Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Declining populations

Same thing I have been saying since most of the old timers have quit hunting with hounds and nobody traps much any more.

City dwellers moving to the country letting their dogs and cats roam at will as well.

Too many raptors do not help either.

Something else to consider. Most plant food plots for deer/turkeys but don't manage the timber for usable habitat.

Food plots have never been a factor in my turkey woods. I have hunted thousands of acres of National Forest for my 35 year Turkey hunting career and have been blessed with great turkey populations for decades, i would average hearing 6 or 8 gobblers on any given Spring morning with turkey sign easily found nearly everywhere but for the last two Springs I can walk those same beautiful ridges for miles and never hear a single gobble and find zero turkey sign....I think several factors are contributing to this massive decline of the turkey population in my area but my guess is a killer avian flu (which i have read several articles about) is the main culprit and im sure nest robbers have also took their toll.....Hb

About 10 years ago the fur prices went into the gutter, I said then and so will the turkey population. Unfortunately I was right. We now depend on natural selection to maintain the varmint population.

We had the same predators when the turkey population was growing here as we do today, when it's shrinking. I believe that the loss of habitat and nesting areas have been a major cause around here. The Mennonites own a large percentage of the farms around here, and they grow a lot of hay, hens nest in those fields, and the nests are often destroyed when the hay is cut. Here on my farm I grow about 40 acres of hay, and we will run over a nest or two every year.

Another factor in turkeys getting established here was the abundance of CRP ground 25 years ago. Today there is none. Turkeys nested in that ground without the fear of a farmer destroying their nest.

I am down to hearing 6-8 gobblers a morning right now.

15 years ago it was no problem to have 15+ birds within hearing distance. In the late 90s a piece we used to hunt had so many birds you would have to decide which bird to go to.

In fact the piece we hunted from the mid/late 80s until late 90s would have several hundred if not close to 1000 acres burn every year, farmers burn to provide browse for longhorns. That makes me wonder if there is something to this prescribed burning bit.

We have always had predators but when the MDC is selling less than half of the furbearer/trapping permits as 30 years ago those predator populations have exploded.

The "ethanol" craze didn't help either. Farmers pulled thousands of acres out of CRP when corn prices outpaced CRP payments. Farmers made more money and didn't have strangers wandering around their property.
WIN-WIN!!!

Trying to get a link from MDC on harvest numbers to attach. Having issues.

Some interesting numbers from the last 8 years in Missouri. Just 2015 and 2018 are the 2 I looked at. Approximately 10k less birds harvested in 2018 than 2015.

I am trying to find some numbers from mid/late 90s through 2010 or so.

Farmers having to plant from fence to fence or ditch to ditch for that last bushel doesn't help either.

Wow! 15+ gobblers on any given morning? You were truely blessed to experience that 👍.....Hb

The good news is the turkey respond pretty quickly to efforts to help them. Trap some egg eaters. If you own some property burn what you can. Don’t bush hog early. A few little things here and there add up and the turkey can respond quickly if given the chance.

here in Minnesota since no one traps much anymore , we need to go back to bounties on possum,raccoons , fox , coyotes and wolves too.

Thousands of acres at our disposal at that time. Some may have been well over a mile away but up on those Ozark mountains you could hear a very long ways.

We did have 1 day of coon calling and killing this winter. Building a house on the property this summer and hope to be trapping in the winter.


I did a small burn last year and a small burn thos year. Probably try to burn some more in late August early September this year as well.

I hope to get started on cutting a bunch of large cedars too. In all of these burn pics you can see cedars. They really need thinned out as well as remove a bunch of hickory and hedge trees.

Hope to remove most of these hickory trees and get a stand of native grasses and forbes on this little hill top. You can see quite a few cedars in that pic as well.

Me and my neighbor friend own 700 acres. We’ve taken over 100 egg eaters off our property the last 2 winters. We’ve had a forestry mulcher reclaim about 50 acres of creek bottom that was overgrown - great for deer, but terrible for turkey. We’ve burned about another 60 acres (some of it twice and we were really limited by wet weather this winter) and we’ve quit mowing our roads, fields and food plots before June 1. And more of this type of work to come this summer/fall/winter. It’s making a difference for sure. We went from turkey everywhere 10 years ago to a dwindling population recently. Then this year we have quickly gone back to the old days. I think I heard 6-8 different gobblers Sunday morning

^ ^ ^ pretty much it ^ ^ ^

Many I've talked with in my area have coon and
possums out the wazzoo, but won't do anything
to control them. I've discussed it with a couple
of people that got pretty mad about me killing
all the coons and possums and skunks and
coyotes that I can. They moan about the coons
emptying their deer feeders, but won't be proactive
and trap and kill any.
Just me- I prefer to have deer and turkeys and
wabbits and squirrels and game birds.
They didn't have all those bounties years ago
for no reason