Welcome to Wild Turkey Science, a podcast made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow. I'm Dr. Marcus Lashley, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida. And I'm Dr. Will Goolsby, professor of wildlife ecology and management at Auburn University. We're both lifelong hunters and devoted scientists who are passionate about hunting, managing and researching wild turkeys.
In this podcast, we'll explore turkey research, speak to the experts in the field and address the difficult questions related to wild turkey ecology and management. Our goal is to serve as your connection to wild turkey science. So we're here today with Bob Long, who is the Upland Game Bird and Wild Turkey program coordinator for Maryland DNR. And we're happy to have you on, Bob. Thank you for joining us. Happy to be here.
Yeah, it's exciting, Bob. We haven't covered that much up in your part of the world. And I'll be honest with you, I don't know that much about what's going on up there. So I'm excited to talk to you. So I know you've got several things going on and appreciate you taking the time. I think if you get up our way, you know, I've listened to quite a few of these and pretty focused on the South there. Yeah. But yeah.
Yeah. I mean, part of that is obviously we have a bias to the South from where we're located, where we grew up and where we do a lot of our hunting. But that also extends, you know, to our network and it's easiest to reach out to the people you know and communicate with often first. And then now we're trying to expand that territory out.
So I'm hoping to bring others like you into that fold so that we have those connections up there, not only for the show, but also, you know, for our personal recreational endeavors too. You know, there you go. Well, and it is a common criticism, you know, our audience is much broader than that.
You know, we did get downloaded in Maryland and a lot of other states up in that way really commonly and people ask us, and that was, you know, the impetus for us to reach out to you as we have listeners there. They're really interested to see what's going on in their part of the world. And you know, it kind of stimulated us to go ahead and reach out to you to get this going.
And we have other states, we're planning the same thing because, you know, people want to hear about what's going on outside the South. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think Marcus, you're about to be spending some time up in Maryland, aren't you? Yeah. I'm here in a couple of weeks. Yeah. Focused on deer. Yeah. Southeast Deer Study Group meeting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's right across the street from my office. Oh, really? Oh, nice. A couple hundred yards from me.
Yeah. Maybe we ought to meet up and talk turkey some. We can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Get you out. Maybe you want to show us how to trap some bird. Well, I'll be happy to go try to trap some with you. We've been catching a lot of them down here. Yeah. We're almost done. I know one of your technicians there that's on your project, and he said he's been trying hard down there.
Yeah. We're in the middle of it right here, so if I get a little distracted, it's probably because I'm looking at cell camera pictures coming into my phone of turkeys on our bait while I'm not sitting. Well, that's a legitimate excuse. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we sure hope we don't cause you to miss an opportunity. It's windy anyway, so we're not missing too much. It was a nice day. Yeah. It'd be good to be out there getting some birds under there.
Yeah. Yeah. They probably would have had to reschedule. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious. Are you using rocket netting or drop nets, or what are you using? We use all rocket nets. Okay. That's what I thought and assumed, but I just wanted to make sure. Our birds aren't dumb enough to fall for a drop net. I guess much less a walk in. Yeah, we tried to walk in one time, and we got one picture of the hen just looking at the wire. We only had two sides up, and she just was looking at it.
They've been coming in every day, and she just looked at it and turned away. We didn't get another picture for a week. Yeah. Yeah. Rocket nets is all we use. Huh. Okay. Sorry. I didn't mean to derail us. No, you're good. Yeah. Why don't we just start from the beginning, Bob, and talk a little bit about the history of ... We don't have to go into detail historically, but just a general overview of the trajectory of turkey populations in the state of Maryland.
Yeah. I don't know how far back you want to go, but just briefly, I think we followed the trend that a lot of states have across the country, where turkeys were nearly extirpated. By early 1900s, there were only a few hundred birds in the state. They were restricted to the more inaccessible, mountainous terrain where people just couldn't get to them.
Also a variety of things were done to try to get those birds back, including releasing pen-raised birds, which were largely unsuccessful efforts there. Then with the advent of the rocket net, we started to translocate wild birds back across the state, put them into suitable habitat. We were a little late to the show on that. I think some of the southeastern states started earlier than us. We got ramped up in the 70s is when most of our trap and transfer took place. We had about a 20-year period.
We were moving birds fairly heavily. That population responded well and started to increase. We had a real good period of growth there until the early 2000s. At that point, we had strong populations in much of the state. There were still pockets that they were struggling. They were huntable populations, but yet at low densities in certain parts of the state. Since then, I guess it's complicated where we've got pockets that are still doing well, fairly stable.
We also have areas where they're still on the rise, they're still increasing. That's mainly in our suburban-urban corridor. We've got a very diverse state. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it's a small state. You go from the Western Mountains, which is high elevation, hardwood forest, more typical of Pennsylvania or West Virginia, that area, and you drop down into the Piedmont, you get into that more urban-suburban corridor there.
More rolling farmland, interspersed with a lot of development. Then you get over into the eastern part of the state, we're in the coastal plain. There our habitat and everything is more similar to coastal Carolinas. We've got these little pockets that are very unique in how the turkey population has grown and expanded. In some areas, they've actually declined. We might have a two or three-county area where we've seen declines.
