00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m joined by doctor Mike Chamberlain to discuss the future of wild turkeys and turkey hunting in America. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie. And this week we are talking turkeys, and we’re talking turkeys because just a few days from now, when you know, a couple days after the show launches, it will be Turkey Week at Meat Eater. Turkey Week is running March thirtieth through April third, twenty twenty six. All things turkey across the Mediator platforms. All sorts of new podcasts, new videos, new arts, racles, contests, social media, lots of fun reasons to get excited and celebrate turkeys. And so this week we are going to do the same thing here on wy’ed tont And my guest today is quite possibly the most well known, foremost expert on all things wild turkeys in America, and that is doctor Mike Chamberlain. He’s got a heck of a title. His title is the National Wild Turkey Federation Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia. This is the University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources is the technical name there. He has been researching wild turkeys for more than thirty years. He is a passionate turkey hunter. He is the creator and the most often content producer for Wild Turkey Labs. Wild Turkey lab dot com, I believe is the url for that website where you can find all sorts of articles, research papers, basically everything that he has compiled, worked on, or been a part of when it comes to wild turkey behavior, research studies, the status of their populations, and much much more. If you enjoy turkey hunting, this is somebody you should be listening to. And hopefully you’ve already heard from him, read some of his things, seen him across the world. He’s very active in the public. He’s one of our you know, as I mentioned, great communicators on this topic. But what I wanted to chat with him today about was the future. What does the future hold for this animal, this bird that so many of us love to chase, to hear, to hunt, to eat. Over the last five or six years, there has been an increasing awareness of the fact that turkeys are not doing as well as they once were. There’s been a lot of debate about why that might be. There’s been a lot of discussion about what we should do about it, and what in fact is happening, and how hunters maybe can or cannot make a different diference on what’s happening with turkeys. Should we be lowering bag limits, should we be changing season dates, should we not be using certain turkey loads, should we not be using decoys or blinds or reaping techniques. There’s all sorts of debate on this front, and all of that is why I wanted to have a kind of status update from Mike. What’s actually happening now, What can we confirm is true? Where is the jury still out? What can turkey hunters do about this? What do we need to be aware of as we come into the twenty twenty six hunting season and seasons to come. What’s the future going to look like ten years from now or twenty years from now. All of that is discussed today. If you like turkeys, if you love turkey hunting, this is a must listen to help prepare you for what’s coming down the line and how all of us can ensure that there are many more enjoyable turkey seasons to come. So that’s what’s in store for today. I also want to let you know that we do have a really cool collaboration with doctor Mike Chamberlain and his Wild Turkey Lab with a project coming up related to Meetator’s Turkey Week. There’s a really neat initiative that Mike has going on called Wild Turkey DNA, in which he is asking for citizens to submit samples of any turkeys that they have killed that have very unique plumage, like all white feathers or funky colors, different things like that. And so Mediator is going to be hosting a photo contest in which you can submit photos of your unique plumage turkeys while also encouraging people to participate in this citizen science initiative as well. You can learn more about that once Turkey Week starts at the Mediator website and that’s the meat eater dot com. It’s kicking off March thirtieth, twenty twenty six, so check it out. Until then, though, we’re going to kick off Turkey Week a little bit early with this very interesting, very practical conversation about the future of turkeys and turkey hunting with doctor Mike Chamberlain. Enjoy all right. Joining me in now on the line is doctor Mike Chamberlain. Welcome to the show.
00:05:09
Speaker 3: Mike. Good to be with you. Mark.
00:05:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. It’s been a long time coming. You’ve been on the Mediator podcast, You’ve been all over the media world in recent years sharing the I was gonna say the good news but in some cases good and bad news when it comes to two turkeys with the hunting world, and have really made an impact. But for some reason, I haven’t gotten you on this podcast yet, So I’m glad it’s finally happening. Glad we have an excuse to get to chat some and I want to just dive right in the deep end because your time is valuable, the listener’s time is valuable, and I don’t think we have any time to waste when it comes to wild turkeys. So if you could help us lay a foundation for this conversation by giving me your best attempt at like a three minute history of turkeys in America. If you were stuck in an elevator for like two three minutes with someone and they said, hey, what’s the deal with turkeys here? Could you give us a quick Hey they started here, this happened, this happened, and now we are here. If you had to broadly summarize that trajectory.
00:06:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
00:06:23
Speaker 4: So I mean turkeys followed a trajectory that a lot of game and wildlife species followed. After colonization, you know, populations were largely decimated. The bird was extirpated from much of its historic range. And then in the after World War two, and particularly as you started getting closer to the sixties and seventies, you started seeing restoration efforts that largely failed at the start, but then really kind of accelerated in the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties, and turkey populations were restored across their historic range and even into areas where turkeys were never historically present. And so now there are wild turkeys and forty nine of the fifty US states, and they’re in multiple other countries overseas as well. And then although things looked really good. The last thirty seconds of that three minute synopsis is around two thousand and five to ten, we started documenting fairly large scale declines and turkey populations. At first, it looked like it was restricted to the south and east, and as more research was conducted, it appears that those declines are much more widespread in occurring across much of the Midwest and beyond. So that is now kind of where we are today with this kind of pulse of turkey research that’s out there trying to understand how to mitigate these declines.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: So before we get into that last part the recent declines, I want to zoom in a little bit on that recovery phase. And I actually did have done a little bit of writing on this on another project as I was kind of thinking through the many different examples of this kind of mid twentieth century recovery of many wildlife species that got pretty close to some serious, serious trouble. And the turkey story is a really interesting one because it wasn’t just like there was one major legislative victory that saved them, right. It wasn’t like you know, market hunting of bison, you know, being outlawed and then all of a sudden there was an opportunity for them, for them to come back. It was something that was much more, at least seemingly much more driven by people, regular people who volunteered their time or join an organization to do these trap and transfer programs and all that. Could you share a little bit more about what that looked like, because that’s such an encouraging, hopeful story of what regular people were able to do and maybe could do again.
00:09:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, turkey restoration was largely driven by turkey hunters and biologists in a number of states who had a passion to hunt turkeys and were dismayed at the lack of opportunity to do that. And so you saw these early efforts by pioneers like you.
00:09:34
Speaker 3: Know, Wayne Bailey and other.
00:09:36
Speaker 4: Biologists who figured out how to capture turkeys at scale. In other words, how do you catch a flock of turkey so that you could trap, you know, you could transport them somewhere and release them. And so you really saw this kind of grassroots effort that started, you know, in the back forty with folks who just loved turkeys and wanted to be able to experience hunting those birds and and many of these folks hunted for seasons and never interacted with a turkey. There’s stories of people, you know, folks that were involved in restoration, spending an entire season trying to hear a bird to the gobble and yeah, and so you really saw this kind of this upswell in Hey, we figured out how to do this, We figured out how to capture wild birds and move them. And once that occurred, you saw this real explosion in the desire because now there was a way to do it right, there was an opportunity, there was a methodology in place, and then really restoration just exploded once states realized that they could they could trap and transport across state lines by cooperating with the National Wild Turkey Federation, which put in place this system to where there was a restitution cost associated with birds. So in other words, a state could request birds from one state, have those birds brought into their state, and then pay restitution for those birds. And what that allowed was, if you think about it, instead of just trapping turkeys in your state where opportunities may be fairly limited, right, there may only be a small population of birds in a particular state. Now suddenly you could go to five states and get birds. And that’s why you saw in the late eighties and early nineties turkey populations just exploded because states were trapping and transporting across lines.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: Was there anything unique about that era that allowed for that to succeed like it did, whether that be habitat on the ground, or political winds or anything else and social things going on. Is there anything that you can point to that’s like, oh, yeah, this is why it actually worked so well. Or was it just this wonderful coincidence that the stars aligned and there was people there willing to do the good work.
