons have
Speaker 1: ended in many of the southern state South Carolina where
Speaker 1: the offices is closed now that season ended, Michigan still
Speaker 1: going through the end of May, so I can capture
Speaker 1: some of that layout for me. Um layoff from me,
Speaker 1: just kind of give me the landscape of NWTF. You've
Speaker 1: done it before, we just do it again, kind of
Speaker 1: like mission statement, where you're at with membership all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Well, the National Wild Turkey Federation is, uh,
Speaker 1: we're forty six going, I'm forty seven years old. It
Speaker 1: was it was set up to restore the wild Turkey. UM.
Speaker 1: Tom Rogers, the original founder of it, had a vision
Speaker 1: that we could restore the wild turkey to North America,
Speaker 1: and we're an organization that came together and did that.
Speaker 1: In the early days, we really were a group that
Speaker 1: did fundraising to help states UM with trapping efforts. We
Speaker 1: taught the technology of a lot of the trapping to
Speaker 1: the state agencies, and then we helped broker the deals
Speaker 1: so you could trade wildlife between states, because you can
Speaker 1: get yourself in trouble with the Lacey Act if you
Speaker 1: put dollar figures on it, and that's why that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I realize that that's why people did swaps. Yep, that's
Speaker 1: because the Lacey Act. You know, when we passed a
Speaker 1: Lacey Act in this country to prohibit interstate movement and
Speaker 1: trade in birds or wildlife in particular, it was a
Speaker 1: great thing. But state agencies then if they're trying to
Speaker 1: swap out wild turkeys, those have they also have value
Speaker 1: to the residents of that state, and so giving away
Speaker 1: their precious wild birds usually they want to and then
Speaker 1: they want to explain to their residents that we're getting
Speaker 1: something in return for that so I mean we swapped
Speaker 1: turkeys for otters, and turkeys for elk, and turkeys for
Speaker 1: rough grouse, and there were all kinds of deals around
Speaker 1: the country. The rough exchange right in your mind. I
Speaker 1: don't even know now, you know, at one time, I
Speaker 1: was it always seemed a little I mean, were people
Speaker 1: real literal about value or was it kind of like
Speaker 1: almost like a gesture. It was a gesture, But in
Speaker 1: most situations, that's when a state really wanted to re
Speaker 1: establish something else. So for instance, you know, when we
Speaker 1: were getting turkeys, we were trapping rough grouse and in
Speaker 1: parts of Michigan around grass at Saginaw, and we ran
Speaker 1: grouse trapping operation all all summer long to try and
Speaker 1: get those birds, to get to fulfill the requirements so
Speaker 1: we could get birds turkeys back in that winter. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were trapping grouse in order to swap them out
Speaker 1: so we could get turkeys back. Who who was after grouse?
Speaker 1: I think it was Iowa at that particular time that
Speaker 1: we were getting our turkeys from, But I don't know
Speaker 1: who they were swapping with in order to get the grouse.
Speaker 1: So somebody in the Midwest. I do remember that state's
Speaker 1: ever trade turkeys for turkeys, like one state wants Easterns
Speaker 1: and the other state wants Miriam's. They have in the West,
Speaker 1: but I'm not aware of situations where they swapped various
Speaker 1: you know, subspecies between that, but I'm sure they probably
Speaker 1: have where the menu's gotta be real interesting when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with the state like Texas, Zebras, anything at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you keep your you keep your exotics to yourself,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Come on the draft man turies
Speaker 1: for a draft. Yeah, but it was wild in terms
Speaker 1: of some of the swaps that went on. But anyhow,
Speaker 1: from there, the National Wild Turkey Federation is one of
Speaker 1: those organizations that actually achieved it some mission. We worked
Speaker 1: with the state agencies and restored wild turkeys to to
Speaker 1: it's historic range and beyond. I mean, we have turkeys
Speaker 1: and places that that really weren't historic at the time.
Speaker 1: The you know, settlers, European settlers came over here and
Speaker 1: that's we've got habitat forum and they're doing well in
Speaker 1: some of those areas now and that's great and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of social enthusiasm for um. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to I was just gonna ask if you
Speaker 1: ever got any pushback from that where people say, well,
Speaker 1: you know they weren't here. Yeah, there's a far amount
Speaker 1: of that in California. Umah, there were I mean, we
Speaker 1: we wound up doing studies there. There were concerns with
Speaker 1: the turkeys would um negatively impact the vineyards that they
Speaker 1: weren't historic to that area. And you know, the question
Speaker 1: is how far do you go back on at there
Speaker 1: is historic evidence a wild turkeys and California and so
Speaker 1: as birds expanded into those areas, and those were restored efforts,
Speaker 1: and we were able to go in and show that turkeys,
Speaker 1: you know at the time that they're feeding in vineyards
Speaker 1: where you've got a lot of um, great maturity and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it. They're really after more high
Speaker 1: protein than they are. They might be incidental takers of
Speaker 1: of grapes and the rest of it, but usually a
Speaker 1: lot of damages coming from other species out there. You
Speaker 1: got raccoons that are going out there and cleaning them
Speaker 1: out and the rest of it. But the turkeys are
Speaker 1: very visible because they're seeing more commonly during the daylight hours,
Speaker 1: and people see them and they assume they're causing damage.
Speaker 1: So I was reading about that same problem in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: when they first started seeing lots of numbers and the
Speaker 1: same thing. They're so visible he's seeing out on the fields,
Speaker 1: and the farmers were like, they're gonna eat us at
Speaker 1: a house at home, and they had to do a
Speaker 1: big study to prove that, well, no, actually it's like
Speaker 1: ten percent of their diet and they're usually just picking
Speaker 1: up the scraps that you've left behind anyway, right, are
Speaker 1: the insects. I mean, that's the other thing is beneficial
Speaker 1: where they're out there feeding heavily on insects in those
Speaker 1: in those fields. So the National Wild Turkey Federation really
Speaker 1: around year two thousand UM had completed most of those
Speaker 1: efforts to restore, and we moved into UM. We had
Speaker 1: Alreadys incorporated creating hunting heriage, maintaining the hunting herriage, and
Speaker 1: really trying to create that next generation of hunters so
Speaker 1: we can carry on the lifestyle and the appreciation of
Speaker 1: hunting and the use of of hunted animals in our
Speaker 1: food base. And then we added in habitat restoration because
Speaker 1: at that point we're starting, you know, in parts of
Speaker 1: this country we're seeing actual declines and turkey populations. Now
Speaker 1: that they've been restored, they're starting to taper back off,
Speaker 1: especially this southeastern United States, and you know what's going
Speaker 1: on with that. We're seeing large landscape level changes. I mean,
Speaker 1: we know we're losing a lot of mass crops in
Speaker 1: the Midwest. Um hickory trees went by the wayside, American
Speaker 1: chestnut has has gone and we've left it now. Oaks
Speaker 1: are starting to diminish in that Midwestern landscape, and those
Speaker 1: mass crops are practice in development well. And our forest
Speaker 1: are turning over to those those oak forests that appeared
Speaker 1: and grew up after logging and and um wood lot
Speaker 1: development and large forest tracks now are turning over to
Speaker 1: beach maple forests in many areas. And they don't have
Speaker 1: they don't have a mass crop. They don't provide the
Speaker 1: food that is readily available for a while of the
Speaker 1: wildlife species that we all love, I mean, dear turkey
Speaker 1: squirrel um are that hard mass is really really important
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife populations. What w did you say
Speaker 1: that deer had to do when they were in a
Speaker 1: lab lollypine and they had to pack a lunch and
Speaker 1: take it with them. And you've seen that in red
Speaker 1: pine stands in Michigan. I mean those pine forest are
Speaker 1: all needles on the floor. There isn't a forb that
Speaker 1: grows underneath there. There's not good un light, and they
Speaker 1: just there's not anything for them to eat. So it's um.
Speaker 1: I think that's what's happening. I think there's I think
Speaker 1: there's a whole range of things that are happening. To
Speaker 1: be honest with you, I think that's heard that Missouri
Speaker 1: had its worst turkey harvest than seventeen years. That could
Speaker 1: be like that could be like a you know, that
Speaker 1: could be weather too. It could be weather. It could
Speaker 1: be what weather was last year for brood production. Last
Speaker 1: year coming out of it had wicked They had a
Speaker 1: wicked snow storm, I know. And usually your year after
Speaker 1: really bad weather conditions, when you have you don't have
Speaker 1: the kind of nest success that you'd really like. Is
Speaker 1: where you really feel it the following year, so you
Speaker 1: feel that there's real We had a piece about this
Speaker 1: on the Meat eater dot com about turkey no you know,
Speaker 1: turkey populations dropping in a lot of areas, and then
Speaker 1: we got a lot of emails and people who are
Speaker 1: really upset, like not in my woods. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to find them. Yeah. Yeah, A lot of
Speaker 1: folks would be like, well, my bird feeder, there's like
Speaker 1: three of them around that be more. Well, they are opportunists,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt about it. But you do feel that
Speaker 1: there are like systemic There are some areas where, you know,
Speaker 1: South Carolina is one of them, that they have really
Speaker 1: been struggling. We are seeing a definite decline even though
Speaker 1: hunter numbers are staying, are up, are actually increasing in
Speaker 1: some cases, so interesting turkeys is increasing. Let me float
Speaker 1: an idea by you. Okay, a body of mind put
Speaker 1: this to me. He says, you know, what's really going
Speaker 1: on with turkeys. He says, we're killing them too early.
Speaker 1: I think in some cases we are. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: he's not a irrational guy. He's like people who say, like,
Speaker 1: get into mid May and they say the turkeys are
Speaker 1: all gobbled out. Because they're not gobbled out, they're dead. Well,
Speaker 1: when they shut up, I mean, that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: Most of the studies that take a look at what's
Speaker 1: happening to birds, they react to hunting pressure. It's like
Speaker 1: predator pressure. We are predators out there. They move. We
Speaker 1: did telemetry studies um here most recently, and it was
Speaker 1: fun to watch it on a screen. We showed it
Speaker 1: for our board couple of years ago. But you'd see
Speaker 1: a hunter walk into an area, you know, and and
Speaker 1: that bird would walk in further to that area, and
Speaker 1: the hunter would leave and that bird would walk back.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are they avoid they know we're there.
Speaker 1: Um they you know, even if you're a decent hunter,
Speaker 1: they know that you're coming into that and they shut up.
Speaker 1: We don't see as much gobbling activity and the rest
Speaker 1: of it, So it's a response just like other predators
Speaker 1: would be where they'll shut up more. And we've all
Speaker 1: seen that when birds, they'll do a gobble on the
Speaker 1: roost and then they when they land on the ground,
Speaker 1: they're done talking. They'll come in silent at that point. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know it it it. I think that in some cases, though,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of controversy right down in South
Speaker 1: Carolina about what should be the right starting date. That
Speaker 1: that state is a state that has temperature changes and
Speaker 1: climate change from the coastal area gets warmer sooner, they
Speaker 1: want to start hunting sooner. But the peak gobbling activity
Speaker 1: and the nest initiation is really about UM April ninth.
Speaker 1: That's most of the studies are most recent studies shows
Speaker 1: that the when nest initiation is is April ninth. Then
Speaker 1: they go in there in South Carolina and South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Now it varies in other parts of the contract. That
Speaker 1: point she's dropped her that's right. And if you're hunting,
Speaker 1: if you start your season before that time period, she's
Speaker 1: still in breeding cycle at that point. That's you know,
Speaker 1: that's just the peak. There's some that start earlier, there's
Speaker 1: some that start late, but that's kind of the peak
Speaker 1: that occurs with that population. So there's discussion down there
Speaker 1: that they by they move their season to start in
Speaker 1: the March, and you're probably disrupting those birds and not
Speaker 1: getting all the birds bread and you're not getting as
Speaker 1: much success on those nests because you are having that
Speaker 1: disruption early during that breeding cycle. Goal. So states are
Speaker 1: taking a look at that also. UM, it's been interesting
Speaker 1: to take a look at what we're doing with hunting
Speaker 1: seasons as we move forward, and we know that, UM,
Speaker 1: the timing of the season is really important. The amount
Speaker 1: of pressure on the birds is really important. And you
Speaker 1: know what happens is people want to have lots of opportunity.
Speaker 1: They want to have lots of days to hunt, and
Speaker 1: they think that by cutting back bag limits they can
Speaker 1: limit what the pressure is on that on that population.
Speaker 1: But really, in almost all your wildlife populations, the length
Speaker 1: of season the number of people that hunt are the
Speaker 1: two factors that have the biggest impact on the population harvest.
