If this is the me Eater podcast, coming at you.
Shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening toast, you can't predict anything.
Presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt, First Light, go farther, stay longer. Okay, everybody, we're coming at you from Kansas Union Town. Not well, kind of new Walnut Union Town. Yep, that's the voice of Jason Phelps. Seth Morris is here. We're on Phelps that had been to this property before and Seth yep. Uh doing a bit of logging, little timber felling. I had to show Phelps
out of feltree. Yeah. Then we got tacked by chiggers. Yep, ticks tiggers and then uh and now we're back. Yeah. So two summers ago, two summers going ye sure.
Yeah, July two summers sold them last year, remember falling here chiggers man.
So yeah, this Chiggers story is worth telling. So we came and we selected a big walnut tree. We're on the front of your How did you how do you know Randy.
So mutual friend Chris Parrish. Oh, he talks about him all, yeah, yeah, great, one of the best turkey colors of all time. Got got to know Chris really well, and we were just trying to plant a turkey hunt together, and He's like, you know what, I think I got a one of my buddies in Kansas, might let us do that hunt here. So we came out met Randy three years ago turkey
hunt and got to be good buds from God. And then so we had an idea where we wanted to make turkey calls but cut the trees down and just kind of go through the whole thing and you'd get all the raw timber a lumber.
Yes, yep. So we came out here to Randy's place and got a walnut tree not far from what we later I didn't know at the time, but not far from Walnut, Kansas. And we had some walnut experts come out. We picked a walnut tree, sawed it down, picked an oceage orange.
Barberchared it.
Barbecared another dudes from like the twelfth generation of loggers, and then and the barber chared.
We don't cut trees. I'm not making any excuses. I barbarer schared it. But they with this whole like little teeny front cut, enter your saw halfway and cut your way out the back.
That was special to cut. That's why I still screwed it up. Yeah, they got away of felling. They got away of felling walnuts where I never I wasn't really familiar with that. No, like high end, like high end veneer logs. They're basically taking that thing down to the dirt yep and not cutting a wedge, because you could be cutting hundreds of dollars. You could be cutting like hundreds of dollars out of that tree yep, cutting the wedge. So what do you even call that little process?
So yeah, they cut maybe a three inch face cut, and then they just dog their saw in burrow hole through it. You dog the tip of the bar in behind that hollow it all out, get yourself squared up to that that notch, and then you just cut your way out the back.
And uh yeah, when you're done, dude, it's like it looks like paving stones. Man. I mean that thing is you haven't wasted anything. But I like that method. But I was like the whole time, I was like, so does the tree come down on me? Where's the tree go? Cut? The wallet down, cut some osage orne down, and I remember when we got the walnut I think we had in our head. We're like, we're calling it a thousand pot tree, and I want to be pretty close.
Yeah, yeah, a little slightly over, but yep.
And and made these calls with that, made strikers with the osage range. I haven't tell you I lost my striker I got. I might have excell but I also have a striker with sentimental value. So anyways, and then we made all the walnut pots and what we wanted to do. But on this podcast, I'm I was joking about sweep steaks and raffle law, being like, if I could go back in time and take another career path, I would go into sweep. I'd become a lawyer and
specialize in sweep steaks and raffle law. We wanted to have them be that they all had a number. It's called the line one call, and they all have a number. We wanted to be that we'd sell them and then get all those ping pong balls with numbers on them and it blows them in the wind. We're going to make our own the leaf bloor and then you grab a ping pong ball out and whoever that number has that call. We were then going to take them back
to the same property to hunt turkeys. We just thought it'd be fun, and we went through it the whole plan until we realized that according to the to the Vagaries of sweep Steaks and Raffle law, you can't do that or it's very cumbersome, like free entries and all of this just every time you go to it's like a every time you go to give something away and a lawyer looks out like, you can't do that. So
instead what we did is we just did it. But and then later after the fact picked someone and called him and took him turkey Hunt, but he still out Turkey Hunt. Me and Phelips are tagged out. Guy, This looks bad, dude that we're tagged out, but our guy hasn't gotten one yet. He's gonna be like, so I won this, like Turkey Hunt and the guys that were supposed to be taking these shots and I didn't. You had to get on that.
Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't. It doesn't sound as bad if we were to explain.
Well, no, we did because I went so I went out with him. I went out with the winner opening morning and the landowner. So you got like the landowner advantage and.
The spot that hadn't been hunted all year yet.
So like the spot that hadn't been hunted landowner who's a very good turkey hunter, very serious hunter, owns the place, it's been hunting here for decades, went to right, stacked the deck in the winter's favor. Phelps got one, so then we moved him over. Yeah he got to a crappy guy and yeah, but then we had like the landowner's buddy even making sure that everything's like we can go there, can't go there, just bad luck. Yeah.
Well, and to be fair, he has had a terrific time. Yeah, and some great hunts and he learned a lot. Yeah, hopefully he'll close the deal.
I got Jake.
He might not want Jake. I think Jake's are hoping for him today. I mean, yeah, he's I think he's been, like he said, he'll remember this morning for like the most picturesque turkey hunt ever. It was was pretty cool. But yeah, I just you know, I think we got a couple of couple of good birds within sixty yards. It's not real comfortable taking the which is fine. Like I have a ton of respect for you know, he wanted him forty and in. But yeah, Turkey's being turkeys and doing what they want to do.
I told you about my kid. I kind of like bad mentoring. That worked out good, but he I still he killed her g at seventy yards, you know, poke and well, I don't know if I told you, but he's like, he said, I'm gonna he's gonna take He's like he wants to take the beard and fill that shell full of hot glue and stick the beard down in the empty shell. And he said, and I'm going to write the yardage on that shell. He's like, listen,
tell him, I said, listen, man. Usually people drag bag about how close the turkey friend about No, he thinks it's great now. He thinks yeah, he already thinks he's invincible because he one time, like we're going down a big hill hunting deer, and I got out ahead of him and he was just lolly gagging behind me, and we're kind of like done doing what we're doing, and we're just kind of in the regroup phase, you know, headed back down the hill. But we'll figure out what's next.
We blew it, and all of a sudden, we jump buck and I turn around, I like register the buck's presence, and I turn around to see that he's up and his buck is running. And as I'm going no, as I go yeah, drops it, I'm like, oh my god. So now he's like, you know, he just thinks he's He's like John Wayne Now, man, I think it's John Wayne now, dude. It's like he just thinks that just this whole everything he's been told about distances and running is you're to slow him down.
Man.
It's everybody trying to slow down.
People without the skill set he has can't do it.
Also joined by Craig Harper, professor of Wildlife Management at University of Tennessee and Knoxville. I assumed you were from Tennessee for some stupid reasons, but you're not.
No, from North Carolina. Tenth generation. Family has been there a long time, just west of Winston Salem. A good place to be from.
What does that go by? Tenth generation? What's that mean? When'd your family get.
There in the mid seventeen hundreds. Dang, really long history, been there a long time, used to have a lot of land now it's whittled down to a postage stamp. With all of the generations so carving everything up, there's still a heavenly piece of early successional vegetation right there in the middle of all the suburban development and Winston Salem expanding, where all kinds of wildlife that enjoy that type of vegetation are very happy. They still hang out there.
You were talking about after you fell out of that. You told us a great story about falling out of a tree stand and getting all crippled up. Yes, and then you went out to hunt your favorite holler. That's correct.
If it wasn't from my uncle and dad and cousin, that wouldn't have happened. I couldn't get around, so they essentially helped carry me and get me in position. And there I sat, and a deer walked up late in the evening and I was able to shoot it, and of course I couldn't go get it. They had to do all of the work. But that was a real
blessing from God right there. Number one to live and number two to be able to get some of my sanity back after laying in the bed for months, not knowing if I'd walk again, you.
Know, we have a guy. We have a friend who's an emergency room doctor in Michigan, and he's a hunter, and he's taken a great interest in tree stand accidents. I was in a point in the direction because he's actually published tree stand accidents and what happens, why it happens, the suite of injuries that comes.
So much of that can be prevented. In my case, I was not hunting, as we talked about. I was actually checking cameras and I came upon this stand that I had not hunted in four years and had forgotten that it was there. And I knew the straps would be bad. So you know, I climbed up to take the straps off and take a stand down and figured i'd come back later, and you know, put the stand.
Back up in new straps.
But the straps appeared fine, and so you know, it's pretty dumb.
Even took them off, even took them off and looked at them.
Yeah, I took them off, and everything looked good. They weren't afraid, didn't look like squirrels had chewed them, whatever. They seemed just to be perfectly fine. I put them back on it with the ratchet strap and thing, you know, banjo string tight.
All was good.
But and there was a big limb and grabbed hold of the limb and you know, felt the stand before I got in it, and then got in it and kind of, you know, put all my weight on it, jumped up and down, et cetera. It was solid as a rock, the bottom strap was. But then when my butt hit the seat, it's just like a twenty two rifle going off and down I went, you know, like a trap door straight down.
Oh man, Yeah, it was that spot was that.
Don't climb without some type of safety harness and something keeping you up there. It's a pretty simple thing to do. It's easy to climb up without it because we're all in a hurry, you know whatever.
But that's it's risky. Tell people real quick, Craig, what you do, what kind of research you do, then we'll get into it. Have you duty in a little bit.
I've been at the University of Tennessee since nineteen ninety eight. As you mentioned, I'm a professor of Wildlife Management and the Extension Wildlife special List. So my primary responsibility is developing wildlife management programs, especially for the extension agents throughout the state and helping them with concerns with wildlife that come in from clientele in the counties, but I work in lots of other states. I work very closely with
state wildlife agencies. Obviously, I conduct research I have since I got there. Although my primary responsibility, of course is extension. We also have the freedom to do research or to teaching the classroom if you wish, But all of my research is directed towards applied land management the vast majority anyway, So how can you manage land to better wildlife? Obviously
create better wildlife habitat for various species. And something else concentrate in that I've gotten into over the past several years is how to manage land for better hunting? You know, how can you set up your property such that the hunting is better, you're more successful. So that that's been very rewarding to work with landowners all over the place and help them with some of that.
God, and you do a bunch of work on turkeys.
Yes, we have been a part of several turkey studies and we have one right now. It's still going on. We're in the seventh year. It's been very very interesting.
What's that really just tell me the real quick snapshot version, and we're going to we'll get back to it.
We have looked at the survival habitat use of wild turkeys in an area of Tennessee that had experienced a population decline, and we involved counties where the decline was happening as well as adjacent counties that there was no decline, and so we were able to do that for four years, looking at all of the reproductive parameters, survival, habitat use, movements,
et cetera for four years. And then the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency their commission voted in a two week season delay and that was implemented in those counties where the population had been declining, and so we were able to follow that for two years. So we have before and after data upon implementing that delay in both treatment counties where the delay occurred, as well as control counties for
the delay did not occur. So that's been very interesting to see if the delay influenced reproductive reproduction in any way.
I want to I want to talk about that a whole bunch because because folks might not yet appreciate the significance of what you're saying, so we get into it a little bit more, but people had to freaked out. If you tell a bunch of people that they're going to hunt turkeys, that turkey sees is going to be delayed by two weeks. So some scientists can do some research. I can imagine people being pissed.
