Wild Turkey Question(s) i.e. crazy idea I hatched.

[bigbendmarine]

My parents loved viewing wildlife at their home and put out about a dozen small plate sized piles of cracked corn mixed with wild bird seed on their driveway. They did this for about 15 years. Turkey were somewhat regular visitors. As long as you are routine in the time of day you put it out they'll be somewhat predictable in their visits. Something I didn't see mentioned, but if you have other animals that will eat the food (such as deer with cracked corn) they'll pattern you as well and visit... and also learn any audible triggers. My folks didnt make any noise to draw them in... just followed a daily timed routine. Do think that the dinner plate sized small offerings spaced out over a 30' line / piles 5' or so apart helped allow more birds to feed at one time. Hope the info helps.

 

[yoderjac]

Yoderjac,

OK This information is very helpful. In fact, the land is such that what you are suggesting is not all that hard to do. So I guess the turkey, then, are sort of like any other wild bird - ever afraid and ever flying off. It is not like the birds at the feeders get tame but the chipmunks and squirrels do. The jays do to a limited extent. Hmmmmm........that makes sense. I am getting a better handle on this whole thing, thanks to your comments. So now getting back to the whole turkey calling devises - DO they, in fact, come when appropriate sounds are made? Is this something worth learning?

Under the right conditions they will come to a call. It is not what you want in your situation. For example in the spring, during mating season, a Tom may gobble like crazy at a hen call. If he is with other hens, he may never come. In fact, hens may actually lead him away from a noisy hen calling. If he is without hens and is in the mood to breed, he may in fact come to your call. In many cases they carefully circle around never really showing themselves or pass by you at an oblique angle. In nature, the hens go to a gobbling tom. You are actually reversing nature when you get the tom to come to you. On occasion, you will get a tom that will almost run you over, but that is the exception not the rule.

In the late summer when hens have young in a flock, if the flock get surprised and run/fly off in different directions, they will try to regroup when danger has passed. You can effectively get birds to come to you by making the calls of another lost turkey. Young male birds form their own groups in the fall. The can be curious and clucking can get them to come investigate looking for other jakes.

In both of the above cases, calling is very interactive which is one reason turkey hunting is so much fun. Other than these two situations, getting turkey to come to calling can be very difficult. In the fall, male turkeys will form bachelor groups and hens will form flocks with young birds. Getting mature gobblers or unbroken flocks of hens to come to your calls can be quite challenging. Calling is much less interactive. I would refer to this as more influence calling. It is kind of like using a soft grunt call to influence the path of a deer coming your direction in general to pass within shooting distance of an archery stand.

Calling turkey can be lots of fun, but I wouldn't use it to acclimate them to you through feeding. If you just want to observe and film them, a blind and calling can be great at the right time. It does take a bit of practice to use a mouth call, but it is easy to simply cluck on a slate and more turkey have been killed with just a cluck than anything else.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Ben, now your comments are REALLY interesting information. How can turkeys or any wild animal possibly be smart enough to make such distinctions? How can they know that YOU will hunt them and he will feed them? How can they possibly understand about property lines and shooting. Once the animal is shot, he is dead so how can he "learn" anything? Dead is dead, no? I never understood that part of it. I have heard that animals "know" where it is safe and where they are hunted. How?

It is not thinking and knowledge like we as humans have and it is not learning in that sense. It is a rudimentary algorithm that drives all animals. It is the instinctive drive to pass on DNA. To do so they must mate as much as possible. That means reaching sexual maturity and surviving as many years as possible to procreate. Conditions where they get the reward of food and experience little exposure to predators will increase their risk tolerance. Conditions where predation risk is higher will decrease their risk tolerance. Conditioning them with food by humans is simply an example of how that algorithm operates at one extreme. Birds that take too much risk are removed from the population by predation and fewer of there over risky genes are passed on. Birds that don't take enough risk get less and lower quality food and are less successful breeders than average and again pass on less genetic material over time. In the end with have a population with enough variety in risk avoidance to adapt to a wide variety of situations that occur in their environment.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

Big Bend Marine, My father was a Marine and when I was growing up, he gave me a pin very much like the one in your picture. He has been gone since 1995 but the beautiful pin lays in my jewelry box to this very day. I am proud to have a father who was a Marine. Ironically, he did not have a typical Marine personality yet I did and I have never served in the armed forces - go figure. Big Bend numbers among my very favorite places on the planet. I do like interacting with wildlife. At the turn-outs at Big Bend and other NPs, various animals "own" the turnout - all begging for food. It could be a crow (common owner), chipmunks or even a coyote. They "work" their territory and pressure the visitors who come to the turn out to feed them. They also keep other animals out of "their" turnout. At NPs and similar safe locations, the wildlife have learned how to "act cute" posing and the like so that the visitors will feed them. Of course, visitors are not suppose to feed them but it happens often enough to make it worth the animal's efforts.

