Question: Habitat in areas with declining population

[Roost 1]

In the areas with a severe decline in population I am wondering was there an upturn in the amount of row crop? Did you lose pasture\cattle ground and\or crp to row crops? I know in the last 7-8yrs here in west KY the majority of the crp and lots of big cattle farms are now being row-cropped. These farmers want every inch of ground they can get, they push out every fencerow, treeline, and even wipe out small woodlots.. I think this loss of habitat is the problem in my area along with bad hatches and increased hunting pressure...However I think the birds can recover from bad hatches and they adapt to hunting pressure but I'm not sure they can withstand loss of habitat...They have no choice other than to move on to available cover.

 

[woodsman87]

None around here. There is son ag fields, but no more than used to be.
All it is are big rolling hills, some cow pasture, some hardwoods.
I do not believe loss of habitat is the problem, although promoting good habitat is always a plus.

It is all about the hatches, and the best habitat provides best hatches. We can talk limits and fall season all we want, what we need to focus on as a group is promoting habitat management for the wild turkey. If we get better nesting habitat, we get more birds, keep liberal limits, everybody wins.

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[8 POINTS OR BETTER]

We lost a lot of mature forest to cut-over, which should have made great nesting habitat. My farm and a couple of farms that join he have improved the habitat for turkey, but our numbers have still dropped. We did not have enough birds to hunt past the second week of season, for the first time ever, and we have about 1700 acres.

 

[8 POINTS OR BETTER]

None around here. There is son ag fields, but no more than used to be.
All it is are big rolling hills, some cow pasture, some hardwoods.
I do not believe loss of habitat is the problem, although promoting good habitat is always a plus.

It is all about the hatches, and the best habitat provides best hatches. We can talk limits and fall season all we want, what we need to focus on as a group is promoting habitat management for the wild turkey. If we get better nesting habitat, we get more birds, keep liberal limits, everybody wins.

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Lawrence County just hit a 15 year low. The habitat has not changed that much and I don't bye the bad weather has caused bad hatches for 15 years in a roll. The only thing that has changes since the early 2000's is the limits, and the numbers started dropping when the limit went up.

 

[PickettSFHunter]

Our habitat has not changed. Big woods environment mostly.


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[woodsman87]

Been poor hatching weather for several years now. No habitat change. They haven't been shot out. They haven't had good hatches. Many predators.

It isn't one single thing, such as four bird limit, or fall hen killing.
It is a combination of several things.

Bad hatches for several years in a row, whether it be nest raiders, poult prefators, or weather. I do not believe chicken litter is the culprit, but could be. Shooting even a few hens in the fall has to have some effect. And yes, a four bird limit may have had an effect too.
It is a combination of things, not just the four bird limit.

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[Roost 1]

I agree it a combination of things with bad hatches at the top of the list.

 

[PickettSFHunter]

I agree it is a combination as well but the only thing we can really change on a large scale is regulations like limits, season, etc. we can't change the way farmers do business, can't change bad weather, can't change predator populations on a large scale, etc. So we have to change what we can and get the effect that we can.


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[Boll Weevil]

One notable habitat change over time has been the increase in planted pines after hardwood clearcuts. Interspersed blocks of pines can be very good habitat but large contiguous blocks may be somewhat less desirable to turkeys especially if there are adjacent stands with big hardwoods or little fields/pastures...mainly because of food or preferred roost sites. Pines that are managed through thinning or periodic burning for example, are absolute turkey havens in my experience (maybe even better than hardwood stands) but not everyone manages their timber in this way.

It's been a number of years ago but a neighbor clearcut 60ish acres of great big hardwoods and I was the beneficiary of a new flock almost overnight. My only guess is they'd spent most of their time in that area because it had all they needed in terms of food and roosting. When those 2 elements disappeared they sought greener pastures.