Speaker 1: In this article that Steve reference was called A New
Speaker 1: Silent Spring Where the Turkey's Um. The author was David Hart,
Speaker 1: and he touched on a number of different theories as
Speaker 1: to where the turkeys have gone, why the population have
Speaker 1: been falling the recent decade. One of the things that
Speaker 1: he kind of suggested but then dismissed was yes, besides
Speaker 1: that was disease, specifically West Nile UM. You kind of
Speaker 1: brought up how states have thought that that's what's decimated
Speaker 1: grouse populations. So maybe it's doing the same thing with turkeys,
Speaker 1: but there's just not enough information available. What are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on like West Niles and turkeys. Well, you know
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, John Fisher, and as ahead
Speaker 1: of the weld or he was. He just retired as
Speaker 1: head of the Wildlife Disease Cooperative at University of Georgia,
Speaker 1: and John and I shared a lot of the health
Speaker 1: committees for the Association Estate Agencies, and you know, everybody
Speaker 1: wants to look to disease. They especially as places where
Speaker 1: poultry farms, you know, spread manure from poultry houses and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it. Is there an opportunity that
Speaker 1: we're really spreading disease out there? And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that we can't or it won't happen, but um, and
Speaker 1: you never want to have birds feeding over um situations
Speaker 1: where they could be exposed to that where you have
Speaker 1: dead birds. But with avian influence and stuff, we just
Speaker 1: haven't seen the die off. I mean, we've done an
Speaker 1: awful lot of surveillance the States have with avian um
Speaker 1: influence and what their impacts. And we know there are
Speaker 1: indicator species there are far more susceptible to that particular disease.
Speaker 1: And when you're not seeing the indicator species go, we're
Speaker 1: not seeing it with with the turkeys. Are you saying that, Um,
Speaker 1: there are other species that are a better indicator of
Speaker 1: West Nile. Yeah, crows and yeah Corvitt, Yeah, cart really
Speaker 1: hard they and they're there are first ones when you
Speaker 1: have that disease show up, when you start seeing crow
Speaker 1: dios or raven dios, you've got a good indicator. You've
Speaker 1: got avian influenza out there. Oh not West Now Avian influenza.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So they're susceptible. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is because your body doesn't handle it well, because they're
Speaker 1: more likely to get stung by mosquitoes. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to that one. I don't know enough about it. So,
Speaker 1: but in West Nile virus, the same thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: these viruses have been going. We really expected with West
Speaker 1: Nile um that we would and corvitts are really susceptible
Speaker 1: West West Nile speci, these two. So that was where
Speaker 1: we first indicated it. But um we really expected that
Speaker 1: we would see major die offs as that started getting
Speaker 1: in the in the populations, and and we did in places.
Speaker 1: Um So, but we also look for high path avian influenza.
Speaker 1: That's one of the ones that found in waterfall and
Speaker 1: is really susceptible path high path, highly path energetic Aida
Speaker 1: avian influenza. There's always low path, low pathogetic avian influenza that'
Speaker 1: center waterfall populations. It's just endemic and we have it.
Speaker 1: But when you get in the high path energetic that's
Speaker 1: where you have it kills off major populations of it,
Speaker 1: and that's a real concern. So and there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's avian pox. There's a number of different diseases out there,
Speaker 1: um avian it can be spread through populations. So it's
Speaker 1: probably through touching close proximity. FEE sees that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not an insect born. What are those theory? There
Speaker 1: are theories is nothing's happened. Oh there's another theory, and
Speaker 1: I don't understand it's one. I mean I understand, like
Speaker 1: I get the concept, but I don't know how true
Speaker 1: it is. That there's just a natural like when you
Speaker 1: bring in it, when you reintroduce a species or introduce
Speaker 1: a species. There's a thing where they don't call it,
Speaker 1: like I know, founder effect is something entirely different. There's
Speaker 1: some name for it, almost like a bloom. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they go like and then exploiting some environment for
Speaker 1: the first time. There example, food predators aren't tuned into
Speaker 1: it yet and they have this like they bloom, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they bloom. They do really well. And there's a time
Speaker 1: leg before your predator species catch on to it. You know,
Speaker 1: you wind up having the disease issues that come along
Speaker 1: with it. The disease is part of this phenomenon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then at that point in time, the population trails
Speaker 1: off a little bit. And you see that historically in
Speaker 1: some cases, and we see it with exotic species, non
Speaker 1: native species that come in. I mean, all you gotta
Speaker 1: do is look at things like the Great Lake where
Speaker 1: you wind up having these zebra muscle populations that just
Speaker 1: were tremendous blooms. They were over all the intake pipes
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it, and and creates this,
Speaker 1: you know, fills this unfilled niche out there. Or more
Speaker 1: a greater concern is they replace native species because they're
Speaker 1: more competitive in that environment because they don't have predators
Speaker 1: or parasites that have adapted to them yet, and so
Speaker 1: they have a competitive edge out there. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some of that. I mean. The other theory is there's
Speaker 1: there's been lots of discussion about fire on the landscape
Speaker 1: um and and this is more a discussion in southeastern
Speaker 1: United States with the large the Forest Service has really
Speaker 1: worked to try and and be more active in their
Speaker 1: management get those fuel loads down, especially in those pine
Speaker 1: forests that are fire driven habitats, and we're used to
Speaker 1: have a lot of lightning strikes and wildfires that would
Speaker 1: move through and burn off the understory, the fuel load,
Speaker 1: and and help promote the grass those ground of those needles,
Speaker 1: that's right, would allow stuff to come up, that's right.
Speaker 1: And you those habitats were originally savannah left to their
Speaker 1: own where they're very open canopy, but you have trees
Speaker 1: and and fire moved through it. And then in the
Speaker 1: southern plains that's the pine savannahs you tend to get up.
Speaker 1: In the midwestern you get the oak savannahs, the same
Speaker 1: type of habitat, their fire driven habitats that had a
Speaker 1: lot of fire that moved through them on a regular
Speaker 1: basis before we got involved in the in the ecosystem
Speaker 1: of living there, and then we suppressed that fire. And
Speaker 1: what has happened then is you wind up having a
Speaker 1: lot of woody vegetation. Turkeys don't like to have really
Speaker 1: a lot of heavy cover that's woody right around them
Speaker 1: because they can't see. They they feel um unprotected in that.
Speaker 1: They much prefer to have good grass cover where they
Speaker 1: have greater visibility, but yet they have good nest protection.
Speaker 1: And then you wind up getting a lot more insect
Speaker 1: damnage or insect not damage, but insect availability for protein,
Speaker 1: food source and all the rest of us. When you
Speaker 1: have that sunshine that comes down to the forest floor,
Speaker 1: you think, yeah, I would imagine that fire could be
Speaker 1: bad for insects, but habitat wise it makes up for
Speaker 1: it makes up for it. Yeah, And there's you know,
Speaker 1: the insects live on those landscapes. When you when you
Speaker 1: um see those landscapes after their burn, quite often there's
Speaker 1: um a very large ant colonies that go in conjunction
Speaker 1: with it. Those sandy soils are very heavy mineral, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of top soil on them, and those
Speaker 1: ants are really important for breaking down what vegetative material
Speaker 1: are there and getting some organics and you know, um
Speaker 1: placement back in place. It will burn those ant colonies
Speaker 1: if you get too hot to fire. Normally it will
Speaker 1: pass through it. But if you get a really hot
Speaker 1: fire out and I've seen where it's will burn out
Speaker 1: the ant colonies also. But it comes back. Now it's
Speaker 1: not bad, it's it's it's part of what happens there.
Speaker 1: So by putting that fire back on the landscape, we're
Speaker 1: getting it overall back in better shape for turkeys because
Speaker 1: it's getting that open grassy component to the savannah back
Speaker 1: in place. But people see where birds might be nesting
Speaker 1: and and the nest gets burned during that time period,
Speaker 1: and they think we're losing lots of turkeys to those
Speaker 1: large scale fires that are prescribed fires, when in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of times they go back into renest. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the nest is even harmed. I mean there you'll see
Speaker 1: photographs of from researchers that they'll go back in. They'll
Speaker 1: take a photograph of the nest. You know, an egg
Speaker 1: will even be singed, but the nest will hatch, the
Speaker 1: hen picks up. It's the fire. Most true. She comes
Speaker 1: back right afterwards. And if you are in those landscapes,
Speaker 1: right after the burn, turkeys moved back in when it's
Speaker 1: still all black. I saw you guys that a study
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, I saw you had turkeys to tracking
Speaker 1: devices and looked at how they respond to fire, and
Speaker 1: they respond very favorably. So short term losses long term
Speaker 1: gain on that landscape. I can device look like on
Speaker 1: a turkey. It's a little a little transmitter. It goes
Speaker 1: on the back. There's two you can do it through
Speaker 1: a radio signal or a little larger one will be
Speaker 1: a satellite signal. So now we have the ability to
Speaker 1: track them through satellite. And that's like embedded in the
Speaker 1: turkey glue. Yeah, yeah, it's it goes right on the
Speaker 1: back between the shoulders is where it goes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we we put it under the skin. Originally with some
Speaker 1: of these devices, they used to have harnesses that fit
Speaker 1: on them. Now we've gotten to the point where we
Speaker 1: embed it right in there, and it's nice. You can
Speaker 1: you can actually um embed it, but it actually you
Speaker 1: can crazy glue it right on the on the skin,
Speaker 1: pull some a few of the feathers out, crazy glue
Speaker 1: it right on the skin, and it's there. It stays there.
Speaker 1: That area that I was in in Tennessee was kind
Speaker 1: of has a lot of these components that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Where you know, we were on one side of the county.
Speaker 1: There's birds everywhere on really some of the same property
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes away. Like, yeah, this used to be
Speaker 1: exactly like the stuff that we were hunting where there
Speaker 1: were tons of birds. In the last year, no birds,
Speaker 1: and they had captured a handful of birds out on
Speaker 1: um well all reads property out there and put those
Speaker 1: tracking devices on them to try to get a better
Speaker 1: understanding what's happening. But went from hundreds of birds to
Speaker 1: uh when we went out there, we saw saw one
Speaker 1: lone tom out cruising around. But they think they moved
Speaker 1: or died. He thinks they died. Yeah, And it's the
Speaker 1: same deal out here in eastern Montana that I was
Speaker 1: telling you about, like the you know, the person doing
Speaker 1: the observation, the rancher. It's like the only thing I
Speaker 1: can think of as a disease because there were so
Speaker 1: many birds and then no birds. Well yeah, we've seen
Speaker 1: that out here as well. Just they're just there and
Speaker 1: it's like tons of them, and then all of sud
Speaker 1: they're not there and it takes some years to come back. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it. When you lose a population, when you get
Speaker 1: down to a critical mass where you don't have a
Speaker 1: good breeding population, when you lose a couple of production cycles,
Speaker 1: it takes a long time for those birds to come
Speaker 1: back in and fill it. But you know, sometimes these
Speaker 1: landscape changes that happened, we don't even recognize them. Um,
Speaker 1: give you a perfect example where I live in Michigan.
Speaker 1: We had we have had turkeys for years. We hunted
Speaker 1: our back hillside. It was a really nice oak mixed
Speaker 1: hardwood stand with some really old oak mass trees that
Speaker 1: are roost trees on it and stuff. And you know,
Speaker 1: I I go out there every year, I've seen less turkeys.
Speaker 1: There's more development in the area, more homes. I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: it's just disturbance. My son comes home, who spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time out back there, and he hadn't been
Speaker 1: back in three years, and he said, you know, Becky,
Speaker 1: we're losing our oak. This is moving over to beach
Speaker 1: beach maple. And you know, it wasn't until Joel said
Speaker 1: that to me that I started really looking around and thinking,
Speaker 1: should have been on this property for thirty years. I
Speaker 1: don't see the kind of maturity changes because every year
Speaker 1: I'm out there during that time period, and and you
Speaker 1: don't see that continual maturity and the changeover and how
Speaker 1: some of the dominant trees are starting to die out
Speaker 1: and become you know, sub dominant in that that forest stand.
Speaker 1: So what's a solution for that? If you cut it?
Speaker 1: Not everything I mean to go in into a shelter,
Speaker 1: would cut and bring up some of those I should
Speaker 1: cut out. Some of those big older oak trees are
Speaker 1: starting to die out because they're starting to die and
Speaker 1: there's some younger oaks and I need to release those
Speaker 1: on the hillside. It's pretty steep hillside. It's not that
Speaker 1: much acreage. It's hard to get in somebody to cut it.
Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of small cutters anymore, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of these timber markets. So
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get somebody in there to do it.
Speaker 1: The chainsaw. I'm good with chainsaw, our buddy dog. He
Speaker 1: manages a family farm. He works his ass off to
Speaker 1: try to keep oaks. Yeah, it's yeah, because the thing
Speaker 1: is too is like there's so many more deer now
Speaker 1: where he is, and so they have the way they
Speaker 1: like to feed and um, and he has he has
Speaker 1: to do a lot of like active forestry management to
Speaker 1: try to to to keep the you know, the sweet
Speaker 1: the sweet of trees on the on his place that
Speaker 1: he'd like to see because if he didn't, I can't
Speaker 1: remember what one it is. If you just like let
Speaker 1: it go, what do you want it with? Red maple?
Speaker 1: Something he doesn't like a lot of. It's probably red maple.
Speaker 1: It takes over in those upland hardwood stands, and so
Speaker 1: if you just didn't do it, and you just had
Speaker 1: a bunch of deer there, no one did anything and
Speaker 1: no one was doing any kind of select work with
Speaker 1: a lot of maple on wouldn't support the doesn't support
Speaker 1: doesn't support the amount of life. No, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have the mass crop that you really need to
Speaker 1: support the wildlife they really want there. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: a start of you ought to do. Get your pencil out,
Speaker 1: get your it's a lot because it's a good study.