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

Yoderjac, Thanks for posting so much information. Yes, it is starting to come together for me now that I am assimilating all of this great info you are proviiding. It is beginning to make a whole lot of sense now. Your efforts are much appreciated. I am going to re-read and study the information you have presented so that I retain it and pick up what I need to accomplish my ends. I love evolutionary biology and anthropology. This information is very, VERY helpful. You are correct, it IS fun to interact with these animals - read "corrupt" them. So many of them "sell out." Others, not so much. Arguably the easiest animal to corrupt is a chipmunk. They sell out and become tame so readily. It takes very little to get them to run up your pants leg and go into your shirt pocket for peanuts then run back down and back to their nest. One concern I have with all of this animal viewing and feeding is that we do have bears on the property and the last thing I want is to encourage them. I do not need my pricey Anderson sliding doors smashed so the bears can get at my stash of feed inside or decide that my presence in the woods and meadows is a threat to bear cubs. They live at the very furthest part of my property - where it backs my neighbors 500-600 acres. Rattlesnakes also live there and I have found them sunning on my hiking path. Usually when I am in the part of the property where I know the bears live, I am in my Deere gator so I feel fairly safe. I do occasionally hike there without the gator but mostly in that part of the property, I am in the Deere gator. We are building a spruce forest there so I often go up there to check on it. One time I was walking the dog and was almost at the house after a long walk only to see a Newfundland dog at my bird feeder only, as I got closer, I saw that it was not a "newfie." It was a young black bear with two ear tags who I never saw again. She destroyed the feeder. I will admit to being scared to death of black bears esp ones with cute little cubs. Actually, I am more scared of Grizzleys only we do not have any of them in Northeastern PA where I live so no worries there. Neither do we have pumas BUT rumor has it the the game commission released a bunch of them in the county. The game commission officially denies it but individual game wardens do not. I swear I saw one once but it was dark so I can't be sure. I saw the back half of an beige cat-like animal with a long tail and it was large. Again, thanks for all the great info. I really like it.

 

[Telemark]

Ben, now your comments are REALLY interesting information. How can turkeys or any wild animal possibly be smart enough to make such distinctions? How can they know that YOU will hunt them and he will feed them? How can they possibly understand about property lines and shooting. Once the animal is shot, he is dead so how can he "learn" anything? Dead is dead, no? I never understood that part of it. I have heard that animals "know" where it is safe and where they are hunted. How?

It's usually not an issue of "smart" and "learning" per se. Most animals, including the dogs in Pavlov's experiments, learn by "conditioning." They are conditioned to associate certain things with certain other things. It happens in domestic animals too. Another driving force in animal behavior is instincts. Between these two aspects of animal brains, most of their behavior can be explained.

With conditioning, it's quite simple, as Pavlov demonstrated. If you ring a bell every time you feed a dog, that dog will associate the ringing of a bell with the availability of food. Likewise, through experience, animals learn where they are in danger and where they are safe. They also associate certain times of day with safety and danger.

 

[hilltopper]

It's usually not an issue of "smart" and "learning" per se. Most animals, including the dogs in Pavlov's experiments, learn by "conditioning." They are conditioned to associate certain things with certain other things. It happens in domestic animals too. Another driving force in animal behavior is instincts. Between these two aspects of animal brains, most of their behavior can be explained.

Trained in the sciences, I too believed what Telemark says. However, a lot of that conventional scientific wisdom on this subject is rapidly evolving. The recognition of higher level thinking in non-human organisms is being recognized more and more. That 5 1/2 year old buck may not simply have adaptive behavior for his environment (e.g. nocturnal activity), he may be quite cunning.

 

[Tap]

I used to feed corn heavily. We'd go through about 20,000 pounds per year.
I had both turkey and deer come to me just by shaking a 5 gallon bucket of corn. Critters would literally come running. Turkeys would be all around me within a foot of my feet. Also had fawns eating out of the bucket while I held it.
Forget the crow call. Just teach them what the sound of corn in a bucket means.

