Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1020: The Future of Wild Turkeys and Turkey Hunting with Dr. Mike Chamberlain

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Ep. 1020: The Future of Wild Turkeys and Turkey Hunting with Dr. Mike Chamberlain · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by doctor Mike Chamberlain to discuss
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: the future of wild turkeys and turkey hunting in America.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: brought to you by Moultrie. And this week we are
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: talking turkeys, and we're talking turkeys because just a few
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: days from now, when you know, a couple days after
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: the show launches, it will be Turkey Week at Meat Eater.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Turkey Week is running March thirtieth through April third, twenty
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: twenty six. All things turkey across the Mediator platforms. All
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: sorts of new podcasts, new videos, new arts, racles, contests,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: social media, lots of fun reasons to get excited and
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: celebrate turkeys. And so this week we are going to
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: do the same thing here on wy'ed tont And my
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: guest today is quite possibly the most well known, foremost
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: expert on all things wild turkeys in America, and that
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: is doctor Mike Chamberlain. He's got a heck of a title.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: His title is the National Wild Turkey Federation Distinguished Professor
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: at the University of Georgia. This is the University of
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources is the
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: technical name there. He has been researching wild turkeys for
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: more than thirty years. He is a passionate turkey hunter.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: He is the creator and the most often content producer
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: for Wild Turkey Labs. Wild Turkey lab dot com, I
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: believe is the url for that website where you can
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: find all sorts of articles, research papers, basically everything that
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: he has compiled, worked on, or been a part of
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: when it comes to wild turkey behavior, research studies, the
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: status of their populations, and much much more. If you
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: enjoy turkey hunting, this is somebody you should be listening to.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: And hopefully you've already heard from him, read some of
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: his things, seen him across the world. He's very active
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: in the public. He's one of our you know, as
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I mentioned, great communicators on this topic. But what I
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: wanted to chat with him today about was the future.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: What does the future hold for this animal, this bird
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: that so many of us love to chase, to hear,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: to hunt, to eat. Over the last five or six years,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: there has been an increasing awareness of the fact that
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: turkeys are not doing as well as they once were.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: There's been a lot of debate about why that might be.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: There's been a lot of discussion about what we should
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: do about it, and what in fact is happening, and
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: how hunters maybe can or cannot make a different diference
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: on what's happening with turkeys. Should we be lowering bag limits,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: should we be changing season dates, should we not be
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: using certain turkey loads, should we not be using decoys
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: or blinds or reaping techniques. There's all sorts of debate
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: on this front, and all of that is why I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: wanted to have a kind of status update from Mike.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: What's actually happening now, What can we confirm is true?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Where is the jury still out? What can turkey hunters
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: do about this? What do we need to be aware
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: of as we come into the twenty twenty six hunting
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: season and seasons to come. What's the future going to
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: look like ten years from now or twenty years from now.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: All of that is discussed today. If you like turkeys,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: if you love turkey hunting, this is a must listen
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: to help prepare you for what's coming down the line
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: and how all of us can ensure that there are
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: many more enjoyable turkey seasons to come. So that's what's
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: in store for today. I also want to let you
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: know that we do have a really cool collaboration with
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: doctor Mike Chamberlain and his Wild Turkey Lab with a
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: project coming up related to Meetator's Turkey Week. There's a
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: really neat initiative that Mike has going on called Wild
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Turkey DNA, in which he is asking for citizens to
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: submit samples of any turkeys that they have killed that
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: have very unique plumage, like all white feathers or funky colors,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: different things like that. And so Mediator is going to
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: be hosting a photo contest in which you can submit
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: photos of your unique plumage turkeys while also encouraging people
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: to participate in this citizen science initiative as well. You
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: can learn more about that once Turkey Week starts at
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: the Mediator website and that's the meat eater dot com.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: It's kicking off March thirtieth, twenty twenty six, so check
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: it out. Until then, though, we're going to kick off
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Turkey Week a little bit early with this very interesting,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: very practical conversation about the future of turkeys and turkey
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: hunting with doctor Mike Chamberlain. Enjoy all right. Joining me
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: in now on the line is doctor Mike Chamberlain. Welcome
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: to the show.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Mike. Good to be with you. Mark.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: It's been a long time coming. You've been on the
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Mediator podcast, You've been all over the media world in
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: recent years sharing the I was gonna say the good
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: news but in some cases good and bad news when
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: it comes to two turkeys with the hunting world, and
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: have really made an impact. But for some reason, I
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: haven't gotten you on this podcast yet, So I'm glad
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: it's finally happening. Glad we have an excuse to get
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to chat some and I want to just dive right
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: in the deep end because your time is valuable, the
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: listener's time is valuable, and I don't think we have
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: any time to waste when it comes to wild turkeys.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: So if you could help us lay a foundation for
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: this conversation by giving me your best attempt at like
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: a three minute history of turkeys in America. If you
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: were stuck in an elevator for like two three minutes
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: with someone and they said, hey, what's the deal with
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: turkeys here? Could you give us a quick Hey they
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: started here, this happened, this happened, and now we are here.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: If you had to broadly summarize that trajectory.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: So I mean turkeys followed a trajectory that a lot
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: of game and wildlife species followed. After colonization, you know,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: populations were largely decimated. The bird was extirpated from much
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: of its historic range. And then in the after World
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: War two, and particularly as you started getting closer to
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies, you started seeing restoration efforts that
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: largely failed at the start, but then really kind of
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: accelerated in the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties, and turkey
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: populations were restored across their historic range and even into
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: areas where turkeys were never historically present. And so now
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: there are wild turkeys and forty nine of the fifty
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: US states, and they're in multiple other countries overseas as well.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: And then although things looked really good. The last thirty
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: seconds of that three minute synopsis is around two thousand
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: and five to ten, we started documenting fairly large scale
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: declines and turkey populations. At first, it looked like it
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: was restricted to the south and east, and as more
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: research was conducted, it appears that those declines are much