Yes, it's kind of complicated, but that's what we're trying to figure out at this point. You mentioned that turkeys tended to be doing better in the suburban, ex-urban areas. What kind of region of the state, or is it too sporadic to draw a trend there? Are they declining? We're seeing the greatest declines in the eastern part of the state, the coastal plain. It's not a consistent long-term trend over large areas, but we've got a few counties that I'd say we're concerned with.
It's not alarming at this point, but we're definitely concerned. We might be off 50% from our peak. Do you have any working hypotheses as to why that might be in that area? Yes, we're looking at a lot of things. We can maybe get into the research project that we're a part of a little later. There's definitely some things going on here, both habitat-wise and perhaps predators, and some changes over time that could explain that. It could just be a series of poor hatches that could explain that.
You get three or four years of below-average poult production, and things aren't looking as good. I think you've talked about it before on some of your previous episodes, just this idea of after restoration and after these birds do this boom, this exponential growth, they're just going to not be able to sustain those high levels.
We all became accustomed to those high numbers, and seeing the flocks of 80, 100 birds out in the field, and now you don't see that, and it's trying to figure out what's going on. We all intuitively know populations can't increase forever. It's a very logical thing, but it damn sure doesn't stop us from wanting it to happen. I certainly want to sustain that peak, personally. Bob, I was curious, where are you drawing your inference from?
Is that all coming from hunter-harvest data, or the poult-per-hen data, or some combination? I was just curious how you know, what are you using to infer the population status? Yeah, so those are, like most data, I think those are our two primary data sources. We're looking at harvest as an index to population size, and both total harvest as well as catch-per-unit effort, so we've got a hunter-male survey where we can look at harvest per hunter, harvest per day, things like that.
So we'll look at a combination of those, and then we also have a summer wild turkey observation survey. We've always just called it the breed survey, like most states have. That's been going on since 1993, and is a really pretty solid survey to get at those reproductive trends, kind of tell the story. So I have a couple questions related to the, we'll just call it the breed survey to make it easy. Is that, do you guys have it open to the public, or is it just biologists, or how is it structured?
It is open to the public at this point, yeah, we started off I think in the 90s with mainly our staff, but since I've been here, which is since 2002, we've always allowed the public to participate in that, and it's really helped our sample size, and we went online a few years ago, about three years ago. It's an online recording, a lot of states are transitioning to that, and that really has helped our sample size as well.
We'll get, I think last year we had about 10,000 turkeys reported, so in a state where our population estimate's about 45,000. I was going to say 10,000 is a heck of a harvest for a state the size of Maryland. Yeah, well that's how many we're seeing on the breed survey. Okay. Oh, okay. But it's an index, it's an index, there's obviously potential for repeat observations and things.
Sure. Well, I was curious on the breed survey, could you kind of walk us through, what do the numbers look like, and have they changed over time, are they stable? Yeah, so I can pull it up here, but in general, we've seen a decline, as most states have. Maybe not as severe of a decline, but we were in the three to four poults per hen range for quite a few years, and then we've just seen that slow, steady decline, and at this point, we're typically somewhere around two poults per hen.
Okay. Occasionally, we'll get up a little higher, so 2021, we had the highest estimate we've had in the last about 10 years, that was the Cicada hatch, and I believe you all- Yeah. Yeah, I think you sent me an email about that when we first talked about the Cicada hatch.
The first time that got on my radar, we were at the working group, and we were watching the Virginia update, and they've mentioned that peak in harvest in the counties, and I think it was right after we talked about that, that you emailed about your observations of that.
Well, it's interesting, I don't know if I've seen any literature on that specifically, but I do know when I first started in this position, it was 2002, at that time, we had a wild turkey technical committee for the Northeast region, now it's developed into the Upland Gangbird Technical Committee, but at that time, it was all about turkeys, and I remember that I'm just a couple years out of grad school, trying to soak it all up,
and there was a biologist, and I'm trying to think who it was, I know they were from West Virginia, it was either Jim Pack or Bill Igoe, both a couple of years older, they've been around a while, and they were telling me about the Cicada hatch being such a big deal, and I was like, really, and trying to figure it out, and then I was thinking, well, I'd have to stay here 17 more years to see if this actually happens again, and sure enough, we did see another peak in 2021, and I'm still here.
Wow. Yeah. That's really cool. People make you take stock of your life, right, like having a realization like that and thinking about, it seemed like yesterday, and it was hard to probably envision yourself being in that role that long, but one day at a time, and you end up there. Yeah, that's really cool.
Well, yeah, I've been really intrigued about that, and I have a crew of people that are really interested in it, so we're trying to tackle some more formal analyses related to it, but, yeah, I've been really interested in the Cicada hatch and how that was affecting turkey populations mechanistically, what is it actually doing, and to me, just at the point we're at right now, and people out there probably are, there's a handful of them, they're
like, well, it's obvious, they've got more bugs to eat, well, if you look at it from our point of view, well, that would mean that they're insect limited, which probably timed back to a habitat issue regulating insect availability, otherwise adding insects wouldn't actually add turkeys, but the other way to look at it is there's a lot of things that eat Cicadas that eat turkeys, so it could easily also be a price switching thing going on. I lean that direction, to be honest with you.