Speaker 1: I've seen this happened a couple of times. Now let's
Speaker 1: we're talking about. I'm sure it happens in other states,
Speaker 1: but you should go in. There's a this this state
Speaker 1: here that we haven't be sitting in right now is
Speaker 1: divided into seven regions. Okay. Over the years they've added
Speaker 1: on which regions you're allowed to use and over the
Speaker 1: counter turkey tag for so as the region is coming
Speaker 1: into its own with turkey numbers. It's a draw. And
Speaker 1: I have come in and hunted turkeys in areas where
Speaker 1: it's a draw where you have to apply and win
Speaker 1: a lottery to get a turkey permit. That's a very
Speaker 1: different kind of turkey hunting than when it's an over
Speaker 1: the counter because people over the years, as they watched this,
Speaker 1: they know where all the turkeys are, and the minute
Speaker 1: you can just go, they go right. It would be
Speaker 1: really interesting to um, there's one region left in this
Speaker 1: state that's still hard to draw a turkey tag. Presumably
Speaker 1: it'll get to where they're going to open it up.
Speaker 1: It'd be interesting to do a gobble study or something,
Speaker 1: because here you have like a great scenario of a
Speaker 1: turkey population and all of a sudden the floodgates get
Speaker 1: opened and a lot more pressure on it, and watch
Speaker 1: and try to put some numbers to how they respond
Speaker 1: where they're spending their time, like how much they gobble,
Speaker 1: where they like to hang out, how much are they
Speaker 1: gonna how much does that that influx of hunting pressure
Speaker 1: because it happens like overnight. You know, what, what is
Speaker 1: what are they doing? What does that do? What's the
Speaker 1: population responds to us? It's gotta be significant, man, Because
Speaker 1: we just had a thing this year. We went to
Speaker 1: a place that only a couple of years ago went
Speaker 1: general and UM and had a couple of individuals say
Speaker 1: to us, like man in that place change because people
Speaker 1: have been watching those turkeys for a decade. They knew
Speaker 1: where they were. I spent a lot of years in
Speaker 1: my life dealing with regulations, wildlife regulations on these very issues.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's always a tough balance to try and
Speaker 1: balance the opportunity of making sure that people can get
Speaker 1: out there and hunt it and um understand the entry
Speaker 1: system to get into it, because you got to think
Speaker 1: ahead and apply, you know, and and meets that deadline,
Speaker 1: which is well advanced to the turkey hunting season, versus
Speaker 1: have an open entry and make it easy for people
Speaker 1: to get in there. And states struggle with this concept
Speaker 1: and try and balance those two so that we're not
Speaker 1: unnecessarily restricting people. But on the other hand, we're not
Speaker 1: unnecessarily over harvesting the population or putting too much pressure
Speaker 1: on the population. I'm not even so much over harvest
Speaker 1: as much as the kind of pressure that goes in
Speaker 1: the behavioral changes that I talked about before. With that,
Speaker 1: in the Big Game world, we divide the whole world
Speaker 1: into two things. You got your quality states and then
Speaker 1: you got your opportunity states. That's exactly it. You're right,
Speaker 1: we do. We do and and you know, it's tough
Speaker 1: because you don't want people to um, you want them
Speaker 1: to have opportunity to go in and take birds and
Speaker 1: and have that that place of hunting if they didn't
Speaker 1: even apply for it. But on the other hand, you
Speaker 1: don't want to diminish the quality. And some states have
Speaker 1: fall seasons too. We talked a little bit about that
Speaker 1: last night. What's your take on that, Well, fall season
Speaker 1: tends to be a season to restrict the population, to
Speaker 1: pull it back. I mean, it's that's what it's intended.
Speaker 1: That's what it's intended. So you've got agricultural interests, you've
Speaker 1: got the areas you know where the where you open
Speaker 1: up those hunting seasons to fall hunting. Your your game
Speaker 1: plan is to reduce the population, and why not reduce
Speaker 1: it in the spring. That's what I thing I understand,
Speaker 1: like why in the fall are you allowed to shoot hens?
Speaker 1: And states that have fall seasons like once she's killing.
Speaker 1: If you want to kill hens, why why not killing
Speaker 1: the spring? Well, the idea is that, um, your spring
Speaker 1: season is a quality season that is not trying to
Speaker 1: restrict the population. And so we started spring hunting and
Speaker 1: have had spring hunting even as we restored populations. That
Speaker 1: was one of the things that Turkey Federation really did
Speaker 1: a good job on. They brought a lot of science
Speaker 1: to the States so that you could introduce wild turkeys,
Speaker 1: get that population expanding, and still hunt it in the
Speaker 1: spring season because those birds are still those You're not
Speaker 1: taking the hands. You're trying to time your season after
Speaker 1: the birds have have have bread, and you're not disturbing
Speaker 1: those nests too much in that regard, and you could
Speaker 1: open up hunting early as you're restoring those populations, then
Speaker 1: use your fall seasons to to reduce populations where you
Speaker 1: have overabundance in that population. Who is it when you say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's too many turkeys? Who is saying that? Usually who
Speaker 1: says it are people that call in they have nuisance birds. Um.
Speaker 1: Your your local biologists will have people that will call in.
Speaker 1: And when I was a biologists, i would have this.
Speaker 1: I'd have people that would say, you know, I've got
Speaker 1: turkeys hanging around my property. They're roosting over the cars
Speaker 1: at night. They're um, they're out in the fields causing
Speaker 1: problems because they see them out in those particular fields.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just the presence of turkeys they're not used
Speaker 1: to it. They don't want to have turkeys around there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're habituating those turkeys. They've got bird feeders up
Speaker 1: and supplemental feed out. Those birds are taking advantage of it.
Speaker 1: It's an education process to get them to realize pulling
Speaker 1: your feed or stop putting out throwing out your chicken
Speaker 1: feed out in the yard and having the turkeys come
Speaker 1: into it. Also, it's a behavioral change. And then sometimes
Speaker 1: we do have too many birds in particular suburban settings,
Speaker 1: and that's where it tends to get the most um
Speaker 1: turkey to manage. Is where you you have this mix
Speaker 1: of of nice field habitats, some small wood lots and
Speaker 1: then a lot of homes in there, and you can
Speaker 1: support pretty good bird populations. And then you're not if
Speaker 1: it's an area where people are it's privately owned and
Speaker 1: they're not let people into hunt not getting much pressure.
Speaker 1: You can have some islands of really pretty dense populations
Speaker 1: and at that point you're gonna get someone who's like,
Speaker 1: there's too many turkeys. Yeah, I don't want them to
Speaker 1: get them out of here. A lot of depredation tags
Speaker 1: in Idaho turkey depredation turkey depredation tags. And so if
Speaker 1: you're a landowner and you say you want to have
Speaker 1: some turkeys taken off your place in the depredation system,
Speaker 1: then folks who apply for those tags, you can get
Speaker 1: a phone call says, hey, this land owner has got
Speaker 1: a bunch of turkeys on there, here's the number, and
Speaker 1: they have to provide access if they're part of that program.
Speaker 1: And then you get dispatched out there to hunt turkeys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a good good friend of mine got a call
Speaker 1: last year for a region that is a difficult place
Speaker 1: to Yeah, you have to draw a tag to go
Speaker 1: over there and hunt birds, but he got a call
Speaker 1: for depredation in over there. Guys like, yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: I got one standing on top of my car right now,
Speaker 1: come kill him. I want to get into some legal
Speaker 1: some stuff you guys do around lobbying and whatnot. Is
Speaker 1: that a dirty word? Lobbying congressional? What do you guys
Speaker 1: call it? What do you like to call it? Um,
Speaker 1: we like to call it education and advocacy, Yeah, advocacine ed.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: what that world's like. But I want to ask a
Speaker 1: couple of things. First, what in your mind. What's a
Speaker 1: very old male turkey and what's a very old female turkey?
Speaker 1: You know, ten is an old bird in the wild. Now,
Speaker 1: you see, domestic birds will get up, people keep them
Speaker 1: their bar and they're older than that. But you know
Speaker 1: you're a show called Cal's Weekend Review. Yes, tell her
Speaker 1: about the bird. Tell her about the bird from the
Speaker 1: episode one of Cal's Weekend Review, real quick. I mean
Speaker 1: they will go older, there's no doubt. A turkey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a lays An albatross. It's the oldest known,
Speaker 1: oldest known bird. Yeah. Yeah, and she's sixty eight and
Speaker 1: still rearing chicks or a chick a year. But it
Speaker 1: was banded at roughly five years of age. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they don't start laying until they're about five. So pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: is yeah. Yeah. And think how little time she's spent
Speaker 1: on the ground. They think that she's covered how many
Speaker 1: miles in her life? Yeah, because I mean they go
Speaker 1: up in the air and they don't come down for
Speaker 1: long periods of time. I think this is a very
Speaker 1: conservative number when you look at all the other data
Speaker 1: that's out there, But three million miles on this one bird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that it's interesting Stus Review more hot, and
Speaker 1: so you think between there's no Tom that lives ten.
Speaker 1: Tom's right, not in hunted populations X would be like
Speaker 1: your mega. Oh yeah, I mean I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: really unusual situation out there because you asked, what's the
Speaker 1: oldest you know, that's that's probably not the oldest A
Speaker 1: really old oh, a really old one. Yeah. If you
Speaker 1: get a bird that's you know, five six years old,
Speaker 1: that's an old bird in the wild. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: especially if there's much in terms of um hunting pressure
Speaker 1: on that particular bird. You know, you're you're lucky. If
Speaker 1: you have very many three year old birds in the population.
Speaker 1: Three and four year old birds, well, thosezards in Texas
Speaker 1: that we got, how old do you think they were? Three?
Speaker 1: We all, yeah, three to four. But scars. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're hunting those birds real hard out there. Maybe no,
Speaker 1: But I just think just disease or you know, bacterial
Speaker 1: infections and stuff. Because we had a couple of birds
Speaker 1: with like real puncture holes in them and old scars
Speaker 1: and staff each other. What's a rough life out there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a rough life. I heard somewhere that a poult
Speaker 1: so a young turkey eats animal matter. They do eat
Speaker 1: a lot of protein and an adult vegetable matter. Is
Speaker 1: it that clean? I don't. I couldn't tell you that
Speaker 1: if it's that clean. But you know, turkeys are omnivorous,
Speaker 1: so they they they're opportunistic, um, and they're as they
Speaker 1: are adults, they do eat a lot more vegetative material.
Speaker 1: We know that those young birds, those pouls really used protein.
Speaker 1: They grow really quickly, and so they need those high
Speaker 1: energy sources and those high calorie sources to really put
Speaker 1: on the kind of growth that they put on. Because
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at a turkey, it doesn't
Speaker 1: take them very long to get to the point where
Speaker 1: they are feathered out and able to fly. So they
Speaker 1: grow really quickly. Um. As young birds like protein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they go out and I mean those those hens take
Speaker 1: them out and they just you know, snurf up whatever
Speaker 1: insect life they can find out there. Yeah, the questions
Speaker 1: you wanted to happen with, John, No, I want to
Speaker 1: come back to the d C stuff we're about to
Speaker 1: get before we get into that, Like quick, hey, what's
Speaker 1: up with type questions? So in South Dakota, a male
Speaker 1: turkey tag allows you to shoot a turkey with a
Speaker 1: visible beard or spurs. And in the Black Hills there's
Speaker 1: a lot of bearded hands. I shouldn't say a lot,
Speaker 1: but more than most places. I've ever seen a dozen.
Speaker 1: Like in my years of hunting there in the spring,
Speaker 1: I have twice shot bearded hands knowing that they were hands.
Speaker 1: Does that make me a bad person? Steve can shoot
Speaker 1: hands in spring, I would shoot a bearded hand. Why
Speaker 1: is that different than a normal hand for you, it's
Speaker 1: not because i'd be I'd be against it, begins the law.
Speaker 1: So only because it's legally you're okay with it. Then
Speaker 1: it's not like it complicated that if spring turkey season. Well,
Speaker 1: here's what the I have, Like I have most states
Speaker 1: forty or so states, I have a lot of uh
Speaker 1: faith in the wildlife managers. Okay, states, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of faith in the wildlife managers. Where I would
Speaker 1: say if they were saying that, um, we're gonna open
Speaker 1: it up for hens most states, I'd be like, they
Speaker 1: probably know what they're talking about. This is probably okay.
Speaker 1: So if I knew that there was a hen, like
Speaker 1: there's there's a part of this state we can shoot
Speaker 1: hens in the spring. Yeah, three of them. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: must be I'm gathering a lot of hens because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of parts of the states where you can't
Speaker 1: and there's some parts where you can't on turkeys. So
Speaker 1: they're have an elastic model. And if in this little
Speaker 1: corner over the area they've determined that they want to
Speaker 1: kill some hens in the spring, I would have faith
Speaker 1: that they were operating in the best interest of hunter.