00:12:12
Speaker 4: I think in a lot of ways, it was a perfect storm where you got one. You had, you had habitat characteristics across much of North America that were at the time fundamentally much better for a wild turkeys than they are today. You had turkeys being transported into parts of the landscape where predators were not familiar with them, didn’t know that a turkey was a prey item, and in some cases moved into areas that had very low predator abundance.
00:12:45
Speaker 3: To begin with.
00:12:46
Speaker 4: And then you also saw situations, if you think about it, where you were kind of genetically mixing up animals and creating. And this is something we’re actually studying now is whether this is a good thing or not. But this kind of hybrid vigor right where you’re sticking animals that are genetically different from one another together into a landscape and predictably, you know, populations really exploded. And the other thing that think about critically if you’re a turkey hunter is that during restoration, hunting was not allowed. So once birds were restored to a state, there was a mandate where hunting could not occur within five years of those restoration efforts. So you really saw turkey populations that were able to function without any type of interference from us. And the result I think was, I mean, it’s one of the greatest success stories in conservation history. And I also think that at the time, the fabric of state agencies and the fabric of NWTF and the many people who were involved in the restoration efforts generation they were they were They were turkey hunters first and foremost right they were they were turkey enthusiasts, and they by and large had a passion for the bird and to understand the value of existing with turkeys on the landscape and and having talked with many of those folks who are now retired. That was their life, man, that’s that’s.
00:14:25
Speaker 3: What they did.
00:14:26
Speaker 4: Like my job is to restore turkeys in my state, and they worked an entire career to do that. And and I think that’s again, I think it was kind of a perfect storm.
00:14:38
Speaker 2: Do you do we have those kinds of people still today?
00:14:42
Speaker 3: Gosh, that’s a loaded question.
00:14:44
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think what you see when you look across state agencies and and kind of the wildlife management community, you see a very different fabric than you did back in the nineteen seventies and eighties and nineties. You know, unfortunately, as an educator, I see this in my own institution that most students that come into natural resources university programs are not hunters.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Most are not.
00:15:17
Speaker 4: In fact, a very small percentage are. And so the people that are staffing our state agencies now are just different. And I’m not criticizing them. I’m simply noting that they’re their fabric is different than the fabric of many in the nineteen eighties and nineties that drove turkey restoration.
00:15:40
Speaker 3: Is there.
00:15:42
Speaker 2: Any possible ripple effects of that that you can foresee? Given that the perspective, the background, the values, the cultural associations that a non hunting wildlife manager might bring to the table could lead to different outcome or or maybe not. Do you do you foresee anything given this you know, natural shift that does seem to be happening.
00:16:07
Speaker 3: One hundred percent?
00:16:08
Speaker 4: I mean, if you think about it, decision making at a state agency level that involves people who are not hunters and have don’t have the the mindset that a hunter would have, if you, I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to kind of project that out across the next few decades. And that concerns me, and it concerns state agencies. Frankly, I have conversations with with administrators from a number of agencies who are concerned about that, because if you think about the constituents that the political process kind of you know, works towards or works for. If hunters are a very small voice period and we are not actively part of our state agencies because of the people that are graduating from universities and going into agency positions are not hunters, then I think it’s logical to think that through time we’re going to be underrepresented in a way that maybe we’re not thinking about because we typically as hunters look to our state agencies, despite the fact that you know, if you go on Facebook, every state agency is the demon. But you know, we criticize state agencies as hunters, sometimes rightfully so. But but the state agencies are law are lawfully charged with conserving sustainable natural resources, right and and many of those resources are our resources you and I cherish, right, whether it be game or non game. And if you’re a hunter and you kind of think about what the future is going to look like in your state, If your agency is staffed people that are not like you, that don’t have the same passion that you have, then that should be concerning to you.
00:18:08
Speaker 2: It is to read between the lines a little bit. How serious do you think the possibility of twenty years from now, thirty years from now, if we have continued declines in Turkey numbers paired with increasing number of managers who don’t see the value in turkey hunters and turkey hunting, and they see those two things, that being the health of Turkey populations and participation in turkey hunting as being possibly opposed to each other because of those declines, you know, looking forward to does the future of turkey hunting, actually hunting them seem at risk given that trend.
00:18:59
Speaker 4: Think where my mind goes mark is, you know, in the in the face of ongoing declines, and and to back up a little bit, you know, turkeys are doing quite well in many areas. It’s it’s the fact that they’re they’re struggling in and in kind of.
00:19:15
Speaker 3: The heart of their range. Right if you really look, the south and.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: East is the heart of of wild turkey range. And for for populations to really, excuse me, be struggling in many of those states and beyond, causes you pause, and I think where my mind goes is, you know, none of us want lower opportunity, none of us want to to not be able to chase the passion that we you know, I live all year for for right now, for the next two months, I think, I tell my wife, I exist all year for the next two months outside of a few weeks when the rut hits. But I kind of look and I think, Okay, what are my opportunities going to look like in twenty years? Right as I’m on the precipice of my you know, I’m at the very end of my turkey hunting career. What’s the opportunity going to look like for me? In other words, what are seasons going to look like? What are are am I going to be hunting under quota systems in most places because there’s so much demand for what supply is available. You already see this, as you know, on public lands throughout much of North America. And is that just the future for the wild turkey in many In many situations our quotas if you will, as you’re and if you pay attention, if you’re a traveling turkey hunter, this is already popping up right. You know, states are limiting non resident access and opportunity as they should because of declining populations. And so is that just the future for me as a turkey hunter where there’s going to be this consistent kind of this decline and opportunity because there’s so much demand for reduced supply and that that’s where That’s where my head goes when I when I’m asked that type of question, is is that the reality that I’m going to be looking at and avoiding that reality is part of what gets me up in the morning.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: So with that in mind, Mike, I guess I want to maybe I’ve dove into the deep end too quickly, because I do want to get kind of a broad sense of the reality of the situation right now, maybe over the last five years or so, I feel like this whole realization that maybe turkeys aren’t doing as well as we once thought. That’s that’s because I’m in top of mind for a lot of people. But I’m not sure that we have a clear sense of the severity of that. I think maybe most people know, oh, there’s there’s some places the turkeys are kind of not like they used to be. But do you have a sense or could you give us a sense of if this is like a I guess on a scale of one to ten, ten being this is a five alarm fire, the most dire crisis possible, a one being things are amazing, they couldn’t be better. Where on that scale would you rate your sense of concern right now about the state of turkeys across America?
00:22:40
Speaker 4: I think that completely depends on where you are, so like if and even within regions, there’s such complexity. So for instance, if I’m in South Carolina, for instance, where populations have continued to lag and the state agency has tried regulatory changes and the population continues to seemingly decline. I’m concerned if I then go to other places where populations, like, for instance, in Louisiana, populations seem to have gotten as low as they were going to get and have responded to changes over the last eight years ish.
00:23:26
Speaker 3: And then I go.
00:23:27
Speaker 4: To places, you know, in the Upper Midwest, for instance, where populations in some areas appear to be doing quite well. You go into areas out west, and turkeys are thriving in many places, almost to the point of overabundance in some situations. And I think it just speaks to how complex the turkey world is, if you will, and really, you know, I kind of when I’m asked this at a kind of a broad scale, I talk to people that particular state that are like, what are you talking about turkey problem?
00:24:03
Speaker 3: Like I got turkeys.