Buying larger correct, But you know when it's couched in a way that hey, we're doing this to help turkeys. You know, turkey hunters and hunters in general, they want to do what's best for the resource. And so you might be surprised at the percentage of people. And we've done surveys every year within the treatment and the control counties, and about roughly half of them were perfectly fine with
the delay. Probably a quarter didn't really feel one way or another towards it, and of course another quarter was very much against it. Sure, and that's largely remained constant through the period. And now we're in the seventh year and we'll have another round of surveys going out this spring because last year the Commission voted to implement the two week delay statewide, so all of Tennessee this year.
The turkey season opened April fifteenth, which traditionally it opened on the Saturday closest to April the first God.
All right, stay tuned everybody, because we're gonna get way into why. Like I said, you might be wondering why that matters, but we're gonna get into why all that matters. I think you'll find it interesting. But first couple of things, a couple promo issues. So Casey and Tyler from The Element have launched on our on the me eater YouTube channel. The Bock Truck series will drop every Tuesday through June
thirteenth on YouTube and the meat Eater site. So tune in for those boys and so Element episodes of the Bock Truck on me Eater's YouTube starting now. And huge new giveaway. I don't even know about this. I'm gonna win this. We're launching a huge giveaway, so you get a chance to win three thousand bucks in hunting gear from all our brands, along with a personalized outfit and session with our very own Gianness. He tell us, you know,
I'm doing one of these outfitting sessions. I'm actually going all the way down to Haley, Idaho, to the First Light Store because I agree to do one of these to the First Light Store to meet someone and then I'm gonna be like their personal stylist and set them up with all kinds of hunting gear at the First Light store in Haley, Idahog. We're gonna hang out and I'm gonna be like, hey might want these and these.
So for your chance to win three thousand bucks and gear from all of our brands, so FHF Felts, First Light and a personalized outfitting session with Giannis where Giannis goes over what you need, why you want it? Okay, what are your plans this year? You win?
All?
This runs now through May twenty one, so head over to the meaeater dot com slash giveaway to to enter. The winner will be randomly picked and contacted on May twenty second. Oh the other day I was drawn. I drew the hat for who wins next year's free Turkey Hunt t RCP Turkey Hunt. It's a dude out of Austin, Texas.
Is that all you're giving right now?
It's all I know right now? Oh, they haven't made I mean some name that I forgot out of Austin, Texas.
Are you coming back here?
Nope? We do it every year in Michigan. That's to raise money for TRSP and we raised a boatload of money this year. Nice, yeah, we did that. That that that rat that fundraiser did a lot, and then in a couple of days we're hunting with last year's winner. This here's the thing that came across that someone sent in and I didn't believe it, but we've verified that it's true. Remember, you know, everybody's all worked up about
chat chat, GPT, end of the world and everything. Okay, first off, all right, so what everybody likes to do is is they like to go on these and the into the chat bots, you know, the chat GPT, and ask you a question and and then you know, use
artificial intelligence to pull you up a model. What I always like to point out to people that as a writer, and everybody will tell me why I should be worried about this as around, it's not like it doesn't bother me because it's only harnessing what's already been done by people. So if you were already doing things that were original to people, it's not that much of a concern. It's like looking at what's been done, but it can't look at what's not been done.
Maybe in the future, though it can take it can look at everything that's been done and predict things that could happen in the future.
Yeah, like, well I win that three thousand dollars packaging sign up. So they've coded in this one has where they've coded in an anti hunting bias.
Imagine that, uh so AI.
Artificial intelligence could be our so whole intelligence AI as an Okay, So this guy goes into this guy goes into chat chat GPT and says, what is the best way to hunt deer in Alabama? Got it? And the answer? It kicks back. As an AI language model, I do not encourage or endorse hunting or any activity that involves harming animals. Here's where Here's where it gets good. However, I can't provide some general information about hunting deer in Alabama. He types in what is the best way to hunt
Eastern gobblers in West Tennessee near the Mississippi border. As an AI language model, I do not encourage or endorse hunting or any activity that involves hiring the animals. However, I can't provide some general information about hunting eastern gobblers in West Tennessee near the Mississippi border. And then it goes down to have like a lot of very Manila, Like a lot of very very Manila. Am I saying Manila like the place of the Philippines? I think it's Vanilla.
It is, Oh, I'm saying Vanilla. I've been to Manila. That was a busy town in the Philippines.
Says that the first step to successful turkey hunting is scouting.
That's a great point, though, it is a great point. Then when you find a good spot, you set up your decoys and calls, and it says that Eastern gallers can be lured of the variety of calls, yelps, clucks, purrs, and gobbles. Important to be patient and stealthy, always follow
the rules, wear blaze orange. So it's like, yeah, it's I know that we're just in the beginning of this, but but at this like with the amount of hand wringing, it's just, uh, if someone's gonna be satisfied by that answered that, that's about the level they're going to be operating on. Now, why they have to bake in their disapproval of hunting? You know, has anybody said, like what is a good way to get like, what's a good
way to get drunk? Does it say, I don't condone getting drunk, but you might want to try liquor.
Oh we could, we could see, we can type it in.
So I didn't buy it.
But then.
Krinn had it checked out and someone else used, you know, another Ai language model, so as an Ai language model. Blah blah blah, I hate hunting, and then and then it did a bullet pointed. They found a bullet pointed list of five things you should try hunt in the morning, use Decoy's scout call strategically, and stay still impatient. So there you go. Goy wrote in gouls Turkey not in the Grand Slam. He's from Egypt. Oh okay. I am a US Army National Guard member and a peacekeeping mission
in Egypt. Okay. Why are Goulds Turkeys not included in the Turkey Grand Slam by the National Wild Turkey Federation. Their exclusion doesn't make sense to me. Objections to their inclusion in the Grand Slam don't seem to hold up.
Uh.
I deleted this then put it back because I wasn't gonna talk about but I decided to talk about it. Since this person's in Egypt and everything they have a there's a million kind of slams. Right, there's grand super world in world. I think that what they're getting at is that gouls are Okay, gouls are mostly found in Mexico. The goules turkey's mostly found in Mexico, but it is found in you know, you can get him in Arizona
and New Mexico, right, yeah, those two states. And he's like, well, if rarity is an issue, why is the Osciola turkey from South Florida that's only in one state. If it's a rarity or just a one or two state thing, then osciola wouldn't be in either. I think, and again, I'm getting into this because you're a service member and you're in Egypt, because you can you can hunt. You can buy an over the counter tag to hunt Ossiola turkeys. Yep. I think it comes down to the opportunity. But in
Arizona you have to apply. I've been trying to draw and I've hunted gouls in Old Mexico. I have been applying for a decade in Arizona. Good look for gules and you can get two points a year.
I mean, obviously there's so many more Osceola's in the United States. Florida than there are gouls in the United States, and so the opportunities are exceptionally limited for gools in the United States.
Yeah, I think it's like of the of the five, this is one of my questions. I don't know, maybe you have an opinion about this. Of the five accepted subspecies of turkeys, of the five subspecies of the America in wild turkey, there are East Osceola's, Easterns, Miriams, Rios, and Goulds, but it's questioned whether they're legit like whether they should be legitimately regarded as subspecies anyways, do you have an opinion on that rather than just phenotypes or you know, variants.
There are differences between those groups for sure, and that's the case with many wildlife space as. It's very common to have subspecies or or races, uh, you know, within a species, and I think it's I think it's very interesting and it adds more flavor to turkey hunting for people to be interested in harvesting one of each subspaces.
Yeah, but do you uh seeings how a turkey can in one day being Eastern or in Asceola depending on where he stands along an arbitrary line, right, I mean there's a little bit of make believe here. Oh well, sure, And obviously there's.
Hybridism if you will, you know where the Easterns and Ossiolas come together, and you'll see characteristics of both and a blend. But once you get on down into Florida, you're definitely going to see a darker bird, doesn't weigh as on average as much, typically has longer spurs. There're certainly physical differences between the subspecies, but there's going to be gradation as they come together in those areas.
Yep. Oh, you know. I keep wanting to tell people Boux We've talked about before. I want to talk about it again. The Merlin app by the Cornell Ornithology is unbelievable. Have you been messing with that?
I've just been hearing Chris talk about it on this hunt.
Dude, It's unbelievable. I've been running it in the morning, you know, like when it's getting daylight out and every bird in the world's going off. I've been just turning on Merlin and uh, I had ten species going what'd you get? Let me see if I still have this one second, I'm gonna try to pull it up. I see I've been stupidly. I've been deleting all my recordings. So oh man, I got rid of it.
I do know that it substantiated you and Randy the other morning though.
Oh that's why I like to hit yeah, is every time someone calls, it'll bing on wild turkey, and sitting there in the dark listening for gobbles, it'll pick them up. It'll pick them up pretty distant. Now you can hear it better than your phone can hear it. But it'll pick it up an idea, and whenever someone when we're sitting there and someone calls, it'll punch wild turkey. So
I'll sitting there. At one point I had red breasted woodpacker, northern cardinal American robin, American crow, a toe he red shouldered hawk, tufted tip mouse.
Did you say goldfinch?
I had a goldfinch, which surprised me. This is all one spot, Bartels. I had a flycatcher on there and as it listens and there's like a sound chart, and as it pings stuff, it just starts adding them to a list. And then anytime some particular birds going off, that bird turns yellow. And so then someone will call and they'll be like wild turkey, you know, and then you're a gobble and it'll bing wild turkey. But then there's a crow going off. It is amazing, man, it
is amazing. Those guys do such good job.
So it didn't say peacock when somebody was calling.
No, But I keep wanting to make I keep wanting to make Chris Gill call he don't have, but he's just been trying to learn how to call turkeys. She's got him around his yard, you know, and so I want to see if, if, if, if he's good enough that Merlin will pick him up. Now, you know another interesting thing that about it is I didn't check this, but Chris said, I gotta look at this.
I don't.
I almost don't want to say it's counting off. It's true. Chris said that when the woodpecker's going, it'll it'll I d that woodpecker on Cadence, but I don't know if that's true. That's good because you think like a like affiliated and then some of those things like yeah yeah, like they got the machine gun style he said it was picking up that. And then I had a squirrel get pissed at something. Well, a hawk flew through I
watched the hawk come through the woods. The squirrel got all bent out of shape last night, and I turned Merlin on and you can see that squirrel in there. But that didn't do nothing. It didn't. It didn't. It didn't pull that squirrel out or misidentify it or even identify it. So it's only a bird out pissed off. A pissed off squirrel did not register on there, even though you could it was definitely picking it up because you could see its markings, but it didn't. I think it's an amazing app man.
I think it's good that you bring it up, because if more people were in better tune with what's going on around them in nature, whether that be bird sounds or frogs, or learning a few of the plants on the property where they're hunting and trying to manage that,
that really increases your enjoyment and appreciation of nature. And you know, just hardcore hooking bullet guys, if you know, and I know several who finally got into not necessarily birding, but at least being able to identify different bird species by their call or by their song. All of a sudden, wow, you know, and they start recognizing how many different species are on the property, and it just it edds to your enjoyment.
