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

oh yes, that sounds a whole lot like the ridges of my Appalachians, you can hear a gobbler from a looong way off....Hb

What didn't you care about as far as turkeys and the landscape mulcher?

This is what 99% of my 20 acres of timber looked like when I bought it.

Going back with the rotary about 6 months after the initial landscape mulching that was done in late March early April.

Poor choice of words on my part. Prior to the mulching the turkey wouldn’t use it - too thick. The first longbeard I shot this year was smack in the middle of a 30 acre place we reclaimed and opened up by mulching everything smaller than my leg. It has made a huge positive difference on the turkey. Will be doing more mulching and some herbicide work this summer

Got it. Have you actually seen an increase in deer activity in that area? Been watching Land and Legacy on YT. Those guys are making bedding areas in timber and it is improving cover plus adding browse.


Your sitiuation sounds like my place. Couldn't see 50' so I cut some paths 12-14' wide then just branched of of those with short runs.

Connected some of those with cross paths. 3 of us used the machine and split the cost. I would like to rent one again and spend a few more days on it. Talk about a mess though. Hopefully a lot of that will burn up in a burn next year.

One view of a N/S path. Turns back west at each end. Horseshoe shape with 3 paths crossing in about a 150 yard stretch.

I did find a gobbler track in this path Friday morning, first turkey track I have seen in this particular section in the year I have owned the place.

Probably do some more chainsaw work and start opening the canopy up. Get rid of cedars, hickory and Hedge/Osage orange.

Deer action is lower after mulching. Deer prefer thickets. Turkey prefer open ground. Where my farm is deer will be there no matter what. All of my land and habitat management is now geared to turkey

Exactly where I am and what I am doing.

Deer bed on neighbors to the North and neighbors to the East.

They cross my place to get to crop ground that is to the SW.

Stock up on the Pathway for stump treatment!!! I've probably went through 5 gallons of it treating stumps on the cedars I've cut off my place. And I ain't even scratched the surface. Some of these cedars are so old they're up to 18" diameter.

Weather is getting about right for me to hook up the brush cutter and skidsteer to make some more trails.

👍🏻👍🏻

I haven't had issues w cedars wanting to come back. The ones I used the mulcher on were ground off at or slightly below ground level and chain sawed trees were at or very close to flush. Oaks tried to restrict over the spring/summer last year but they were chopped off again with the rotary in early fall.

See what those do this summer.

Looking at different herbicides for the different types if trees.

I saw turkeys yesterday on the Yorktown Battlefields. I've pretty much lived here my whole life and have never seen turkeys on the battlefields. Ever. I've seen them way up the road in the Historical Park near Jamestown. But never here. Right near the high school. There's no reason they shouldn't be on the battlefields. I've just never seen them there. I was driving though a back road in the pouring rain yesterday afternoon and saw a tom with a long beard on the side of the road. I got up close and he just sort of walked off into the woods. There was another in the woods further in front of him but didn't get a good look at it. Can't hunt there. But it's nice to see birds where I've never seen them before.

Have this same discussion going on over at ultimatepheasanthunting.

Pulled these numbers from that discussion

Missouri harvested 34,595 inn 2022. Missouri used to harvest around 50,000 (2005 ish)

Kansas harvested 13,488 in 2022. Kansas used to harvest around 35,000 each year. (2005 ish). Kansas will have a hard time reaching 10,000 this year.

2006 Arkansas was around 20k birds, last year was 8k.

Here is a pretty good podcast (BearGrease Podcast, episode 48) talking about the declines across the southeastern US.

https://www.themeateater.com/listen...n-turkeys-part-1-will-primos-and-dr-mike


Pretty much, don't ever put your love into a ground nesting bird. Everything is trying to kill them. Mother nature and her weather, predators, man with his changed land use, etc, etc, etc. Arkansas state biologist is on there talking about prescribed burns. How the big forests look like great habitat, but they're realistically a dessert with nothing the birds like. Then they try and do a burn and the area keyboard biologists throw a fit that they're killing all the animals and taking their homes away....

We’ve seen a dramatic decline on our place. Twenty years ago, we might see dozens on a morning during deer season. Less than ten years ago I almost always saw a flock or two. I might have seen a dozen total over the last five years or so but probably saw half of those this last year. So maybe they are coming back a little.

We have enough land to hold turkeys on it and we haven’t done anything different. Habitat is the same. We’ve had all the same predators. Nobody has trapped coons or other predators since the 80s. Had coyotes forever. Maybe more hogs now, but those fluctuate too. And the turkeys weren’t hunted much if at all most years.

I lean towards natural fluctuations or maybe the populations got so high that disease went through them and crashed them. We’ve lost a lot of turkeys and about four of the five things he mentioned don’t really apply to us.

The areas I burned in March I believe have dropping, feathers and tracks in them. Found 1 dusting spot the other day.

I have only had this piece for a year but up until last week I had only seen 1 hen track and 1 gobbler track a year ago. Have ran 2 hens off of nests and watched a hen fly out one morning on the first weekend.

This is so spot on. Indiana is having a declining population because of all the nest raiders aren’t hunted or trapped. The stupid dnr also released bobcats back in the early 2000’s they’re finally pushing a bill to create a season for them but the animal rights retards are fighting it tooth and nail.

The bill for a Bobcat season is on the governors desk.

Do you know if it includes hunting and trapping? It's a good move IMO! Wish they'd also open up a spring season for squirrels and a season for sandhill cranes.

Where I hunt, cover isn't much oof a problem, but I do think predators, especially nest, are. So much focus on deer habitat, that does not always benefit turkeys. Would like to see more clear cutting/agressive timber harvests.