Turkeys can be nomads but when they find an area they like, they'll stay. I can't help but wonder if not for habitat improvement work, whether those birds would have kept wandering until they found something they liked vs. taken up residence on my place. It hadn't occurred to me until writing this response but maybe that's some of what people are seeing too. With all the focus on habitat improvement these days, have turkeys that used to be on your side of the fence found somewhere they like a little better?

 

[woodsman87]

I understand agree with what you say 100%. A pine plantation that is cut and maintained/burned on a good program will be the best turkey habitat there can be, as long as you have some hardwoods, like in the creek bottoms.
Overall, habitat maybe better in Maury and Marshall county than in Lawrence and Wayne county, therefore, all of southern county birds migrated north. Turkeys can't read county lines, and road names, and if they could, I am sure they wouldn't care. Turkeys I think randomly walk around, until they find their preferred habitat, whether it be wintering, breeding, or nesting.
Right now, Maury county may have the best habitat, hence Lawrence and Giles birds migrating north. It sure isn't better habitat south Into Alabama, maybe the northern edge, but south close to the Tennessee river is nothing but big farmland.

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[woodsman87]

I know for a fact they migrate from my southern Giles county farm, and everywhere around it. We rarely ever have a winter flock of birds. I assume they migrate north, because that is where we see the huge 100~ turkey flocks.

We will have a few turkeys from March when breeding and nesting really heat up, all the way through September when they migrate back to wherever.

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[darn2ten]

No habitat change around me to speak of, if anything a few more places have better habitat with more cow pastures than before because of high cattle prices. The north end of my county is mainly large rolling hills and ridges with hay and cow pasture. South county is flatter and has more row crops. I have done a lot of things on my farm to improve the habitat. During early spring there were virtually no turkeys on my place, however I have noticed 3 different lone hens in the last two weeks staying on me. I guess they came back to nest which is a good sign.

 

[SKFOOTER]

No major habitat change here in Hardeman County.

 

[Mike Belt]

I had a place that was covered up with birds during the winter. Come spring we'd still have birds but the hens would migrate off of us to what they deemed better nesting areas. There is a difference in the bird's preference between seasons.

 

[AlabamaSwamper]

Again,

I've had no habitat change to roosting or feeding areas since 2006. I've had lots of nesting areas created.

Little to NO fall hunting in my area. We've never fall hunted.

When we had plenty of turkeys, we'd have from 12-20 gobbling birds. I'd kill 2-3 of them. The most we ever killed in a season was 5 on my place. The last weekend of the season we had 12+ gobbling. The spring season never hurt our place as you can see.

The only thing that has changed is I used to from one hill could hear 12+ birds every morning and now you are lucky to hear 2. See very few hens. Flocks of dozens has been reduced to flocks of A dozen.

We had plenty of predators when turkey populations went from 0 to hundreds. I don't buy that either.

 

[megalomaniac]

....It is all about the hatches...

This exactly.

The question is... how do we get back to hatches that produce 4-5 poults/hen in Aug like we had back in the late 90's/ early 00's???

Is it because of the weather? Maybe... just maybe we had a decade of optimal weather back then, and for a decade straight it's gone to pot in the spring. Or maybe, just maybe, it's more than blaming the weather.... maybe hens are laying eggs that aren't fertile due to overharvest of gobblers before hens have been fertilized?

If something isn't making you go... hmmm.... you need your head examined.

 

[deerchaser007]

I have to agree with mega. Even hens renesting, if no gobblers are there late for breeding renesting is not possible.

 

[Mike Belt]

You also have to consider that with fewer birds nesting and most nests hatching around the same time it's easier for the predators to eliminate many of the poults making for fewer birds surviving to nest. That saturation point is diminishing and that spiral is gaining downhill speed.

 

[AT Hiker]

The habitat in my area has improved yet populations have declined. One thing I have noticed is a increase in predators, both human and wild critters. We are trying to tackle the wild critter part but it seems to be doing nothing as of yet.

I think its aliens, what else could it be? ET likes his turkey birds...