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: more widespread in occurring across much of the Midwest and beyond.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: So that is now kind of where we are today
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: with this kind of pulse of turkey research that's out
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: there trying to understand how to mitigate these declines.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: So before we get into that last part the recent declines,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: I want to zoom in a little bit on that
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: recovery phase. And I actually did have done a little
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: bit of writing on this on another project as I
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: was kind of thinking through the many different examples of
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: this kind of mid twentieth century recovery of many wildlife
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: species that got pretty close to some serious, serious trouble.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: And the turkey story is a really interesting one because
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: it wasn't just like there was one major legislative victory
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: that saved them, right. It wasn't like you know, market
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: hunting of bison, you know, being outlawed and then all
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: of a sudden there was an opportunity for them, for
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: them to come back. It was something that was much more,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: at least seemingly much more driven by people, regular people
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: who volunteered their time or join an organization to do
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: these trap and transfer programs and all that. Could you
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: share a little bit more about what that looked like,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: because that's such an encouraging, hopeful story of what regular
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: people were able to do and maybe could do again.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, turkey restoration was largely driven by turkey hunters and
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: biologists in a number of states who had a passion
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: to hunt turkeys and were dismayed at the lack of
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: opportunity to do that. And so you saw these early
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: efforts by pioneers like you.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Know, Wayne Bailey and other.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: Biologists who figured out how to capture turkeys at scale.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: In other words, how do you catch a flock of
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: turkey so that you could trap, you know, you could
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: transport them somewhere and release them. And so you really
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: saw this kind of grassroots effort that started, you know,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: in the back forty with folks who just loved turkeys
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: and wanted to be able to experience hunting those birds
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: and and many of these folks hunted for seasons and
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: never interacted with a turkey. There's stories of people, you know,
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: folks that were involved in restoration, spending an entire season
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: trying to hear a bird to the gobble and yeah,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: and so you really saw this kind of this upswell
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: in Hey, we figured out how to do this, We
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: figured out how to capture wild birds and move them.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: And once that occurred, you saw this real explosion in
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: the desire because now there was a way to do
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: it right, there was an opportunity, there was a methodology
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: in place, and then really restoration just exploded once states
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: realized that they could they could trap and transport across
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: state lines by cooperating with the National Wild Turkey Federation,
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: which put in place this system to where there was
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: a restitution cost associated with birds. So in other words,
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: a state could request birds from one state, have those
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: birds brought into their state, and then pay restitution for
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: those birds. And what that allowed was, if you think
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: about it, instead of just trapping turkeys in your state
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: where opportunities may be fairly limited, right, there may only
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: be a small population of birds in a particular state.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Now suddenly you could go to five states and get birds.
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: And that's why you saw in the late eighties and
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: early nineties turkey populations just exploded because states were trapping
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: and transporting across lines.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Was there anything unique about that era that allowed for
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: that to succeed like it did, whether that be habitat
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: on the ground, or political winds or anything else and
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: social things going on. Is there anything that you can
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: point to that's like, oh, yeah, this is why it
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: actually worked so well. Or was it just this wonderful
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: coincidence that the stars aligned and there was people there
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: willing to do the good work.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: I think in a lot of ways, it was a
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: perfect storm where you got one. You had, you had
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: habitat characteristics across much of North America that were at
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: the time fundamentally much better for a wild turkeys than
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: they are today. You had turkeys being transported into parts
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: of the landscape where predators were not familiar with them,
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: didn't know that a turkey was a prey item, and
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: in some cases moved into areas that had very low
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: predator abundance.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: To begin with.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: And then you also saw situations, if you think about it,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: where you were kind of genetically mixing up animals and creating.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: And this is something we're actually studying now is whether
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: this is a good thing or not. But this kind
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: of hybrid vigor right where you're sticking animals that are
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: genetically different from one another together into a landscape and predictably,
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: you know, populations really exploded. And the other thing that
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: think about critically if you're a turkey hunter is that
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: during restoration, hunting was not allowed. So once birds were
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: restored to a state, there was a mandate where hunting
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: could not occur within five years of those restoration efforts.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: So you really saw turkey populations that were able to
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: function without any type of interference from us. And the
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: result I think was, I mean, it's one of the
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: greatest success stories in conservation history. And I also think
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: that at the time, the fabric of state agencies and
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: the fabric of NWTF and the many people who were
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: involved in the restoration efforts generation they were they were
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: They were turkey hunters first and foremost right they were
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: they were turkey enthusiasts, and they by and large had
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: a passion for the bird and to understand the value
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: of existing with turkeys on the landscape and and having
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: talked with many of those folks who are now retired.
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: That was their life, man, that's that's.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: What they did.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Like my job is to restore turkeys in my state,
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: and they worked an entire career to do that. And
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: and I think that's again, I think it was kind
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: of a perfect storm.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Do you do we have those kinds of people still today?
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Gosh, that's a loaded question.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I think what you see when you look across
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: state agencies and and kind of the wildlife management community,
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: you see a very different fabric than you did back
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: in the nineteen seventies and eighties and nineties. You know, unfortunately,
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: as an educator, I see this in my own institution
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: that most students that come into natural resources university programs
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: are not hunters.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Most are not.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: In fact, a very small percentage are. And so the
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: people that are staffing our state agencies now are just different.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: And I'm not criticizing them. I'm simply noting that they're
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: their fabric is different than the fabric of many in
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties and nineties that drove turkey restoration.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Is there.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Any possible ripple effects of that that you can foresee?