00:24:04
Speaker 4: Running out of my ears, you know, And I’ll be like, yeah, and counter blessings because I can take you right down the street here and drive you through a county that ten years ago you could ed to sew turkeys all the time, and you don’t see birds anymore.
00:24:21
Speaker 3: They’re just not there.
00:24:23
Speaker 4: And if you look at you know, many places in North America. That is a common refrain. That’s a common thing you hear, or what I hear a lot is you know, I had a bunch of turkeys around two thousand and five, and man, I still see turkeys, but not like I used to. That’s the common theme that I hear, and so the severity of that equation just differs from one point to the next.
00:24:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, did I see. I believe the number I saw was that the turkey harvest in Georgia has declined by something like seventy five percent over I can’t remember what the time spend was, but does that trend sound accurate for some of those South Southeastern states?
00:25:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, many Southeastern states have seen well over a fifty percent decline in harvest, some sixty plus percent, and that you know, if you think about it this way, twenty years ago, I could go turkey hunting on public ground and rarely I could go an entire day and never bump into another hunter. I could go to a least property that I was a part of and there were no other members there, you know.
00:25:43
Speaker 3: And now it’s.
00:25:44
Speaker 4: A challenge to go find a public ground that is not being hunted, and competition for least property is keen, and so there’s so much interest around turkeys, as there should be. They’re an incredible spaces to hunt and.
00:26:02
Speaker 3: And what’s not to love.
00:26:03
Speaker 4: But if you kind of think about the world of harvest and you think what’s changed in the last twenty years for harvest to be declining, speaks volumes about kind of where things stand. Because you know, some will argue, well, harvest is just an indicator of hunter activity, and that’s largely in some ways true. But if you have increasing interest and increasing participation and decreasing harvest, the math doesn’t add up, right. That suggests a subli and demand issue. And that’s kind of what I was saying earlier. That’s what kind of gets me up in the morning, is like, Okay, I don’t want to see a world where we are dealing with these constant like quota caps, you know, limits, that that that type of thing, because that that’s a that’s a world where the opportunity to chase this this passion and you know, is going to be reduced.
00:27:06
Speaker 2: I’ve heard you explain my area, you answer my next question.
00:27:12
Speaker 3: Let me let me phrase this.
00:27:14
Speaker 2: The natural question after hearing all this is is why why is this happening. Right, You’ve been asked that question a thousand times and it is a complex answer. I recognize, and I’ve heard you once explain it with the analogy of a football team kind of being representative of the interconnected variables that impact Turkey health and populations. Could you could you answer that question for me? Could you help us understand why these things are happening and maybe use that football analogy because I found that so helpful.
00:27:49
Speaker 4: That’s the that’s the way I can think about it that makes sense to me. Is like every year in every spot, the Turkey population is like football game where your local population has influenced All the positions that are on the field can influence the outcome. But every single year, in every single location, there’s certain positions that influence every outcome, habitat, predation, harvest, etc.
00:28:21
Speaker 3: But then in.
00:28:22
Speaker 4: One particular area, you may have a position on the field that disproportionately impacts the game this year that doesn’t impact the game in a subsequent year. Severe drought, very very wet two week period when hens are starting to hatch polts and you see this decline in productivity. Those types of things that you can’t really predict you can’t anticipate. And then the kind of sinister positions. You know, if you think about a football game, offensive line always impacts the outcome of every game, right quarterback plays, you know, the super important positions, Well, those would be your habitat and your predator communities, and those two are kind of intertwined everywhere you go. So that’s the way I think about it. And then when I think about, Okay, so why is this happening? I mean, I don’t think any informed person would ever argue that habitat is not the driving force that’s impacting turkey populations above everything else. I don’t think any logical person would argue that that in most places, habitat has changed quite a bit in the last few decades.
00:29:43
Speaker 3: Now.
00:29:44
Speaker 4: Of course, you and I we can go to places that damn near don’t look anything different twenty years ago. They look just like they look now. But if you go east of the Mississippi in particular, and you look at the landscape now compared to what it looked like before, you are going to see dramatic losses of hardwood forest, which are particularly important for turkeys, one because they provide hard masks in the winter, but two. They’re also important for brooding brood hens. If you think about it, if you go in and take hardwood forest and you replace them with something else, and you undermine that food resource, it’s not just well they have to go eat something else. That’s a fundamental problem because acorns built fat, and fat makes hens more productive in the spring, and so in the bird world, being big and fat is good. And so if you take turkeys, if you think about it, if you take hundreds of thousands of acres of hardwoods and you remove them and replace them with something else, that’s a problem. At the same time, if you look at much of the United States now compared to a few decades ago, you’re going to see that.
00:31:05
Speaker 3: It’s fragmented, right.
00:31:06
Speaker 4: We we we cut the landscape up into little pieces, and those little pieces are easier for predators that eat turkeys and their nests to hunt and so habitat and predation to me, you can’t they’re in they’re the same like they’re they’re they’re interacting with one another to influence turkeys. And then you you tack in, you know, disease issues, which we we don’t see situations with turkeys dying in masts right, like you’d see with waterfowl. But we we know that turkeys have diseases, and some of those diseases kill birds.
00:31:40
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:31:41
Speaker 4: And then you you tack in, you know, go out well out in the Midwest and look at agricultural practices and how they’ve changed in the last few decades, and how the availability of waste green is going to be much less now because of how efficient harvesting practices are and and how mechanized agriculture is. And I guess my point is if you just start, if you sit back and start in your area, start kind of picking apart what’s different now. It doesn’t have to be something that’s so different than it smacks you in the face. It could be something that just slowly erodes the landscape. And that’s kind of consistent with what we’ve seen with these declines is they were not very rapid. They were very very slow. It took us twenty years to get where we are, and in a lot of ways it happened right under our noses.
00:32:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it’s that idea of shifting baseline syndrome.
00:32:36
Speaker 3: Right.
00:32:37
Speaker 2: We become used to a new normal and then that becomes our baseline and we forget about what that old baseline used to be twenty years ago or forty years ago. Many of us never knew what it was like forty years ago, so we have nothing else to compare it against. But yeah, if you were to take a snapshot of our world today and compare it to what that landscape looked like twenty years ago.
00:33:00
Speaker 3: It’s people, it’s unbelievable.
00:33:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I talk with younger turkey hunters a lot about this is, you know, if you’re in your twenties or your thirties, I mean, I’m fifty four, I’ve been I started hunting turkeys as a teenager, and I saw literally population restoration.
00:33:20
Speaker 3: But right before my eyes.
00:33:21
Speaker 4: I mean when I started turkey hunting, if you went and killed a bird in the spring, you were you were doing something.
00:33:28
Speaker 3: And then I went.
00:33:29
Speaker 4: Through a period where there were so many turkeys on places I went, even public ground, that you were paralyzed.
00:33:36
Speaker 3: You didn’t know which direction to.
00:33:37
Speaker 4: Head at, you know, a half hour before sunrise, a little in every direction.
00:33:43
Speaker 3: It’s like, this is unbelievable.
00:33:45
Speaker 4: And now I’ve seen those declines, and I’ve seen the landscape change in my lifetime, and to your point, those changes in a lot of cases, they reset your kind of your normal, Right, And now I go to places that I hunted when I was, say twenty five, and I don’t even recognize those places. And that happened right in front of me, And at the time, it didn’t seem that big of a deal. Right, It’s like the ten years it took for that to happen, or the thirty years it took that for that to happen didn’t smack me in the face like it does now now I see it. And that’s just kind of the way human humans function, you know.
