Turkeys seek one type of habitat for nesting and as soon as they hatch they move to rearing type habitat. The goal is to have both types.

I have seen places that never had turkeys before have turkeys the next season. Could it be the surrounding properties are being trapped and reduced the predator numbers so the hens could nest and raise a successful brood that roams to other properties?

Ultimately it comes to habitat. If NWTF’s theory was true then all the wild bird quail plantations around here would go under. They maintain the quality and quantity of birds year after year. Of course this is optimal habitat and basically year round trapping, but still the numbers rarely fluctuate substantially on their reports. Most private lands hold turkeys and in great numbers.

Public land is where the issues arise. Down here they are finally starting to manage for quail, which means everything prospers. The main issue isn’t the habitat, but the amount of predators on these WMA’s. I believe they allow trapping if you submit a written request and picked. I’ve never really checked into because the cost outweighs the return. Not sure what the solution is other than Southern fur becoming a hot commodity again. Not sure if Swamp would know the ins and outs of State land trapping or not.

careful what you wish for. They have become like crows or coon here. The USDA has been shooting them (nuisance) for a few years here.

Trapping or not corn buzzards flourish.





Nope. Let your corn sit over winter and there will be nothing left come spring. I counted an even 100 in one corn field one day.

I can't really say whats happening on all neighboring properties. I suspect there is very little trapping, most of the properties in my area are small, lots of under 40 acre and under. SO even if one or two of the properties are trapping hard I don't think it make much of a dent.

There is a little public land, used for pheasants and deer mostly.

My neighbor feeds the birds, including turkeys, he claims he has seen a lot less turkeys in the last couple of years also.

I really don't care if the population of predators is high or low. I'd like to see alot less deer tho, they are destructive, unfortunately there are too few predators that prey on deer.

Just introduce some wolves then, that should solve all of your "problems"

Good job! Alsome!

while that would help its not really feasible. Tho they may end up around here in future, who knows.

What I'd like to see is the DNR get it head out of its arse and change the regs so that more deer get thinned out.
I liked the idea of earn a buck and would suggest it for bow and gun. Maybe its not great for the whole state but in the southern 1/2 it makes more sense.
Biggest issue is a lot of the land is not hunted. So there is a patch work of hunted areas and no hunt areas comprised of small parcels of land (80 acres or less). Deer don't have to go far to be safe.

D,

I detest earn-a-buck rules. I hunted the CWD area for lots of years, passed up a lot of bucks before I could get a doe. I'm a meat hunter, I'll take the first legal, adult deer that walks in front of me. They get smart real quick. And I don't believe it helped the deer numbers get down at all. It just concentrates the deer on the properties that are not hunted and makes them more nocturnal. It also contributed to lots of wounded deer as guys would blast away at the first brown they saw, just to get a buck tag. It was amazing to hear the difference on opening morning the first year they did away with earn-a-buck. No more rapid fire strings of shots.

Patchwork access is a bigger issue, as well as the shift in hunting style the last decade or so. How many drives are there where guys are shooting does? How many small "farms" are now hunted by 1 or 2 guys that shoot a few mature bucks and no does?

We used to have gobs of turkeys here. The last two years they have been in decline. The habitat is the same, the ccoon died out. two years ago here locally, and haven't been any skunks for five or six years. I have often wondered what effect turkeys eating that treated corn seed has on them. Farmers hate them, as they pull the just emerged seedling outand eat the whole thing, as well as scratch out fresh planted seed. I wouldn't think it would take much of that seed corn to poisen full grown turkeys, but have never found any dead ones!

Good work! And the trapping gets us out in the timber a little longer!

we used to be able to do more drives drives from about 30 minutes after first light to an hour or so before dark

it got less and less

we shot anything worth butchering

there were parties that did bigger drives than us

now we do a few little drives and go sit in the swamp one parcel at a time changed ownership and it is thick with deer , we are still shooting deer every year but I only need about 3 so thats about all we take

I would love to get the people together and organize some big drives but so many people are anti drive now.

so they all sit and wait and wait and wait

In the early 90's my folks bought a chunk of land in the country. There were no good birds on the property or anywhere near. I started trapping there and after removing a lot of coon, tons of skunks and possums and a certain feral species that kills for the heck of it, soon there were birds making noise. You never saw them, but as time went on, you began to see the birds. After a while and hundreds of feral barn residents gone, there was a flourishing population of turkeys, pheasants, bluebirds and meadowlarks among other things.