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Given that the perspective, the background, the values, the cultural
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: associations that a non hunting wildlife manager might bring to
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: the table could lead to different outcome or or maybe not.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Do you do you foresee anything given this you know,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: natural shift that does seem to be happening.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: One hundred percent?
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you think about it, decision making at
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: a state agency level that involves people who are not
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: hunters and have don't have the the mindset that a
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: hunter would have, if you, I mean, it doesn't take
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: a rocket scientist to kind of project that out across
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: the next few decades. And that concerns me, and it
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: concerns state agencies. Frankly, I have conversations with with administrators
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: from a number of agencies who are concerned about that,
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: because if you think about the constituents that the political
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: process kind of you know, works towards or works for.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: If hunters are a very small voice period and we
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: are not actively part of our state agencies because of
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: the people that are graduating from universities and going into
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: agency positions are not hunters, then I think it's logical
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: to think that through time we're going to be underrepresented
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: in a way that maybe we're not thinking about because
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: we typically as hunters look to our state agencies, despite
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: the fact that you know, if you go on Facebook,
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: every state agency is the demon. But you know, we
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: criticize state agencies as hunters, sometimes rightfully so. But but
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: the state agencies are law are lawfully charged with conserving
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: sustainable natural resources, right and and many of those resources
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: are our resources you and I cherish, right, whether it
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: be game or non game. And if you're a hunter
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: and you kind of think about what the future is
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: going to look like in your state, If your agency
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: is staffed people that are not like you, that don't
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: have the same passion that you have, then that should
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: be concerning to you.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: It is to read between the lines a little bit.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: How serious do you think the possibility of twenty years
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: from now, thirty years from now, if we have continued
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: declines in Turkey numbers paired with increasing number of managers
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: who don't see the value in turkey hunters and turkey hunting,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: and they see those two things, that being the health
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: of Turkey populations and participation in turkey hunting as being
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: possibly opposed to each other because of those declines, you know,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: looking forward to does the future of turkey hunting, actually
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: hunting them seem at risk given that trend.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: Think where my mind goes mark is, you know, in
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: the in the face of ongoing declines, and and to
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: back up a little bit, you know, turkeys are doing
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: quite well in many areas. It's it's the fact that
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: they're they're struggling in and in kind of.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: The heart of their range. Right if you really look,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: the south and.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: East is the heart of of wild turkey range. And
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: for for populations to really, excuse me, be struggling in
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: many of those states and beyond, causes you pause, and
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: I think where my mind goes is, you know, none
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: of us want lower opportunity, none of us want to
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: to not be able to chase the passion that we
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: you know, I live all year for for right now,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: for the next two months, I think, I tell my wife,
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: I exist all year for the next two months outside
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: of a few weeks when the rut hits. But I
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: kind of look and I think, Okay, what are my
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: opportunities going to look like in twenty years? Right as
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: I'm on the precipice of my you know, I'm at
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: the very end of my turkey hunting career. What's the
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: opportunity going to look like for me? In other words,
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: what are seasons going to look like? What are are
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: am I going to be hunting under quota systems in
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: most places because there's so much demand for what supply
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: is available. You already see this, as you know, on
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: public lands throughout much of North America. And is that
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: just the future for the wild turkey in many In
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: many situations our quotas if you will, as you're and
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: if you pay attention, if you're a traveling turkey hunter,
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: this is already popping up right. You know, states are
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: limiting non resident access and opportunity as they should because
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: of declining populations. And so is that just the future
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: for me as a turkey hunter where there's going to
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: be this consistent kind of this decline and opportunity because
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: there's so much demand for reduced supply and that that's
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: where That's where my head goes when I when I'm
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: asked that type of question, is is that the reality
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: that I'm going to be looking at and avoiding that
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: reality is part of what gets me up in the morning.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: So with that in mind, Mike, I guess I want
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: to maybe I've dove into the deep end too quickly,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: because I do want to get kind of a broad
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: sense of the reality of the situation right now, maybe
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: over the last five years or so, I feel like
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: this whole realization that maybe turkeys aren't doing as well
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: as we once thought. That's that's because I'm in top
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: of mind for a lot of people. But I'm not
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: sure that we have a clear sense of the severity
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: of that. I think maybe most people know, oh, there's
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: there's some places the turkeys are kind of not like
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: they used to be. But do you have a sense
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: or could you give us a sense of if this
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: is like a I guess on a scale of one
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: to ten, ten being this is a five alarm fire,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the most dire crisis possible, a one being things are amazing,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: they couldn't be better. Where on that scale would you
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: rate your sense of concern right now about the state
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: of turkeys across America?
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: I think that completely depends on where you are, so
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: like if and even within regions, there's such complexity. So
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: for instance, if I'm in South Carolina, for instance, where
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: populations have continued to lag and the state agency has
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: tried regulatory changes and the population continues to seemingly decline.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: I'm concerned if I then go to other places where populations, like,
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: for instance, in Louisiana, populations seem to have gotten as
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: low as they were going to get and have responded
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: to changes over the last eight years ish.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: And then I go.
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: To places, you know, in the Upper Midwest, for instance,
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: where populations in some areas appear to be doing quite well.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: You go into areas out west, and turkeys are thriving
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: in many places, almost to the point of overabundance in
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: some situations. And I think it just speaks to how
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: complex the turkey world is, if you will, and really,
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: you know, I kind of when I'm asked this at
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: a kind of a broad scale, I talk to people
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: that particular state that are like, what are you talking
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: about turkey problem?
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Like I got turkeys.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: Running out of my ears, you know, And I'll be like, yeah,
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: and counter blessings because I can take you right down
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: the street here and drive you through a county that
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: ten years ago you could ed to sew turkeys all
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: the time, and you don't see birds anymore.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: They're just not there.