 

[Telemark]

I used to feed corn heavily. We'd go through about 20,000 pounds per year.
I had both turkey and deer come to me just by shaking a 5 gallon bucket of corn. Critters would literally come running. Turkeys would be all around me within a foot of my feet. Also had fawns eating out of the bucket while I held it.
Forget the crow call. Just teach them what the sound of corn in a bucket means.

Our very own St. Francis.

 

[Tap]

I used to feed corn heavily. We'd go through about 20,000 pounds per year.
I had both turkey and deer come to me just by shaking a 5 gallon bucket of corn. Critters would literally come running. Turkeys would be all around me within a foot of my feet. Also had fawns eating out of the bucket while I held it.
Forget the crow call. Just teach them what the sound of corn in a bucket means.

Our very own St. Francis.

Lol...no one ever called me a saint, before!. Just call me Pavlov and the corn bucket was my bell.
Training the critters all started with one old bearded hen turkey. She was pretty beat up. Bad leg and a bad limp. The rest of the flock ran away when I first started going out with the bucket, but she didn't. I'd throw corn towards her as far as I could. She started coming closer each time. The other turkeys started watching her and began to trust me. It wasn't long after that, the deer started watching the turkeys and then they started to trust me. It all started with Dorothy the bearded hen!

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[ruskbucks]

I have taken a mind to calling in wild turkey for the purpose of viewing and enjoyment. There are lots of them on my land (40 acres) and I do occasionally see them here and there. I am not planning to shoot any of them - which is not to say that I don't like turkey meat (I do) but that is not what I have in mind. My idea is to buy a crow whistle and bring up a bucket of dried corn via my gator to the part of my land where I know they hang out. I am hoping to train them to come when I blow the crow whistle and eat the corn which I plan to scatter on the ground. I have heard that turkeys "answer" crow and owl calls. Any idea as to whether this idea will work and how to go about doing it? My plan is to train them first to the crow whistle then switch them over to a regular blast whistle (the kind lifeguards use). Is this idea doable or just some crazy notion I have concocted. If this idea is possible, how should I go about training them to come on command?

I think your idea will work, I'm not a fan of it thou. These animals are wild and know how to survive in the wild. A lot of people think they are helping them by putting out food and trying to domesticate them. Most times this is detrimental to the animals. These turkeys should be afraid of hunters/people. After awhile they associate food with people and be a nuisance or easy pick'ens . The worst thing you can do to wild animals is to feed them and then stop. I saw a show on tv that was about these bears that would eat at a garbage dump in Canada everyday. Then one day they closed the dump down and that was the only food source that these bears knew. They ended up starving and actually ended up killing a person for food as a last resort. Not that this will happen from your turkeys,but you should get the point. If you want to view wildlife and help them out, how about planting some of your forty acres into food plots. They love clover,chufa, buckwheat, corn,etc, and you will actually be benefiting a lot of other crittters along the way too from songbirds to deer.

 

[Telemark]

Bears and turkeys are totally different.

 

[Tap]

I think your idea will work, I'm not a fan of it thou. These animals are wild and know how to survive in the wild. A lot of people think they are helping them by putting out food and trying to domesticate them. Most times this is detrimental to the animals. These turkeys should be afraid of hunters/people. After awhile they associate food with people and be a nuisance or easy pick'ens . The worst thing you can do to wild animals is to feed them and then stop. I saw a show on tv that was about these bears that would eat at a garbage dump in Canada everyday. Then one day they closed the dump down and that was the only food source that these bears knew. They ended up starving and actually ended up killing a person for food as a last resort. Not that this will happen from your turkeys,but you should get the point. If you want to view wildlife and help them out, how about planting some of your forty acres into food plots. They love clover,chufa, buckwheat, corn,etc, and you will actually be benefiting a lot of other crittters along the way too from songbirds to deer.

I agree with you 100%. When I look back on our feeding practices, I wish we hadn't done it. Diet wise, it wasn't good for the animals and conditioning-to-humans wise, it definately wasn't good for them.
And for my enjoyment of turkey hunting...it destroyed it. I used to like the challenge of hunting them when they were wary. Now, there's no challenge in killing a turkey here. Maybe I should shoot a few and wise 'em up a little.
It's been 3 years since I've fed and the deer have reverted back to being wary but not so much for the turkey. I'll never artificially feed again.

