All Things Habitat - Lets talk.....
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Wild Turkey Management
- Thread starter ALwoodsman
- Start date
ALwoodsman
A good 3 year old buck
You guys were right. I went back to my property this weekend with my family. We got to the cabin after dark and the next morning while I was out by the fire drinking coffee and watching the sunrise I heard a gobble. A little while later there was a nice longbeard strutting in the field not 40 yards from where I killed the one the weekend before. I was amazed at the short amount of time that it was for another gobbler to move in and be the boss.
TMIL
5 year old buck +
Here is a short article from the NWTF that is relevant to this discussion.
http://www.nwtf.org/conservation/article/plants-save-poults
http://www.nwtf.org/conservation/article/plants-save-poults
Boll Weevil
5 year old buck +
This is an older thread and I'm sure everyone's got deer on their minds these days but thought I'd share a pic I pulled a few days ago. I continue to be amazed at the outcomes from my "turkey factory" experiment. This group of 11 jakes is just one of several flocks that now wander the farm...there's turkeys absolutely everywhere.
Also, I'd be interested to hear if any of you have applied any habitat management focused on turkeys and what you're seeing.
Also, I'd be interested to hear if any of you have applied any habitat management focused on turkeys and what you're seeing.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Our primary management species are deer and turkey. I don't plant any food specifically for turkey. They will eat anything that doesn't eat them. NWTF touts things like chufa, but that makes no sense to me. There are plenty of crops that turkey love that also benefit deer. We don't manage for waterfowl, but I can see how some folks managing for both waterfowl and turkey would benefit from planting and flooding chufa.
I do the things I said were keys in an earlier post. We focus on poults. Most of what we do for turkey is arrangement. You want good nesting cover that is relatively close to brooding cover. Poults can't move well through things like fescue that fall down. They need bare ground to move easily. Bunch type grasses are much better than fescue for them. Clover is a key for poults. It greens up early in the spring and attracts bugs. Insects are 90% of a poults diet. Nesting predators can be an issue if they are high, but now that coyotes have moved into our area, they seem to be well controlled. The biggest predator issue after they leave the nest is avian predators. Now that raptors are protected, the key is habitat. By planting something tall with bare ground next to clover, we provide good escape cover for poults. I used bicolor, but it can be invasive. RR soybeans work well provided they canopy. There is lots of bare ground underneath that poults can move through easily. If you want to hold turkey on your property through the summer, buckwheat is a great crop. It attracts bugs and provides some vertical cover. Deer use it but generally don't abuse it. Turkey love the seeds when it goes to seed. We planted a lot of buckwheat this spring and staggered the planting so as one field was finishing others were just going into seed.
We have had great results. We only have under 400 acres. This year we have a band of 6 longbeards running around and also have jakes in the queue for the future.
Thanks,
Jack