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: And if you look at you know, many places in
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: North America. That is a common refrain. That's a common
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: thing you hear, or what I hear a lot is
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: you know, I had a bunch of turkeys around two
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: thousand and five, and man, I still see turkeys, but
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: not like I used to. That's the common theme that
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: I hear, and so the severity of that equation just
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: differs from one point to the next.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, did I see. I believe the number I saw
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: was that the turkey harvest in Georgia has declined by
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: something like seventy five percent over I can't remember what
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: the time spend was, but does that trend sound accurate
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: for some of those South Southeastern states?
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, many Southeastern states have seen well over a fifty
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: percent decline in harvest, some sixty plus percent, and that
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: you know, if you think about it this way, twenty
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: years ago, I could go turkey hunting on public ground
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: and rarely I could go an entire day and never
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: bump into another hunter. I could go to a least
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: property that I was a part of and there were
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: no other members there, you know.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: And now it's.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: A challenge to go find a public ground that is
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: not being hunted, and competition for least property is keen,
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: and so there's so much interest around turkeys, as there
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: should be. They're an incredible spaces to hunt and.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: And what's not to love.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: But if you kind of think about the world of
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: harvest and you think what's changed in the last twenty
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: years for harvest to be declining, speaks volumes about kind
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: of where things stand. Because you know, some will argue, well,
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: harvest is just an indicator of hunter activity, and that's
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: largely in some ways true. But if you have increasing
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: interest and increasing participation and decreasing harvest, the math doesn't
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: add up, right. That suggests a subli and demand issue.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: And that's kind of what I was saying earlier. That's
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: what kind of gets me up in the morning, is like, Okay,
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: I don't want to see a world where we are
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: dealing with these constant like quota caps, you know, limits,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: that that that type of thing, because that that's a
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: that's a world where the opportunity to chase this this
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: passion and you know, is going to be reduced.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I've heard you explain my area, you answer my next question.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Let me let me phrase this.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: The natural question after hearing all this is is why
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: why is this happening. Right, You've been asked that question
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: a thousand times and it is a complex answer. I recognize,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and I've heard you once explain it with the analogy
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: of a football team kind of being representative of the
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: interconnected variables that impact Turkey health and populations. Could you
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: could you answer that question for me? Could you help
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: us understand why these things are happening and maybe use
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: that football analogy because I found that so helpful.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: That's the that's the way I can think about it
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: that makes sense to me. Is like every year in
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: every spot, the Turkey population is like football game where
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: your local population has influenced All the positions that are
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: on the field can influence the outcome. But every single year,
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: in every single location, there's certain positions that influence every outcome, habitat, predation, harvest, etc.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: But then in.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: One particular area, you may have a position on the
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: field that disproportionately impacts the game this year that doesn't
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: impact the game in a subsequent year. Severe drought, very
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: very wet two week period when hens are starting to
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: hatch polts and you see this decline in productivity. Those
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: types of things that you can't really predict you can't anticipate.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: And then the kind of sinister positions. You know, if
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: you think about a football game, offensive line always impacts
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: the outcome of every game, right quarterback plays, you know,
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: the super important positions, Well, those would be your habitat
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: and your predator communities, and those two are kind of
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: intertwined everywhere you go. So that's the way I think
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: about it. And then when I think about, Okay, so
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: why is this happening? I mean, I don't think any
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: informed person would ever argue that habitat is not the
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: driving force that's impacting turkey populations above everything else. I
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: don't think any logical person would argue that that in
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: most places, habitat has changed quite a bit in the
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: last few decades.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: Of course, you and I we can go to places
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: that damn near don't look anything different twenty years ago.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: They look just like they look now. But if you
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: go east of the Mississippi in particular, and you look
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: at the landscape now compared to what it looked like before,
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: you are going to see dramatic losses of hardwood forest,
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: which are particularly important for turkeys, one because they provide
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: hard masks in the winter, but two. They're also important
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: for brooding brood hens. If you think about it, if
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: you go in and take hardwood forest and you replace
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: them with something else, and you undermine that food resource,
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: it's not just well they have to go eat something else.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: That's a fundamental problem because acorns built fat, and fat
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: makes hens more productive in the spring, and so in
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: the bird world, being big and fat is good. And
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: so if you take turkeys, if you think about it,
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: if you take hundreds of thousands of acres of hardwoods
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: and you remove them and replace them with something else,
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: that's a problem. At the same time, if you look
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: at much of the United States now compared to a
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: few decades ago, you're going to see that.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: It's fragmented, right.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: We we we cut the landscape up into little pieces,
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: and those little pieces are easier for predators that eat
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: turkeys and their nests to hunt and so habitat and
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: predation to me, you can't they're in they're the same
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: like they're they're they're interacting with one another to influence turkeys.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: And then you you tack in, you know, disease issues,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: which we we don't see situations with turkeys dying in
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: masts right, like you'd see with waterfowl. But we we
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: know that turkeys have diseases, and some of those diseases
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: kill birds.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: And then you you tack in, you know, go out
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: well out in the Midwest and look at agricultural practices
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: and how they've changed in the last few decades, and
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: how the availability of waste green is going to be
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: much less now because of how efficient harvesting practices are
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: and and how mechanized agriculture is. And I guess my
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: point is if you just start, if you sit back
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: and start in your area, start kind of picking apart
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: what's different now. It doesn't have to be something that's
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: so different than it smacks you in the face. It
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: could be something that just slowly erodes the landscape. And