Most of our predators here, nest predators and predators of adult turkeys, are gorging on Cicadas. Yeah, so I feel like it would be really interesting to document the effect size, but also try to understand mechanistically why it's saying, I mean, I've heard enough anecdotes to suggest that this is an important part of the wild turkey population trajectories in states where we have Cicadas, so very interesting. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
One thing that I did want to get back to, Bob, that we talked about a minute ago, is the trends in pulp per hen numbers, and specifically, have you noticed any regional trends in that? Yes, yeah, I mean, it's interesting where there sometimes is a consistent trend statewide trend, but there are definitely years where one region will kind of do the opposite of what another region will. Some years maybe one outperforms and one underperforms compared to its baseline.
Right, and the other thing I've noticed is that certain regions, particularly where turkeys are doing well, like our western region, which is our more mountainous region, they tend to have a much more stable pulp per hen ratios. Recruitment doesn't vary a whole lot around that mean, I mean, of course, there's good years and bad years, but it doesn't fluctuate as wildly as it does in some of these other regions. Well, that's really interesting in and of itself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting.
I wonder why that is. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I've thought a lot about it, but in that eastern region, we're more similar to the southeast in general. Similar habitat types and probably predator communities, and we just tend to get, we tend to be more like those states with our brood survey in that we often dip down below two pulps per hen, which I think of as sort of the danger zone.
Yeah. Well, we've already danced around it a little bit, so I'll just go ahead and open the can of worms. Do you think it has to do with the predator context in the western part of the state compared to the rest of it? Yeah, perhaps, yeah. We'll get more answers to that, hopefully, after this research project is completed and we get some data analyzed. But just anecdotally, and maybe I'm jumping ahead a bit, but we're in the final year of a three-year project.
We've got study sites in the western part of the state and the eastern part of the state. These are large study sites, they're three to four county areas, so kind of a landscape perspective. It's not just a single property. We definitely see different predators impacting those populations, for sure. Eastern part of the state, red fox are very abundant and we have significant predation on both adult nesting hens and nests by red foxes in the first two years of our project.
Now, it's much worse the first year than the second year, which is interesting and brings up a whole other conversation about why that is and whatever. But then the western part of the state, a lot fewer red foxes, but we've got coyotes and bobcats and a different predator community. Maybe there's some differences there that can explain some of these trends in production. And you said that most of the habitat in the western part of the state is typical Appalachian hardwood forest?
Yeah. Of course, there's ag land and, sure, things interspersed. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. Do you have any other suspicions or things that you think might be separating them? I know we've talked about the predator community and some about the vegetation. Any other ideas on why they might differ so much?
Yeah. Not... I mean, I think it's some very complicated issues and looking at it, just both what's changed within a region to cause this decline in production over time, and then also looking at what's different between the regions or among our regions. So yeah, it's a lot to unravel, I guess, and we're trying to do what we can. But like I said, we'll learn a lot more in the next few years, hopefully some data analysis will get us closer to understanding exactly what's happening.
The other interesting thing that's going on is that central, that swath in the middle of the state, right? So it's like the Washington DC, Annapolis, Baltimore corridor, kind of runs... It kind of bisects our state and turkeys were struggling there for many years. I mean, they were there. We translocated birds and they were kind of just there, but in low numbers and those populations have boomed recently and just taken off.
And so I've scratched my head and I've talked to a lot of other colleagues, I'm like, what's going on over there? You can't find a lot of what we would think of as good nesting or brood habitat. These are parks and any kind of semi-natural area is just little woodlots or green space behind a development and turkeys are thriving. So what's causing that? Makes you scratch your head. So what's your best guess as to what's going on in those areas?
Maybe the foxes and raccoons and have other better, easier things to eat. And the Cooper's hawks are eating birds at the feeder instead of poults. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, you would certainly think that from a rural part of the state going to a more developed one, the predator context would change in many ways. So what potentially constitutes good nesting cover where in a rural area may not be the same thing in a more developed area because of that predator context.
Yes. Yes. I think there's some interactions there that are interesting. Now New Jersey is a part of this Mid-Atlantic Research Project and they are trapping and tracking birds in a more suburban part of the state. So that might be interesting to look at what they're getting. And it's a place where there are a lot of birds. Yeah. A lot of turkeys. Right. It's really interesting to me as well. It seems like those urban, suburban turkey populations up there, I don't see that in the South. Right.
Right. Yeah. Why don't we have, I mean like the idea that you're regularly getting nuisance calls from an urban area, like I just can't imagine that in our big city areas down here. Yeah. I don't really hear about that happening in like suburban Montgomery or Birmingham or Mobile. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it does on occasion, but it's not enough to be in the news like it is up there. Yeah. Yeah. We don't get a lot of nuisance calls.
Now north of us, some of those states, they deal with it regularly, New Jersey, Massachusetts, some of those areas. We'll get a handful a year, but yeah, in general, our turkeys are just kind of living around people, but not really harassing folks like they do in some of these other states.