 

[yoderjac]

Good points. While I talked a lot in previous posts about the "how it could be done", I did not address either the ethics or legal issues. First, check you state game laws. For example, it is illegal to feed certain wild animals in my state from September through early January. Given you are not harvesting them, you don't have the fair chase ethics to deal with, but you still have to worry about the negative consequences. For example, just because you are targeting turkey, doesn't mean other wildlife like deer won't respond. Point source attractants like food piles encourages more than normal face to face contact between deer and increases the chances of disease spread. Animals that become dependent on a constant food source become less effective at finding natural food over time. They also tend to breed more and can exceed the natural biological carrying capacity of the land. When that food source is suddenly disrupted (say you are in the hospital or something), the negative effects can be dramatic.

This is not to say there is never a case when you can feed wildlife. It simply means that you need to think through the entire process and what unintended consequences it may have.

Thanks,

jack

 

[bigbendmarine]

Big Bend Marine, My father was a Marine and when I was growing up, he gave me a pin very much like the one in your picture. He has been gone since 1995 but the beautiful pin lays in my jewelry box to this very day... Big Bend numbers among my very favorite places on the planet. I do like interacting with wildlife.

Thank you for sharing the story about your father giving you an EGA (eagle, globe & anchor) pin -- a true sentimental treasure for sure! My father was also a Marine and definitely influenced me to join -- though not through any pep / patriotic talk, but instead just in the hardworking ethic I witnessed in him and appreciated was somewhat molded by the Corps. He died just a month ago and my mother showed me a few Marine Corps mementos he held on to from his time in and I loved being able to see them.

As for the Big Bend moniker, while I briefly lived in Texas (wife did residency at Texas Tech) the big bend referenced is from the "Forgotten Coast" area of North Florida. I live just outside Tallahassee and the region is often referred to locally as the "big bend" since the coast curves like an upside down bowl to form the Apalachee Bay before then turning southward towards Homosassa and Tampa. Far different type of geography than the Texas Big Bend region, but no shortage of wildlife and if you like parks and wildlife and are ever in the area the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge area along the coast just south of Tallahassee is home to quite diverse fauna and flora.

 

[j-bird]

Conditioning of wild animals is very well documented. I remember watching a show where there where wild deer in Europe and those deer that where alive while the iron curtain was still up dividing east and west Germany refused to EVER cross over the line once the fence was down. Only as new generations where born did this start to fade.

You can see this in fish as well. If you get fish raised in a hatchery where they feed the floating pellets.....you can continue that practice. Then you can "call" the fish to you buy throwing out a handful of small stones to replicate that sound. We used to do this as kids all the time for my grandfathers channel cats. Some fish will follow a person around a pond that gets grass clippings and the like blown into the water from mowing as well as it makes an easy meal of bugs and the like.

I realize fish and mammals are far different, but it's the same concept.

Set up a game feeder in a safe location and set up a hunting blind and the animals will figure out the rest. "Calling" them and trying to get them to see people as not being a threat is dangerous to people AND the animals.

 

[ruskbucks]

Bears and turkeys are totally different.

Ya I realize that, I was just giving a example. I could tell you probably a hundred negative examples about the effects of feeding wild animals and bringing them close to residences. Usually never benefits the wildlife. My neighbor up north decided to "help out" our deer herd a few years ago by feeding them hay in the middle of winter. The result was 6 deer that starved to death with belly's full of hay because they couldn't adjust to braking it down. Three of them were nice bucks. I don't care if it is turkeys,deer, or bear most of the time you are do more damage to the animal by feeding them and conditioning them to come around humans and their houses.

 

[ruskbucks]

Conditioning of wild animals is very well documented. I remember watching a show where there where wild deer in Europe and those deer that where alive while the iron curtain was still up dividing east and west Germany refused to EVER cross over the line once the fence was down. Only as new generations where born did this start to fade.

You can see this in fish as well. If you get fish raised in a hatchery where they feed the floating pellets.....you can continue that practice. Then you can "call" the fish to you buy throwing out a handful of small stones to replicate that sound. We used to do this as kids all the time for my grandfathers channel cats. Some fish will follow a person around a pond that gets grass clippings and the like blown into the water from mowing as well as it makes an easy meal of bugs and the like.

I realize fish and mammals are far different, but it's the same concept.