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[woodsman87]

I have to agree with mega. Even hens renesting, if no gobblers are there late for breeding renesting is not possible.

yep





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[woodsman87]

You also have to consider that with fewer birds nesting and most nests hatching around the same time it's easier for the predators to eliminate many of the poults making for fewer birds surviving to nest. That saturation point is diminishing and that spiral is gaining downhill speed.

Exactly. You got to be rich to get richer, and with so few hens in the first place, it is already tough on them.





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[woodsman87]

....It is all about the hatches...

This exactly.

The question is... how do we get back to hatches that produce 4-5 poults/hen in Aug like we had back in the late 90's/ early 00's???

Is it because of the weather? Maybe... just maybe we had a decade of optimal weather back then, and for a decade straight it's gone to pot in the spring. Or maybe, just maybe, it's more than blaming the weather.... maybe hens are laying eggs that aren't fertile due to overharvest of gobblers before hens have been fertilized?

If something isn't making you go... hmmm.... you need your head examined.

And now they are proposing a two a day limit, meaning that opening day harvest may increase by about half. Pathetic.





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[MickThompson]

The habitat has changed, though. We just didn't notice it. There was an event in the mid-late 90's that affected forested habitat at a scale no biologist could dream of. It put early successional cover (nesting and brooding cover) on the ground a thousand acres at a time. I've heard time and time again that folks saw big pulses of quail too when it happened. Any guesses?

 

[8 POINTS OR BETTER]

The habitat has changed, though. We just didn't notice it. There was an event in the mid-late 90's that affected forested habitat at a scale no biologist could dream of. It put early successional cover (nesting and brooding cover) on the ground a thousand acres at a time. I've heard time and time again that folks saw big pulses of quail too when it happened. Any guesses?

I guess your talking about cut-over and timber cutting, but I dont think there was any more back then in my area as there is today.

 

[MickThompson]

No, this was not manmade. I'm not saying it was what helped push our peak as high as it did, but it didn't hurt- the last big southern pine beetle outbreak. It killed 1000's of acres of plantation pines that were past prime cover for turkeys, and created canopy gaps throughout the oak-pine forests on the plateau. The plantations have been replanted, and the gaps have been retaken by hardwood shoots, so the habitat improvement that we saw has evaporated. If there's anything that create brood cover at a landscape level, that's it. Good news for us and bad news for paper companies, we're due another round shortly. Maybe we can get a few good years of weather too.

 

[MickThompson]

It will be interesting to watch some of the plateau counties after this year's ice storm to see if it will improve brood conditions enough to move the needle on the harvest.

 

[callemquacktn]

Great post Mick!
I have noticed several farms around here in the last few yr have turned away from cattle farm operations into no till crop fields now. Those fields once had plenty of birds in them and now they don't.
I have permission for a small farm in Bell Buckle that has always been a cattle farm with a couple of fields used as tilled crop fields and silage. Over the last few yrs he has went to no till practice and row cropping the fields for grain. Turkey # have gotten lower and lower to the point I have only killed 1 bird off there in the last 3 yrs.
Went by there this week and he had sprayed a 60 ac pasture field and no tilled it for beans. This field was his main supply of hay and now it is in beans. I would not be suprised if in the next yr or so he totally stops cattle farming.
I think most places have been slowing changing and people just have not noticed.

 

[MickThompson]

...I think most places have been slowing changing and people just have not noticed.

This is the absolute truth. I have a farm that I can hunt that 3 years ago it would be nothing to hunt 7-8 birds on 250 acres. One neighbor clearcut his timber, and this was a significant wintering area for the local flock. another neighbor switched a field from pasture to no till corn. This year there was only 1 bird roosting on it with any regularity. I'm sure the neighbors appreciate the changes though.

 

[Roost 1]

There is prolly a reason the NWTF uses the slogan, "save the habitat, save the hunt."

 

[callemquacktn]

There is prolly a reason the NWTF uses the slogan, "save the habitat, save the hunt."

Correct. I talk to some of them this yr at the convention and they said it was the number one thing they was seeing across the nation that was causing a decline in turkey population and it was something they could do to raise the awareness across the board.