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: that's kind of consistent with what we've seen with these
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: declines is they were not very rapid. They were very
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: very slow. It took us twenty years to get where
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: we are, and in a lot of ways it happened
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: right under our noses.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it's that idea of shifting baseline syndrome.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: We become used to a new normal and then that
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: becomes our baseline and we forget about what that old
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: baseline used to be twenty years ago or forty years ago.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Many of us never knew what it was like forty
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: years ago, so we have nothing else to compare it against.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: But yeah, if you were to take a snapshot of
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: our world today and compare it to what that landscape
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: looked like twenty years ago.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: It's people, it's unbelievable.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I talk with younger turkey hunters a lot
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: about this is, you know, if you're in your twenties
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: or your thirties, I mean, I'm fifty four, I've been
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: I started hunting turkeys as a teenager, and I saw
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: literally population restoration.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: But right before my eyes.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: I mean when I started turkey hunting, if you went
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: and killed a bird in the spring, you were you
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: were doing something.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: And then I went.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: Through a period where there were so many turkeys on
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: places I went, even public ground, that you were paralyzed.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: You didn't know which direction to.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: Head at, you know, a half hour before sunrise, a
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: little in every direction.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: It's like, this is unbelievable.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: And now I've seen those declines, and I've seen the
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: landscape change in my lifetime, and to your point, those
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: changes in a lot of cases, they reset your kind
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: of your normal, Right, And now I go to places
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: that I hunted when I was, say twenty five, and
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: I don't even recognize those places. And that happened right
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: in front of me, And at the time, it didn't
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: seem that big of a deal. Right, It's like the
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: ten years it took for that to happen, or the
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: thirty years it took that for that to happen didn't
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: smack me in the face like it does now now
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: I see it. And that's just kind of the way
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: human humans function, you know.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is. It's hard sometimes to recognize what
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: you were just sharing there, which is like the slow
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: accumulation of habitat change and loss and fragmentation. But it's
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: really easy for us to point a finger at competition, right.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: It makes common sense that if that raccoon or that
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: coyote is eating eggs or eating my turkeys, then I'm
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: gonna have fewer turkeys to kill. Right. Why is it
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: that you say that predators in their impact are directly
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: tied to habitat That connection seems possibly a little bit
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: harder to make. Could you help us understand that?
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what I'm saying there is is in a lot
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: of ways we have created situations that benefit a predator
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: versus a turkey.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: So if you if you if.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: You take a you know, take some of the big
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: egg eaters, rat snakes, raccoons, you know, species that even
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: coyotes that are good egg raiders. They you know, if
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: you're a raccoon or a coyote, you're you're hunting with
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: your nose and you're using a combination of queues, your eyesight,
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: you're hearing your nose to bounce around through the environment.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: And if you can get on something that's linear, like
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: a road or right of way or something that allows
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: you to efficiently traverse your range, you can be more successful.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: You can hunt bigger ground, you can and particularly we
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: see this with raccoons is they are so intensive in
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: how they function as a predator.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: They just course.
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: Over and over and over through places, and so they
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: are going to find a nest if it's there, right,
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: if it's there, if it's in the core of their
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: activity areas, they're going to find it. And so if
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: you kind of think about that and you say, okay,
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: I'm going to take these big chunks of habitat and
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: split them up into ten smaller chunks that may not
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: seem like a big deal to us because we're just
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: looking at it. It's green vegetation, it's forced, it's but
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: every time you split it into sections where a predator
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: can more effectively course it, they are going to be
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: more effective in general. And so that's what I'm saying
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: is in a lot of ways, the habitat issues that
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: we're that we're seeing are kind of predisposing turkeys to
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: dealing with predation rates.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: And the other thing I.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: Would say is on the flip side, there's a large
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: body of research showing that you can mitigate predation through
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: wise habitat management. You know, a prime example in my
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: area would be my own research showing that when you
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: conduct prescribe burns, you fundamentally change how coyotes and raccoons
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: use areas that are prescribed burned because you're essentially creating
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: a vegetative community that's not as conducive to their foraging efficiency.
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: So by burning these these stands, you're causing predators to
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: have to shift their centers of activity, and in so doing,
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: you can correspondingly, you know, increase turkey success because you're
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: changing how predators are distributed.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: So someone listening to this right now might be thinking,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: all right, I want to try to improve the situation
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: for turkeys in my area, and I only have so
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: much time and so money resources, and I'm thinking about
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: how best to use my time. If you had, if
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: you were forced to choose, and if you were forced
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: to pick between investing time and energy and resources into
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: directly addressing predation by way of trapping and hunting, or
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: by investing your time, energy and resources into improving habitat.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: I think I know the answer, But which would you choose?
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, ideally I choose both. I'll always answer this
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: the same way. It really depends on what you can
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: control or what you can influence on at scale. Right,
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: And so if you're thinking about a while turkey, you
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: have to understand that their home rangers are quite large, right,
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: if you're in the eastern United States or up into
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: the upper Midwest where you are, I mean, you're talking
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: birds that use thousands of acres in their annual cycle.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: And then if you go out west and you look
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: at you know, subspecies like merriams, they may move ten
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: to fifteen twenty miles between their winter range and their
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: their spring breeding range. So you've got an area that
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: you got an animal uses a lot of area, right,
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: and so that's kind of how I approach the answer
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: to this question. Okay, if you're impacting turkeys at scale,
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: at a fairly large scale, then I'm always going to
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: start with habitat if I can. As you scale down,
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: you just have to understand that your expectation needs to
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: be kind of predicated on the fact that you're influencing.