The best, without a doubt, far and away, the best woodsman I ever spent time with, would be like in Amerindian hunters in South America, like indigenous hunters in South America, far and away in terms of like tracking ability, just everything, you can't what you get from. So where you you're hunting two hundred and fifty days a year in a let's say a fifty sixty mile radius of your home, and your dad hunted that me days year within that radius.
Your grandfather hunted that many days year within that radius back perhaps thousands of years. Any little noise of anything you hear, I don't care if it's a bug and it's and in the jungle, it's all noise. It's like it's it's there's so much noise. It's stressful. Any noise and you go like make the what was that thing? They know the answer. Yeah, like they got to think about you know what I mean.
They're in tune with what's going on.
No dude, any noise, any noise. We've talked about this bunch where there's a friend of ours, a writer Pat Dirkin and he used to be the editor at Deer and Deer Hunting magazine.
No, Pat is a great guy.
Oh you know Pat. When he was doing that Deer and deer hunting thing, he had to he would profile like someone to kill a big buck, you know, and he'd have to he'd have to report on someone killing a big buck, and he had to spend a lot of time with a lot of like very successful big buck killers. And he's like, man, there's just some guys that are phenomenal big bock killers. We said. A thing that would surprise me about them is that many of them, as good as they were, they couldn't tell you what
kind of tree their tree standards are poked into. So there's some things you can do and not need to know that kind of stuff, but just for the general enjoyment and like like old school woodsmanship, man, yeah, knowing the sounds around you.
I don't get into this, but one of my graduate students, Mark Turner, he tries to see how many tree species he can kill a deer from.
That's like a different I got one out of a magnolia one time, did you so?
Was it a southern magnolia in Alabama.
Uh so, I guess that'd be Do you think that would fit under is the Merlin app? Does that fit under? AI? Of course it does?
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Out, I wish so the Cornell Ornithology Lab or Lab of Ornithology, they're phenomenal, dude, they do so much cool stuff. Yeah, I keep thinking they're they should send me like a hat or something promoting talking about the Cornell Ornithology that anyhow, if if they see that, they were not gonna do this because it's not birds, but I think that that should be developed. I would like to see that be
developed into frogs, yes, toads, insects. Yeah, that'd be sweet, so that you could sit out and be like, oh, that's that frog.
You know, or even that it'd be cool if there was like animal ones, because sure I've heard several different times I've heard like Bobcat mountain lion screaming. Most people are like, what in the hell, Yeah, someone's getting murdered up on the hill.
We've had people send in crazy noises, you know, and you listen to it and you're like, that's something slowly killing a cottontail rabbit or whatever, right, Like, yeah, if it would just like be able to to pick off all those sounds. Yeah.
I was in the Yucatan, Uh three weeks ago we were hunting oscillated turkeys and uh, some howler monkeys started going off. Now that's something that will get your attention. When those big males are up in the trees, Uh just growl and hollering at the females and young. And it was it was rather fascinating to say, Yeah, Phil, when you're putting this together, it is just a quick note to Phil. You can leave the note in Phil, play uh, play howler monkeys real quick going off in
the trees, so that that is an intimidating noise. Oh yeah, and you're in.
The dark, going through the jungle and dark and when it's just getting light out, those things going off right over your head. Oh my god. Man.
And obviously I have never been confronted by one or whatever, but uh, you know they're said to be rather aggressive.
I was with some guys that shot one and we ate it a red howler monkey.
Really, you know, how was it?
I didn't like it.
You didn't eat the brains?
Did you know?
They did? Do you remember those videos from years back?
What was it called eating the live monkey brain.
Yeah, yeah, what was the faces of death? Yeah, where the monkey's head would be in the center of the table. And then people had these little like ball pin hammers and pop pop pop, you know, all the way around the table until they finally killed the monkey. And then they cracked his skull open, and all of them had spoons and would.
Man, no, they didn't do that, but they uh, they they had. So they had a monkey. They'd killed it with a sixteen gage shotgun. Chaman. These guys were Chamane. Was there a tribe? They killed it with sixteen gage shotgun and man, they had like they cleaned the intestines and everything all to eat. One of them was walking around he had that it had a little it had a little baby, and he was just eating that little head like a little apple cooked.
Man cooked.
I just thought it was too much like eating folks. I hate it, but I thought it was a lot like eating folks. I had eaten. I had eaten, and I had had occasion overseas as well. I'd had occasion to eat domestic dog a bunch, and that bothered me, but I didn't bother me like monkeys. You know, well, both of them made me feel sweaty.
We also saw spider monkeys, but they didn't have nearly as exciting of a vocalization. But you mentioned somebody shot one. Now, our guides when we were down there, they were very strict about, you know, not being able to shoot the mono.
Yep, no monkeys. Yeah, I've been so. I was with the other group that it's taboo tabooed eat monkey, like they don't eat monkeys, tabooty iguana. But you know what, it's just different. We have all kinds of taboos. Like you might come with us and be like, well, there's this good looking animal right there. That's my dog.
Dude.
You know, everybody's got their table.
That's one rule I have no problem in abiding by.
It's easy to here's a good question that came in. If you're in New Richmond, washsen there's a piece called the ten Mile Water Foul Production Area. Okay, US Fish and Wildlife Service Land. There's a Okay, the just gonna read from what the guy has to say. Recently, a group of individuals in my neighborhood want to have the
easement removed leading to US Fish and Wildlife Land. So there's a group of individuals in this individual's neighborhood who want they have an easement into the ten mile waterfowl production area New Richmond, Wisconsin. Their argument is they should close that easement because there's other easements anyways. Because what happened. A new landowner purchased some land knowing damn well that there was an easement there, and they want to build
their quote dream home. Whenever you see someone's gonna build a dream home, it usually proceeds a problem. Do you know what I mean? They're like, oh, no, no, no, no, it wasn't any home. It was my dream home. So the land that is being accessed is not. So the people are saying we should close the easement because you can get there from other ways anyways. You can get into this area other routes, and this gentleman is saying,
the other routes suck. You gotta go through a bunch of swamp and muck and wetland or across the river, and so it's not comparable. And he said, is my belief that the individuals fighting this easement and seeking to have it removed just want this land for their free use and to prevent hunters from walking through it. They have said hunters can request access through their property, But in my eyes, this defeats the purpose of public land. Why should I have to request access from a private
party to use the public easement. He says that his position on this is so controversial in his neighborhood that his kids will lose friendships with neighborhood kids. If he were to bring this up publicly, what would you do? Would you stand up to the whole neighborhood. Yeah, well, I'd make it be like it was in the neighborhood's benefit.
But I wonder why the other neighbors feel so strongly that the easement should be kapy.
He'd be like, who's being the good neighbor here? I feel that all the people in our neighborhood can right now walk on over there. But if this guy builds his dream home, then the neighborhood's boned. Yeah.
It seems like a real slippery slope to allow somebody the ability to say yes you can go or no you can't.
Yeah. I don't get. I don't get. It's like he you know what he's doing, he's getting best. He's getting beat by someone who's better at rhetoric than he is, but someone's out rhetoric in him. The guy that wrote in he's getting out rhetoric, but he should he should have the upper hand here. If his kid's gonna lose buddies over this, Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna take his bike or something.
Uh.
We had a we had a podcast a while ago. On an episode, we talked about the ways turkeys get reported in the news, you know, like the idea of the the rabid, mean downtown turkey. We had a police officer from Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Mount Pleasant Police apartment. He rode in where they had a turkey that was viciously attacking people in the neighborhood. This turkey, he says, this turkey actually managed to knock a lady down and broker wrist. I don't mean to laugh at the knocked her down
and broker wrist. Okay, they triudn't. They tried to catch it in the net gun. That couldn't catch it in the net gun. They eventually put together a coordinated approach to mobilize the turkey. Since they knew that the tom would routinely charge vehicles, they use an suv as a blocker, had officers hide behind the suv as it approached the tom When they executed the plan, they did not consider that a taser gun. Part of the plan fell apart when they forgot that a taser gun has a five
second sequence that prevents a cop from overtasering people. They hide behind the vehicle and the turkey approaches the vehicle to attack, So an officer tases the turkey, at which point the other officers all run out to get it into a fishing net. He had to keep tasering it, but the five second thing made it that the turkey recovered and actually spurred up and injured an officer with its spurs. They eventually got it into a box from
a cardboard pool, a large pool cardboard box. They then drove the turkey five miles out of town and let it go on a farm. Two weeks later, he was back.
Even even if the turkey never came back, it seems like a big giant waste of Oh if people lose their mind turkeys, I mean, a twelve gage is a great cheap way to take care of that problem.
You know.
I'm just sitting here listening to all this and thinking. Of course, turkeys were not numerous in the nineteen fifties. But had that problem occurred in the nineteen fifties.
What you just described would not have happened. No, oh, in the nineteen fifties of a turkey at tagged the lady and broke the wrist. Would they be then having like an eatings of the girls.
Yeah, they would have a meeting to eat it. Yeah, that evening, that's what they'd be doing.
We did our big Chatticot episode, but the Chatticot questions keep rolling in, So we had a Chatticut episode. Luke Colmbs. We took care of a million Chatticot questions, but a couple keep coming in. This is an interesting one. So you guys gotta do a morality. This is a moral question. So this guy a few years back, he buys a house. He buys three acres out in the country. As he puts it and on it is a one quarter acre
what he describes as a scummy duck pond. The neighboring property owner has thirty five acres with three other larger ponds. This guy takes a shine to the pond that he now owns. There's four ponds, three around the neighbor's place ones on his He takes a shine to this pond and he has it dug out and deepened. He has it treated with beneficial bacteria. He adds an air raider and he says, this pond turns out awesome. The neighbor that has thirty five acres with three ponds sells his place. Okay.
The person that buys this new place now has these three ponds, and he decides to have it surveyed. And when he has it surveyed, it turns out that he owned the actually guy that the guy actually send in a little illustration, he actually owns a little bit of the shore of the sweet new pond. Now, the people that bought the three ponds with thirty five acres now camp out and hang out on their little sliver of the pond that he rehabilitated about one hundred yards from
his kitchen window. Oh man, and he's wondering, sure, man, it's on their place, But really, what's the etiquette on that. That's a tough one. A tough one. It's a tough one.
I would say, there just needs to be give and take on both sides, you know. I mean, the dude fixed up the pond it's unfortunate that it's actually owned a portion of by somebody else. But all parties involved should realize, you know, we have a little issue here and let's let's be nice to each other.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one because here's one thing I am, like, I empathize with the guy that duged the pine up. But at the same time, dude, you like you like you didn't survey your property line?
Yeah, I was. The whole thing could have been fixed when you bought your property and not just and then you would have known. All right, at this point, do you want to put the money and effort into it? And so this guy buys the place and he gets to walk around. There's a sweet pond on his as far as he knows, just a sweet pond on his place. He may not know what all happened.
Maybe if he just lets his pond go back to the scummy duck pond, the neighbors won't want to hang out by it.
Yeah, he needs to call the contractor be like, I want to put all that fill back in the pod. What if he What'm I gonna run my sewage out into that get it right back to way I found it.
What if he paid to have one of the neighbor's ponds fixed up just like his pond, and in trade, we work out an agreement where he can purchase the land around his pond. Either way, it's gonna costume something, dude, that's the fix. It's costume.