Now we did have that one, that one crazy gobbler there on the right outside of DC that it was, it was going, did you see that on the news where it was like chasing, it was chasing runners and bicyclists on this trail right outside of DC, Washington DC. I think I saw this on TikTok or something. Yeah. Yeah. It was big news. You know, cause we had, it was going back and forth between Maryland and the district of Columbia. So they've got their own sort of wildlife agency.
We had our wildlife agency and then there was like, there's a national park in there. Then you had the county, you know, whatever, animal control officers or whatever. There was like five agencies trying to catch this one. Jurisdictional nightmare. Yeah. That was a big joke. Like five agencies can't catch this one Turkey that's harassing everyone. But eventually he just disappeared. They had them named and everything. I mean, it was a big, big. I think he's still just mad.
He's not the national symbol. Well, but going back to what we were talking about right before we kind of got into this dialogue, I was curious what, you know, just kind of comparing the Western part of the state and the Eastern part where it's relatively rural in both cases, but quite different in terms of what vegetation types are dominating. How much has the land use changed in those two?
Like are they similarly changing or stable or has there been a lot more in, you know, change in one or the other? You know, it's hard, kind of hard to answer that because they are so different just, you know, from what we have.
But I would say that in general, we've lost a lot of early successional habitat in both, you know, over time and, you know, kind of, you know, cause I deal, you know, Will said I'm the Upland-Gamber biologist, so I deal with not only turkeys, you know, we're a small state, we can't just have a dedicated turkey biologist, you know, which we could, but, you know, I also deal with bobwhite quail and they're restricted to the Eastern part of the state at this point. We're kind of on the fringe.
So, you know, I'm really familiar with the habitat changes that have taken place over the last, you know, 40, 50 years that have caused our quail populations to plummet. And, you know, to be frank, they're just barely hanging on at this point, but we do have pockets where we've got some wild birds left. So, you know, we've lost all of that, you know, what was quail habitat, but also very important from a turkey standpoint as far as nesting and brood rearing habitat.
Same thing has happened in the Western part of the state, but out there are, you know, our sort of native game bird is rough grouse, but, you know, we've lost a lot of early successional forest in that part of the state. So, you know, that could clearly be driving some of these slow long-term trends and, you know, reducing the productivity of turkeys in those regions as well. Sure. Okay. I was just really curious about that.
Yeah, one of the other things that I wanted to get into, you know, you've mentioned the research project that y'all have underway a couple of times, and I definitely want to get to that, but before we do, can we talk a little bit briefly about, you know, kind of the trends in turkey hunting and turkey hunters in the state and what's going on there? Yeah, so we have a fairly stable number of turkey hunters over like the last 20 years.
We've averaged around 10 to 12,000 turkey hunters in the state. That's held relatively stable. Prior to that, we did have a little blip when we first opened the season, I believe it was 1995. That was our first statewide spring turkey season, and we did see, you know, there was a few more hunters out there during those years. I guess they tried it and it wasn't for them, but, you know, once we got them weeded out, we've kept it fairly stable since then.
So, yeah, our spring season is definitely the most popular. We also have a short one-week fall season, but it's only in three counties, so it's only in those three western counties where it was sort of a traditional season. It's been in place for decades and decades. We've always kept that around, but participation has really declined in that season. Yeah, we're down to maybe 1,000 hunters and they might harvest, you know, 100 birds a year in that season.
We also have a short three-day winter turkey season, kind of different, but it's late January. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, so that just wrapped up, and that's a statewide season, it's only three days, and very low participation and harvest in that season. Are those either-sex seasons? The fall and the winter season are either-sex. What about non-residents? Do y'all get a lot of non-resident hunters? We do get a lot of non-resident hunters.
We're a fairly small state, and so get a lot of hunters from other states come into ours if our season's open or close earlier or later, so we get a lot of Pennsylvania hunters come down because we open about two weeks prior to them. So yeah. That makes sense.
So I know you talked about earlier that the hunter harvest data was one of the, or the catch per unit effort was one, so Sam, that since some parts of this, or actually I'll just let you tell us instead of project, you know, what did the hunter harvest numbers look like and did they vary across the state? Yeah. So if you look at it on a statewide basis, our harvest continues to go up.
And like I said, a lot of that's driven by these regions that where turkey populations are still growing and expanding. So we've seen, you know, in general, of course, we've had declines, but in general, we've seen an increase over time in our harvest and our hunter success. So our harvest per hunter, harvest per day, whatever you want to look at.
But again, you know, that is, it is somewhat regional and it's, it's driven largely by the fact that we just have more turkeys in more new places all the time. You know, at some point we're going to, you know, max out on that. How many are you harvesting per year? Last year was around 5,000. Our record was two years ago, which was I think about 5,200 in the spring season. And again, that was two years after the cicada hatch. Yeah. That was our record harvest. Might be tough to beat that one.
Well, I mean, without putting pen to paper initially, that seems like a solid harvest density, you know, given the size of the state. Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're not doing too bad. We, uh, we have some good turkey hunting here. Yeah. Uh, could you, I'm completely ignorant to the structure of the season and everything. So could you tell us a little bit about what the spring season structure looks like? Yeah. I'm glad you asked that.