Speaker 1: So in those places, yes, the bearded hand. I don't
Speaker 1: think that the American wild turkey is gonna live or
Speaker 1: die or thrive or not thrive based on the occurrence
Speaker 1: rate of hunters harvesting bearded hands, which are an anomaly.
Speaker 1: So if you were to see one of these, I've
Speaker 1: never had a bearded head in front of me with
Speaker 1: a shotgun in my hand. If I were to see
Speaker 1: one and get it, I don't think that that that's
Speaker 1: gonna then mean that we're going to see this population
Speaker 1: wide decline in turkey numbers. I always have a bit
Speaker 1: of guilt because I feel like I'm gaming the system
Speaker 1: all the time. Twice, that's not all the time, So
Speaker 1: tell me, tell me yes, Because it's like the the
Speaker 1: idea of the tag is for you to shoot a
Speaker 1: male turkey. Yeah, that's the spirit of the law. And
Speaker 1: I'm knowingly shooting a female turkey, which is legal to
Speaker 1: get a turkey. I feel it's like if you found
Speaker 1: a rain bow and there was like a little leprechn
Speaker 1: and he stole his gold, it would be like, sure,
Speaker 1: it never happens there I was. I took it. We
Speaker 1: call it backy off, Tell me, I think it's an
Speaker 1: individual choice. I mean, you knew it was a weird hand. Okay,
Speaker 1: that bird I had in front of me last year
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. I knew she was a hen. She was
Speaker 1: a legal target. I didn't take it. Why that? Why
Speaker 1: did I do it? Because I couldn't believe her behavior.
Speaker 1: I had never seen a hand to a full strut
Speaker 1: like this and be that aggressive. But that doesn't account
Speaker 1: for why you didn't shoot it. Well, so you saw
Speaker 1: a regular turkey to a backflip. Yeah, that's true, but
Speaker 1: it was you know, I knew it was an egg layer.
Speaker 1: You know it was out there. I got more enjoyment
Speaker 1: out of watching her that day then I did. And
Speaker 1: naming her that day and her behavior and laughing about it,
Speaker 1: we well we lame. We named her a pretty aggressive
Speaker 1: female name, so she just wound up being she she
Speaker 1: was scaring the tom off. I mean, she was a
Speaker 1: really aggressive hen. So it was one of those situations
Speaker 1: where I got more joy out of that with the
Speaker 1: people I was hunting with than I did would have
Speaker 1: by taking it and end in the scenario what she's saying, Spencer,
Speaker 1: I'm reading between it. What she's saying is because she
Speaker 1: wouldn't do it because it's wrong. No, But I don't
Speaker 1: think we should shame one another on this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was It's okay you you could easily change my
Speaker 1: mind if you like said no, you shouldn't be doing that.
Speaker 1: Well you obviously you feel that way, you wouldn't ask
Speaker 1: the question that you had some trepidation about it. But
Speaker 1: I don't think as hunters we should ever criticize another
Speaker 1: hunter for taking a legal target. I used to see
Speaker 1: this all the time in deer hunting, with people getting
Speaker 1: into it and somebody during an antler's season would take
Speaker 1: a buck vawn and they couldn't tell it was a
Speaker 1: buck vawn. They didn't they just couldn't tell it from
Speaker 1: the head, you know, don't criticize him for doing it.
Speaker 1: It was legal. It's it's ethical and the person didn't
Speaker 1: know it, so let's not chastise them for that. It's
Speaker 1: legal when you're asking that person to get on board
Speaker 1: with something that that there, you're asking them to get
Speaker 1: on board with some long term manage the plan that
Speaker 1: maybe they don't even they don't share that, they don't
Speaker 1: share the desire. That's right. They shot a perfectly legal
Speaker 1: target there. That was an animal that is going to
Speaker 1: give them quality meat. They're gonna enjoy it. Don't ruin
Speaker 1: it for him. And the same thing I would say
Speaker 1: with that, we take it into a fact that um
Speaker 1: on harvest when biology just make those recommendations, they know
Speaker 1: there's a certain percentage of bearded tom's it's so much
Speaker 1: or bearded hens. It's small enough it doesn't factor into
Speaker 1: a significant part of the population that's going to hurt
Speaker 1: the population. So it's perfectly legal. Go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: And it's probably the cleanest indicator for someone who's starting
Speaker 1: off turkey hunting to determine whether it's a tom or
Speaker 1: a hand. Is that beard? You can pick it up
Speaker 1: and see it and and visualize it for folk start
Speaker 1: just getting started. They're not used to looking at all
Speaker 1: the heads and behavior cues and all the rest of it. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's one of the hardest things. I remember struggling. So
Speaker 1: for at least two or three years, I'd have turkey's
Speaker 1: coming in close for age and the world is just
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, moving a million miles an hour,
Speaker 1: and it's spinning faster, and you're, you know, in your
Speaker 1: heart's beating between your ears with anticipation. Could just never
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, that there's a time that's him right there.
Speaker 1: Hunting with the hunting with Maggie and Tracy. One was
Speaker 1: their first turkey hunt. She's like, well, how do I
Speaker 1: know that. I'm like, oh, you'll just know. I thought
Speaker 1: I thought about, well, you know what to talk about this.
Speaker 1: I think we should touch on bag limits, because you know,
Speaker 1: the there's a difference between the face value of a
Speaker 1: bag limit and what the actual practical application of that
Speaker 1: bag limit is. Like there you can shoot four birds
Speaker 1: with no tags in Tennessee, but you can only kill
Speaker 1: one bird per day. That's right. So you know, bag
Speaker 1: limits have have their overall see season implications, but people
Speaker 1: need to realize that season length and the number of
Speaker 1: hunters are really the controlling force on it when you
Speaker 1: put bag limits on. For instance, I'll just use South
Speaker 1: Carolina because it's been hotly debated in the legislature lately.
Speaker 1: They wanted to go from a few years ago, they
Speaker 1: moved their season, they provide a longer season. With that,
Speaker 1: they cut the bag limit from five to three. Well,
Speaker 1: it really didn't do a whole lot because there aren't
Speaker 1: very many people that were shooting five turkeys, and so
Speaker 1: you're only nipping back the population of hunters for a
Speaker 1: very small percentage of those folks that were successful enough
Speaker 1: every year to take five birds. And something that I
Speaker 1: think about also is that the bird per day rule,
Speaker 1: because it's definitely happened to me where if it were
Speaker 1: legal to fill those tags and when one morning you
Speaker 1: would do it, I would have had the opportunity. But
Speaker 1: because I gotta wait to the next day to then
Speaker 1: have a valid turkey tag, again, I had no opportunity.
Speaker 1: No opportunity, no opportunity. Sometimes the birds don't cooperate. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't go out, You've got to actually go work
Speaker 1: for a living. You know, it could be that, you know,
Speaker 1: as a Sunday Monday, it could be the weather conditions
Speaker 1: are different. Um and those birds. Just about the time
Speaker 1: you think you've got them patterned and figured out, they
Speaker 1: prove you wrong every time. So you uh, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to I'm trying to track what you're saying, so you
Speaker 1: instinctively don't see a problem or do see a problem
Speaker 1: with the state saying like, oh, yeah, five turkeys, no problem.
Speaker 1: It depends on the state and whether their population is.
Speaker 1: But I do think a lot of times when you
Speaker 1: have um populations that when the biologists are setting up
Speaker 1: season recommendations, a lot of times in some states it's
Speaker 1: their legislature that sets the season's, not the agency itself.
Speaker 1: Its varies by state, but a lot of times what
Speaker 1: you'll see is UM legislators wanting to trade off days
Speaker 1: and then nip back the bag limit to comp and state. So, okays,
Speaker 1: that doesn't work that well, I mean, it just does.
Speaker 1: It's not a trade off. Your season length and the
Speaker 1: number of hunters are going to have a far greater
Speaker 1: impact on your harvest than what your bag limit is
Speaker 1: going to be. So I'm tracking what you're saying. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got what you're saying now, So that's where they
Speaker 1: really need to listen to the biologists and realize that
Speaker 1: it isn't for you can't necessarily compensate for a super
Speaker 1: long season because you might be harvesting them before the
Speaker 1: birds are are really fully bred. You might be disrupting
Speaker 1: that breeding. And number two, having that really long season
Speaker 1: and a high hot hunting population. Even if you cut
Speaker 1: back that bag limit, there's such a small percentage of
Speaker 1: people that that can put it together take you know,
Speaker 1: five birds or whatever the maximum is, that you're really
Speaker 1: not having that much impact. I'm restricting that season at
Speaker 1: that point. So you could have the bag limit and
Speaker 1: double the season, and you're gonna have a lot more
Speaker 1: dead birds, you got it? Yeah, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: looking at fishing regulations this morning, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: really hard to put reality on those regulations. I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I really want to put a bunch of fish in
Speaker 1: the freezer. Oh great, here's a reservoir that I can
Speaker 1: put thirty croppy per day. Yeah. I'm never caught a
Speaker 1: croppy in my life. The odds to me putting thirty
Speaker 1: croppy in the boat are pretty bad, you know. But
Speaker 1: I look like if I'm about fifty a day and
Speaker 1: there's no closed season, I'm you know, thousands upon thousands
Speaker 1: of croppy you talked earlier. You mentioned with big game
Speaker 1: hunting you have the quality states and you have the
Speaker 1: opportunity states. Okay, that usually is reflective when you go
Speaker 1: back and look at how many people are a licensed
Speaker 1: hunter within that state. Usually it is tied to if
Speaker 1: you have a smaller hunting population or a smaller population
Speaker 1: in your state. For the population of an moles out
Speaker 1: there that you're hunting, you're gonna be able to support
Speaker 1: a quality regulations and seasons that will because you're not
Speaker 1: exploiting that population as greatly as you would with a
Speaker 1: population that has a lot more hunters, and and they
Speaker 1: go out there and they take a lot more animals.
Speaker 1: Michigan's perfect example. When I start my career, we had
Speaker 1: we had damn near a million licensed by your arm hunters.
Speaker 1: You don't grow old deer in that scenario. No, can
Speaker 1: I get in one more question before we move on. So,
Speaker 1: in some place like the Great Plains where you have
Speaker 1: potential for all three species of turkeys, Rio's, Mariam's Easterns,
Speaker 1: is there any more species? It's part of the question.
Speaker 1: Is there any concern for hybridization? Like long term there
Speaker 1: is like having turkeys could potentially be a problem. Well,
Speaker 1: I won't say concerned, but does does hybridization happen? Absolutely? Right?
Speaker 1: But is there any cern about it happening? Or like
Speaker 1: places that are like in Nebraska or whatever, they're like
Speaker 1: you could kill Miriam's a rio on the eastern all
Speaker 1: all the same farm. It's like, come on, well, no,
Speaker 1: but that's not what he's getting at. If there's any
Speaker 1: like worry that that could negatively affect turkey populations, that
Speaker 1: that would be bad for right, Like if all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, white tails and mule deer were just hybridizing
Speaker 1: all the time, that'd be a bad deal. Those are
Speaker 1: two distinct species. I know what most people consider these
Speaker 1: like varieties. They're not even like legitimately subspecies. So yes
Speaker 1: and no, um, And I'll give you an example in
Speaker 1: the Waterfall front okay, um, I'll take it away. And
Speaker 1: when we had when we don't dealt with geese populations
Speaker 1: up on the tunder, we had these subspecies and we
Speaker 1: tried to manage it by subspecies in the flyway, so
Speaker 1: that you had James Bay birds and and Mississippi Valley birds,
Speaker 1: and we tried to keep you know, distinct populations. You
Speaker 1: mean Canada geese. Yeah, and it's in fact, when I
Speaker 1: thought we had twenty some kinds of Canada geese, that's right,
Speaker 1: and they're breeding up on the grounds. So we had
Speaker 1: the We did it geographically, and we tried to just
Speaker 1: harvest and maintain those separate populations of those geese within it.
Speaker 1: And everybody was concerned when one population started to decline.
Speaker 1: Well wound up happening. As we started to use DNA
Speaker 1: to to sample those populations, we realized there's a lot
Speaker 1: more in breeding going on there, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: more of the mutts, you know, that really had genetic pools,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't as clean geographically as we really thought.
Speaker 1: So taking into turkeys, yes, you want to keep variability
Speaker 1: in your population because the more variability you have, the
Speaker 1: more ability you have that population to adapt to changes.
Speaker 1: You know, they're going to have, just like diversity in
Speaker 1: any population, the more diversity you have in it, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have some survivors that stand a better chance. And
Speaker 1: if it's a really homogeneous population, so yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to maintain that, but there's always gonna be some interbreeding
Speaker 1: of those birds and with it comes different diversity with
Speaker 1: it also, So yes, we don't want them all to
Speaker 1: be crossbreds or highbreds between those populations. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you're always going to get some variability because
Speaker 1: of the range and where they're located. They're going to breed.