Yeah, this guy Craigs should be on all the etiquette episodes. Yeah yeah, he says, you know, I got a proposal. I'm gonna do just what I did that my pond, your pond. I'll make it better and then you'll see to me that little chunk of beach.
Yeah, just be nice.
Property bound adjustments. Okay, here's another one. This one's this one. That one was great. This one is not great. This is a horrible person. Fourteen year old kid Thanksgiving Eve is hunting a property with his uncle, who's his hunting mentor. Big Buck pops out Big buck for North Carolina. He says, big eight pointer. He's a kid, he's fourteen. Bam, hits it in the leg, says he pretty much takes off the lower third of the deer's leg. Deer runs over
towards the uncle. Bam, Uncle gets it. The uncle kept the buck. Oh wow, it's hanging in his house. Come on, dude, argument being you might not have found that deer. That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. I would even if that uncle, if it wasn't his nephew, and it wasn't even the same property.
Dude, give the person the deer that they made a whole movie called First Blood. Obviously I don't know the guy, but I don't like him.
No, if he did it to a neighbor, I think he was right.
So I was gonna change up the question if this was an adult that made the bad for a shot.
When a kid got it.
Oh no, like adult made it bad for a shot and then the buck roun you. So I made a shot, wounded a buck, bad shott and then you killed it? Or you giving me the deer back.
Absolutely without question?
Is there any wounding that doesn't count, like a hide wound or like, oh that's a.
Good question, Well give it, give it to me. Like let's say you shot a tye off it or you keep it now, Okay, you shot a tye off it or you hit hair? What what if it?
What if you like shot a deer with a ball that that would just win through muscle, That dear is gonna live, not one hundred percent, but.
Because you never know.
But I'd give it to the person you don't know. I'm gonna can I twist the question one more time for you? So it's the new Michigan state record. Okay, I ding it in the lower in the knee joint, and it runs to you and you kill it.
It's your buck.
I don't believe you.
Who else you're gonna ask what I would do besides.
Me, Jason, That dude would be on my wall.
See the ethics change a little bit.
No, I think if the kids.
Involved you, yeah, yeah, you specifically just yeah, it's it's going home with the fourteen year old.
Can I tell another story that's somewhat related?
Oh please?
Uh?
Marcus Lashley at the University of Florida. He is on the committee of one of my current graduate students, Jake Bones, and Marcus was a graduate student mine years ago. So I have a long relationship with Marcus. Great guy, very smart, knows a lot about turkeys and fire and other things.
Well.
Thinking about the etiquette, he was coming up to hunt with us and spend time to meet with Jake on his project et cetera, and it happened to be coincidentally in April during our turkey season. So of course Marcus wants a turkey hunt, and so Jake says, hey, I know where there's a couple of birds hanging out. It's on some public land. He said, let's take doctor Lashley and hunt over.
That's great.
And so Marcus and I had hunted a couple of different spots, and then on this third morning, we went to the public land that Jake was going to go to and I had not been there. And backstory a little bit. Jake had only killed one turkey ever in his life, okay, and so he's giving up this goblin bird to what's going to be his committee member, you know, which can be important when it comes voting time.
So got.
And so we drive to the spot. We get out and the bird is gobling literally within one hundred yards. I said, well, you know, gosh, you know that's we're really close. And I did not know Jake that well at this time about his turkey hunting ability, savvy whatever, I didn't know, and so I just figured, you know, Jake's probably long time turkey hunter and he knows what he's doing. And so we're walking down the gravel road headed to this goblin bird. And you know, I'm I've
been kind of hanging back the whole time. Let let Jake kind of take control of this situation. And but it dons on me. I'm going to have to do something because we're fixing to mess this up royally. And so I speed walk ahead to get up to Jake, and I said, hey, what's your plan here? And he said, we.
Exactly.
And then and by the way, it's already plenty light enough to see. It's not like even gray light. It's after that because the places the ways off they had to drive to when we were a little late getting there. So anyways, you know what you're playing, He said, Well, I figured we'll just walk up here and sit down. I said, well, we need to get off of the road and get in the woods now, like right here, come, let's go. And so guided them into the woods. And so we get a little closer to where the bird
is and it's next to an opening. It's a very good situation.
We sit down.
We certainly are within seventy yards of the bird's goblin, which is good. I was afraid it would spook differently. Hens are calling and I'm calling for Marcus and get a lot of response. You know, the birds just tearing it up. The hens fly down, they fly down near us, they ease out in the opening. So oh, this is looking really good, right, and so here comes the gobbler.
But there was a little rise not far from us, and the gobbler got behind that, and so now he is at eight yards and Marcus does not have his gun in just the right position, and so he finally eases his gun over. The bird sees it. He's starting to walk a little you know, quick walk a little bit. Marcus shoots, hits the bird. The bird tumbles and rolls, and Marcus shoots again and again, and the bird jumps up and flies. And you know, I didn't have a shotgun.
I'm not hunting, and Jake is sitting behind us, and I said, you know, shoot, shoot, and Jake shoots, and the bird, you know, kind of does a slow dive and so he lands about one hundred and twenty yards out in this recent clearcut.
Jake.
Now, Jake's a tall boy, He's like h six seven or something and long legs. He is just striding out there chasing this turkey. And now the turkey's flopping and flying and half running and whatever else. And there's Jackie flops onto the bird. He was out of shells, uses the shotgun as a club to try to get the bird down. Finally wrestles with him. Feathers are flying everywhere, and he finally comes up with this bird in his hand.
He's got this huge smile on his face. And we all meet and congratulating whatnot.
So who gets the bird? The guy that shot it first.
And so there's Marcus. Now Marcus shot it first. But here and I'm learning as the morning goes on, Jake has only killed one bird. You know, here's a new graduate student. And uh and I'm I'm Marcus. You know, what are you gonna do here? What are you gonna do? Well? You know, I shot him, and uh, I said Marcus. I said, Jake's only killed one bird before. Long story short, They split the meat. Marcus gets the spurs and Jake got the bears DVD. I thought that was pretty man.
It is good. A couple more quick things, but this goods has to do with turkeys. I got two more questions, a couple more questions for you. Here's when it came in from a guy and I just experienced the same things. Let me hit you with this. Let me hit with this, craig. My name is Luke Birch. I'm from eastern North Carolina. I have lived here my whole life. I love hunting in this great state. Recently drew a tag to hunt
game lands here. I don't claim to be a wildlife biologist, but just have to ask your opinion on controlled burns. I am all four controlled burns, but can't understand why it seems the state always does them and nesting season. I just got an ear flip. Before you answer, I want to tell you what happened with me. I have discovered multiple scrambled turkey nests and these pine plantations that
are under prescribe burn plants. Our states started planning long leaf pines sometime back and are also trying to bring back a healthier quail population. But I don't see that as being super efficient, considering prescribed burns seem always to take place during nesting season. When I was just down in Florida, out in Big Cypress, I was there. I was there before the turkey season open. We weren't hunting turkeys, but I was with a turkey hunter doing a little tour.
They had stuff burning everywhere in there, and he says the same thing, Why do they got to burn it when they like they gotta be cooking turkey nests? True?
How much time do we have?
As much time as you want?
Well, this is uh. I hate to say this a hot topic.
I don't know that I'd like to say.
I'm not one with pun but it is of a very hot topic, and it's discussed a lot and has been a lot over the past few to several years. Some turkey nests very well may be burned up, but whether that is having a detrimental effect on the population or not is more related to the scale of burning, how often they are burning. So, if you're burning on a relative small scale, and relative can be defined in a little bit, but on a small scale, and you
burn up a nest or two, whoop you do. That's not going to affect the population in that area per se. But if you're managing your property for turkeys, unlet's say you have one hundred acres or seven hundred acres or whatever, and you're managing it for turkeys, then I'm in agreement
with the guy. I'm not going to be burning during the nesting season when I could destroy some nest and so I want to give the turkeys every bit of advantage I can, because it's very easy to do my burning earlier prior to the nesting season, or do my burning later. You know, one thing that should be considered among fire practitioners is that every day is a potential burn day. You don't just have to burn in March
or April. You can burn in August, you can burn in September, you can burn in July, you can burn in December, whenever. Now, your timing of burning can have a differential effect on the vegetation. But if I'm managing specifically for turkeys, I'm not going to be burning during the during the nesting season. Now, I'm sure what he's talking about is probably on the Crouatan National Forest and in eastern North Carolina, and so they're doing their scale
of burning is larger. They largely are managing for an ecosystem for which turkeys are a part of, but not managing specifically for turkeys. So fired during all seasons can play a role in that and should be done. But even for them and other federal and state agencies I would strongly encourage to burn at other times of the year also, even for you know, quote ecosystem management in
various ecosystems, not just in March April. Chris Mormons a professor at North Carolina State University, and he led projects at Fort Bragg and one of those was was on turkeys, and I was on the committee for the graduate student there.
And what we found was the preponderance of nests while turkey nests were in the drainages that did not burn, they were burning on a two year fire turn interval in long leaf pine and in the sand hills of North Carolina, and they're promoting endemic plants, especially wiregrass underneath the long leaf in many of those areas. And they conducted most of their fires during the early portion of the growing season, and most of that would be done in April May and some in June, for example, but
most in April and May. And we did not document many turkey nests getting burned. I think it was like it was less than ten percent. I think it was like six percent or something like that that were disturbed or destroyed by burning, which would not in and of itself have an effect on the population. And so one message could be, oh, growing season, fire doesn't have an effect on wild turkey nests.
But wait a minute.
When you looked at the distribution of the nest where they occurred, the turkeys were avoiding that grassy understory which was very sparse with regard to cover, but concentrating their nests in the drainages which would not burn. And so you know, you can twist the results a little differently there. And so there's no doubt that the timing and frequency of their fire strongly influenced while turkey nesting, essentially forcing them to nest in other areas that were relatively small,
oftentimes linear. You could make the argument that then you could have increased amount of predation on those nests because of how they were placed in range. So they had effectively removed a lot of what would be much better cover for nesting by their burning regime at that time.
Man, here's another one from a listener. Well, no, it's just a thing. We it's just a piece of reporting, and it's apropos because we're in Kansas right now. Kansas, it looks like they're gonna do away fixing the du away of fall turkey hunting season, the number of fall This really surprised me. The number of fall turkey hunters across the state has fallen greatly since twenty fifteen, at
a rate of twenty percent per year. In twenty nineteen, they dropped fall turkey season dates, so they reduced a meaning they used to be open October one to January thirty. First, what the hell's out now? Four months of fall turkey season, So then you're figuring that they were at plus they were at it was basically close to six months out of the year's turkey season, like usually turkey season in Kansas. Right then they reduced it October one through November ten,
so they asked off a lot. Right now, Fishing Game Agency staff are recommending that fall season be suspended all together in twenty twenty three. What's your take on shooting turkeys in the fall.
That's a good question and something that we've thought a lot about in Tennessee here in recent years. You know, in Tennessee there's been a fall season for a long time, and for the longest time, and I don't remember when the fall season began and when either sex could be taken, but for many years you could shoot hens or males,
females or males during the fall turkey season. That was changed a couple of years ago to mail only, but still today the regulation is you can kill a male per county in the counties that it's open, and it's opening a bunch of counties, Like there's ninety five counties in Tennessee, and I think it's seventy seven counties where you can fall turkey hunt now, so you were.