The crazy cat farmer moved away and it got even better because there was no longer someone feeding feral invasives. My catch of invasives slowed way down and the number of wildlife species and their populations grew like wild fire.

Now that it has been sold to a citiot who can't seem to get any deer on it, I imagine it has all gone to pot again. At least to some degree.

Google Neonicotinoid.
Neonics for short.
Very controversial chemical that is incredibly popular.

Even the NWTF realized the seed they were selling to plant for turkeys was coated in that stuff. Don’t think they sell/give it away any longer.

They are growing! Looks like we have 16 now, but as big as they are now they should be in the clear

Multiple hens with all their poults.
That a good recruitment number right there. By Spring over half of those should still be alive and make more turkeys for next year.

I have been told that treated canola will kill black birds. So I would guess treated corn does not make turkeys or any other bird grow.

Delta Waterfowl has done a large amount o9f study in regards to how much impact ground nesting predators have on reproductive rates of ground nesting birds .They of course focus on waterfowl .By removing racoons ,possums skunks fox and coyotes they have found that the success rate of waterfowl eggs hatching increases by 25 % to 35% in some areas

I trapped for Delta Waterfowl for eight years. I watched the hatch rates from my block and other blocks pretty close. What I saw of it habitat can make a bigger difference than trapping did. If you had a block with bigger grass blocks, it will have a higher nest hatch rate on its own than a block with smaller grass blocks. I do not feel like running a few traps for a couple months makes much difference in the hatch rate or survival of fawns. Especially if the trapping is done in the fall. New predators move in during the spring and fill the void. If you leave a couple egg eaters in a area they just eat better and the same amount of nest are taken. To make a real difference you have to take 100% of them.
Delta went to trapping all small grass areas to be able to show a larger increase in the hatch rate percentage. Some what stacking the deck. They talk percentages always. I feel the large grass blocks can produce a lot more ducks due to there being way more ducks nesting. What make more ducks 25% of 50 nests or 10% of 500? But 10% does not look near as nice on paper. I went from trapping blocks with 500+ nests to blocks with a forth or fifth as many. Just my thoughts.

The studies done by Delta Waterfowl from what I know where done intensively throughout the year and kept predator populations unnaturally low I was a Habitat Chairman for a local Pheasants Forever chapter for 27 years in South Central PA . What we saw was planting small blocks (2 to 3 acres) of nesting cover was not worth the time and money as far as providing more successful nesting cover The predators would work the cover like a hunting dog ,find the nests and destroy them .Yes they would find nest in larger fields also but the large blocks of cover made it more likely that at least some nest would produce some live chicks .We had so many pheasants during the 60 ,s &70,s they where considered a pest .But at that time almost every farm had at least some marginal bird cover . And many property's where made up of good to excellent nesting cover It is not like we did not have egg eating predators at that time . Now I would not know where to go to see a wild pheasant in my county .A major increase in farms being turned into residential development and farms now being so heavily crop farmed to the point where the fields are bare to the ground in the winter and double cropped in the growing season There is little place or time for ground nesting birds to have time to establish a nest and hatch them

w side rd 151 Like I said habitat is key. Without habitat you will not have wildlife. Delta Waterfowl trappers in ND trapped from 15 March-15 July. 15 Mar the sloughs are still froze over hard. That is the time when the first ducks arrive. Mallards and pintails arrive first. Some will start nesting with in two weeks. When I started we trapped a township, a 6 mile x 6 mile block. At they end I was trapping small blocks of grass scattered over 50 miles. It is way harder to protect all the scattered out small grass than it is one big block. You could trap ground outside the block if you had permission, but you had all the ground you could keep up with as it was. At times I had over 400 traps and snares out.
to me 2-3 acres is small grass and a section, 640 acres or more is large grass. If you have a section or more grass you catch way less predator in the center than on the edge. I rode a ATV, so it wasn't a lack of traps out there. I averaged over 35 miles a day on the ATV.