00:34:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is. It’s hard sometimes to recognize what you were just sharing there, which is like the slow accumulation of habitat change and loss and fragmentation. But it’s really easy for us to point a finger at competition, right. It makes common sense that if that raccoon or that coyote is eating eggs or eating my turkeys, then I’m gonna have fewer turkeys to kill. Right. Why is it that you say that predators in their impact are directly tied to habitat That connection seems possibly a little bit harder to make. Could you help us understand that?
00:35:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, what I’m saying there is is in a lot of ways we have created situations that benefit a predator versus a turkey.
00:35:21
Speaker 3: So if you if you if.
00:35:23
Speaker 4: You take a you know, take some of the big egg eaters, rat snakes, raccoons, you know, species that even coyotes that are good egg raiders. They you know, if you’re a raccoon or a coyote, you’re you’re hunting with your nose and you’re using a combination of queues, your eyesight, you’re hearing your nose to bounce around through the environment. And if you can get on something that’s linear, like a road or right of way or something that allows you to efficiently traverse your range, you can be more successful. You can hunt bigger ground, you can and particularly we see this with raccoons is they are so intensive in how they function as a predator.
00:36:10
Speaker 3: They just course.
00:36:11
Speaker 4: Over and over and over through places, and so they are going to find a nest if it’s there, right, if it’s there, if it’s in the core of their activity areas, they’re going to find it. And so if you kind of think about that and you say, okay, I’m going to take these big chunks of habitat and split them up into ten smaller chunks that may not seem like a big deal to us because we’re just looking at it. It’s green vegetation, it’s forced, it’s but every time you split it into sections where a predator can more effectively course it, they are going to be more effective in general. And so that’s what I’m saying is in a lot of ways, the habitat issues that we’re that we’re seeing are kind of predisposing turkeys to dealing with predation rates.
00:37:02
Speaker 3: And the other thing I.
00:37:03
Speaker 4: Would say is on the flip side, there’s a large body of research showing that you can mitigate predation through wise habitat management. You know, a prime example in my area would be my own research showing that when you conduct prescribe burns, you fundamentally change how coyotes and raccoons use areas that are prescribed burned because you’re essentially creating a vegetative community that’s not as conducive to their foraging efficiency. So by burning these these stands, you’re causing predators to have to shift their centers of activity, and in so doing, you can correspondingly, you know, increase turkey success because you’re changing how predators are distributed.
00:37:51
Speaker 2: So someone listening to this right now might be thinking, all right, I want to try to improve the situation for turkeys in my area, and I only have so much time and so money resources, and I’m thinking about how best to use my time. If you had, if you were forced to choose, and if you were forced to pick between investing time and energy and resources into directly addressing predation by way of trapping and hunting, or by investing your time, energy and resources into improving habitat. I think I know the answer, But which would you choose?
00:38:34
Speaker 4: I mean, ideally I choose both. I’ll always answer this the same way. It really depends on what you can control or what you can influence on at scale. Right, And so if you’re thinking about a while turkey, you have to understand that their home rangers are quite large, right, if you’re in the eastern United States or up into the upper Midwest where you are, I mean, you’re talking birds that use thousands of acres in their annual cycle. And then if you go out west and you look at you know, subspecies like merriams, they may move ten to fifteen twenty miles between their winter range and their their spring breeding range. So you’ve got an area that you got an animal uses a lot of area, right, and so that’s kind of how I approach the answer to this question. Okay, if you’re impacting turkeys at scale, at a fairly large scale, then I’m always going to start with habitat if I can. As you scale down, you just have to understand that your expectation needs to be kind of predicated on the fact that you’re influencing. You know, if you’re managing ten acres or twenty acres or fifty acres, you’re influencing a small part of that animal’s home range. So you just have to be you know, your expectations have to be couched in that. The same goes with predators, exact same scenario. If you’re if you’re capable of influencing predator abundance and distribution and activity at a larger spatial scale, then you would expect to have more impact on your local population than if you were trapping a ten acre you know, wood lot in the back forty if you will. And the other thing that’s important to understand with predators is that there are a lot of predators that influence turkeys and some of those predators can’t you can’t legally manage right, and so that’s just that’s an important reason for me. I’m trying to do both if I can. If I can influence habitat and predators, I’m going to do that. If I can’t touch habitat right, I have no ability to do anything with the habitat and the property that I have access to. If you’re interested in managing predators, I encourage people to do it.
00:41:09
Speaker 3: I mean, try it.
00:41:11
Speaker 4: If you’ve ever trapped, you realize that that’s an incredibly rewarding activity. It causes you attention to detail, and it puts you out in the woods at a time when otherwise you may not be out there, and all of that’s good. Just be realistic in your expectations. That’s the way I answer that.
00:41:41
Speaker 2: On the habitat side, I feel like this is one where there’s a lot of tailwinds, at least for those people that own or lease land already for hunting, because there’s there’s been so much energy and education in managing habitat within the white tail world, improving habitat in these lands, and I’m curious if there is any conflict between the typical practices that are discussed and recommended for whitetail habitat management versus what’s best for turkeys. So with the typical guy who’s been trying to make his property better for deer hunting, is that guy helping turkeys too, or do we need to consider some alternatives or adjusting our approach if we really want to address the turkey issues too.
00:42:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, in a lot of ways they’re compatible. You know, managing for deer and turkeys are compatible in a lot of ways, but not all. And one fundamental difference that I think hunters need to understand is that, you know, whitetails, when they’re threatened, they want to run a short distance and stop and hide. And so as a deer hunter, we’re thinking betting cover, security, cover juxtaposed to foraging areas. Right, We’re we’re thinking, Okay, I’m going I can catch this buck coming from his bedding area to where he’s going to feed, or we’re thinking, you know, transitions between vegetative communities, and so we’re kind of thinking, like, you know, a deer, but in the turkey world, you have to understand they need to see and then be able to run, right and their last escape mechanism is flight. They don’t really want to fly. And the reason is very simple and we don’t have to go into it. But turkeys are a big bird and they have a high amount of wingloading, which means their wings are not very proportionate to their bodies. So they’re not designed to fly. They’re designed to sail. And so turkeys need to be able to see. So if you’re thinking about, you know, a forage plot for instance, and I’m thinking, as deer hunter boy, i want it thick right up to the edge, right because that joker is going to pop out there and he’s right on me, he’s dead. For a turkey, I want that bird to stand in that plot and be able to see up into the surrounding forest. And so what I encourage landowners that I interact with if you want both, there are ways to do both. You just have to be very surgical in how you plant it. So, for instance, if I’m looking at a food plot that I’ve planted or a foraging area where I’m trying to attract deer and i want turkeys to also kind of be attracted to it, I’m managing at least one part of that forest surrounding that plot to be open, right, so birds can see. And I’m trying to get intel, if you will, on how are birds accessing this plot, where are they coming from, where.
00:45:00
Speaker 3: They when they leave, where do they go?
00:45:03
Speaker 4: And then I’m trying to set up a very surgical management scenario for literally every part of that property so that I can optimize the attractiveness for white tails but also give my birds the ability to see.
00:45:18
Speaker 2: So you mentioned this open hardwoods kind of habitat, which, to your point, is sometimes something that deer hunters don’t want. It looks nice, but white tails don’t always love to spend a lot of time in it. But what about nesting and poulting habitat. That’s something that you know, seems like it’s very important for turkey productivity as well. Can you help me understand what that looks like and why that’s important and how somebody might build to create that.
00:45:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean nesting habitat is you know, it’s variable and I’m not going to say it depends, but it really does. I mean Turkey’s nest and all kinds of stuff. Right, So if I took you to the two thousand nests that we’ve you know that we’ve looked at over the last however many years from GPS marked birds. You would kind of as a hunter outdoorsman, you would at some point you go, okay, I see a little bit of commonality from one spot to the next.
