Wild Turkey population is tanking across most of its range

Howboutthemdawgs said:
I’m taking 60 acres of row crop out of production after this season. I’m going to convert maybe 10 acres to food plot. The balance will be early succession. I know it’s a bit away but I hope my efforts will be rewarded for turkeys and quail.

And this ground is broken in a couple different fields so not just one big field. I feel like that’s better for wildlife than one field.
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That sounds awesome. Got any satellite images of the area? I would love to talk you in to doing a wheel and spoke plot with early succession between!
 
omicron1792 said:
Could it have been the big cicada event last year? Heard it would be a banner few years after that.
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We didnt have any cicadas - but a huge grasshopper event. There is also the question of what all of a sudden happened that so many poults hatched. I cant remember when the grasshoppers really got thick - it may have been during poult hatch time and all the coons and crows were full of grasshoppers at that time.
 
Depends on what you're discing to start with. A blanket of fescue will need more than a single light pass. A stand of giant ragweed might be perfect for a light pass. I disc and brushog to create different plant populations and regrowth. At quail level (less than a foot) I want some open understory with cover above, as well as easy to run through open spaces that grow seeding plants and house bugs. Flowers are important. If you have flowers you'll have bugs and seeds.
 
SwampCat said:
Yes - that is referencing the early embryonic death study I was speaking of. Although 85 to 90% of non predated eggs are hatching - that seems like a pretty good percentage to me. I guess every egg matters
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They're also trying to determine why it could be that 70% of some fertilized eggs experienced the early embryonic death.
 
I imagine they are wondering if a situation like DDT and the bald eagle is going on. Very interesting.

Many of these states had turkey populations that were extinct and then repopulated. I wonder if the species just reached a carrying capacity and is leveling out.
 
omicron1792 said:
I imagine they are wondering if a situation like DDT and the bald eagle is going on. Very interesting.

Many of these states had turkey populations that were extinct and then repopulated. I wonder if the species just reached a carrying capacity and is leveling out.
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I wondered the exact same thing! Not uncommon for something to explode and then tapper back to carrying capacity. Locally there were no turkeys when I was growing up, then they exploded on the scene and now aren't as numbered as before. Prairie chickens are a completely different story though. They were always here then over the course of a few yrs declined drastically. Quail seem to fluctuate from yr to yr.
 
In my state - when I started turkey hunting here in 1980 - there were a lot of turkeys in the area I was hunting. The rest of the state was going through restocking efforts with a lot of the turkeys coming from the area I lived and hunted in - where they had been established for a long time. While the turkey population was exploding across the rest of the state, it was declining in the original area. In fact, enough so to warrant one of the first turkey studies to determine why they were declining in mid 90’s. By 2003, they had come back with a vengeance in that area - enough where hunters set the all time harvest record.
 
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