Like the most cracked command on the planet. You kill seventy five gobblers in the fall.
Well, there's not that many days in the fall season, but you theorytically kill one and every day of the man. But while that theoretically could be a problem, it's not because in Tennessee, I think there's only like four to five hundred birds harvested annually during the fall season. But in my opinion, a fall bird should count toward the statewide annual bag limit, and in many cases it does not, and in Tennessee it does not. I think that's something
that could be improved. You know, it really matters as to how many are killed.
But the.
Thought of shooting females in the fall in areas or in a state that is suffering a decline in turkey population. I don't think that's smart. I would not agree to have a female harvest in the fall. If there are concerns about the turkey population and the harvest has been going down as it has in so many states. What do you.
What do you to What do you attribute the general decline in turkeys that we're seeing in the southeastern US, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas. I'm not sure other areas how widespread it is in other areas, but like to what I know, it's a very complicated question, But what do you think, like when you had to name the things that are going on? What's going on?
It is a very complicated question. And we were discussing some of this over the past couple of days and with one of the guys that was asking me about it while we're walking around to property. You know, I mentioned think about what are the main issues or problems that could lead to a decline in turkey population. One is hunter harvest. You know that kills more males than
anything else. Predators. Predators can be an issue. Disease obviously can be an issue, and then other things such as weather and so all of the there's an adage that you'll hear commonly death by a thousand cuts, and I generally agree with that. But some cuts are deeper than others, and some cuts are deeper in some areas than in other areas, and so nothing is the same over all the states or all the places where turkeys have declined.
How many properties do you hear of? I know, I've visited many, and they might be seventy acres, or they might be seven hundred, or they might be five thousand acres.
What have you?
And they'll say, man, we used to have, you know, groups of one hundred birds, or you know, some properties even more than that, or it might be we would regularly see groups of thirty birds, and now we only see eight, or we only see twenty areas, whatever the case may be. And we used to kill ten gobblers a year, or twenty or forty, whatever the case may be, on these properties. Now we only kill eight or three,
or whatever the case may be. Well, think about the productivity of turkeys, how it goes up and down.
We have.
Typically now more relatively poor hatch years than good hatch years. But the hunter harvest, the hunter effort largely remains the same, and so if there's a certain number of gobblers on a property and you've been killing on average, you know, ten or twelve every year or whatever, and then you have a poor hatch year, or a couple of them in a row or whatnot, that's going to show up in a couple of years with regard to the number
of goblin birds. And it might be that you, the landowner or one of the people who hunt, you only kill one, or maybe you try to kill your state wide limit on there or whatever, and there's other people who also hunt the property with you. Everybody's gonna try
to get one, you know. Usually that's the case. And so the harvest intensity, the pressure remains the same, although the productivity has lowered, and I am confident that on many properties and likely in many regions and larger that has been problematic as the productivity of turkeys has gone down, but the harvest intensity has remained the same.
But people have been told, and I've even mentioned this, maybe erroneously, that hens are going to get bred. So whether you have let's see you have, let's come up with some hypothetical population. You fill in the numbers. For me, we have a hypothetical population of one hundred breeding age females. Okay, and I don't know the exact numbers, but maybe you can help me with the exact numbers. There's one hundred breeding age females. Let's say there's sixty breeding age males.
You'd be like, Okay, all those females are, they're gonna get bread, They're eggs will be fertilized. But then there's only forty breeding age males, right, all those females will still get fertilized. So, and perhaps I'm wrong, but but since all this hunter harvest is targeting males and not hens, they're still gonna get They're still gonna lay the same number of eggs they would lay. Is that not true?
Well, there's still natural mortality other than hunting, which also is placed on the females.
And so.
The ratio of males to females in the clutch might be biased a little bit towards males, but still then the number of females is gonna go down. Also with you know, perhaps a fifteen to thirty percent natural mortality rate on the females and males typically, you know, we're seeing twenty to thirty percent natural mortality rate on the males,
but the hunter harvest is usually greater than that. In Tennessee, we've seen anywhere from twenty to forty five percent male harvest and any given year, yes, and so if that is continued and you have poor productivity over a couple of years or whatever, the number of mature gobblers on a property is going to go down. You're shooting them. Now, I'm not saying that has happened everywhere, but I'm confident
that that has happened on many properties. The other issues, for example, with predation, I mean, I don't think anyone would disagree that the meso mammals have exploded over the past twenty thirty years. The coons, possums, skunks, armadillas in many places, and nobody is killing them. And we've identified that as the primary problem with regard to nest success.
You know, most of the nests are being depredated, and you know, on average we're seeing about thirty to thirty three percent nest success overall, which is which is decent. But the main problem is the predation. One thing that we have not noted is disease as a problem. Now you know, we've seen blackhead and other diseases but not at any rate that would cause a population decline, and so we have not been able to identify disease. And I'm talking about in the Tennessee study as a reason
for the Turkey declares line. In those areas, predation is a problem. We have not been able to identify weather as a problem, and there's been some other projects that looked at that, but weather is one of those that is very difficult to get a handle on because most of the studies will rely on weather data from some nearby weather station that might be a mile, that might be five miles or whatever away. Well, a weather event can be relatively small with regard to intensity, and so
a lot of that may not be captured. You know, we could see problems related to weather that we're not capturing in the data. But I would not doubt that weather in some areas in some years can be problematic. But it's difficult to quantify that and get a good
handle on it. But we do know that predation is a problem, and we do know that hunter or harbor can be a problem, whether that be usually continuing to shoot as many as you can, and you're continuing to do that when the productivity has gone down at least in certain years. So there's a thing called adaptive resource management where you try to adapt the regulations according to what's going on. But there's no state that changes its bag limits, for example, from year to year based on
POLP er hen surveys or anything else. And even on a WMA with quotas, more times than not things have to get pretty bad before they change the number of quotas issued, etc. So I think that can be a real issue with regard to a sustained hunter pressure. But in the face of lower productivity, we're shooting a lot of gobblers and they're not being recruited at the same rate that they're being removed.
What are some of the extremes that you're aware of in terms of how many male turkeys out of a population are killed by hunters. I know you said like in Texas, it's really low.
Texas is low where you have large properties and not that many people, especially large private properties, it's typical to have lower hunter harvest, as you might imagine, But in areas where the property sizes are smaller and you have a lot of hunters, it's not unusual to hardly ever see what you figure to be a three year old bird. Most of the goblin birds are two year olds. So what does that sound like. It sounds a lot like deer management, doesn't it.
You know where? Well, let's back up for a second.
Thanks to Joe Hamilton and al brothers, most deer hunters in the country practice what we call quality deer management, and that has lots of facets, but one of the main things is to let young bucks walk and let them gain some level of maturity before you kill them. We don't have that luxury with turkeys. We can look at body confirmation characteristics to be able to estimate the
age of a buck. We can't look at a male turkey and estimate the age really beyond a jake versus a two or two plus year old, either a jake or a gobbler. If we can look at a turkey and know that it's a two year old, there's a lot of people on a lot of properties that would let that one go. They'd like to see if they couldn't shoot more gobblers with inch and half spurs, for example,
but we can't do that. I have hunted properties that are extremely well managed and calling birds might call in four or five birds in a morning, look at the spurs with a binocular and let them go until because I know there's some out there with really long spurs, and killing a bird on this property is not an issue, and so I can be very selective. But that's exceptionally rare. Few properties are that good. Few hunters are going to go to that extent to look at spurs before they
shoot the bird. And that's not necessarily a reliable indicator of exact age anyway. But we don't have that luxury of being able to age turkeys like we can deer before we shoot them. But that only and if I can interrupt. And so what that means is we typically shoot gobblers like we would quail flushing up. You know, you're shooting whichever one you can get. So if a goblin bird comes in, oh yeah, here's a goblin and
and you shoot it. And so we're not paying attention to allowing the aide structure to increase.
Across a property.
For example, with a number of gobblers that are there, you're shooting whatever comes in, and with a lot of heavy hunter pressure, it leads to more younger birds.
Okay, here's the thing I've never understood. I get it, but trying how to express this. Let's let's take quality deer management for a minute. Is the objective with quality deer management is the objective to satisfy hunter desires to get bigger deer, or is the objective the health of the deer herd?
I would strongly argue that it's the health of the deer herd. However, of course many hunters their objective is to shoot the biggest deer they can. But if you're allowing a balanced age structure, then you can see the behavior of the animals take place such that you have dominant animals that are doing a majority.
Of the breeding, and that.
Pretty much always for most of us, leads to a more exciting hunting opportunity.
So why is there not a deer management strategy by which you only kill year and a half old deer and anything that slips through you don't touch. Mean, you kill spikes and forky's okay, But once something becomes a two and a half year old, never touch it because you are so committed, you're so committed to having these different age groups represented that in your management practice, no one is allowed to kill big, huge box because you just shoot the little ones that way, you got these
big ones doing the breeding. That would take a lot of conviction.
But this is not a thing that exists, no, because the hunting excitement is where the tire meets the road. I mean, there is a hunting strategy where people will shoot a young deer like that, especially for meat, you know, because the meat in general is more tender with younger aged animals. But usually when that happens, the harvest is high, and you're killing such a high percentage of the bucks, you're not getting many into those older age classes.
Yeah, yeah, they're not. I was kind of I'm asking a rhetorical question because I you know, at the where I grew up, at the time I grew up, throughout my entire childhood, I could tell you about the two deer that were killed within like an eight mile radius my house. I could tell you about the two deer that weren't one and a half years old.
You know, they're both.
Hanging on the living so this day, hanging on the living room wall of uh my mom's thoughts. And that's the two that in a lot of hunting, that's the two we saw.
And to show how this is so widespread across the country. The National Deer Association, they put out the white Tail Report every year and Kip Adams is the principal author of the white Tail Report. And just here in the last year or two, we are killing few you know, white tail hunters across the country are killing fewer yearlings than ever before, and the number of three and a half plus year old deer that are killed is greater
than ever before. So just to show how that practice is being conducted broadly among deer hunters all over the country.
Uh, one of your one of your colleagues, I'm sure you know, Mike Chamberlain. We had talked with Mike Chamberlain, who goes We've talked a lot about his Instagram page wild Turkey Dot. He's been on the show. He has expressed concerns about killing turkeys too early in the year. A friend of mine, Robert Abernathy, who was a turkey biologist for a long time, has expressed concerns that about
states allowing harvest early in the year. And I don't want to put words in these guys' mouths, but basically there's this management idea that let turkeys get through nesting at which point or initiate whatever the hell it is, at which point.
I would allow most of the reproduction to take place before you open the season on the males.
And then whatever you that then the idea being whatever you've taken from hunters up front, tack it on to the end, meaning shoot turkeys all through May. Like like, for instance, you go to I was just in Wisconsin for the youth turkey season. Okay, so you have a two day youth season, then you have season A, B C, D and those are all limited one tag, and then you get into the end seasons, have at it. You
kill turkey to day. So you can apply for years to try to get an a season tag and you're gonna get one thing, or you go to Wisconsin for those last two and you can just have at it every day. What's your take on what's your take from from the research you've done and whatever anecdotic things you've picked up on. Is it actually detrimental to the resource
to be gun in turkeys? And the dates change around the country based on day length and latitude and all that, But like, what's your take on the idea that if you're killing turkeys early, you're doing a greater harm to the resource than if you're killing turkeys later.