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: You know, if you're managing ten acres or twenty acres
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: or fifty acres, you're influencing a small part of that
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: animal's home range. So you just have to be you know,
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: your expectations have to be couched in that. The same
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: goes with predators, exact same scenario. If you're if you're
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: capable of influencing predator abundance and distribution and activity at
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: a larger spatial scale, then you would expect to have
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: more impact on your local population than if you were
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: trapping a ten acre you know, wood lot in the
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: back forty if you will. And the other thing that's
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: important to understand with predators is that there are a
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: lot of predators that influence turkeys and some of those
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: predators can't you can't legally manage right, and so that's
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: just that's an important reason for me. I'm trying to
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: do both if I can. If I can influence habitat
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: and predators, I'm going to do that. If I can't
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: touch habitat right, I have no ability to do anything
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: with the habitat and the property that I have access to.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: If you're interested in managing predators, I encourage people to
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: do it.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, try it.
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: If you've ever trapped, you realize that that's an incredibly
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: rewarding activity. It causes you attention to detail, and it
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: puts you out in the woods at a time when
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: otherwise you may not be out there, and all of
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: that's good. Just be realistic in your expectations. That's the
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: way I answer that.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: On the habitat side, I feel like this is one
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: where there's a lot of tailwinds, at least for those
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: people that own or lease land already for hunting, because
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: there's there's been so much energy and education in managing
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: habitat within the white tail world, improving habitat in these lands,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: and I'm curious if there is any conflict between the
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: typical practices that are discussed and recommended for whitetail habitat
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: management versus what's best for turkeys. So with the typical
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: guy who's been trying to make his property better for
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: deer hunting, is that guy helping turkeys too, or do
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: we need to consider some alternatives or adjusting our approach
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: if we really want to address the turkey issues too.
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, in a lot of ways they're compatible. You know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: managing for deer and turkeys are compatible in a lot
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: of ways, but not all. And one fundamental difference that
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: I think hunters need to understand is that, you know, whitetails,
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: when they're threatened, they want to run a short distance
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: and stop and hide. And so as a deer hunter,
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: we're thinking betting cover, security, cover juxtaposed to foraging areas. Right,
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: We're we're thinking, Okay, I'm going I can catch this
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: buck coming from his bedding area to where he's going
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: to feed, or we're thinking, you know, transitions between vegetative communities,
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: and so we're kind of thinking, like, you know, a deer,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: but in the turkey world, you have to understand they
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: need to see and then be able to run, right
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: and their last escape mechanism is flight. They don't really
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: want to fly. And the reason is very simple and
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: we don't have to go into it. But turkeys are
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: a big bird and they have a high amount of wingloading,
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: which means their wings are not very proportionate to their bodies.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: So they're not designed to fly. They're designed to sail.
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: And so turkeys need to be able to see. So
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: if you're thinking about, you know, a forage plot for instance,
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: and I'm thinking, as deer hunter boy, i want it
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: thick right up to the edge, right because that joker
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: is going to pop out there and he's right on me,
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: he's dead. For a turkey, I want that bird to
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: stand in that plot and be able to see up
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: into the surrounding forest. And so what I encourage landowners
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: that I interact with if you want both, there are
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: ways to do both. You just have to be very
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: surgical in how you plant it. So, for instance, if
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: I'm looking at a food plot that I've planted or
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: a foraging area where I'm trying to attract deer and
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: i want turkeys to also kind of be attracted to it,
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: I'm managing at least one part of that forest surrounding
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: that plot to be open, right, so birds can see.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: And I'm trying to get intel, if you will, on
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: how are birds accessing this plot, where are they coming from, where.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: They when they leave, where do they go?
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: And then I'm trying to set up a very surgical
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: management scenario for literally every part of that property so
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: that I can optimize the attractiveness for white tails but
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: also give my birds the ability to see.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned this open hardwoods kind of habitat, which,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: to your point, is sometimes something that deer hunters don't want.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: It looks nice, but white tails don't always love to
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: spend a lot of time in it. But what about
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: nesting and poulting habitat. That's something that you know, seems
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: like it's very important for turkey productivity as well. Can
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: you help me understand what that looks like and why
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: that's important and how somebody might build to create that.
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean nesting habitat is you know, it's variable
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: and I'm not going to say it depends, but it
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: really does. I mean Turkey's nest and all kinds of stuff. Right,
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: So if I took you to the two thousand nests
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: that we've you know that we've looked at over the
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: last however many years from GPS marked birds. You would
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: kind of as a hunter outdoorsman, you would at some
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: point you go, okay, I see a little bit of
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: commonality from one spot to the next.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: But not a lot.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: And it's because hens are highly variable and how they
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: how they choose to put a nest at a particular spot,
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: and so some nests are really thick and dense like
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: you would think white tail bedding cover, but many nest
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: are in places that are wide open, and the common
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: theme seems to only be she thinks she's hidden when
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: she's sitting right here.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: That that's the common theme. And so my point is
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: turkeys will nest in a in.
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: A wide array of different vegetative communities, but be thinking
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: of about it needs to be dense enough at ground level,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: say knee and below, that she can.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: Hide in it right and not be seen.
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: And it also needs to provide some overhead cover so
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: that aerial predators can't see her as well. And that's
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: kind of what we see. Most nests are up against
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: something a shrub, a bush, a log, a stump, something,
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: and there's some type of cover around her that she
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: feels she can hide in. But when you get to
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: brood habitat, it completely flip flops. The first couple of weeks,
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: they're a few inches tall and they're hatching, right, They're tiny.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: They need bare ground, they need overhead cover. So if
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: you think about places where you would walk where you're
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: kind of you're kind of pushing things at knee height
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: out of your way. Yet you're not tripping up on vegetation.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: It's not a mat of grass on the ground. You're
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: walking freely, but you're just having to kind of brush
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: some things aside. That's kind of an early brood cover.
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: I tell I give people this analogy. Just lay down
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: on your stomach and if you can see out in
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: front of you, then they can too, right, And then
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: if you hop up on a knee and you look around,
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: if you can see, then the hen can see as well.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: So that that's.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: Early brood cover. Looks completely different than nesting cover, Like
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: they're completely different. But then what you start seeing is
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: when broods get older, about the time you and I
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: start seeing them, right, they're chicken size. They're out in fields.