I was going to say it on the tip of my tongue too earlier, and then I forgot. Sure. Sure. We, we like to keep things fairly simple here. So we've got a five week spring season that starts on April 18th every year. Um, so regardless of the day of the week, I know a lot of states start their seasons always on a Saturday, but somebody before my time picked April 18th as the best date to start the spring season on was probably based on the nesting data that they had at that point.
And, uh, so we always start on April 18th and last five weeks, um, two bird limit, two bearded bird limit, um, in that spring season. Yeah. And, uh, there's no tags or lottery or, you know, you buy a hunting license, you can, you can go turkey hunting. Yeah. I'm a simple man with a pretty poor memory. So I appreciate the simplicity of that season structure. I've never done very well with the first Saturday, second Saturday, all that kind of math.
Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately, we haven't seen the need to this point to, you know, make any major adjustments to it. You know, we tweak things here and there with, you know, method. Yeah. I was going to ask you, so I forgot the exact year, but in the nineties, when you started you started with that same structure or have you had any changes since then? I believe it was a four week season when we first opened the season statewide.
Um, it was kind of phased in, you know, as populations grew and reached what we thought were honorable levels. Um, at that point they'd opened certain counties or groups of counties or state statewide season was 1995. I think it was a four week season at that point. And then, uh, we went to a five week season. Okay. And you, you mentioned, I meant to get this earlier too. You mentioned that y'all had that bump in recruitment associated with the cicada hatch.
Have y'all seen any other kind of recent bumps in the past couple of years? Cause I know a lot of others, a lot of Southeastern states have in the past two or three years. And I wondered if that trend continued all the way up there to where y'all are. Same bumps in, uh, our productivity, uh, yeah, it, so it was, it wasn't bad last year. Okay. So yeah, it was, it was definitely a pretty decent year last year as well.
So yeah, 2024. Yeah. That's something Marcus and I really talked about I think a lot lately and been very curious about as well as these broad scale trends and increases in pulp per hen ratios from different states, um, be awesome to be able to put a pin on what exactly is driving that and maybe even be able to eventually forecast it.
Yeah. It's weird to me because there's so much variety in the way that seasons are structured, how many hunters there are in the hunter harvest and just like landscape context. Yeah. Like there's all this variation and all these different things that we think might influence Turkey populations, and then you still have this broad scale, uh, almost like mirroring across this broad scale of production that's really interesting to me. Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree.
You know, we see that both within our state and then if we look at surrounding states and then many times we, we might not follow the trend exactly, but it, you know, if it's up in one state, it's up in another state. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Could be some weather, weather patterns or something as well. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah. So let's talk about, um, this research project that y'all have got ongoing. We've kind of hit all, hit all around it.
Um, but yeah, I'm really interested to hear what you've got going on. It sounds very ambitious. Yeah. So, so we're excited about it. Um, and it is, it is ambitious, more ambitious than I thought it would be getting going with this.
We're a small state with not many staff, so we might have been off a little more, more than we can handle, but, but we are handling it and we're, we're learning a lot, but, um, kind of to take a step back and I guess it, uh, it started in, in, uh, 2021 where, uh, Pennsylvania was planning some research and we had, we had been thinking about it for some time, you know, like we wanted to get a little better handle on what was going on.
Not that we were concerned or, or alarmed, but we knew that things were not going to continue to go well, you know, indefinitely, like, like you said, well, you know, populations can't increase forever, you know?
Um, so we were starting to see some of these declines, um, Pennsylvania started their project in 2022, uh, and, and at that point we kind of had an opportunity to piggyback on, onto what they were doing and follow the same methodology and, and kind of use all the same techniques to, you know, collect the data, the same transmitters, the same monitoring protocols, um, things like that.
And so, so we kind of jumped onto that and, uh, kind of how, how it's working is that the, the states are collecting the data, um, hiring technicians, you know, going out, doing the field work to trap and monitor the birds, and then we send that data to, uh, Penn State where they're, you know, conducting the analysis and they've got several graduate students. Um, since then, so, so Pennsylvania started in 22, we started in 23, and, uh, Ohio started at that point as well with two study sites.
So Pennsylvania had four study sites, we had two study sites, Ohio had two at the time, I believe they've expanded to four, New Jersey started, uh, the year after with two study sites and now West Virginia jumped in with, uh, I think four or five study sites. Oh, wow. So we've got, you know, what, five states, 15 plus study areas, all doing the same types of things, looking, looking at, uh, hen, you know, hen reproductive success and survival and habitat use and movement.
And hopefully at some point all this data will get sorted out and kind of parsed up among the various universities and, uh, and we'll be in a good position to really understand what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. What a phenomenal effort. Absolutely. And when you say study sites, is it similar to what you mentioned earlier is going on in Maryland where these are like county level study sites? These are really large areas.
Yeah. I know, I know at least, I know in Pennsylvania and Maryland, it's a multi-county study area. So we're trying to, you know, get an idea of what's happening over sort of, um, a region that would be similar to what we might manage for, you know, like we're not managing for individual populations on individual property, um, what would be like our turkey management region type of level.
Yeah. And, and so we're not putting all of our transmitters on, you know, one spot, like we'll get five birds from this flock and then, you know, 20 miles away, fight another five birds. So it's kind of distributed across that landscape. I believe New Jersey and I think the other states are more or less following that same, that same model. Okay. Yeah, that's a pretty remarkable effort. I can certainly appreciate how difficult it is to get that many states aligned and, you know. 100%.