Yeah. Well, for for decades turkey ball, I just have broadly pushed for opening turkey seasons once a majority of the reproduction has taken place. And certainly theoretically that could be an issue. For example, in Tennessee, nest initiation peaks on April the eleventh. That's what we've determined after six years of following round five hundred hens.
And are you when you say initiation, I mean she lays the first egg.
That's correct, she's initiating her nest. The peak of that is April eleventh in Tennessee.
And then she's gonna just to walk people through this cycle that hen is gonna lay one egg a day, correct, for about twelve days, at which time she will then start incubating them and they'll hatch on the same day, even though they were laid perhaps ten days apart. That's eleven days apart.
Now about about twenty eight days later, and there's another couple of days that is included in the lay in season. She might skip a day initially, And you're correct. The clutch sizes vary in some areas. It might only be eight or nine in some areas, you know, twelve or thirteen, and our study sites in Tennessee, we average ten eggs for the clutch size, and it varies a little bit, but that's the area.
That clutch is just one. One tom fertilizes all those eggs.
Good question. There are some data, and it's not much. There's at least one study with a fairly small sample size that does indicate more than one male can be involved in the clutch. In that study, I think it was about fifty percent of the eggs involved one male, or maybe seventy five percent of the nest involved one male. Roughly a quarter of them involved more than one male, and at least twenty five involved more than one female.
And most times we figure what's called a dump nest and we see that, you know, fairly commonly that might have you know, eighteen or twenty some eggs in it, and a lot of times many of them will not hatch because they.
Weren't all incubated.
Equally, interestingly, we had a nest and Tennessee that had twenty three eggs, obviously a dump nest, and twenty two of them hatched.
So a bunch of different females finding that spot and lean and egg.
On it, right, and so, but the other thing is this dump nest in occurs and there might only be nine eggs in the clutch. So it's extremely interesting. I don't know just exactly how another hen finds another one's nest, if you know they're they're walking nearby or what have you. But anyway that that happens more frequently than what you
would imagine, I find that very interesting. And so obviously that's increasing the genetic diversity when you have multiple females and multiple males that are involved in a single clutch.
Like, how do they determine who sits on that nest? Is just the hand that starts?
Oh, that initiates it, gotcha, that's not a bad deal for those other hens. I don't really want to raise these things this spring anyway.
And so to get back to your question about the timing, certainly the timing of the hunting season can be problematic. That's definitely possible, and a number of states have have set back their season dates because they perceived that that could be a problem. And studies are being done right now to look at that, and hopefully some data will be provided soon that substantiates that this is or is
not happening in various states. In Tennessee, though, I can tell you that it is not a problem at least with regard to when the season opens in early May. You know, I mentioned that we had experimental two week delay in three of the counties and in the two
control counties there was no delay. Well in those two years, the season opened on April the second and a third, and following the treatment counties both pre and post delay, and the control counties both pre and post delay, we found no effect on any reproductive parameter, whether that be the percentage of hens that nest, the timing of nesting,
the clutch size, the hatch ability, or pulse survival. They were exactly the same with regard now they would vary year to year, but they would vary the same way. So if, for example, nest success, that would be the percentage of nest in which at least one egg hatches went up a little bit in the control counties. It also went up a little bit in the treatment county. So everything trended exactly the same way. And the delay at least through two years, and this is a two
week delay, This is not a five day delay. It's a two week delay, and there was no change in any reproductive parameter which was which was telling. So I'm not saying that is not occurring in other states. I haven't you know, collected data in spots that in Tennessee.
No that that the dudes out hunting, that's not preventing these hens from being successful nesters, or these eggs getting fertilized or whatever.
I do not believe that in any way, shape or form, that dudes o hunting are causing a problem. Look look at look at the harvest rate what it did from the nineteen eighties for example through the mid two thousands. I mean, it's going up exponentially in most states. And obviously hunters on the landscape did not cause a problem at that time. The turkey population was going up. There are more turkey hunters in some places now than there
were in Tennessee. That number has increased, well, it increased about one thousand per year for a few years, and then of course twenty twenty happened with the problem with the virus and everything, and we went from like having ninety ninety two thousand hunters up to around one hundred and ten thousand hunters so that situation increased the number of hunters.
In a lot of places. Has that dropped off now?
I have not seen the data for twenty twenty one yet on the number of turkey hunters in the state, or at least the number of hunters who had a license that would enable them to turkey hunt. So to get back to the earlier point, we didn't have in Tennessee, the season opened on the Saturday closest to April first, which means some years the season can open on May
twenty eighth. Well, during this experimental delay, we didn't have turkey season opening excuse me, on March twenty eighth, So we didn't have turkey season opening in March during the course of that experimental delay. So I would not propose Tennessee to go back to open the season on the Saturday closest to April first, when our peak nest initiation
is April the eleventh. But I would feel comfortable if that season opened sometime during the first week of April, because that's when it happened during our experimental two week delay, and we found no issue surrounding that. And so if the season opened in Tennessee sometime during that first week, whether it's you know, you could say the first Saturday
in April. That way, it would vary from April first to April the seventh, and that could be, you know, on average, about four days later than it was traditionally, and from the data that we've collected, opening at that time is not having a detrimental effect on reproductive production. But again that's not to address other states, because you know, of course the timing of nesting is going to vary from from place to place, and states have different opening season dates.
Of course, how far apart are the counties that you're separating with the opening dates they're touching. I know you're interested in turkeys more than turkey hunters, but that has you've changed where people are like more intent now and doubling up on the double opener.
I would be yes, And we have surveyed some of that and that that is happening some So in those experimental counties they opened two weeks later. Well, some hunters in those counties, of course, they would go to other counties where they could hunt during that initial season, but that only happened during those two years. Now, of course it's a state wide delay. So the statewide. The season as of this season opens on April fifteenth, and so you can't do that in Tennessee now go from one
place to another. But it does impact out of state hunters. I spoke with the executive director the other day and he mentioned how revenues from out of state hunters were down as of yet, but I imagine that will pick back up because now the Tennessee season will go through I think it's May the twenty eighth. I mean, goodnight,
that's what you said, Jason. The turkey season is in Washington State April fifteenth through the end of May, so you better believe there'll be some hunters from Alabama and Mississippi, Georgia coming to Tennessee during the the last half of them night.
But you're almost ready to start shooting off fireworks by then, man, the end of May. One time someone said this to me, and I've quoted it, and I worry that it's not that it's not accurate. They were saying, like, as here's a picture way to picture turkeys. As a rule of thumb, they're saying, seventy five percent of the eggs that hit the ground won't hatch. Of those that hatch, seventy five
percent won't see their first birthday. Of those that do see their first birthday, seventy five percent won't see their second birthday. How close to accurate is that according to your understanding, I would say that is accurate.
Yeah, but the other night you.
Were talking about the other night you were talking about the possibility, even though it's hard to tell, you were saying that there can be turkeys out there that are four or five years old with males. So for a male to get that edge, he's defying, he is defying the odds.
Yes, that is absolutely correct anywhere. But you're not going to see turkeys that are four or five years old on these heavily hunted areas. And it can happen, it does happen, but they are going to be exceptionally few. God on areas that are either hunted lightly or the hunting pressure is well managed, or on unhunted properties. Absolutely you'll see turkeys that are four or five, six, even eight years old males males were band recoveries or tag birds.
Has indicated, you know, you know the exact age.
What the hell kind of spirit they got it? Eight years? How long does that can grow.
About the same as a four year old. Again, ever, you're going to see, for example, Eastern turkeys with spurs longer than an inch and a half, usually they're worn before then. And you know, you can take it with a grain of salt the length of the spur and the age. But that's not an accurate way to age the bird. I would not you know, somebody say, oh, that this spur is an inch and and eight so it's three years old. Now you only God knows how old that bird is, but you know it's not a jake.
It's very unlikely to be a two year old. But you just you don't know.
I wish you, I wish you did.
I wish they had some you know, mark on their back, you know, two white feathers if if it's a two year old, and three if it's three or whatever, and you could tell the age very easily.
Uh I if so.
I think turkey hunters would manage the populations on the lands they hunt very very differently.
Oh if they could tell absolutely, just like with deer, what that that it could happen and you could create it.
On this property that we're on right now with a landowner that we have Randy, who's a tremendous guy and tremendous to allow us to come out here and enjoy the property with him. If there was a way to age turkeys, you know in Randy and you see in the deer that are around on these walls, I don't see any FOURK horns on the wall round there. I mean we're looking at one hundred and sixty to two hundred inch white tails. They don't grow that large at two or three years old.
Now.
I know there have been some six three year olds that have been one hundred and sixty inches. But the point is he's allowing young bucks to walk so he can shoot them at five to seven years old because of their size. If you could age turkeys in the same way, they would be managed very differently. And I think a lot of that gets to the bag limit. I think the bag limit is a very important regulation.
You know, for years in Tennessee there was a four bird statewide bag limit, but actually you could kill a lot more than that if you killed a bird on some federal lands land between the Lakes or Fort Campbell for examples of freebie b I didn't count towards your state bag limit, and then and this this drives me nuts. There were like fifteen plus WMA's across the state for which if you killed a turkey on it, it was free, a bonus gobbler. That's ridiculous. Any bird killed should go
into the bag limit. And so in Tennessee for years you could and that didn't even count you fall birds. So you could easily kill well not easily, but you could kill eight, ten or more birds a year. But it really wasn't that big of a problem because very very few people did that. But these large bagline it's now you're seeing them back off dramatically on the bag limits,
and in Tennessee it's it's down to two now. And I have been one of those who all into turkey hunting and I killed as many as I could because I absolutely love it going to you know, five, six, seven states every year to hunt. But you know, a bag limit of four that's too many in my opinion that that's that's too many. There was some interesting data in Tennessee.