Speaker 1: What I'm getting at here, Spencer, there's no okay, take
Speaker 1: the Eastern turkey and the Osceola turkey. It's you we
Speaker 1: like draw some arbitrary line across the state, right, but
Speaker 1: they just bleed into one another, I understand. But the
Speaker 1: National Wild Turkey Foundation draws that line. Excuse me, federation
Speaker 1: draws that line in the record books. You guys define
Speaker 1: them as the different subspecies. We do, and well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's how people like to classify and go out
Speaker 1: and gather the different birds. But you know, don't forget
Speaker 1: there has been interbreeding a wildlife, I mean, and there's
Speaker 1: mixing of it over time. And sometimes we like to
Speaker 1: look at a point of time and think it's clean
Speaker 1: and neat and tidy, and it's just not. It's messy.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the different types of turkeys,
Speaker 1: Rio's Miriam's, Gould's easterns Osceolas, that's everybody, right, Uh, how
Speaker 1: like with current thinking and our understanding, a taxonomy changes
Speaker 1: all time with current thinking, like how legitimate are those
Speaker 1: designations and how is it not just that there's this
Speaker 1: thing it's the wild turkey, and there are slight color
Speaker 1: variations throughout the country. They're distinct enough that they're distinct
Speaker 1: um subspecies there um with it. But you're always going
Speaker 1: to have some of that interbreeding and part of it
Speaker 1: man is created too because we've moved these birds around
Speaker 1: um with that, so you've got populations where the habitat
Speaker 1: type might have looked like it was more attractive to
Speaker 1: various species, and we tried it. But we did that
Speaker 1: with other species around the country too. It's not just turkeys,
Speaker 1: you know. As we restored wildlife populations in this country,
Speaker 1: we moved wildlife. Heck, we moved it from Europe and
Speaker 1: Asia over here, and we put it out in landscapes
Speaker 1: and when it did well, it you know, it did well.
Speaker 1: And so the same thing is true with these restoration efforts.
Speaker 1: A guy wanted to me the thing that made me
Speaker 1: that keeps me like not fully understanding the subspecies thing
Speaker 1: or meaning half the time I feel like it's just
Speaker 1: there just different colors in different places, and half of
Speaker 1: time I'm like, okay, there's like a legitimate difference. Is
Speaker 1: a guy in Oregon was telling me when they were
Speaker 1: trying to get wild turkeys established in some areas of Oregon,
Speaker 1: they tried miriams and couldn't get them to stick and
Speaker 1: put reels in there and they took off. Now, they
Speaker 1: asked my well, what happened, and he had mentioned something
Speaker 1: about the I can't remember that one of them has
Speaker 1: like a higher likelihood of having a brood, just fit
Speaker 1: in that characteristic and was more successful. And he felt
Speaker 1: that it was the person outside who felt that it
Speaker 1: was that that was the thing where they took the
Speaker 1: birds from. And one couldn't figure it out, and one
Speaker 1: figured out and the other one figured it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean there are things genetically different. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at what we tried to do with turkey restorations.
Speaker 1: Before we really had the technology to trap live birds,
Speaker 1: we tried to use these birds that were raised in
Speaker 1: game firms, I mean Pennsylvania Michigan birds for populations, and
Speaker 1: several where we had turkeys back in the fifties came
Speaker 1: from game farm. So then they were bronze broad breasted turkeys,
Speaker 1: but they were not genetically bred for real good survival
Speaker 1: in a wild environment. And those populations got out there
Speaker 1: and they maintained, but they were always they never grew,
Speaker 1: they never did really well. And when we brought in
Speaker 1: live birds and released them in adjoining habitats, they took
Speaker 1: off and did really well. So there's genetic variability in
Speaker 1: these populations. And and with that sometimes it fits different
Speaker 1: climate situations, you know, micro climates with the habitat is
Speaker 1: there and the rest of it. All right, good, good,
Speaker 1: No more like basic turkey trivia. I got a thousand
Speaker 1: basic turkey. But most of my fail most of them,
Speaker 1: most of them are, most of them are unanswerable. Um,
Speaker 1: we did have we did want to ask about the roost.
Speaker 1: Thing we didn't know about ruce was that in reference
Speaker 1: to that study that we were looking at. The study
Speaker 1: that really surprised me. It was on Southern Colorado. I
Speaker 1: believe so Miriam Turkey's Southern Colorado from back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, And it was like that
Speaker 1: that on average a turkey only had a thirteen like
Speaker 1: a turkey only had a thirteen percent chance that he
Speaker 1: would roost in the same tree two nights in a row,
Speaker 1: and on average would roost a thousand yards away for
Speaker 1: where he roosted the night before, and that the first
Speaker 1: number decreased during turkey season and the second number increased
Speaker 1: during turkey season, which would legs you to believe that
Speaker 1: they really responded to the fact that every day when
Speaker 1: they wake up, there's some guy down there trying to
Speaker 1: call him in and shoot him. He's like, man, tomorrow night,
Speaker 1: I'm roosting way far away from here. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: it probably depends on how many hens are in the
Speaker 1: area and all the rest of it. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: when you hunt the same property over and over again, um,
Speaker 1: it winds up being one of those situations where you
Speaker 1: learn that where there you think about roost and traditional
Speaker 1: roosts and stuff, where they'll they'll come in there and
Speaker 1: roost one night, and then there won't be any birds
Speaker 1: there the next night, or they'll be half as many birds,
Speaker 1: and then the third night there's nobody there, and you
Speaker 1: wonder if it's you or whether those birds just move around.
Speaker 1: I personally think those birds move around and they they're
Speaker 1: they're opportunists, so they you know, they make good use
Speaker 1: of their daylight hours. They you know, they're kind of
Speaker 1: like we are. They get about get up about the
Speaker 1: same time. Even the days are getting longer, they get
Speaker 1: up about the same time every day. Um, they go out,
Speaker 1: they forage, their looking for hens, they're breeding, and then
Speaker 1: when it gets starts to be getting close to sunset,
Speaker 1: they're looking for the place to go to bed. Now
Speaker 1: every few days are coming back in and and having
Speaker 1: kind of in the same vicinity if their if their
Speaker 1: habitats that way, I mean when you look at those
Speaker 1: home ranges in terms of how far they stray and stuff,
Speaker 1: it's going to depend on the habitat quality. It's going
Speaker 1: to depend on how many hens are there in terms
Speaker 1: of how far he needs to roam and and how
Speaker 1: frequently he's coming back to the general vicinity. And then
Speaker 1: also with that forest type is going to be for
Speaker 1: whether there are a lot of trees. I'm sure they're
Speaker 1: a river corridor. They're cotton woods down in the southwest
Speaker 1: where they get hit up and roosted pretty routinely because
Speaker 1: there just aren't that many roost trees. And there are
Speaker 1: other woodlots and places and forested habitats where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of really significant roost trees that are gonna
Speaker 1: have good growth patterns that turkeys are comfortable on them.
Speaker 1: They're big enough, they're high enough that they're comfortable there
Speaker 1: that they're going to use. Um, they have lots of choices,
Speaker 1: so they're they're opportunistic, they're going to go out and
Speaker 1: not frequent the same particular roost tree. All that. Often,
Speaker 1: what's a long walk for for a male turkey in
Speaker 1: one day? Um, it depends on the habitat and where
Speaker 1: it is no turkeys around, you know, it varies from
Speaker 1: area to area across. With a particular study you're talking about,
Speaker 1: they were talking about a thousand meters was about the
Speaker 1: typical what they did. How far would he just in
Speaker 1: his travels throughout the day, how many miles would he
Speaker 1: put on? Well, I mean at that point you're looking
Speaker 1: at most of those turkeys are it's fairly small those turkeys, UM,
Speaker 1: in that particular study you're looking at during the breeding season,
Speaker 1: they were anywhere from fourty to eighty when you when
Speaker 1: you factored out the hectors translate it back in, so
Speaker 1: those aren't big areas, like that's what he's spending his
Speaker 1: day in that type of a little area. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's a fair so it's really but that was
Speaker 1: probably an area that had some decent habitat and they
Speaker 1: had some hens around and the rest of it. In
Speaker 1: other areas, you know, you can see it. So you've
Speaker 1: got several sections that those birds are moving around. So
Speaker 1: they're moving several miles to get around in those areas
Speaker 1: because there's not much cover um to get to roost
Speaker 1: trees at night, they got to move further. So some
Speaker 1: of those really wide open landscapes, those birds are moving
Speaker 1: further on a daily basis. And then other places where
Speaker 1: they're staying really tight in. They've got everything they need
Speaker 1: in pretty short areas, and there's competition if they move
Speaker 1: into their habitats. Man, them spending their whole day in
Speaker 1: forty acres makes you think it's just good. I just
Speaker 1: sit down and those situations are too good. Little trails
Speaker 1: of roads come together, and just that's thing I always say,
Speaker 1: like jerkey hunting, if you spend a few days on
Speaker 1: the property and you're looking at tracks, like, you know
Speaker 1: what we could have done just said that, pick a
Speaker 1: spot at the intersection of two trails and say, you
Speaker 1: know what, you guys do your thing. I'm gonna spend
Speaker 1: my three days sitting right here. I'm not gonna do anything.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make any noise. I'll be here at
Speaker 1: sun up and I'll wait till sundown, and you'd probably
Speaker 1: be a very effective turkey hunter. Just abide your time,
Speaker 1: you know. And the other thing that I thought that
Speaker 1: turkey hunters need to remember is a lot of folks
Speaker 1: go out. They get out there real early in the morning,
Speaker 1: before the birds get off the roost. You know, they're
Speaker 1: going out way before daylight, and then they're coming in
Speaker 1: a couple hours after sunrise. You know, they're working for
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. And that's a great time to
Speaker 1: be out in the turkey woods. Yeah, you know, when
Speaker 1: it's eight, nine o'clock, ten o'clock in the morning, that's
Speaker 1: the time where you want to sit tight and let
Speaker 1: all those other yahoo's in the vicinity go to work
Speaker 1: do what they're gonna do. But about their time, they're
Speaker 1: going back and make their money. That's right, get their
Speaker 1: cup of coffee, whatever they're going to do. You need
Speaker 1: to sit tight at that point because those birds move
Speaker 1: in a response to it. Okay, that's a hot turkey
Speaker 1: hunting tip from Becky Humphreys. Now, you guys spend a lot,
Speaker 1: like your organization spends time on government policy. We do
Speaker 1: what does that look like? Like, what do you go
Speaker 1: down there and you're like, we need more turkeys about
Speaker 1: the federal level, we don't do that because management and
Speaker 1: wild turkeys falls to the state authority. So we do that.
Speaker 1: You know, we we have through our chapter system, we
Speaker 1: advocate when it comes to regulations, seasons, um, funding for research,
Speaker 1: those types of things. So you guys will go to
Speaker 1: a state and say, we feel that you're going about
Speaker 1: this the wrong way. Yeah, most of the time we're
Speaker 1: working with the agency along with it through helping to
Speaker 1: fund research to help move forward good science on it.
Speaker 1: So we like to work hand hand in hand with
Speaker 1: that that state agency. We're partners with most of them.
Speaker 1: And we actually have a technical committee that was formed
Speaker 1: before we even had biological staff with the Turkey Federation.
Speaker 1: That's made up of Turkey specialists for the state agencies
Speaker 1: in our federal agencies, and we call that the Technical Committee.