All those cats. Dang near impossible. Yeah. Yeah. So that's commendable effort for sure. It's been, it's been, uh, evolving, you know, and we're getting more, more coordinated as we go, I guess, but, but in the end, I think it'll work out really well. Yeah, that's, that's great. I know that you said you were in your third year here.
Can, is there anything that you can share with us that, you know, uh, preliminary data that you find interesting or something that surprised you or anything like that?
Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot that I think is interesting, you know, but, um, uh, as far as what, what, uh, hunters or, you know, other folks that are interested in turkeys would find interesting, you know, I, I think, um, of course the, the, the information on predator, you know, predation rates and the, the low nest success, which, you know, might not come as a shock to a lot of us, but the hunters, that's, you know, somewhat alarming.
So we've had to, you know, let them know like, this is not unprecedented, like it's normal for a lot of us. We are around 20%.
Yeah. We're about 20 to, uh, so, so what I thought was very interesting, just, and again, we just have the sort of the raw data at this point, you know, things aren't really, you know, analyzed the way they will be, you know, later on, but, but what I thought was very interesting was that the first year, so in 2000, the summer of 2023, we had extremely low hen survival and nest success.
Um, they kind of went hand in hand because in a lot of cases, if that nest was predated, the hen was also killed, you know, so we had, it was, it, but we had a smaller sample size that first year. So that's a little bit of a caveat there. We started with 25, uh, hens in both of our study sites and then the second and third year, we've increased 50, but that first, first year we started with 25, but, um, but of those 50 birds at 25 per study site, 50 birds total in the state.
And we had, uh, less than 50% hen survival through in, in, during the spring season. Wow. Okay. We lost, we lost on, you know, over half of our hens annual survival that year was 37%. Oof. Bad. That's not good. Yeah. Yeah. It was not good. Yeah. It doesn't matter what nest success is. If hen survival's that low. It really doesn't. Nest success was also very low that year. Um, and I thought, man, this is bad, you know, what's, what's going on.
Last year we had hen survival in the 80% range, so we went from, yeah, so we went from four, you know, uh, 37% to somewhere around 80%. So much better and they were much more productive. So they, you know, they, they produced many more poults. That first season, I think we, like we, like I said, we started with 50 hens and get the end of the four week brood counts. We had documented 17 poults produced from those 50 hens.
Keep in mind, that's conservative because they're very, I mean, you all know if you've done field work, they're, they're not, they don't just stand there and let you count them all. Sure. You know, so, but, but there could have been a few more out there, but we felt like they were fairly complete counts. It was really dismal that first year. And our, our brood survey showed that, that it was a, it was a poor year for production that year.
And then, you know, 2024, we saw a much higher hen survival, much better nest success, um, in both regions, although they kind of flip flopped and that the one region, you know, that did poorly the first year did better, um, in the second year. Um, but, but regardless, they both, they both produced a lot more hens, uh, poults by the end of the nesting season. So that, that was, that was interesting right there.
So Bob, um, what, I'm not expecting you to know the answer to this, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are, how could you reconcile the going from 37% hen survival to, what'd you say? 80%? Yeah. So like, that's, that should be like the tips of the curve, you know, in terms of how far they are apart. I'm just curious, do you have any insight on why that might've varied so much?
Well, again, like I think a lot of this and, and, and, and some of this, you know, it might be a little premature in, in, in, you know, throwing some of this out there because we don't, we don't have the full analysis done yet, you know, and so hopefully they will look at some of these covariates and try to identify, you know, what was different between those years.
Um. Yeah. I would guess too within that first year with the limited sample size, the, the uncertainty around that estimate is probably really big. Yep. I mean, you don't know how certain that is in terms of applying to the broader population, but you do know that that many of them died with certainty.
So. Yeah. It's a really good point, Will, that, that there definitely, that we had fewer birds, you know, with, uh, backpacks on that first year, but, but I will say like anecdotally we had, um, it was a very wet, I wouldn't say a wet spring, but it was wet during our peak nesting. So what we found and, and, and, uh, you know, I'm fairly close to what's happening.
You know, a lot of the birds are at least in our region here are close to the main, you know, follow the technicians and look at what the birds are doing. And when we had rain events during that, that peak incubation period, you know, there was often, um, you know, either the nest were lost or the, that bird was killed on the nest, you know, following those rain events.
So, you know, hopefully, hopefully we look at that a little closer and you get, we get a better picture than just my sort of anecdotal, um, and, and our technicians, you know, come back saying, well, it, you know, it rained last night. I'm sure there's going to be a couple nests that got whacked, but wow, it was that obvious that when it was raining, they were predicting we're going to have some dead hens today. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wet hen hypothesis.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we did a, uh, my master's was on rough grouse and we, you know, the, the wet hen hypothesis was, I felt was pretty obvious during that study as well. Yeah. Um. Little turkeys. Well, there is a fair amount of evidence even with turkeys. I mean, there's two or three publications noting that relationship. Yeah. To me, it occurs on a, you know, you can't, you can't look at just, was it a wet spring or not?