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: The reason they're out in those fields and pastures and
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: more open and grassland type areas is because they can fly.
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: And so once they get to that stage, that's when
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: we start seeing them in open fields and areas like that,
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: and at that point their survival is much higher. And
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: so my point is you literally go from I need
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: to hide in plain sight to I need to see.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Right and then.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: As I get two three weeks old, now I can
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: use a lot of different things, and so I'll go
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: out in the open where I'm visible because I can
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: use those vegetative communities and escape risk because.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: I can fly.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: So there's all these different ways that we can, on
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: an individual basis try to create this kind of habitat
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: in the landscapes that we own or lease or manage,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: whatever it might be. Is there anything broader, more scalable,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: like at a state level or or federal policy level
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: or anything like that that could help us with this
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: habitat side of the challenge. I don't know. Is there
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: something in the farm bill that we if we could
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: just get this across the line or anything else that
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: at a broader scale could help with these habitat challenges
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: we have across Turkey.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: Habitat Yeah, I think you know, from a and some
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: of this this is ongoing with other you know, related
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: to other species and or landscape types, but farm bill
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: programs that provide financial incentives for landowners, cost share type programs,
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: things that are going to allow us to be able
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: to implement changes and not have to cover all the costs.
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: To be honest with you, Mark, I see a lot
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: of a lot of the landowners that I interact with
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: don't even know that such things exist, right, And so
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: you will go to some states and talk to local
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: whether it's Natural Resources Conservation Service or or other agencies.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: You'll talk to their staff and there's in some cases
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: very little interest in using call share programs from landowners
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: in that area. And of course you go to some
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: areas and that's it's the reverse. But I think continuing
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: to explore options that incentivize us to manage our properties
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: wisely and to implement practices that are going to ensure
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: early successional vegetation communities. Early succession that you know, turkeys,
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: their ability to see means that there's early successional habitat there,
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: and so anything that's going to incentivize us to manage
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: our properties in ways that sustain early successional vegetation I
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: think are going to be critical to the future of
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: this bird and many many other species that thrive in
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: those same those same habitat types.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to kind of take that and then
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: circle back to somewhere towards the beginning where we started.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Habitat in many ways regulates the potential productivity for a
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: population of animals, right, And I've heard you make comments
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: somewhat to the effect of the fact that in some
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: places sometimes we might be hunting with a either set
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: of regulations or with an effectiveness because of our technology
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: or whatever might be that might be above and beyond
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: what habitat can support today. Is that Is that an
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: accurate representation of of of how you feel and your
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: concerns about this kind of third leg of the stool.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: If habitat and predation are these two big ones, I
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: think you mentioned harvest being that third major leg. Can
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: you can you expand on that a little bit?
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I would just say, you know, the relative impact
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: that harvest would have on a population, obviously is going
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: to vary from spot to spot, county to county, state
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: to state, etc. I think in the Turkey world you
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: have to recognize that turkeys are very unique and that
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: we hunt them during their breeding season. In the game
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: bird world, that is not the norm. So if you
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: were to think about it, let's say, as a waterfowl hunter,
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: if I told you to go to the prairies and
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: hunt mallards in May, right, that would be the analogy.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't even consider doing that.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: So you just have to understand that we are hunting
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: wild turkeys in the spring while they're breeding, and in
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: many cases early in their breeding period, and throughout their
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: entire breeding period, depending on the state that you're in.
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: In some states, you can start hunting in early reading
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: and hunt the entire breeding season, you know, so the
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: season encompasses the entire breeding season.
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: And because of that, you know.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: We've known for many decades that harvest for this bird matters, right,
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: the timing and rate of harvest matters at a very
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: low rate, Like you're killing a really small percentage of
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: your males. May probably doesn't matter when you kill the bird,
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: but if you're going into a population and taking out
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: a significant percentage of your males every year, and you're
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: doing that early in the breeding period, then logically, at
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: some point, as populations decline, It doesn't to me, doesn't
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: seem logical to think that you can continue to do that.
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: If you're producing fewer birds, then you're going to have
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: to take fewer birds. And that's like we were talking
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: about earlier, with the harvest in many states declining the
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: way it has that, you know that that shows me
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: that we have you know, we have an issue when
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: our harvest is declining by fifty plus percent. And something
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: you and I talked about before we started is, you know, okay,
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: what do we look like ten years from now, twenty
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: years from now, fifty years from now. And when I
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: look at North America and I see the world through
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: my lens, which is a turkey hunter and a scientist,
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: and I'm trying to think about what the future looks
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: like for me, we just can't produce the number of
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: turkeys that we used to produce. And we're never going
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: to produce the number of birds that we did twenty
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: years ago. And the reason for that, irrespective of harvest
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: or any seasons or bag limits or anything, the landscape
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: in North America in many areas just can't it can't
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: produce that many birds. And the reason is, like all
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: these things we've talked about. I mean, all the changes
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: to have TAD and everything that's ongoing competing land uses
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: in North America are incredible. And if you're a traveling
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: turkey hunter and you go places like, for instance, Florida,
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: go to Florida and look at what is happening in
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: the state of Florida. Literally, that state is imploding on
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: itself from from coast to coast towards the center. It's
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: imploding on itself. And if you're a wild turkey living
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: in Florida, a local population, you're not going to be
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: able to function the same as you did twenty years ago.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: I mean that should be to me, is common.
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: Sense that if you've got a shrinking land base, then
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: turkey populations are not going to be able to sustain
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: themselves at the levels.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: That they did.