00:46:20
Speaker 3: But not a lot.
00:46:22
Speaker 4: And it’s because hens are highly variable and how they how they choose to put a nest at a particular spot, and so some nests are really thick and dense like you would think white tail bedding cover, but many nest are in places that are wide open, and the common theme seems to only be she thinks she’s hidden when she’s sitting right here.
00:46:48
Speaker 3: That that’s the common theme. And so my point is turkeys will nest in a in.
00:46:54
Speaker 4: A wide array of different vegetative communities, but be thinking of about it needs to be dense enough at ground level, say knee and below, that she can.
00:47:08
Speaker 3: Hide in it right and not be seen.
00:47:11
Speaker 4: And it also needs to provide some overhead cover so that aerial predators can’t see her as well. And that’s kind of what we see. Most nests are up against something a shrub, a bush, a log, a stump, something, and there’s some type of cover around her that she feels she can hide in. But when you get to brood habitat, it completely flip flops. The first couple of weeks, they’re a few inches tall and they’re hatching, right, They’re tiny. They need bare ground, they need overhead cover. So if you think about places where you would walk where you’re kind of you’re kind of pushing things at knee height out of your way. Yet you’re not tripping up on vegetation. It’s not a mat of grass on the ground. You’re walking freely, but you’re just having to kind of brush some things aside. That’s kind of an early brood cover. I tell I give people this analogy. Just lay down on your stomach and if you can see out in front of you, then they can too, right, And then if you hop up on a knee and you look around, if you can see, then the hen can see as well.
00:48:34
Speaker 3: So that that’s.
00:48:37
Speaker 4: Early brood cover. Looks completely different than nesting cover, Like they’re completely different. But then what you start seeing is when broods get older, about the time you and I start seeing them, right, they’re chicken size. They’re out in fields. The reason they’re out in those fields and pastures and more open and grassland type areas is because they can fly. And so once they get to that stage, that’s when we start seeing them in open fields and areas like that, and at that point their survival is much higher. And so my point is you literally go from I need to hide in plain sight to I need to see.
00:49:26
Speaker 3: Right and then.
00:49:28
Speaker 4: As I get two three weeks old, now I can use a lot of different things, and so I’ll go out in the open where I’m visible because I can use those vegetative communities and escape risk because.
00:49:44
Speaker 3: I can fly.
00:49:47
Speaker 2: So there’s all these different ways that we can, on an individual basis try to create this kind of habitat in the landscapes that we own or lease or manage, whatever it might be. Is there anything broader, more scalable, like at a state level or or federal policy level or anything like that that could help us with this habitat side of the challenge. I don’t know. Is there something in the farm bill that we if we could just get this across the line or anything else that at a broader scale could help with these habitat challenges we have across Turkey.
00:50:23
Speaker 4: Habitat Yeah, I think you know, from a and some of this this is ongoing with other you know, related to other species and or landscape types, but farm bill programs that provide financial incentives for landowners, cost share type programs, things that are going to allow us to be able to implement changes and not have to cover all the costs. To be honest with you, Mark, I see a lot of a lot of the landowners that I interact with don’t even know that such things exist, right, And so you will go to some states and talk to local whether it’s Natural Resources Conservation Service or or other agencies. You’ll talk to their staff and there’s in some cases very little interest in using call share programs from landowners in that area. And of course you go to some areas and that’s it’s the reverse. But I think continuing to explore options that incentivize us to manage our properties wisely and to implement practices that are going to ensure early successional vegetation communities. Early succession that you know, turkeys, their ability to see means that there’s early successional habitat there, and so anything that’s going to incentivize us to manage our properties in ways that sustain early successional vegetation I think are going to be critical to the future of this bird and many many other species that thrive in those same those same habitat types.
00:52:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to kind of take that and then circle back to somewhere towards the beginning where we started. Habitat in many ways regulates the potential productivity for a population of animals, right, And I’ve heard you make comments somewhat to the effect of the fact that in some places sometimes we might be hunting with a either set of regulations or with an effectiveness because of our technology or whatever might be that might be above and beyond what habitat can support today. Is that Is that an accurate representation of of of how you feel and your concerns about this kind of third leg of the stool. If habitat and predation are these two big ones, I think you mentioned harvest being that third major leg. Can you can you expand on that a little bit?
00:52:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would just say, you know, the relative impact that harvest would have on a population, obviously is going to vary from spot to spot, county to county, state to state, etc. I think in the Turkey world you have to recognize that turkeys are very unique and that we hunt them during their breeding season. In the game bird world, that is not the norm. So if you were to think about it, let’s say, as a waterfowl hunter, if I told you to go to the prairies and hunt mallards in May, right, that would be the analogy.
00:53:38
Speaker 3: You wouldn’t even consider doing that.
00:53:40
Speaker 4: So you just have to understand that we are hunting wild turkeys in the spring while they’re breeding, and in many cases early in their breeding period, and throughout their entire breeding period, depending on the state that you’re in. In some states, you can start hunting in early reading and hunt the entire breeding season, you know, so the season encompasses the entire breeding season.
00:54:06
Speaker 3: And because of that, you know.
00:54:08
Speaker 4: We’ve known for many decades that harvest for this bird matters, right, the timing and rate of harvest matters at a very low rate, Like you’re killing a really small percentage of your males. May probably doesn’t matter when you kill the bird, but if you’re going into a population and taking out a significant percentage of your males every year, and you’re doing that early in the breeding period, then logically, at some point, as populations decline, It doesn’t to me, doesn’t seem logical to think that you can continue to do that. If you’re producing fewer birds, then you’re going to have to take fewer birds. And that’s like we were talking about earlier, with the harvest in many states declining the way it has that, you know that that shows me that we have you know, we have an issue when our harvest is declining by fifty plus percent. And something you and I talked about before we started is, you know, okay, what do we look like ten years from now, twenty years from now, fifty years from now. And when I look at North America and I see the world through my lens, which is a turkey hunter and a scientist, and I’m trying to think about what the future looks like for me, we just can’t produce the number of turkeys that we used to produce. And we’re never going to produce the number of birds that we did twenty years ago. And the reason for that, irrespective of harvest or any seasons or bag limits or anything, the landscape in North America in many areas just can’t it can’t produce that many birds. And the reason is, like all these things we’ve talked about. I mean, all the changes to have TAD and everything that’s ongoing competing land uses in North America are incredible. And if you’re a traveling turkey hunter and you go places like, for instance, Florida, go to Florida and look at what is happening in the state of Florida. Literally, that state is imploding on itself from from coast to coast towards the center. It’s imploding on itself. And if you’re a wild turkey living in Florida, a local population, you’re not going to be able to function the same as you did twenty years ago.
00:56:36
Speaker 3: I mean that should be to me, is common.
00:56:38
Speaker 4: Sense that if you’ve got a shrinking land base, then turkey populations are not going to be able to sustain themselves at the levels.
00:56:47
Speaker 3: That they did.
00:56:49
Speaker 4: And so is that going to require us to change the way we behave as hunters. I think logically the answer is yes.
00:56:58
Speaker 2: Over the last five years or so, give or take, there has been a tremendous amount of conversation around that question of how, how does our behavior as hunters need to change? How should regulations possibly change, or season timing or length change, or you know, practices like reaping or using certain kinds of loads or whatever it might be. There’s there’s all sorts of kind of internal discussion around this within the Turkey hunting community. What of all of these possible changes that have been debated and discussed at you know, in bars and on message boards and everywhere, what actually could make a difference And which of these things are just you know, verbal sparring that that really maybe aren’t actually impactful.