Speaker 1: They meet a number of times during the year and
Speaker 1: we share that that good scientific information. We try and
Speaker 1: come in and help them so that there UM we
Speaker 1: can support good management, and typically it's when an agency
Speaker 1: is getting pressured doing something UM legislatively that's going to
Speaker 1: be detrimental that population or restrict hunting too much. At
Speaker 1: the federal level, we try and we try and narrow
Speaker 1: our focus so we can really be effective on the
Speaker 1: areas where we have good expertise. We really work on
Speaker 1: UM forest management issues. So a lot of the the
Speaker 1: work that's been done to try and get more active
Speaker 1: forest management and try and correct this fire suppression funding
Speaker 1: problem we have in the country, we've been very active
Speaker 1: on that. I've gone fire suppression funding. You're not saying
Speaker 1: you want more money to suppress well, I'm saying the
Speaker 1: forest US Forest Service over the course of time, because
Speaker 1: we've had we've had we've not kept up with the
Speaker 1: growth cycles and we have more are more fuel loads
Speaker 1: building up in our national forests, not burning enough, not
Speaker 1: cutting enough. We've got older forests, so we're getting a
Speaker 1: build up on it, and with that, we're having these
Speaker 1: large wildfires that are occurring. And it's we've also come
Speaker 1: off a period of UM unusually high rainfall. Now we're
Speaker 1: heading into a more drought type situation. And then you've
Speaker 1: got disease. I mean, we've got trees dying off, We've
Speaker 1: got some climatic changes going. But all that's culminating in
Speaker 1: these mega forest fires that we're seeing, and so we
Speaker 1: have the Forest Service has has moved a lot, had
Speaker 1: to move a lot of their funding to fight those
Speaker 1: forest fires and put in specialists and fire suppression to
Speaker 1: try and combat and control those fires. And as a result,
Speaker 1: they have less funding available to do the proactive management
Speaker 1: to keep our forests healthy. So we've been working with
Speaker 1: Congress and trying to get the money in the right direction,
Speaker 1: money in the right direction, and also take away some
Speaker 1: of the barriers that there are. Um, they're always going
Speaker 1: to be people that don't like the idea of active
Speaker 1: forest management. They want to leave it alone. But it
Speaker 1: has you know, we're not living in a situation anymore
Speaker 1: where we can just let it go and it's we're
Speaker 1: gonna like the results of it. But you're not leaving
Speaker 1: me alone when we do fires, when we put out fires. No,
Speaker 1: you're not leaving alone. You gotta you gotta make up
Speaker 1: for you know, I mean, you've already like you've already
Speaker 1: entered into sort of a false pretense on it, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have as humans, we have taken away
Speaker 1: a lot of these these fire driven habitats. We have
Speaker 1: taken away the cycle of fire on it that occurred
Speaker 1: so regularly. It kept those fuel loads down low. It
Speaker 1: would burn the pine needles and the dead woody vegetation,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have it ladder up, you didn't have
Speaker 1: it climb up those trees and crown and then just
Speaker 1: go on these huge fires that burn everything down. And
Speaker 1: when you have these really hot, extensive forest fires, it
Speaker 1: actually burns the top soil off the ground. And then
Speaker 1: the problem is afterwards you have rain and you have
Speaker 1: you have the soil gets loose, so you have mud
Speaker 1: slides and tremendous you know, saltation in your streams and
Speaker 1: your water course as a result of it. And it
Speaker 1: takes it takes decades to restore those those landscapes to
Speaker 1: that um. You know, you can see areas um in
Speaker 1: my home state of Michigan where I was, you can
Speaker 1: see places where those forest fires after they cut down
Speaker 1: the white pine forests in northern Michigan, they had fires
Speaker 1: that literally swept across the peninsula. And with that because
Speaker 1: they had all that down vegetative material that had died off,
Speaker 1: and it burned that top soil in places where we
Speaker 1: are just now starting to see forest cover back come
Speaker 1: back into it. It wasn't capable of growing anything but
Speaker 1: liking for decades and decades and fire, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's a horrific story, man. Yeah, I mean some of
Speaker 1: these wells and getting live in their own wells and
Speaker 1: crazy fires, well families getting wiped out, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in those dats, and so I mean it's it's we
Speaker 1: have altered the landscape. So we've got to deal with
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't at this point in time
Speaker 1: on our on our forest, we're not keeping up with
Speaker 1: the growth cycles, and we're getting these fuel build ups,
Speaker 1: and we either have to become much more engaged and
Speaker 1: actively manage those forests or we got to be willing
Speaker 1: to suffer the consequences. And part of the consequences is
Speaker 1: we have people actually building in some of those forests also,
Speaker 1: so you've got homes, large homes, sometimes very expensive homes
Speaker 1: right within it. And there it takes resources to go
Speaker 1: out and try and put in fire lines and protect
Speaker 1: those resources and get people evacuated and get them out
Speaker 1: of those communities that are built right in fire prone landscapes,
Speaker 1: and that sucks money out of doing the kind of
Speaker 1: wildlife work. That's right, that's right. So I'd rather put
Speaker 1: the money towards the proactive management and get our forests
Speaker 1: so that they don't have these build up a fuel loads,
Speaker 1: that we manage them more actively with prescribed fire and
Speaker 1: cutting regime regimes. And then that we also need to
Speaker 1: think about some of these places, how much how much
Speaker 1: we're as a public going to invest in people that
Speaker 1: want to build large homes and in holdings and some
Speaker 1: of that problem. Look at the risk, right, risk your
Speaker 1: fancy home in a spot that nobody built there for
Speaker 1: a reason. You put a lot of people at risk
Speaker 1: when you ask some fire crew full eighteen year old
Speaker 1: kids go in there and try to say it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and you know it's heartbreaking for people. Um you know,
Speaker 1: you see whole communities wiped out. So anyhow, we've been
Speaker 1: working with Congress on that and and there are um
Speaker 1: some folks that feel very strongly and we've used a
Speaker 1: lot of our laws that are on the books right
Speaker 1: now that we're intended to give the public input into
Speaker 1: planning processes and and bring challenges against government when they
Speaker 1: are unduly negatively impacted. But we've got groups and individuals
Speaker 1: are using those laws to really slow down the active
Speaker 1: management process outside public comment, yeah, or bringing lawsuits. Primarily
Speaker 1: it's lawsuits, bringing lawsuits against the Forest Service in these
Speaker 1: particular cases. And over time, then your processes get so expensive.
Speaker 1: You're spending all your time and energy on the planning process,
Speaker 1: you're not ever getting to the management, and then you're
Speaker 1: having to pay even more because of the result of
Speaker 1: lack of management, because they have this kind of like childish,
Speaker 1: sort of naive idea that the best thing for all
Speaker 1: forests has let all even though you're not even talking
Speaker 1: about and most often the case, you're not talking about
Speaker 1: native old growth stuff anyways, you're talking about disturbed egos.
Speaker 1: They're already disturbed from the start, that's right, And so
Speaker 1: it's a philosophical difference. It's a very expensive way to
Speaker 1: iron out that philosophical difference. Uh. To back up for
Speaker 1: a second, you're talking about your you guys talk about
Speaker 1: state involvement, federal involvement. Don't name any names or please
Speaker 1: eas but I doubt you'll want to. Uh. Do you
Speaker 1: encounter states that seem to be very receptive to your
Speaker 1: professional input in states that kind of run a course
Speaker 1: where you're like, that's not the way to do this,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to really listen, or do you
Speaker 1: or do you guys get pretty good buying from state
Speaker 1: I have to say we have, UM, we have pretty
Speaker 1: good buy in from state wildlife agencies. We a couple
Speaker 1: of things that you know, having run a state agency before. UM,
Speaker 1: we don't come in and try and lecture states how
Speaker 1: they should do things, especially there are regional differences and
Speaker 1: cultural differences on how populations like to run their natural resources,
Speaker 1: and we try and be respectful of that. We also
Speaker 1: try and be proactive in helping the state agencies if
Speaker 1: they have needs, if they have scientific needs, if they've
Speaker 1: got questions, if they want to learn from other states
Speaker 1: on stuff of sharing that information behind in a safe
Speaker 1: environment that they can get hold of it and have
Speaker 1: those conversations and really try it out and and and
Speaker 1: know what they're getting into as they get into those
Speaker 1: discussions before they come real public, because at that point
Speaker 1: in time, you're you know, it's tough to be wrong
Speaker 1: on things once you've gone out publicly and or whatever
Speaker 1: that's right, So we try and take a proactive approach
Speaker 1: on that. UM. You know, there are other issues we
Speaker 1: work on a national level. We try and maintain making
Speaker 1: sure that there's really good access to our public lands
Speaker 1: out there, making sure that regulations that unnecessarily hamper the
Speaker 1: ability to go out and hunt those those lands are
Speaker 1: we're not putting those in place. UM, try and get
Speaker 1: the make sure that the federal agencies are respective of
Speaker 1: UM people that want to go out and use firearms
Speaker 1: and those lands and hunt those lands, fish those lands,
Speaker 1: hike those lands. Involved in that stuff. Yeah, we take
Speaker 1: a very active role in it because that's one of
Speaker 1: the criticisms I have of the conservation space in generals.
Speaker 1: I feel like you have, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: groups who focus very heavily on hunting rights, and you
Speaker 1: have groups that focus heavy on habitat and wildlife. I
Speaker 1: feel like in a lot of cases, I think that
Speaker 1: those two things should be melded together a little bit
Speaker 1: better too, as a holistic package. It's why I'm at
Speaker 1: the Turkey Federation. And to be honest with you, when
Speaker 1: I looked and I worked with a lot of different
Speaker 1: conservation groups out there, and there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: good ones. But I agree with you. I think it
Speaker 1: takes both habitat management and it takes people using that landscape,
Speaker 1: carrying about it, and being those future conservationists to really
Speaker 1: get the full picture. We can't pull people out of
Speaker 1: the equation. You just can't. We're part of the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: We're part of the influence on that landscape. And um
Speaker 1: I want there always to be segments and a big
Speaker 1: chunk of our population that really understands what's going on
Speaker 1: in those landscapes and advocates for wise management and also
Speaker 1: realize that our wildlife are renewable resources. We don't have
Speaker 1: to I mean, most of these populations, they have high
Speaker 1: turnover and and hunting can be compensatory. It replaces other
Speaker 1: types of mortality out there. And I just as soon
Speaker 1: have people use that that food source it's out there
Speaker 1: and have it us and value it as a way
Speaker 1: to get part of their protein and what they like
Speaker 1: to enjoy and be connected to that landscape and understand
Speaker 1: it on the federal level, like in d C. What
Speaker 1: are some of the what are some of the changes
Speaker 1: you've seen going on in d C. Do you do
Speaker 1: you find that people is it like, Uh, you're enjoying. UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who sort of instinctively understand the
Speaker 1: concerns you have. Is that landscape changing a little bit?
Speaker 1: Is it harder to explain your mission? Um? It depends.
Speaker 1: I see there's glimmer as of hope. I mean we
Speaker 1: have in the House. We have UM Congressman Westerman, who
Speaker 1: is a forester and he's really been the lead on
Speaker 1: a lot of this forest initiative. So it's been helpful
Speaker 1: to be able to work with him and his staff
Speaker 1: because he's a trained forester, or he gets it and
Speaker 1: he's willing to work with leadership and and and move forward.
Speaker 1: Good regulations, UM, good changes that are going to think
Speaker 1: help move us forward. There isn't necessarily I will say, Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Since I've been working in it, it's got
Speaker 1: more contentious, more polarized. It's tough with some of the
Speaker 1: big issues our country is facing right now, a lot
Speaker 1: of the issues on conservation and some of the challenges
Speaker 1: we have. Do you wind up getting positions and polarization
Speaker 1: where people are talking, Um, they're not talking about ways
Speaker 1: that they can work together to achieve getting there, but
Speaker 1: they're taking positions and whenever that happens, where it's all
Speaker 1: or nothing or we don't this is off the table,
Speaker 1: we can't even talk about it. That doesn't lead us
Speaker 1: on the path of really great decision making. But it
Speaker 1: takes people sitting around the table, and by it has
Speaker 1: to come about with bipartisan support. It has to be
Speaker 1: by Camber. Can't be just a Senate, can't be just
Speaker 1: a house. It has to be both in order to
Speaker 1: get it into law. So it's it's tough, and we
Speaker 1: have people, more and more people in Congress who have
Speaker 1: not I mean, we're as a population in general, and
Speaker 1: Congress represents that population. We are now several generations off
Speaker 1: the farm and ranch. By and large, fewer and fewer
Speaker 1: people are living in those rural environments, living off the land,
Speaker 1: and so their direct knowledge and understanding of those landscapes
Speaker 1: is impacted by that. Yeah, I always tell people, it's
Speaker 1: really easy to understand how detached these folks are from
Speaker 1: some of these outdoor situations. All you gotta do is
Speaker 1: go walk around the tunnels in d C. Or at
Speaker 1: those those folks working on the hill don't even get
Speaker 1: to go outside. Yeah, it's and you know, and you
Speaker 1: can't blame them. It's not that they don't want to know,
Speaker 1: they just don't know. So some of the most effective
Speaker 1: things you can do sometimes they're getting getting people out
Speaker 1: to see stuff in the field, to actually do tours
Speaker 1: of active management, to see that, so that they're not
Speaker 1: hearing it from people that saying, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: timber cut was just devastating. Look at looks terrible. Go
Speaker 1: out and look at a forest that was hasn't been thin,
Speaker 1: look at one that has been thin, look at one
Speaker 1: that that see an area that's been burned over, and
Speaker 1: see some of the degradation that occurs from that forest
Speaker 1: fire as opposed to a timber cut um and and
Speaker 1: have that real life knowledge so that when they're talking
Speaker 1: about these issues they can visualize that it makes more
Speaker 1: sense to them. Yeah, I think that you're also asking
Speaker 1: I mean, you're kind of asking a lot of people
Speaker 1: to understand all the complexities and nuance that are involved
Speaker 1: in landscape management where there's not a lot of hard
Speaker 1: and fast rule to live by. I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we have a cabin up in Southeast Alaska and they're, um,
Speaker 1: there's a very legitimate argument, and I and I feel
Speaker 1: this way personally where um, I think we're cutting too
Speaker 1: much old growth timber. So but that's a very different
Speaker 1: thing where you're talking about these coastal like coastal rainforest
Speaker 1: areas that have five and six hundred year old trees
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna like. It's not that you're not
Speaker 1: gonna go back that. So it's like, how could I say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want them, I want to slow down, Curtail.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see the end of old girls timber
Speaker 1: harvest on public lands in southeast Alaska. But how can
Speaker 1: I then turn around and say in northern Michigan, Um,
Speaker 1: we need to be catton Because people are like, well,
Speaker 1: how could both those things be true? And it's like,
Speaker 1: because it's just we live. It's a complicated planet. It
Speaker 1: is complicated, and it gets to accessibility, It gets to
Speaker 1: what those those species are, It gets to how quickly
Speaker 1: it regenerates, what those soil types are, and what's already happened,
Speaker 1: and there is you know, And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: we talk in generalities when we it, we try and
Speaker 1: simplify the system for discussion sake, and in that simplification
Speaker 1: you lose some of the nuance with I think it
Speaker 1: became logging is bad. People love absolutes, right, It's like, well,
Speaker 1: tell me what the problem is, loggat it? What's next?