I want to live. I want to interrupt you for one second. Early on I was tide about hous gonna explain why this matters, and I want to back up for a minute, because I've failed to really do that effectively in talking to listeners about why why we're debating some of these issues, and I want to do like a quick American history through the wild Turkey. Okay, uh, I'm gonna start with my favorite pieces. The Pilgrims. Almost
certainly we're not eating turkey at the first Thanksgiving. They had to catch all word turkey, which meant big edible bird, probably a goose. They're probably eating geese. There's similar things we use. The term. You'll hear people use the term it's a game bird, and that's a catch all I've heard people use in Spanish. I think it was in the Spanish speaking areas. I've heard people use a word like Poe's in South America. It's like a big bird,
it's good to eat. So you see when running along poies what one oh curs ow, but meaning a big bird good to eat. They threw that word around. They probably ate geese. However, if they also late dear yep, they definitely there's no doubt that the first thanks even ate deer. And so when I when we have Thanksgiving at the Bronella household, we always have deer mee I don't care about. So there are accounts from the long Hunters and the first Western Frontier of them describing areas
where it seemed like this. It seemed that the forest floor was literally moving with turkeys. So at times and places there were like outstanding numbers of turkeys. By the early nineteen hundreds, we had really really depleted turkeys everywhere of the states. I can't remember what it is. I think that maybe I don't know what it was. At the time of European contact, we probably had wild turkeys
in thirty four states. Maybe we had we had. By the early nineteen hundreds, they had been removed from over a dozen of those states all together. There were only a few little pockets. I think South Carolina maybe always hung out to some form of a turkey season, but most places turkey hunting ended. And then they started into through a lot of failed efforts and trying to get
it right, they started to reintroduce turkeys. They initially tried to reintroduce turkeys by turning out pen raised birds, and it was a disaster. It didn't work. Then someone hit on the idea of capturing wild bread birds, and so they went to those little pockets like the deepest swamps, the worst mountains in the southeast, and they started catching turkeys and turning them out, and that those efforts really started to gain ground in the seventies and they pushed
all the way up into the nine. So where I grew up, there weren't turkeys when I was a little kid. By the mid nineties there were turkeys because they had been reintroduced by and National Will Turkey Federation in conjunction with state agencies. And then they exploded and sore where you live. If you're a listener, where you live, you are probably sitting at some part of this like crazy, is it fair to call the bell curve? You're sitting
at some part of this curve. You're probably at a part of the curve where you're you're not at the climb anymore. You probably are at the crest or you're on the falling edge of the crest of the saturation. Chris, Yeah, because they came in and it was like, like, admit, where I grew up, it happened kind of right when I moved out west, but all of a sudden it was like you could draw a turkey tag here and there, and then it was everybody was killing turkeys every year.
My dad was just killing turkey every year, and it exploded, and I think people thought that it would always be that way, and it was like the turkey heyday, right, And then now you're having these these areas where we're coming out of it and it's dropping off, and people are people who love turkeys are wondering where's the where's
the bottom, Like, where's the actual line gonna sit? So when I've on the show raised questions about fall turkey seasons, about being able to kill a turkey every day, being able to kill hens, it's not that it's like, it's not that I'm against I'm not against shooting hen turkeys. People like, well, you killed Doe dear, why it's okay to shoot hen turkeys. I'm not talking like a morality thing.
It's not a morality thing in my view. It's like, as we go through this big experiment of turkey reintroduction and in certain areas in the northwestern US and introduce auction, they weren't there before, but they're there now, what is gonna be or is there gonna be a are we going to achieve a normal where turkey hunting is a normal part of our lives for decades to come, or will we look back fifty years from now at this kind of weird thing that happened where we had all
these turkeys and then we're right back where we started because of various concerns. So when I say, like, why this matters, is there's no normal.
To answer your question, No, I don't believe that will happen. I think states are making adjustments right now, especially with all the turkey studies that are going on, and we're learning tremendous amounts about all kinds of things that be seasons or bag limits or predators, disease, et cetera. You know, you mentioned the turkey population is going up, and I mentioned that about the harvest from the eighties to the
mid two thousands or whatever. And so when you look at harvest rates or as a proxy, you know, the population increase. How long can it do this? You know, at essentially a forty five degree angle? How long?
Yeah?
Not infinitely, No, And so we have reached infinity right now. And I believe that in many areas it reached the point where the area could not support any more turkeys than what it has because of various factors, and so then it begins to drop off, and then it begins to fluctuate. Now, if the harvest pressure remains the same as it's going down and the amount of habitat is deteriorated or reduced, then you're not going to get back up to some historic high. And I've brought this out
with different folks. Think about what the landscape was twenty years ago. And I keep going back to Tennessee, in that area south of Nashville and south Middle Tennessee that had some of the highest turkey populations, if not the highest turkey population of anywhere in the country. In the late nineties early two thousands, you could see a winter flock of one thousand birds. That's like unbelievable. So how long is that sustainable. It's not going to be that
sustainable for that long. We have more roads, we have more buildings, we have more infrastructure from humans. So many properties are quote lost with regard to it being turkey habitat because they're subdivisions. And so the amount of land that turkeys have to live on today in many areas is considerably less than it was twenty or thirty years ago. And so we had this steep incline of the population. It reaches the point where that cannot be sustained anymore,
then it drops, and then it's going to fluctuate. And I think our change in regulations can have a strong impact, of course on leveling that out into what you know, you call the new norm. But over time, the human population, at least in the foreseeable future, is going to continue to do this, go up and up, and so conserving our lands is hugely important, as it always has been.
But that can't be discounted when you think about how many turkeys were and are or will be killed in a particular county, for example, we can't expect to go back to historic highs in all areas.
When you when you are talking to someone to get into your extension work, let's say a landowner, you know, let's say someone's got forty acres of glenn and they're like, I want to make it better for wildlife, just in a very general sense, wildlife being like, whatever the hell is available?
What what are the.
What are the top suggestions you have?
Well, the the number one thing is you've got to define wildlife, you know, are you talking about chickadease? Horned owls, copperhead snakes, deer and what what what is it that you're talking about? So the landowner has to identify and that's very common. I want to make it better for wildlife. What okay, I'll say this, all okay, and all native identify. So I get here's my here's my thing. I got forty acres.
I'm like, I just want to make as good as I can for all native wildlife, whatever assemblage of native wildlife I could hope to attract.
Well, you're going to help a diversity of wildlife by having diverse conditions on the property, But that's not going to help all species. You know, if you're an Eastern metal arc, you will never hang out in the woods. You see what I'm saying. And so there's no such thing as managing appropriately for everything. You've got to choose something because each species have certain requirements that have to be met, and they are very different among some species.
And so that's why you know, and you know, like on two ends of the spectrum, think of an Eastern gray squirrel or an affiliated woodpecker versus a grasshopper sparra. You know that they will never be found in the same place. One requires forest at least wooded areas woodlands and as well, and the other one requires not just grassland, but vast amounts of grassland. And so there are different
area requirements by different species. You know, some species, if you have the perfect conditions on ten acres, will never be found there because they require a much larger footprint than that. And northern bob White is a great example.
So frustrating because so many landowners would like to manage for quail, but they only have seventy acres, and around the seventy acres is non habitat for bob white, and you know, you just got to tell them, Look, you can make your place absolutely perfect for quail, but you're never going to see a population response because of what's
going on around you. And so with regard to your question about improving it, if they then identify the species and we kind of stick to turkeys, then you've got to meet their habitat requirements, and so you have to have or ideally you would have good cover for nesting,
you would have good cover for brooding. Obviously, you would have roosting areas, You would have areas that provide good foraging during the summertime as well as during the fall and winter, and so you've got to meet their food and cover and water requirements as their requirements change throughout the year.
What's the difference in nesting and brooding territory.
Well, the cover that generally is selected by turkeys for nesting is going to be relatively dense. The visibility is
not going to be that far. For example, one interesting thing that we found in the Tennessee study is that just less than fifty percent of the nest I think it's forty six percent of the nest occur in either what we call early succession, you know, like overgrown fields or shrubbling, you know, where there's a preponderance of small tree stems, you know, ten fifteen feet tall something like that,
or shrubs or what have you. Forty six percent of the nest are in those vegetation types, but only seven percent of the landscape is represented by those vegetation types. So certainly you can see selectivity by the birds when there are different vegetation types available for them to select from. And so think of an overgrown field that can provide excellent nesting cover, but it probably won't provide good brooding cover. Because you know, if you imagine you're a poult, it's
you know, three or four inches tall. You literally can't physically navigate through that dense vegetation at ground level. And even for the hens when they're nesting, they don't like to navigate through that either. And so with a number of studies, including ours, something that we find commonly is that the nest will be within twenty to forty yards of the edge of this dnse cover or you know,
forty yards from some trail or what have you. So she doesn't want to walk through that dense, thick stuff to get to her nest, as she has to come off of the nest each day for at least, you know, usually at least one recess to go feed and defecate, what have you. And so that then gives rise to the notion of, hmm, what's the scale that I should
be managing for with regard to nesting cover. And so if I'm managing a property specifically for turkeys, I don't want that nesting cover to be any more than about eighty yards wide, you know what I'm saying, Because in the interior of that she's likely right to not go in there. But for the for the broods, they may be around the edges of those fields because they can walk and get around, and that's caused lots of people to consider, you know, whether it be turkeys or deer
or bob white or rabbits or whatever to be edge species. Personally, I don't agree with that. If you find a species that is only using the edge, and the edge is defined as where two or more vegetation types or two or more successional stages join each other, if you find a species tied to that edge, then what that should tell you is not that the species likes the edge, but the species doesn't like the interior of one or
both of the adjoining vegetation types. And what that means is you need to manage that vegetation type differently such that you can see use in the middle of it instead of just along the edge. And so when you see broods around the edge of the field, that immediately tells you the structure in that field is probably not adequate for the bruds to be using in there. And so that's when your management comes in to make these fields and your your woods better with regard to cover,
whether it be for nesting or brooding. Or or even even roosting. So there's different things that we do to enhance an area to make it more attractive to turkey. Why they like that you can fix up all of these.
They like to roost in certain spots and you can't always tell what it is about the spot, but like it's like you feel like if you took every turkey off and put new turkeys there, they're probably gonna go roos in that spot. Yes, absolutely, have you guys ever looked at like what is it?
Well, one thing that is important is the visibility. And so when I'm managing specifically for a roosting area, I might choose and number one, you start where that you know birds are roosting, or if you don't know, or you want to make a roosting area somewhere, it's usually a place where it's up a little higher than the surroundings, or at least on the upper portion of a slope where you know, at least for a gobbler they can call.
And I'm referring specifically to springtime and surrounding hunting and trying to make set up a property for better hunting, And so we manage that with fire, and we use low intensity fire, and we're preventing a dense mid story from coming up. We're keeping the understory. You know, mid story is those trees that are above four and a half feet and before they get into the overstory condition. And then the understory is that vegetation as defined as
being under four and a half feet. We're keeping that low. We're keeping it open. We're killing trees that we don't want want and leaving the trees that we do want, primarily according to species or form for roosting, allowing a little bit of sunlight to come into the area, but not too much, because if you do, the understory is going to blow up and it's going to be more difficult to keep it open. So these roosting areas probably have anywhere from seventy to one hundred percent shade, no
more than about thirty percent sunlight coming in. Now, before somebody screams, I fully understand that turkeys roost in more open areas. And you know, ever been to Kansas. I mean, you know, individual cotton trees along a drainage, there's going to be turkeys there. But I'm talking about in forested conditions. If you want to enhance an area such that you're increasing the preponderance of birds to be roosting in a given area. Manage that where it's open, and what we do,
what I prefer to do is leave it alone. I know people are going to think this is crazy, but on lands managed specifically for turkeys and turkey hunting, think of the roost area like you would a bedding area for deer. Do you go into the bedding area to hunt deer. No, that's kind of dumb. You're going to run that buck off and you know it might not return to the property for the rest of the hunting season.
And so your roost areas to me, and this is just a personal view, it's kind of like your anchor. And you know, a gobbler is going to usually have three or four areas that they typically use for roosting. Is not going to go back to the same area every night. But if you know, okay, I'm managing these roots spots and I'm not disturbing the birds immediately when
they come off of the roost. And how many people, you know, they call and they mess up the bird, they move they you know, when the birds are spooked at their roost site, that just damages your chances of them returning there and them going somewhere else instead. If you know where the birds are going to go, hunt on the birds on the way there, or you can even go there and wait on the birds. And for a lot of people, that means you don't have to
get up, you know, two hours four daylight. You can go into the Turkey woods at nine o'clock in the morning and have excellent hunting. One of my favorite times is like from nine o'clock to two pm. And so you're allowing the birds to do their thing early in the morning when they come off the roost, and then when they start to move out, that's when you know where they're going to go. And when you do that, at least in my humble opinion, your success rate goes up.