00:57:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:57:51
Speaker 4: I mean, if you, if you kind of look at this from the standpoint of the state agencies, and I’m not speaking on their behalf, if I’m simply explaining to the listener how regulations work, agencies are going to be very reticent to try to you know, trying to change the ammunition we shoot or those types of things. That’s just that that’s not going to sell.
00:58:19
Speaker 3: Right.
00:58:21
Speaker 4: You have some states that have prohibited, you know, certain practices like fanning or reaping, or the use of decoys or whatever the case may be. At the end of the day, none of that matters unless it impacts the timing and rate of harvest.
00:58:40
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:58:40
Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is if you change something and it doesn’t change the percentage of males that are removed, and when they’re removed, then why who cares? Right, That’s what agencies are trying to influence. They’re trying to influence when birds are shot and what percentage your shot under the recognition that they’re trying to minimize in some state, trying to minimize extensive, intensive early harvest.
00:59:11
Speaker 3: Okay, And the reason.
00:59:14
Speaker 4: They’re trying to do that is just this recognition, which we know most turkeys are going to die the first couple weeks of the season in many states, regardless of when the season opens. And that’s because right we’re engaging with birds, they’re not educated as well. We harvest whatever we’re going to harvest, and then as the season progresses, harvest declines dramatically, and then by the time it gets warm in some places, or your kids start playing ball, or you start fishing or whatever it.
00:59:46
Speaker 3: Is, we don’t pay attention anymore.
00:59:48
Speaker 4: And so what agencies are trying to control is when the bird is dying and what percentages die. What they’re going to change to do that is they’re going to try to regulate bag limits, They’re going to try to regulate the timing of the season and they’re going to limit opportunity, right, They’re trying to change our opportunity to be out there, because opportunity kills. If you give turkey hunters more opportunity, they’re.
01:00:14
Speaker 3: Going to be successful.
01:00:15
Speaker 4: And so, whether you like it or love it, and I don’t think any of us like being told we can’t, we can’t do something the way that we’re used to doing it. But whether you like it or not, that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying they’re trying to change the one thing they can control at a state level. They’re trying to change that in hopes that it will mitigate some of these issues that have been observed in some states.
01:00:42
Speaker 3: And so that’s that’s why you see the.
01:00:44
Speaker 4: Changes to regulations and maybe not some of the other things.
01:00:49
Speaker 3: That are at practice.
01:00:51
Speaker 2: So to the turkey hunter who sees their state possibly change those season dates or bag limits or something and they’re toed off about it, what do you say to that guy or girl, whether it be about the value of making that change or the efficacy of that change, how would you respond when Bill or Betty says this is bullshit, I’m not doing this, or this is ridiculous.
01:01:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, The first thing I say is I want thousand percent get it, like I understand, I mean, regulation changes are contentious. Again, I don’t want you to tell me that the last ten years, I’ve been doing this thing that I live to do all year, and now suddenly I have to do it differently. And I don’t want you to tell me that. You know, I’m used to starting this thing that I cherish on this date, and now suddenly I have to stop doing that. I have to do it a week later, or two weeks later, whatever it is. I don’t like it, So I get that. The other thing that I think creates real challenges for for US hunters.
01:02:01
Speaker 3: Is that states make these changes.
01:02:05
Speaker 4: And you have to understand that there are that these changes in many ways end up being politically driven and not framed around biology. And I’ll give you an example hypothetical that you can apply to many states. The state Wildlife the biological staff will make a recommendation to the Commission, for instance, in a particular state, and say we recommend based on the science that the season open here, that the bag limits be this, et cetera. Okay, they then they make that change, but they don’t they can enact to that change, that the regulation that ends up being put into place is then going to be tweaked in the political process, and so what comes out the other end in many cases is not what was recommended specifically by the biological staff. It’s some derivation of that, right. And so my point there to the listener is just because a change was made should not cause you to think that that change is going to have an effect at a population level.
01:03:22
Speaker 3: Okay.
01:03:22
Speaker 4: So for example, a state delays their season opener for a week, I’m just creating, I’m just giving you a scenario by a week, and they reduce a bag limit by one bird.
01:03:35
Speaker 3: Okay.
01:03:37
Speaker 4: The hunter in US goes, well, see, nothing’s happened. That shit didn’t work. Let’s go back to where we were. But what you have to understand is the season may have opened three weeks before peaks and breeding activity. Right, So the one week delay was just window dressing, and a percent of hunters in that state, again just hypothetical number, don’t kill the full bag limit. Okay, So reducing the bag by one let’s just say, saved five hundred birds in a state, and the one week delay shifted the harvest from three weeks before peaks and breeding to two weeks before peaks and breeding. But like I’ve already said, which the data show this clearly in most states, but most of your tims that are going to die are still dead in that scenario before you reach peaks and breeding.
01:04:38
Speaker 3: So would you expect that to matter?
01:04:43
Speaker 4: And to me, the answers no, I wouldn’t expect it to matter. And that you know that creates real challenges for us as hunters and as academics because it’s like, you know, the hunter and us was what did it help?
01:04:58
Speaker 3: Did that matter?
01:04:59
Speaker 4: And if the answers well, not really, well, then let’s go back to the way we were. But you if you put your state agency glasses on and they go, well, wait a minute, we’re charged legally with ensuring sustainability of these populations. Were trying to do something that’s going to mitigate these ongoing declines. And so it puts us as hunters in kind of a conflict with the agencies because they’re making a change. We expect something to happen. It doesn’t happen, and now we’re even more skeptical of any management action. Really, And so to your original question, when that when Bill brings that up. The first thing I say is I totally understand, one thousand percent understand, but.
01:05:50
Speaker 2: You would also or would you also ask him to have a little bit of understanding for what they’re trying to do and hoping they can achieve.
01:06:00
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:06:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I also think, and this is me speaking as Mike the turkey hunter and Mike the person that interacts with state agency administrators, commissioners, and biological staff. I think we as hunters are going to have to give state agencies enough social license to make changes and be patient to see if those changes have any influence on the population, because that is what agencies are going to try to control harvest. That’s the lever they’re going to pull, whether we like it or not, because we can we can scream in a state agency all day long, do something about the habitat, do something about the predators. The scale at which state agencies are thinking about turkeys is not on your farm. They’re thinking about it at a statewide level, and so they’re trying to enact things that are going to have potential to influence at that scale.
01:07:08
Speaker 3: Okay, and so I.
01:07:11
Speaker 4: Understand the frustration of saying, well, do something about habitat, but you have to understand that state agencies don’t control most.
01:07:19
Speaker 3: Habitat in any state.
01:07:22
Speaker 4: So at the end of the day, something we talked about earlier is private landowners and our willingness to consider ways that we can implement practices that can benefit the wild turkey. That’s going to be key to the future of the bird, because agencies are going through time, are going to continue to make changes for I mean you, if populations respond, you’ll see seasons liberalized again. But in the face of ongoing declines, what you’re seeing is agencies controlling they what they can at that scale.
01:08:11
Speaker 2: A little thought exercise here, Imagine that you stumble into an amazing windfall of power and you all of a sudden control the management of turkeys across the entirety of the United States, and you have full rain to adjust regulations, season length, bag limit, season timing, anything like that. And I guess it’s narrow downloabit We’ll say we’ll pick a state. In any one given state, you have the ability to adjust that regulatory framework in any way you possibly would like to. I would like to know, number one, how would you change hypothetical structure of these regulations if we’re in one of these states where declines are underway, So I’d like to understand that it’s the ideal as best as you can think of. And then number two, as an individual, what would you do to reflect these changes to best account for the fact that these declines are happening? So what would you say, as an individual you would do to adjust your hunting practices or strategies or approaches or personal limits you might place on yourself given those realities.