Speaker 1: And isn't that as a biologist, You're like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: there's a myriad of problems. I'm like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: have a time for that. Yeah, that anti logging campaign
Speaker 1: you know that we all grew up with. It must
Speaker 1: have been like the eighties. I'm guessing right, that must
Speaker 1: have been when the spotted owl. It's the spotted owl
Speaker 1: late eighties, early nine, early nineties and think the way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it took me a while into
Speaker 1: adulthood to sort of have my own personal you know,
Speaker 1: enlightenment about logging to be like, oh, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: always bad, because that was just pounded into my head
Speaker 1: through whatever channels. My parents never told me that logging
Speaker 1: was bad, but the marketing of that, you know, you
Speaker 1: got into my head. Well. And I mean Smoke of
Speaker 1: the Bears another one of those campaigns that's been highly successful,
Speaker 1: to the point where people don't like prescribe fire that
Speaker 1: much because they have fire is bad. She wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: It seems like a straightforward fellow. He's like a straight
Speaker 1: shooter old smoky. Okay, you had mentioned that you wanted
Speaker 1: to discuss personal goals for mentoring a new hunter. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should all have personal goals, so I'll
Speaker 1: look at all you don't want to tell us about
Speaker 1: your personal goals. So, uh well, I mean, we have
Speaker 1: a new pledge going on with our corporate sponsors right now,
Speaker 1: trying to get every one of our members to make
Speaker 1: a personal commit method. They at least mentor one new
Speaker 1: hunter every year, and so, and you know, we we
Speaker 1: asked him to sign a pledge form. We asked him
Speaker 1: to report back on that pledge form with us. You're
Speaker 1: already good, all right, Spencer? Not this year yet? Last
Speaker 1: year yet? Yeah? I don't know about last year either.
Speaker 1: How about the year before? Yes? Good? Possibly last year
Speaker 1: definitely the year before, Yes, And that wasn't just because
Speaker 1: you met your wife or something. Now and taking an
Speaker 1: old college room mate the first time, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: I'd like to I'd like to brag that last year
Speaker 1: I did it as well. My neighbor took him out
Speaker 1: hunting first time. Yeah, tearing it up on the pledge.
Speaker 1: We need to give him a retroactive pledge. There you go, well,
Speaker 1: it's an actual sheet. It's an actual sheet. We asked
Speaker 1: him to sign it, um write their name down on it.
Speaker 1: We kicked it off at our annual convention this year,
Speaker 1: and we are trying to get every one of our
Speaker 1: members to do that because that's what's gonna take. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you look at the demographics of hunters in this country,
Speaker 1: we're going to see a pretty start start decline with
Speaker 1: the baby boomers as they start to age out of hunting.
Speaker 1: And if we don't start getting other folks to replace that.
Speaker 1: And everybody loves to do the kids programs, and we're
Speaker 1: one of them. We have a really robust Jake's program.
Speaker 1: We've done it for years. You love it. But those
Speaker 1: kids aren't going to grow up fast enough to replace
Speaker 1: the baby boomers. We've got to get those adult hunters
Speaker 1: out there. We've got to get the twentiesomthing's that either
Speaker 1: weren't exposed to it or or didn't do it enough
Speaker 1: to make it part of their lifestyle. We've got to
Speaker 1: get them to feel welcome and that's something that they
Speaker 1: want to do and enjoy the lifestyle and and think
Speaker 1: of themselves as hunters. There's gonna be somebody listening, probably
Speaker 1: more than probably ten percent. Maybe I don't know. A
Speaker 1: bunch of people listening, they're gonna say that ain't true.
Speaker 1: We're not losing any hunters. Show me one person that
Speaker 1: can say there's less hunters where I hunt now than
Speaker 1: there was ten years ago, which is a really good
Speaker 1: interesting point. You can't. You can't flip it about it.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't at all. It's like, oh, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: hunt used be guys everywhere. Now I go there and
Speaker 1: no one's around. It's just Turkey's gobblin every which way.
Speaker 1: I did want to run it into one guy in Colorado.
Speaker 1: It's been a few years now, this is maybe five
Speaker 1: seven years ago, but he did say that he noticed
Speaker 1: it because they hunted very dense forest and he felt
Speaker 1: like there was there's less camps along this road, this
Speaker 1: forest Vist road everybody used to camp and then he
Speaker 1: felt like a lot of success was due to more
Speaker 1: guys in the woods back in the day, moving more
Speaker 1: animals around, and now they didn't have that, there was
Speaker 1: less success, and he did complain about having less people
Speaker 1: out there. But that's interesting. That being said, I wonder
Speaker 1: sometimes if it's not a Western thing right, we hunt
Speaker 1: big western open vast landscapes. We can see a lot
Speaker 1: more so we see more people. Well, plus more people
Speaker 1: are people that the people that are are hunting are
Speaker 1: more inclined. There's a greater likelihood that they are hunting
Speaker 1: multiple states and traveling around. That's that's true too. Like use,
Speaker 1: habits change, and then you have a lot of states
Speaker 1: that aren't seeing declines you have, you know, then you
Speaker 1: go to these states, so you know, you say, it's
Speaker 1: like Michigan, Pennsylvania and you're seeing declines that you're not
Speaker 1: experiencing whelming. That's true. There's changing, I mean, and it
Speaker 1: has changed over time, but overall the licensed number of
Speaker 1: licensed hunters as a whole is declining through the federal surveys.
Speaker 1: Do you find it more like maybe where you guys
Speaker 1: are at in the southeast, Um, yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: Eastern United States is seeing it faster than the Western
Speaker 1: United States. Um. And and it varies by state. Some
Speaker 1: states are seeing nice. You know, part of it is
Speaker 1: populations of those states also, you know, I happen to
Speaker 1: be from a state. In terms of Michigan that we
Speaker 1: lost overall population, we lost almost two million people during
Speaker 1: the ecademic downturn. What really, Yeah, so the one from
Speaker 1: ten years ago, Michigan came out of that with fewer citizens.
Speaker 1: It did a lot of fewer and so as a
Speaker 1: result of that, you lost hunters as part of that. Also,
Speaker 1: so where they go sun Belt all all over, they're like, dude,
Speaker 1: we're in the rust belt, this place called the sun Belt,
Speaker 1: and you have other states that are seeing population gains
Speaker 1: and with that, um changing demographics in those particular states,
Speaker 1: and and sometimes um with it, you're seeing increasing hunters
Speaker 1: and sometimes you're seeing a decrease in hunters. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, it changes around the country. But overall, the
Speaker 1: total number of hunters and the age of hunters is
Speaker 1: getting older every single year, which means you've got no
Speaker 1: bottom of the population of hunters coming into the scenario.
Speaker 1: Go on with your point, you're gonna make a point
Speaker 1: of the people are gonna, well, no, that was it.
Speaker 1: They're just gonna say, how can that? How can that be?
Speaker 1: I though, you're gonna extend that to what, like the
Speaker 1: perspective of why in the world. No, I mean, we've
Speaker 1: explored why in the world would you ever even suggest
Speaker 1: a desire to have more hunters like that? Makes no sense, right,
Speaker 1: Why would you want more people out screwing up your hunt,
Speaker 1: which is also legitimate thing to say, Oh yeah, we're
Speaker 1: our own worst enemy when it comes to that, Yeah
Speaker 1: we don't. I mean, we're all guilty of it. Not
Speaker 1: in my spot, you don't, especially coming out of from
Speaker 1: a turkey hunter. Turkey huntings where you gets shot well,
Speaker 1: and we've all been there where you're out, you go out,
Speaker 1: you set up that morning, you've got that perfect place,
Speaker 1: and then there's somebody else calling. You're like, darn, yeah,
Speaker 1: we hunted some public Animasouri last spring, Mienani did. And
Speaker 1: when you heard a gobble, instead of like wanting a
Speaker 1: gobble gobbler to keep gobbling, you heard a gobble, and
Speaker 1: you're like, please shut up, please shut up, please shut up,
Speaker 1: no matter what. Pretty soon it's like your car door
Speaker 1: on some ridge and then like the races on. Let's right, so,
Speaker 1: but it is I mean, if we've got a window
Speaker 1: of time here that is pretty short that we've got
Speaker 1: to replace those baby boomers, which are the biggest bubble
Speaker 1: of licensed hunters in the country right now, to participate
Speaker 1: their parents. Hunting participation was so high for their parents,
Speaker 1: that's right. So as much as it hurts, go out
Speaker 1: and mentor somebody that's right, and don't pick else. Don't
Speaker 1: pick anybody that's less than twenty years of age. I think.
Speaker 1: I think that is a point that shouldn't be glossed over.
Speaker 1: Is is there is no set age for a first
Speaker 1: time hunter. No, there's not. And you know, it's the
Speaker 1: cool part of it is you can take people out
Speaker 1: that might have hunted their entire life, who have wanted
Speaker 1: to go hunting, or maybe they don't even recognize they
Speaker 1: wanted to go hunting, but they go out and enjoy
Speaker 1: it and it opens up a whole new world for him.
Speaker 1: But you know, the other part of it is stick
Speaker 1: with them. It takes more than one hunting experience. You know,
Speaker 1: it's intimidating to try and figure out what kind of
Speaker 1: equipment you need and how it's fun to go out
Speaker 1: with somebody who's all done all the research and scoping
Speaker 1: and loans your their equipment, takes you out there and
Speaker 1: and calls in a bird or whatever you're hunting species is,
Speaker 1: and you get a chance to go out and be
Speaker 1: part of it. It's another to then go out and
Speaker 1: be self sufficient, so you gotta stick with them to
Speaker 1: be there, that mentor that tells them, Okay, you want
Speaker 1: to go out and get a firearm, here's here are
Speaker 1: some recommendations. I'll go with you if you want to
Speaker 1: go talk to the person at the at the gun store,
Speaker 1: or here's here's what I recommend for some basic equipment.
Speaker 1: Or you know, here's so and so that also hunts.
Speaker 1: Maybe you want to link up with them, because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be gone next month, but maybe you'd like to
Speaker 1: go hunt with them, because we know it takes social
Speaker 1: that social network. You guys have it because you you
Speaker 1: live it every day. But for other folks, as we
Speaker 1: become more mobile as a popular nation, trying to link
Speaker 1: up with other people in our communities who share that
Speaker 1: same lifestyle, it's we're not we don't join clubs anymore.
Speaker 1: We don't join conservation clubs and some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: So and and I, you know, I hope they do.
Speaker 1: I hope I'll give a plug for National Wild Turkey Federation.
Speaker 1: You know, if you moved to a new community, or
Speaker 1: if you're just are part of a community and you
Speaker 1: want to meet people that hunter and can introduce you
Speaker 1: to it, go join the local chapter of the Nationale
Speaker 1: Turkey Federation. That's the hot tip I've been giving people
Speaker 1: all because we we when we do live shows. We here,
Speaker 1: we talked to a bunch of people and um, it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, what's the best tip for getting involved? Like
Speaker 1: a hunted two years and haven't seen anything yet, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't do this because everyone's different, Like
Speaker 1: I just grew up like very immersed in it. I
Speaker 1: was like, what I would do now that I realize
Speaker 1: how things work is I would get involved volunteering with
Speaker 1: the conservation group in your area. Because you're gonna get
Speaker 1: in there and start doing stuff and people are gonna
Speaker 1: be feel sorry for you. They're gonna make You're gonna
Speaker 1: make friends and and get involved in activities through social
Speaker 1: interactions and through organized events. That's the other part of it.
Speaker 1: And you get those people a little drunk and you'd
Speaker 1: be like and pretty soon they'll say something like, I
Speaker 1: haven't been in there myself, but I have a good
Speaker 1: feeling that if you tried that spot those kind of
Speaker 1: conversations and fella might that's the sentence you're looking for. Well,
Speaker 1: on the other part of this helps motivate you to
Speaker 1: get out there, you know, when you're you're socializing talking
Speaker 1: about it, somebody has you over for you know, for
Speaker 1: venice and dinner afterwards, you're you're more inclined as you
Speaker 1: get immersed in the lifestyle to remember how much you
Speaker 1: enjoy it and make that effort to get out doing
Speaker 1: some rough math in my head, I feel like you
Speaker 1: need to have them mentor could you say in one
Speaker 1: person every year at least one, Yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: that it takes about four to have one stick. Just
Speaker 1: looking at my own set of experiences, You're probably right. Everyone.
Speaker 1: I've never had someone be like I wish I hadn't
Speaker 1: done that. There are always liked it was really like,
Speaker 1: very informative and really kind of change my perspective on things.
Speaker 1: Glad I did it. But that doesn't mean that they're
Speaker 1: going to then start, you know, go off on their
Speaker 1: own and starts. We've been you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that we've been doing on these we've tried to
Speaker 1: move away from one and done um events that's what
Speaker 1: we call them. Where you come in, you take them
Speaker 1: out for a hunt, and then you're done. That's it.