No, because most of these, the nesting seems to be fairly synchronous, you know, and a lot of these adult hens were, were initiating nest within a very short period, you know, within a week or two of each other. So when you, when you had all these hens nesting and you, uh, and you had two or three days of rain, um, in an area like this where, where the vast majority of our predation was red fox, I mean, of the, of the ones that we knew, you know.
Which is interesting in and of itself, because not a lot of places in the turkey's range have a lot of red fox anymore. Right. Right. Well, you know, so they're, they're hunting these edges and they're, they're hunting with, you know, using scent. So, um, it makes sense that that would be an important factor around here at least. Yeah. Yeah. That's really, really interesting. So it also is interesting to me that your pulp per hand data, do I hear you correctly?
Kind of match that at the state level. Yeah. I picked up on that too. I thought that was neat. Which suggests that those two vital rates are correlated, not just in the fact that, you know, there's no pulse if there's no hand, but when there are hens, the number of pulse, you know, when there's more hens, there's also more pulse per hen. So it's sort of like a, they're additive. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. Which is going to make it have even, yeah, really profound impact on the population.
That's kind of my working theory at this point is that, is that when you have a bad spring, it's, yeah, it's, it's that, it's that compound effect of you're losing all those nests, but you're also losing, losing a lot of adult birds. Right. And, and so it's, that's not going to show up in that brood survey.
You know, your, your brood survey is if those hens are, are, are killed, you know, they're not out there so that there's not, you know, your pulp per hen estimates are based on the number of hens that are, that are, you know, surviving through that period. So it may, and that might be why we get these really large swings in our, you know, population in certain, certain regions, certain years. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
And life with two or three bad years could, in a row, could have a significant impact. Yeah. I've, I've been all in the middle of, of a life stage analysis, like, you know, trying to project population trajectories and looking at different vital rates and yeah, like when you throw out a number like that 37% in survival, it doesn't even really matter what the rest of the vital rates are. That's right. Like that, that turkey population is going extinct basically at that level.
But at 80%, the same could be said, the opposite direction, you've got 80% survival that overcomes even poor reproduction, but when you have the two correlated such that both are low or both are high, you know, it really affects the population trajectory pretty dramatically. So I could see how that would cause these huge swings like you're talking about. Right. And, and again, just keep in mind that, you know, Turkey's doing fairly well.
Yeah. So I don't, I don't want anybody to think that like, you know, there's some major problems and, and that that's, you know, a consistent, you know, every year we're losing all these birds to predation. Right. And you know, we're not saying that we're just saying that in this, in this one, you know, one year with these, with these, you know, 50 birds that we had marked that that's what we saw. Right.
Yeah. I think that's an important point, Bob, that that's actually probably a natural feature of populations just for turkeys in general, that they probably have a few bad years and then they all line up for one year and they have this enormous, you know, all the hens survive and everybody does well. And you have this huge influx of turkeys recruited into the population and it's probably, those are probably, I wouldn't say rare, but those are less frequent than those average or poor years.
So you may go have several poor, and then you have one big one that makes up for all that in a stable population. So obviously we'd want those big years to be really great in magnitude, but also more frequent, but that's probably a feature of the way that populations function in general. Yeah. It seems to be the, what's going on, at least in some areas.
Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else from the ongoing work that you can share with us as, you know, maybe preliminary or I don't want to squeeze you too hard on it, I know you're still crunching numbers. I'm trying to think.
We did get some information, you know, a lot of this is new for us because we've never done a more in-depth research project on turkeys here, you know, we've done our standard surveys and monitoring and felt like we had a good handle on, you know, whether turkeys were increasing or decreasing and, you know, whether it's related to production or whatever. But a lot of this is new for us.
Other states might've had it for a while, but things like, like our incubation dates, you know, our, you know, when peak nesting periods are, we're getting some good data on that. So. About when is that for Maryland? So in the last two years, it's, it varied a little bit between the years, but it was, it was the last few days of April to the first few days in May. Right. That was your peak incubation. That was your peak date of nest initiate, you know, incubation initiation.
Yeah. Yeah. So it wasn't, you know, they were laying eggs prior to that. Yeah. Yeah. So, and we were, we were curious because, you know, again, it's a very diverse state. So we've got, you know, elevations over 3000 feet in the Western part of the state. And it's, it's completely different, you know, client, like it's cold up there and start a spring Turkey season. And then that down here on the coastal plain, you know, it's, it's warm.
And so there's always this thought from hunters that, that nesting varied a lot, you know, between the Eastern and the, and the Western part of the state, similar to, you know, some of the South Eastern states where you've got, you know, some latitude differences there. But we've, we found that at least initially the nesting dates only varied by a few days between those high elevation Western sites versus the lower site.
Marcus, didn't Chris Mormon say that it was the same, the case was the same for North Carolina? Yeah. There was basically no variation. Yeah. I mean, you know, they'd have longitudinal variation for the same reason that Bob did because of that elevation change from West to East, but they didn't. I remember him noting the, yeah. Hunters really think, and you know, we've had some talk about having the zone seasons and things for that reason.