Set up a game feeder in a safe location and set up a hunting blind and the animals will figure out the rest. "Calling" them and trying to get them to see people as not being a threat is dangerous to people AND the animals.

We have a pond just like you described J. When you walk towards the beach where we feed them all you see are wakes heading toward you. They know that's its feeding time.Its amazing the kids swim in there and the fish stay right around them. I had to put a ban on fishing on this beach because the same fish that hang out there would be caught way to many times in a day. If I could only get that blue heron to fish somewhere else.

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

Guys, The bottom line is that, basically, there is not much difference between hunting animals and feeding wildlife. It is all the same thing. We are "using" the animals for purposes of our own personal enjoyment and we are all very good at deceiving ourselves in the process. I don't want to feed the turkeys so as to "help" them. I want to enjoy interacting with them in an unnatural way for my benefit. I want to up there - where they like to hang out on my land - and feed them when I feel like doing so because I would like having them all gather around me, clucking and interacting for food. The turkeys may marginally benefit by virtue of getting some extra food but that is not what is driving the equation. What is driving it all is making the animals do what I want them to do for my benefit. I feed the birds because I want to watch wild birds from my window. I put some corn out because I want the deer to come up near my sliding doors and window so that I can watch them and see them up close. I have a question on how to tell the sex of deer but that is for another thread, later. The blue jay now knows enough to get my attention when his peanuts and sunflower seeds in the corn mix run out - totally unnatural behavior for blue jays but I am fine with it. He stares at me until I put some more mix out where he can pick through it, choosing only what he wants - leaving the corn. I think it is all rather cute but the whole thing is being done for my benefit. None of this is really done for the animal's benefit only we like to deceive ourselves that such is the dynamic. It is not.

Same with hunting. Hunters "use" the animals just as I do only to a different end. They enjoy the thrill of the hunt. They want to match skills with the animals to see who "wins." Same as feeding the wildlife. It is done for our - meaning the human's - benefit. Some hunters will deceive themselves and think they are doing it for the meat just like some wildlife feeders will say they are doing it to "help" the animals. If you added up all the high-tech hunting gear, the specialized adaptations to the pick up trucks, the clothing needed, and the time off from work and/or the lodge fees, the hunting fees, etc., it would be cheaper to simply buy the meat in the supermarket. Hunters and feeders are simply different sides of the same coin. Often, each likes to judge the other but, the bottom line, we are all doing the same thing - only our methodology differs.

Now on a more practical note, I am REALLY enjoying all the great info I have gotten from you guys. All of this information is extremely helpful and will very specifically help me to achieve what I am after. I want to be where Tap is or was - training animals on my land to come around when I have some corn in a bucket and feel like watching them. Corn is super cheap and not at all hard to afford quite a bit of it. My own personal feeling, however, is that one should never feed any wild animal enough to make a difference in their survival. I severely limit what I feed any wild animal on my property. The deer do not get more than a cup of corn from me at a time and often, it is not worth their while to come down to get it. I don't want any of them depending on me for a food source - just have them come around for "free handouts" when it suits me to pass them out. One thing I have learned about hunters is that these guys have the answers to a lot of the questions I have and they typically have the information I want. They know a whole lot about how to set up the environment on my land to be the way I want and they and they know a whole lot about how to manipulate the animals. In general I find hunters to be full of very useful information which is why, I hang out here from time to time. Thanks to you guys, I think I can pull of this "turkey thing" which I have in mind to do. I have gotten a whole lot of tips from you guys as to how to make it happen. I, personally, like training animals to come to a whistle (it is very convenient) so I think I will try to get them to associate the whistle with the bucket of corn. The dog (border collie) was super-easy to whistle train. Beats screaming at her when I want her to come in from her run. Her run is attached to my house with a dedicated door. I had a large run put on the side of an extension I had built to my house so I don't have to walk her in the snow and cold in the winter. Border collies are very stubborn dogs. She does not come always when called (or screamed at to get inside) but she ALWAYS comes to the whistle. Let's see how "smart" these turkeys are. Is it true they call them "flying foxes?"

 

[Tap]

I don't think that you understand the hearts and souls of the hunters on this site.
Very few of us feel we are using deer or that hunting them is the same as feeding them. You are way off base on that one.
Most of us care deeply about the land and wildlife habitat. We care deeply about the hetd and what's best for THEM.
You should spend a few days or weeks reading through our threads. You may come to understand the average hunter on this site.

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