Yeah, but man, you might as well be asking people to quit. I really coffee and stuff, dude. Yeah, it's like the world's most powerful magnet. Like as Star Wars they called a tractor beam, you know, pulls you into that roost tree.
You still can hunt near the roost where you're hearing the bird, you know, gobble off the roost, but you know, trying to crawl right there under the bird. You're you're you're risking messing things up if you don't kill him.
One of my favorite things about turkey hunt know is is the when you get real close. I say, you're seventy yards from that roof tree, where you're like, it seems like there's no way we're not going to kill this turkey, but the other part of your brain knows you won't.
I think this morning, I think I heard that very recently this morning.
I was like, how would it like? Of course we're going to kill these turkeys, And then they hit the ground and they stop gobling, and in a while later ebody, God, want it's like something inch and a half. You're like, what happened?
It is amazing how they can avoid death by us. Anyway, we have.
These in our studio. We have various formulas up. We had an original one and people cracked at it. We've made it into a T shirt. Would be that if you get within seventy yards of a roose tree and don't do anything, creep in and don't do anything, don't put out a decoy, don't touch a call.
Can I interrupt yep, you immediately have a twenty five percent chance of killing that.
Bird thirteen, you have a thirteen percent chance killing that, according to which choked to you, we have right, Yeah, well we varied those, like it's hard to pin down because you get into certain brush types and stuff. I think we figured right. We tried to figure your seventy yards out and you got thirty yards. Okay, you know, and it's not a given, no, And I know it's and it's like, but I sometimes wonder if setting up
on them is that much better than thirteen percent. And it's a little better, but it's not.
It's very similar to duck hunting. I love to listen to Phil Robertson and one of the things that he said, and I'm sure I'm not stating this verbatim, but you know, if the ducks are coming, don't call. If you know where the ducks are going to go, there's your best bet for being a successful duck hunter, not trying to call them into a place they don't want to go. Just be where they want to go. And the same thing is true for turkey hutting, which I found myself
in that position yesterday. You know, it's how did I get in this position? I would never choose this position to try to call a turkey, but situations happen. Here's where I am, and I can't move. This is it's I can either just not call or I can try, and more time than not, I'm gonna try.
We got this, this this t RCP fundraiser hunt. We got coming up. Me and Johannis. We have a spot where we agree. If you went there and didn't just crept in and didn't do anything, we have a few days to hunt. If you went there and didn't do anything and just sat there, you are absolutely you're gonna kill a turkey every day. Stay that. But he's like, yeah, what I was mentioning, But he's like, no one wants to do that.
If you set up the property correctly, you can take someone who is never turkey hunted and just say sit right here, sit right here, and be patient. Yeah, and whatever you do, don't put out a decoy. No, don't call, just sit They're going to come right through here.
Now.
If you can't stand it and you want to scratch on a call a little bit, you know, give them a sleigh or a box call and just don't hit it more than three times and they'll feel like they're doing something and Okay, you're you're being active, but just sit here, you're eighty percent you're going to shoot a bird.
Yeah, there are spots on this place. If you go where I think of a couple of them in particular, It's like, yeah, there's just no if you had that time, there's no way if you just sat and ambushed and had a little shoot and hole out into an intersection every day, if every day. But no one wants to do that. Man, they want to get out, they want to make noise.
But like I was saying, if you set the property up correctly, and if you have the luxury of having a property, private property where you can manage, and you just observe turkeys, just just observe them. And the same
is true with with deer and other species. But you know, you're not necessarily hunting, but you're going out and you're observing and watching what they're doing, or when you are hunting, take you know, exercise some patience and just watch them instead of just trying to get in close or call them to you watch what they do, watch where they go.
And then you can set up areas where there are some type of objects or funnels where the birds are going to walk through here, they're going to use this area, and then we will set up these specific spots to sit. And even if you're not a good caller, you're going to have excellent success because you know the property and you know the birds on your property, and you're not just setting up under the roofs tree trying to get them to come to you at first light, but you're
allowing them to do their thing. You're not shooting too many of them, you know, instead of like there's five guys a hundred acres and the other properties around are also small, and everybody's trying to kill the birds. You know, back off of that where you know this property can only sustain so much hunting, so much harvest, and still have some of those older age turkeys out there. So
I think paying attention to that is very important. And in those years where you're not seeing or hearing as many I realize private landowners, you know, they don't have polch for hand surveys or whatever necessarily, but at least your visual and auditory senses what you see and what you hear. If you're not seeing or hearing as many, back off of the kill some you know, stop trying to kill every goblin bird on the property and leave some so they can get into that older age group.
And you're helping ensure that there's mature birds out there.
Yeah, you've mentioned that a couple of times. That's sticking with me that it seems like a thing you hear people say, like, are you saw always get my turkey the first day? Yes, now it takes me six days, I still get them.
Or or we you know the group of hunters we used to kill twelve, Now you know we're lucky if we'll kill three. Well, look at how many of there are out there, and during those years of low productivity, that's gonna be that's going to show up in a couple of years once those birds would get to be two. And if you have really poor hatch years or really poor polt survival, you've got to meter your harvest along with that.
How do people you have your services available? You do work for people and people can contact you. Well, is that not true? I have a day job.
I work for the University of Tennessee and that keeps me extremely busy. I am on the road all the time.
I didn't know if for some aspect, if you had clients that you went and worked with.
I do, and I do a few of those each year. You know, we're allowed to do uh some consulting out of state, but I don't do much of that, and I don't advertise that also, although I just I guess I just said that to a whole lot of people.
But yeah, so you don't want people emailing you their turkey questions.
You know, email is like the bane of my existence.
You just want to call, you want to call.
It's like rules my life, man. I mean, that's my job. I've got to answer emails and there's just so much email pressure and we'll hit people with your cell phone.
Would so, But if people want to look into if people want to see about let's say someone wants is so interested in wild turkeys, they want to start instead of listening to the guys at the bar, right, they want to are educating themselves about all aspects of turkey Okay, turkey behavior, turkey management, turkey biology. What do they do? What would you recommend someone does who wants to be on like cutting edge of turkey understanding.
I think a great starting place is to look at your universities that are conducting turkey research, look at the products that they have available, whether that be written or podcast, there's a lot of those out there. At no time in the past have people been able to access scientific information and scientific information that has been written or delivered in a way that the layperson can understand than now. And so I would look specifically to those universities that
are doing the research. Everything is online now and they're gobs of sources of not just information, but accurate information that isn't just someone's opinion, but this is science based and data driven.
And when you crystal ball, when you look in your little your crystal ball, we're still hunting turkeys, and so my kids, my kids twelve, is he hunting turkeys when he's sixty two?
Yes, I do think so.
I do think so.
I do not believe turkeys are going to crash everywhere. They're resilient birds. And we are taking giant steps ahead with all of the research that's being done to help find teune the the regulations and learn more about their needs and how management can make positive adjustments for all of that.
You know what question I wish you could answer for me, is my kids twelve when he's thirty two? Is he hunting grizzlies in the lower forty eight. That's a political place.
Yeah, I was about to say, considering the political climate, that I would not guarantee.
That's purely a political question. That question is completely divorced from anything I have to do with bio.
I've heard, I've heard you have some opinions on that.
Yeah, I do, And like I said, I don't. I don't personally need to be I'm not personally asking or needing to be the one. In fact, if I could, I would. If someone said to me, I'm going to give you a choice, there's a choice here. We will follow the US Fish and Wildlife Services.
We will.
Follow their direction and follow what they've tried to do repeatedly and delist grizzly bears in some of the distinct population sect the Greater Yellowstone, the Northern Continental Divide populations that the US Fishing Wildlife Service has asked for the bears to be delisted. If people said to me, we will allow the Fishing Wildlife Services wishes to be carried out, and you have to agree that you'll never even try
to draw a tag, I would say, no problem. Right, It's not like a personal thing it's not a personal thing, all right, tell people where you're at again, you don't want them to come find you though.
The University of Tennessee.
You can take gradual students. Oh, we've talked about that. You want people to come apply.
For always look for good students. I have several really good graduate students right now. That that has been That has been my biggest blessing of this job, as having the graduate students that I have had. They have everyone, literally without exception, have been fantastic, fantastic people, fantastic workers, developed into find scientists. They're all over the country and every one.
Of them has a wildlife job.
I am very, very proud of them. It's the biggest blessing that I've gotten out of this job is my relationship with the graduate student.
I got one. I do have one last question. What percentage of your graduate students are hunters or anglers? One? Is that right? Oh?
Yeah, every one of them. Now there's a couple of them that don't hunt much, but every one of them hunt. You know, there's a screening process, Steve. You know when when we're riding around during interviews and I asked them, where do y'all want to go eat. Uh, that's a tailing question right there. Oh you want to eat that? Well, I wish so bad. If I don't like fried fish and barbecue and whatnot, you know that we could have
some issues. And number one, if you don't eat deer, mate, we got a big issue.
I wish I could tell you who said this, man, But I know someone that gets a lot of grad students and technicians and stuff, you know, and they're saying they're walking me through. They're walking me through when they're looking at the applications and they're looking for you know, they're looking for the kid out of Minnesota that just did the crudiest jobs on the planet, you know, creole surveys, net surveys, you know what I mean. And he says, Man, the minute I see Costa Rica, that one's the tra
you asked me. It's like people that can work.
You asked me when I started about what I do. And I'll bring this back to the graduate student question. You know, when I finished my master's degree, there literally was no job even to apply for in wildlife in the region. There was nothing, And so I then looked
at PhD positions. I had a couple of offers. I got into a PhD program, not because I necessarily wanted to, but I was married to the love of my life and had one daughter at that time, and I had to have a job, and so I was intrigued with the PhD possibility.
So fast forward.
I finished my PhD at Clemson, had a wonderful, wonderful experience at Clemson. But then I thought, now what am I going to do. You know, I'm not quote a professor, that's not me. I'm a manager. And I have just educated myself out of every job that I ever wanted. And it was at that time this position came open with the University of Tennessee in extension, and that extension
responsibility fit me perfectly. And because I could have graduate student graduate students, I then decided, this is my goal for my professional life, and that is to produce Although I can't be an on the ground manager anymore. You know, I've just educated myself out of those jobs. But my goal is to produce the best managers that any state agency could possibly ask for. And that's what my graduate students, that's what they are. They are outstanding. They are managers.
They become scientists while they're there and they've done a fantastic job.
Good graduations. Keep pumping those hunters through the system.
We are trying, all right, every bit.
Professor, you can't call you professor, no, Doctor Craighart, Doctor Craighart, thank you for joining my pleasure.
Ride on.
On the seal, br shine like silver in the sun.
Ride ride on alone, a sweetheart.
Were done beat this damn horse today, taking a new drive. We're done beat this damn horse today, so take a new one and ride on.