I don't think it's as much of a biology question as it is that, you know, you're hunting in the snow versus hunting the mosquitoes. Absolutely. Yeah. It's that whole social aspect that we have to think about with reg cycles and packages too. I think, well, good stuff. Yeah, really cool.
So yeah, I guess there, I didn't want to cut you off, Bob, if you have anything else that you wanted to share from the project or just in general that we haven't covered, is there anything that you'd like to talk about that we haven't asked you? No, I think that was the highlights of what we've gotten out of it so far. There will be a lot of habitat information coming out, you know, but of course those analyses are a little tougher to get at, but looking at some of those types of things.
I've got some, you know, thoughts on like where birds were most successful versus unsuccessful, but you know, none of it's been, you know, really backed up by the data. It's just my own kind of personal observations on things like that. Oh, and I will, I will mention that as part, I don't know if it's a part of it, but we also started to band gobblers at the same time that we're doing this telemetry work. So that's the first gobbler banding we've done in Maryland.
Yeah. And then you started some statewide gobbler banding a few years back, so we'll be getting at some harvest rate and some male survival estimates, you know, some better data on that. First two years, we were in line with what you might expect with about 30% adult. Wow. Yeah. That number keeps popping up. Yeah. It's pretty much everywhere. 30% adult harvest and juvenile harvest was actually a little bit higher. I don't have that number in front of me, but it was up in the 10 to 15% range.
I think the one year, depending on the region, I think the other year was down around 9%. For the juvenile harvest, you mean? Yes. Yes. The juvenile harvest. Yeah. I was curious with the juvenile harvest, are some of those in the fall and winter seasons or is that strictly coming from the spring? Yeah, that was strictly the spring season. Okay. Yeah. We haven't had any of our gobblers or hens killed in the fall or the winter season that we have marked. Yeah, that's interesting.
Okay. Well, I feel like we've covered a lot of ground here, a lot of Maryland ground. Yeah. Bob's probably happy that we're going to quit asking questions here in a minute. Yeah. We've been grilling you for a while. We have. Well, that's fine. It was good talking to you. Yeah. We learned a lot. I really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. And just learning a little bit about the state and how different things are across that. Even though it's a small state, that's really interesting.
Well, I didn't have a chance. I actually calculated this before we got on, but- Nice. I know where this is going. For Will's benefit, we are a small but diverse state, but we're 0.24 Alabamas. There you go. There you go. Just give yourself- A quarter Alabama. Yeah. Just give yourself the credit that you're a quarter Alabama. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. That's hilarious. There's a man with a good sense of humor. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Well, I enjoyed learning about that quarter Alabama.
Yeah. For sure. Hope to get up there and hunt sometime. Yeah. For sure. Let me know. Let me know. Sounds like we need to get up there and get after some foxes. Yeah. Sounds like we got a pile of those. I'd like to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. I'd like to trap a red fox. Plenty of red foxes. Yeah. I've never caught a red fox, but I'd love to. What about- Yeah. Bob, do you do any rough grouse hunting?
I know you said your master's was on rough grouse and you work with the species now in your current role. I used to. Yeah. But, yeah, I live on the opposite end of the state from where we currently have grouse. Yeah. And grouse numbers are really, really poor right now. Right. And some steep population declines and really the huntable populations are to the north of us. Right. Gotcha. Well, that's a shame. Those birds are fun to hunt too. I love it. They are. They are. Indeed. All right.
Well, it sounds like, Bob, you got a lot going on and probably have some birds on bait somewhere you need to get after. My phone's been dinging. Oh, man. They're probably on it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're going to definitely have to have you come back on in a year or two to give us a final update on all that work y'all are conducting right now. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. We'll have a lot more to share at that point.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like throughout that whole region, we'll have a lot of information to learn. Yeah. What an exciting project to hear about and learn from. Yeah, we're really trying to get ahead of it because again, we're not alarmed at this point with some of these declines, but we do know that in other states that completed restoration earlier than us, they have seen some issues.
We want to have some good baseline data and just try to make sure that the species that we all care about is here for generations to come. I think this is a good first step, at least for our state and all the surrounding states to really take a deep dive into what's going on and things change in the future. We'll be able to take management actions to try to correct that if we can. Right. Yeah. I think it's phenomenal. Yeah. Y'all are being proactive. Yeah. For sure.
Having good baseline information before things get bad, assuming they do, is extremely valuable. Well, then what's to hurt? Then you have really good information if they don't get bad. That's still good. Exactly. It's still good information. Yeah. It doesn't throw it out. Yeah. Thank you for your time, Bob. No problem. Yeah. We really appreciate you taking the time. I know how it is during the miller trapping season.
We're just concluding hours here, but I know it's a busy time, so thanks for taking the time to meet with us. Thanks everybody out there for listening. We appreciate all the support. This is another one. We've gotten a lot of feedback asking us to get up in this part of the world, so thanks everybody for rating the podcast and leaving comments and sending us messages and everything. We really appreciate it. We're trying to be responsive, so thanks for sticking with us.
Yeah. Thank y'all. Wild Turkey Science is part of the Natural Resources University podcast network and is made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots organization dedicated to the wild turkey. To learn more about TFT, check out turkeysfortomorrow.org. Thanks. Bye. www.globalonenessproject.org