01:09:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, So for the first question, would I would just rely on the science, and there have been multiple documents, scientific documents written about this topic offering recommendations, some of those authored by state agency biologists themselves, noting that the most conservative season framework for wild turkeys would be to open the season timed around peaks and nest inc cubation, meaning a large percentage of your hens are sitting on nest and at that point are not receptive to breeding anymore. So there’s some percentage of toms that could be removed.
01:10:12
Speaker 3: Right.
01:10:14
Speaker 4: A less conservative but also biologically appropriate season would be to open at peaks and laying activity, and the reason for that would be a lot of your hens are starting to lay clutches and so they are well along in the breeding process. Why is that less conservative, Well, there’s a lot of breeding that also occurs during the laying period, So hens are continuing to copulate with toms during while they’re laying eggs, and there’s a lot of competition at that time, which is why you see gobbling activity often peaks when you have the peak and laying activity because there’s a lot of competition. Right then, Tom’s recognize if you think about it from their perspective, the hens are leaving them every day for some period of time, going to a nest, laying an egg, so they’re not available all the time, and Tom’s are sensing that. They’re sensing that hens are starting to break up.
01:11:23
Speaker 3: They’re leaving.
01:11:24
Speaker 4: She’s not always around me, and so there’s a lot of competition. Okay, So if I were, if I were in the position you gave me in the first question, I would time the season around one of those two periods, depending on when exactly that occurs in a given.
01:11:45
Speaker 3: Area and.
01:11:49
Speaker 4: What harvest would look like in general. So, in other words, if you have if I had data available to me and I knew what harvest rates look like, if you were in a situation where hunting activity is not very it’s not super high. In a particular state, then you could probably support a little bit earlier harvest, say peaks and laying. But if I were in a state where my population has declined by fifty percent plus and it is continuing to decline, then I would try to frame the season in a way where a lot of the breeding activity has already occurred by the time I start removing birds, and I and the other thing I would do, which this is but you’re giving me a scenario that would be cool.
01:12:41
Speaker 3: You know.
01:12:41
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the way our regulations work, and I say our I don’t. I don’t set regulations, so but I’m telling you the reality.
01:12:49
Speaker 3: It takes years.
01:12:51
Speaker 4: So, right, an agency recommends a change, it’s it can take years for that change to occur, and then.
01:13:01
Speaker 3: It can’t like that.
01:13:03
Speaker 4: It’s not an iterative type adaptive process in a lot of situations. So it’s not like let’s see what nesting season looks like this year, and let’s make an immediate change to the season next train.
01:13:16
Speaker 3: Right, that doesn’t happen.
01:13:18
Speaker 4: So we are making changes that are going to occur down the road, and then we’re continuing to collect information. It may be another set of years before another change is implemented, although the discussion surrounding that change started years earlier. And I’ll give you an example regulations changes made in and I won’t name the state, but a southeastern state. There were regulation there were changes being discussed in an agency a full eleven years before they were implemented. And so it’s very common for agencies to have these conversations and then it take years to to make the change. The second question, what this is just me? I mean, as an individual hunter, I’m trying to assess what the population looks like, you know, in the areas that I’m hunting, and and I’m just I’m using my my.
01:14:20
Speaker 3: Intel and my own observations to dictate how I behave.
01:14:27
Speaker 4: If that, If that requires me to take fewer birds off of a particular property, then I do it. If it involves me not taking any birds off of a property. I have a property right near my house that I went fourteen years from what I you know, till I shot a bird last year. And it was because I just could not justify killing a bird on that property given the abundance in the local area. But through years of management, not just on this property, but the rounding neighborhood, our population now has come back and looks decent, you know, and so I felt comfortable shooting a bird there last year. So as a as an individual hunter, I’m just kind of I’m trying to think through each year in the places I go. You know, if I have history there, then I kind of know what the population is trending, and I’m going to adjust my behavior accordingly, and if that involves taking fewer birds in certain places, and that’s what I’ll.
01:15:31
Speaker 2: Do in the last five years or so where there’s been And tell me if you think I’m wrong on this kind of broad strokes assessment here. But give or take the last five years or so, this has become a little bit more of a popularly discussed topic. Have we made any progress? Has anything positive happened in the last five years or so since this conversation has become more public and Turkey hunters seem to be realizing that, oh, the the golden days maybe are are not here anymore, We’re entering a new era. Has anything turned around? Have we seen any changes in either hunter activities or regulations anywhere, or habitat or anything that makes you think like, oh, we sounded the alarm on some of this stuff and we’re actually seeing some positive shifts occurring.
01:16:20
Speaker 3: Oh lot, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.
01:16:22
Speaker 4: I think in the last six years since COVID, that’s when it that’s when it started to shift. In my opinion, is that spring. First of all, we were stuck. Second, we were told, like in many like in my case, I had to cancel multiple trips to go out of state. We couldn’t interact with each other, We had nothing to do. We were we were concerned with what was going on, and we started communicating with each other through social media. And I think a lot of people in the Turkey hunting world started listening to podcasts and having conversations and they started one potentially seeing that a problem existed somewhere and they weren’t aware of it, or they started hearing other people say the same thing they were seeing and they were like, oh shit, okay, that not just being not just me. And they started having more conversations, and they started becoming educated about what other people were experiencing. They started sharing perspectives, sometimes heatedly, right, and that’s okay. And I think you started seeing this upswell of kind of attention focused around turkeys and the ongoing declines, which you know, we had been talking about since twenty fifteen. That was when we first published some of the work showing regional declines in the south. And fast forward six years and yeah, I think there’s been a tremendous chain and I think a lot of people are having these conversations like we’re having right now, wherein there’s recognition that we may need to change things we’re doing, whether it’s it’s management, whether it be our own behavior. I think a lot of turkey hunters now understand that they can be part of the solution in many cases, and they can be part of the future, and they want they see true value in that, and that’s awesome. And so I think if I look now at the conversations that I have, they are comparatively way different than they were in twenty nineteen, way different. And I think that’s good and that tells me the future of the bird. There’s a future there because turkey hunters are going to be I mean, we are the ones that are going to be the future.
01:18:59
Speaker 3: Right.
01:19:00
Speaker 4: Our willingness and our passion to buy a hunting licenses, to purchase the things that we were talking about to spend our money and our time focused on hunting this bird and supporting conservation of the bird. We are the future of this bird, period. And so like our earlier discussions about students and you know who populates our agencies, and how do we incentivize landowners to manage how it’s have for turkeys, and how do we ensure cost share programs and farm bills that are going to target management. Turkey hunters are going to be front and center of that because turkey hunters are the ones that most value the wild turkey and most want to see this bird on our landscapes in the future. So the future of the turkeys starts with us.
01:19:53
Speaker 2: So would that be the case? Paint for me two pictures. This will be the last thing I asked, and it’s a doozy, but paint me a picture of a world twenty years from now. I want to imagine my youngest son will be twenty six, my oldest son will be twenty eight, adults on their own, hopefully avid turkey hunters. Maybe they’re starting their own young families at that point. Possibly in that world that I’m hoping for and imagining for my kids. Paint from a picture of first a worst case scenario, what that would look like and what would have to happen for that to come to be, and then a best case scenario twenty years from now, what the best case could possibly be for turkeys and turkey hunting and what would have had to happen for that to come to life.
01:20:50
Speaker 3: Damn, that is a doozy. Oh.