Speaker 1: Where we try and work with other conservation organizations, so
Speaker 1: we we teach them the life skills. They learn how
Speaker 1: to hunt safely, get hunter safety, move through, go out
Speaker 1: on a hunt, try several different hunts. What we ideally
Speaker 1: would like to do is move people through that system
Speaker 1: so then they can become mentors to other folks. But
Speaker 1: it takes having them have exposure and meeting different people
Speaker 1: and having those different experiences multiple times to really start
Speaker 1: thinking themselves as hunters and getting the confidence to go
Speaker 1: out on their own or take somebody else out who
Speaker 1: hasn't hunted before. So you can't let those assumptions lie either.
Speaker 1: Like if you are successful to the point of having
Speaker 1: a bird or a buck on the ground, you can't
Speaker 1: just be like, cool, well take that to the processor.
Speaker 1: You're successful. Good job. Show him what to do with
Speaker 1: the meat too, I think he is a big deal,
Speaker 1: Like you gotta and then check their freeze or make
Speaker 1: sure they're using it. If not, yell at him, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: humiliate them in front of their freaks. Well, and humiliate him.
Speaker 1: Got got final thoughts about a wedge in there, kel,
Speaker 1: I know I've been wearing a hat and a briar patch. Well,
Speaker 1: you know he had a tiny little head and only
Speaker 1: certain hats fit me, so I gotta stick with him
Speaker 1: while I got good. When you get one of the works,
Speaker 1: you stay and you stand by it. Yeah. Yeah, no man,
Speaker 1: I think we covered a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: good stuff. And thanks for coming out and my pleasure,
Speaker 1: love love hearing all the good info. What's a lifetime
Speaker 1: membership cost? At the Old Turkey Federation, lifetime membership you
Speaker 1: can an annual membership is thirty five dollars, sponsorship is
Speaker 1: to fifty and then we stack memberships so you can
Speaker 1: continue to be lifetime memberships. Um, not a one lump
Speaker 1: some lifetime membership thing. No, I mean you can do that,
Speaker 1: but typically what we do is we like to get
Speaker 1: people back every single year and continue with someone buying
Speaker 1: and once then going that's right, because we want to
Speaker 1: have we want you to be active with us. I
Speaker 1: mean that's one of the things with National Wild Turkey Federation.
Speaker 1: We have so we have a pretty high percentage of
Speaker 1: folks that not only are members but are volunteers. So
Speaker 1: they come in, they put in and learn to hunt workshops,
Speaker 1: they go out there and do the Women in the
Speaker 1: Outdoors events, they do the Jake's events, they do the
Speaker 1: Willins events, they go out and do habitat work or
Speaker 1: they work at the capitol in their respective states and so,
Speaker 1: and that is what's special about it because those people
Speaker 1: are really engaged in Yeah, I can't just like cut
Speaker 1: a check and then go vanish for the rest of
Speaker 1: my well, you can, but really rather have you come
Speaker 1: back and be more invested. The strangest thing you've heard of?
Speaker 1: A turkey eat the strangest thing, because they mean they
Speaker 1: eat anything, They eat just about anything. It's the strangest
Speaker 1: or contender. I don't know that I can think of
Speaker 1: something that's really strange. What have you seen that on
Speaker 1: the lookout for that? Well, in Colonel Tom Kelly's a
Speaker 1: tenth Legion, he talks about watching them out eating crayfish
Speaker 1: from underwater. That's interesting, Oh that is that's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: I've heard a number of people bring that up. I've
Speaker 1: seen deer eat fish. Now that's pretty weird. Waiting and
Speaker 1: eating ale wives the footage of a deer eating baby
Speaker 1: birds out of a nest, which really changes how you
Speaker 1: feel about deer. That's true. I mean watching a watching
Speaker 1: a turkey swallow a snake is whether interesting. After the snakes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get really excited they do. Yeah, I've seen footage
Speaker 1: of that where a turkey standing out the field beating
Speaker 1: a snake to death, whipping it back and forth, trying
Speaker 1: to kill it and eventually gets it, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: gulping it down. Concluders, you know, you should you know
Speaker 1: what your concluders should be. You should have a concluder
Speaker 1: question where you say, what's the strangest way you've ever
Speaker 1: heard of a turkey dying? Unless you got something else.
Speaker 1: I got something else. You can take that one. But no,
Speaker 1: I'm always just so impressed. Man. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of guests on this show, and uh, Becky, you rarely
Speaker 1: say I don't know. Today I think you said I
Speaker 1: don't know to one of these questions, like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what happens there. It's just very like I don't know.
Speaker 1: She's been Yeah. I'm just always so impressed because now
Speaker 1: knowing your background, because last time, the last podcast, I
Speaker 1: wish I knew the number off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: You should listen to that one too. But we really
Speaker 1: got your wory of you know, how you came career
Speaker 1: path and all your experiences and then it just it
Speaker 1: just so thoroughly comes out when we're chit chatting because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact I've been around in the mill a couple
Speaker 1: of times, but that before finish your point a little
Speaker 1: more solid, beaus I might have misunderstood it. No, my
Speaker 1: own point is just that I'm impressed. Man, Like I said,
Speaker 1: she has the humility. You're saying that you appreciate that
Speaker 1: she has the humility to say I don't know, or
Speaker 1: that she rarely doesn't know. I didn't say that about
Speaker 1: the humility. That's a great um uh characteristic of people.
Speaker 1: I like to think that I can say that often too.
Speaker 1: I say it often, you know that I don't know,
Speaker 1: But she doesn't say it often, which is so impressive,
Speaker 1: you know, because she has a lot of yes, yes.
Speaker 1: But I took note of when she did and felt
Speaker 1: uh proud and happy to know where that she would
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know. It's great for us Turkey
Speaker 1: geeks because we just it around here and just ask
Speaker 1: weird Turkey questions and she's like, yeah, yeah, let me
Speaker 1: tell you about this that. And you know, that's where
Speaker 1: you run up against the trouble talking to biologists is
Speaker 1: I'm interested in like what's the weirdest, right, and they're
Speaker 1: kind of biologists is more like, well, we're kind of
Speaker 1: a little more focused on sort of like what happens, happened,
Speaker 1: what normally happens, So I appreciate it. My concluder is
Speaker 1: that before we started recording, Becky and I were talking
Speaker 1: about the National Wild Turkey Federation Convention that happens in
Speaker 1: Nashville every week around Valentine's Day, that's right, And she
Speaker 1: was telling me what a good time it is, and
Speaker 1: I was saying that it must be right, but you
Speaker 1: didn't stay along. I think we should go back next year.
Speaker 1: We would love to have you back, maybe do a
Speaker 1: little something. Call and I were talking about doing a
Speaker 1: little uh, like a seminar called drumsticks and dies, something
Speaker 1: along those lines, as you can make them real good
Speaker 1: and and be like, tell me this ain't good. You know,
Speaker 1: that's what we call that booth something like that, this
Speaker 1: ain't good. But yeah, she just tell me what a
Speaker 1: party it is and what a good time, how people
Speaker 1: like take family vacations to be there. And I was
Speaker 1: just I was noticing that a lot of other conservation
Speaker 1: organizations there annual conventions aren't so hot anymore, and they
Speaker 1: might be losing participation where it seems like the Turkey
Speaker 1: Convention is just like we hear everybody's going there and
Speaker 1: it's not. People love it. Over fifty six thousand people
Speaker 1: or there last year. Yeah, that's where I met Will
Speaker 1: Primos real quick. Yeah, I mean, I mean it's so
Speaker 1: fun because you can you can we have secretaries of
Speaker 1: UM Agriculture, Secretary of Interior was there, in chief of
Speaker 1: the Forest Service and rcs and they're they're they're having
Speaker 1: dinner with people and you can have conversations with our
Speaker 1: members with those folks and then who's who of Turkey
Speaker 1: calling and all the rest of it. And so between
Speaker 1: the trades, know the events, the talks, the seminars. You
Speaker 1: you get a wide variety and it's fun. It's like
Speaker 1: a big family reunion. Is it Nashville this year? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in Nashville. Well, we used to move it around. UM.
Speaker 1: Last time we had we moved out in Nashville as
Speaker 1: when the glor wound up getting flooded and had to
Speaker 1: be closed. So it's probably about eight years ago, seventy
Speaker 1: years ago, and we had it in Atlanta, much smaller participation,
Speaker 1: but we have gotten so large that there are very
Speaker 1: few facilities that we can really host it. Um, well,
Speaker 1: don't move that thing to Las Vegas. Man, Well that's
Speaker 1: what I said. That and our membership. You know, historically
Speaker 1: our membership was more um heavier to the eastern United States,
Speaker 1: so we're within driving distance for a lot of our membership,
Speaker 1: so they can bring the whole family down and makes
Speaker 1: it really nice. Yeah, I have to go down and
Speaker 1: hang out. Please do around that floor and just pick
Speaker 1: up every single pot call and go you and everybody else.
Speaker 1: We should get a big stack thighs and drumsticks and
Speaker 1: do something fun. I'm gonna mend our title. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be called Turkey drumsticks, not just for driving intense stakes.
Speaker 1: So that would be great, man, if we had, if
Speaker 1: we were solicited from listeners a whole bunch of thighs
Speaker 1: and drumsticks, then went down and just had a taco truck.
Speaker 1: M we just gave out, don't talk too much about
Speaker 1: is gonna be held held to it now? Said if
Speaker 1: would be, We'd love to have you come down, Spencer,
Speaker 1: I don't have any concluders. Go ahead. Uh. The Turkey
Speaker 1: recovery stories like one of the coolest conservation stories there is.
Speaker 1: You know one time they said there was like thirty
Speaker 1: thousand that were left. And when people think of like
Speaker 1: imperiled species today like an I'm ranging t hang or
Speaker 1: an elephant, there's hundreds of thousands of those left and
Speaker 1: people think of how few there are. And so when
Speaker 1: you think about thirty thousand turkeys and how they're seven
Speaker 1: million today, that's crazy. So it's thank you to Becky,
Speaker 1: the NWTF and the agencies and all the people before you,
Speaker 1: because it's a really cool animal that you have brought
Speaker 1: back to this status that they're all over the continent.
Speaker 1: People think there's a trap of people thinking that things
Speaker 1: only get worse. That's right. And then when you learn
Speaker 1: about the story of American wildlife, like, oh, you can
Speaker 1: make the world better. You can. I used to give
Speaker 1: a talk when as a state director that these are
Speaker 1: the golden years, the great years, because you know, we
Speaker 1: spent a hundred years restoring a lot of these wildlife
Speaker 1: populations that just weren't around. But the Turkey Federation and
Speaker 1: then the Wild Turkey is a great success story. And
Speaker 1: it's it's nice because it's confidence boost to people that
Speaker 1: you really can with working together and effort, we can
Speaker 1: we can restore these species. We can enjoy them today
Speaker 1: and have them tomorrow. That's pretty cool. Yeah, good old
Speaker 1: American elbow Greece man uh in a in a nice
Speaker 1: incentive program. It is because you can go out and
Speaker 1: interact with these birds and hunt them and eat them.
Speaker 1: And that makes people be like, I'm in that's right,
Speaker 1: let's do it. And they're they're they're gorgeous. I mean,
Speaker 1: as I said, I probably told you guys this before
Speaker 1: my daughter when she was Lawi's used to calm glowbirds
Speaker 1: because they glow. You know, you bring back those toms
Speaker 1: and they're still they just glow in the iridescence and
Speaker 1: the feathers and everything else. Pretty spectacular. Yeah. One that
Speaker 1: you guys should work on is there's nothing that looks
Speaker 1: worse than a wet turkey. That's true. You have to
Speaker 1: think some way to when you get a wet turkey
Speaker 1: to make them look nice again, because then you walk
Speaker 1: up on a wet turkey, it's not like walking up
Speaker 1: it's not like walking up on a dry turkey. You're right,
Speaker 1: it's not not a glow bird anymore. Yeah, to tell
Speaker 1: the person normally a spectacular all right, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, thank you people can find you guys obviously
Speaker 1: if you type in National Wild Turkey Federation, I mean
Speaker 1: they dot org. Yeah, and you're looking to get into
Speaker 1: turkey hunting man, go there and read because there is
Speaker 1: a just a I'm not going to use the expletitive
Speaker 1: term there, but just a lot of information. Like I
Speaker 1: still go there. I'm like, how could I not have
Speaker 1: read that article? And you can go there for good,
Speaker 1: um all like vocalizations and stuff, yep, all kinds of
Speaker 1: information and look up a local chapter. Get involved, get
Speaker 1: to know some of the people in your community that
Speaker 1: already are active and participate with the National Wild Turkey Federation.
Speaker 1: They're great people and we'd love to have new members
Speaker 1: join us. And get in your bids for the carbon
Speaker 1: carbon spider used the used left handed hoy carbon spider.
Speaker 1: Make your let us know your top bid and then
Speaker 1: we'll send the boat to whoever pledges the highest dollar
Speaker 1: amount to the National Wild Turkey Federation. And thank you
Speaker 1: Becky for coming on. Thank you m