01:20:53
Speaker 4: I almost don’t even want to ponder the worst case scenarios, you know, honestly, and I’m not trying to skirch your answer, but sure, I think I’m going to stick those two scenarios into what I think is going to be the future. I think what you’re going to be looking at is a world where there there is a lot of demand for a shrinking supply, and basic math and laws of economics are going to tell you that your opportunity to to be part of consuming this bird right through through harvest is going to change as the future progresses, and so the world that I think we’re going to live in a few decades from now, I think you’re going to see a continued use of quota systems by state agencies. I think you’re going to see situations where harvest is going to be increasingly more limited on public lands because that’s the properties.
01:22:04
Speaker 3: That agencies can control.
01:22:07
Speaker 4: I think you’re going to continue to see, at least for the foreseeable future, situations where states are going to try to regulate non resident access because non resident hunters kill a lot of turkeys. And I’m part of that problem myself. You know, my calendar is full go every spring because I love to do that, and so I see that, and so I see your kids hunting in a world where activity and opportunity is going to in some cases be limited because of the availability of the resource. I also think you’re going to continue to see situations where competing land use essentially causes turkeys to disappear from parts of the landscape, and so our collective population inevitably are going to have to decline, particularly in local areas, and in some places, I think you may actually see the reverse. You may see populations respond like we’ve talked about very early on and start to do much better. But across the bird’s range, I think you’re going to be looking at situations where pockets of turkeys that are existing now will not exist in twenty years, and so what that’s going to cause is a shrinking land base, right that contains turkeys, and that’s going to put more attention on the dwindling supply of turkeys, which again is going to prompt agencies to.
01:23:46
Speaker 3: Change how we’re able to pursue the bird.
01:23:49
Speaker 4: And that’s just the that’s the reality answer, if you know, whether you like it or not. I think that’s where we’re headed with not just turkeys, many many species. As you know, if you go out wes you know, I mean in the big game world. You know, preference points rules the world, you know, in many states, and that could we be in a situation where we’re applying for preference points to hunt turkeys. I don’t I don’t think that’s far fetched.
01:24:20
Speaker 3: All Right.
01:24:20
Speaker 2: I told you that’s gonna be my last question, but I’m gonna ask one more. Now, give me one reason for hope on this front. What’s one thing that encourages you that, hey, you know what, while all those things are possible and maybe even likely, uh, there there’s some silver lining. There’s some avenues for for moving things in a more positive direction. Because I do think that one thing about the hunting conservation community that has always almost always been true has that has been that while we have faced serious challenges in the past, very often unique within the broader environmental or conservation community, we’ve always been a very much let’s pull on the gloves and get to work. You know, we haven’t been the group that just moans and bitches about how things are all going to hell, but instead we’ve actually been quite hands on and saying, all right, well, I’m gonna do something about it. That’s something that hunters and anglers have always done a pretty darn good job of the last one hundred and twenty some years. So with that in mind, give me something to be hopeful about.
01:25:25
Speaker 4: That’s an easy one to answer. Turkey hunters interacting with turkey hunters. I see, you know, it doesn’t matter if you you can get on social media and find somebody that that hates on this or hates on that, or it doesn’t matter because every turkey hunter at their core wants the same thing. We want to be able to hunt turkeys in the future, and we want our kids and our grandkids to be able to hunt turkeys. We all at our heart want the same So that’s what tells me there’s hope, because there is a turkey hunting community that is fanatical.
01:26:04
Speaker 3: About this bird.
01:26:06
Speaker 4: Turkey hunters, I say this, I’ve said it hundreds of times, are just different.
01:26:10
Speaker 3: They’re just different people.
01:26:12
Speaker 4: They are cerebral and they have a passion that is borders fanatical, right, And so you have people that are that vested in this bird that it consumes their year, it consumes how they behave, it consumes who they are as a person. It’s their fabric. That is what gives me hope because, like you’ve said, we’ve done this before. We’ve faced existential crisis, which we’re not there with turkeys now, but we’ve faced situations where we didn’t have turkeys and we put our innovative caps on and we figured out a way to make it happen. And now we’ve gotten a little behind and our populations have declined, and now we have to figure out how to reverse the ship. Understanding that, like we’ve talked about, there’s all these challenges and face things that we’re going to have to face and hoops we’re going to have to jump through. Okay, let’s just jump through them. Let’s figure it out. Let’s let’s put our innovative caps back on. Be willing to give a little bit and figure out what the future for this bird looks like and then be part of it. And that’s that that gives me hope, and that starts with turkey hunters.
01:27:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:27:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe that’s possible, and I have to I have to thank you and give you, give you credit for helping a lot of people start that journey. The work you’ve done, the research, the broader communication effort that you’ve led over the last hand, you know, however many years you’ve been, you know, really be in the public eye. It’s been tremendous and it’s making a difference. So first to thank you, and secondly, if there’s people out there listening who want to dive deeper into this, who want to start engaging more and understanding what’s going on with turkeys and all the many, many different things that you share, could you tell folks about the Wild Turkey Lab and other platforms or places where they can connect with you or the information that you’re sharing with the world.
01:28:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Yeah.
01:28:14
Speaker 4: So I have a website, wild Turkey lab dot com that is kind of a clearinghouse for the work i’ve done. All of the research articles that we’ve published are there posted with a summary of what we did, what we found, and why you should care if you don’t feel like reading the entire paper. All of the social media posts I’ve ever done our archive there, a bunch of the podcasts that I’ve done our archive there, so you can find all of that material if you’re on social media. If you’re on Facebook, if you just type my name in, you’ll see my account. I post on Facebook, Instagram and X every week. If you’re on Instagram or X, it’s wild Turkey Doc, Wild Turkey Doc one word UH. Pretty much the same content within reason, on on all of those platforms, although I tend to post more on Instagram than I do on the others because I share some personal stuff there.
01:29:13
Speaker 3: But and lastly, if you’re interested in.
01:29:17
Speaker 4: UH, we launched a huge nationwide genetics project last spring called Wild Turkey DNA, and that’s a project that’s really starting to expand this spring, and we’re super excited about it. If you go to wald Turkey dna dot com, you can see that that stuff there, and and we also have socials. Wild Turkey DNA is on all three of those platforms that I mentioned previously. So yeah, if you’re interested in any of that stuff. Check it out, and man, thank you for for being interested enough to go to go to those pages and take a look.
01:29:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s great stuff. You’ve You’ve been a wealth of information for for so many people, and I’m appreciative of that and really appreciate you taking the time today to talk turkey. While some of this, you know, is a little bit a little bit discouraging when you dive into it, there’s also a whole lot to be excited about turkey season kicking off in a lot of parts of the country. And like you said, turkey hunting is a thing to celebrate, and it’s a thing to get us off our tails and work for these birds too. And so I think, you know, let’s get out there, let’s have an amazing season, let’s enjoy it, and let’s let that kind of refill our reservoir with energy to go and do some of these good things to keep it around for many, many generations to come.
01:30:36
Speaker 4: Right, I completely agree, Get out there and spend some time in the woods and the presence of this bird and let it reach ourge reingines and then get to work, you know, in the summer, when the summer gets here, don’t stop thinking about turkeys.
01:30:49
Speaker 3: And slow down and take a breath. Man.
01:30:52
Speaker 4: It spring goes by really quick, and it ends so quickly for me every year, and then I have to live all year to.
01:31:00
Speaker 3: Get back to slow down and soak it in. So true.
01:31:03
Speaker 2: All right, Thank you, Mike Man. All right, and that’s gonna do it for us today. Thanks for joining me, thanks for tuning in to this one. Good luck on your future turkey hunts, and until next time, stay wired to hunt.
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