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: And so is that going to require us to change
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: the way we behave as hunters. I think logically the
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: answer is yes.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Over the last five years or so, give or take,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: there has been a tremendous amount of conversation around that
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: question of how, how does our behavior as hunters need
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: to change? How should regulations possibly change, or season timing
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: or length change, or you know, practices like reaping or
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: using certain kinds of loads or whatever it might be.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: There's there's all sorts of kind of internal discussion around
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: this within the Turkey hunting community. What of all of
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: these possible changes that have been debated and discussed at
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: you know, in bars and on message boards and everywhere,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: what actually could make a difference And which of these
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: things are just you know, verbal sparring that that really
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: maybe aren't actually impactful.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you, if you kind of look at
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: this from the standpoint of the state agencies, and I'm
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: not speaking on their behalf, if I'm simply explaining to
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: the listener how regulations work, agencies are going to be
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: very reticent to try to you know, trying to change
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: the ammunition we shoot or those types of things. That's
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: just that that's not going to sell.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: You have some states that have prohibited, you know, certain
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: practices like fanning or reaping, or the use of decoys
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: or whatever the case may be. At the end of
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: the day, none of that matters unless it impacts the
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: timing and rate of harvest.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is if you change
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: something and it doesn't change the percentage of males that
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: are removed, and when they're removed, then why who cares? Right,
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: That's what agencies are trying to influence. They're trying to
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: influence when birds are shot and what percentage your shot
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: under the recognition that they're trying to minimize in some state,
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: trying to minimize extensive, intensive early harvest.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, And the reason.
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: They're trying to do that is just this recognition, which
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: we know most turkeys are going to die the first
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: couple weeks of the season in many states, regardless of
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: when the season opens. And that's because right we're engaging
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: with birds, they're not educated as well. We harvest whatever
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: we're going to harvest, and then as the season progresses,
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: harvest declines dramatically, and then by the time it gets
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: warm in some places, or your kids start playing ball,
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: or you start fishing or whatever it.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: Is, we don't pay attention anymore.
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: And so what agencies are trying to control is when
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: the bird is dying and what percentages die. What they're
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: going to change to do that is they're going to
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: try to regulate bag limits, They're going to try to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: regulate the timing of the season and they're going to
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: limit opportunity, right, They're trying to change our opportunity to
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: be out there, because opportunity kills. If you give turkey
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: hunters more opportunity, they're.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: Going to be successful.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: And so, whether you like it or love it, and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: I don't think any of us like being told we can't,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: we can't do something the way that we're used to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: doing it. But whether you like it or not, that's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: what they're trying to do. They're trying they're trying to
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: change the one thing they can control at a state level.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: They're trying to change that in hopes that it will
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: mitigate some of these issues that have been observed in
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: some states.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: And so that's that's why you see the.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: Changes to regulations and maybe not some of the other things.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: That are at practice.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: So to the turkey hunter who sees their state possibly
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: change those season dates or bag limits or something and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: they're toed off about it, what do you say to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: that guy or girl, whether it be about the value
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: of making that change or the efficacy of that change,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: how would you respond when Bill or Betty says this
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: is bullshit, I'm not doing this, or this is ridiculous.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, The first thing I say is I want thousand
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: percent get it, like I understand, I mean, regulation changes
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: are contentious. Again, I don't want you to tell me
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: that the last ten years, I've been doing this thing
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: that I live to do all year, and now suddenly
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: I have to do it differently. And I don't want
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: you to tell me that. You know, I'm used to
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: starting this thing that I cherish on this date, and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: now suddenly I have to stop doing that. I have
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: to do it a week later, or two weeks later,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: whatever it is. I don't like it, So I get that.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: The other thing that I think creates real challenges for
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: for US hunters.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: Is that states make these changes.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: And you have to understand that there are that these
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: changes in many ways end up being politically driven and
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: not framed around biology. And I'll give you an example
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: hypothetical that you can apply to many states. The state
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: Wildlife the biological staff will make a recommendation to the Commission,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: for instance, in a particular state, and say we recommend
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: based on the science that the season open here, that
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: the bag limits be this, et cetera. Okay, they then
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: they make that change, but they don't they can enact
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: to that change, that the regulation that ends up being
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: put into place is then going to be tweaked in
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: the political process, and so what comes out the other
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: end in many cases is not what was recommended specifically
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: by the biological staff. It's some derivation of that, right.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: And so my point there to the listener is just
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: because a change was made should not cause you to
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: think that that change is going to have an effect
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: at a population level.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: So for example, a state delays their season opener for
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: a week, I'm just creating, I'm just giving you a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: scenario by a week, and they reduce a bag limit
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: by one bird.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: The hunter in US goes, well, see, nothing's happened. That
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: shit didn't work. Let's go back to where we were.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: But what you have to understand is the season may
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: have opened three weeks before peaks and breeding activity. Right,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: So the one week delay was just window dressing, and
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: a percent of hunters in that state, again just hypothetical number,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: don't kill the full bag limit. Okay, So reducing the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: bag by one let's just say, saved five hundred birds
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: in a state, and the one week delay shifted the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: harvest from three weeks before peaks and breeding to two
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: weeks before peaks and breeding. But like I've already said,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: which the data show this clearly in most states, but
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: most of your tims that are going to die are
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: still dead in that scenario before you reach peaks and breeding.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: So would you expect that to matter?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: And to me, the answers no, I wouldn't expect it
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: to matter. And that you know that creates real challenges
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: for us as hunters and as academics because it's like,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: you know, the hunter and us was what did it help?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: Did that matter?
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: And if the answers well, not really, well, then let's
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: go back to the way we were. But you if
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: you put your state agency glasses on and they go, well,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: wait a minute, we're charged legally with ensuring sustainability of
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: these populations. Were trying to do something that's going to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: mitigate these ongoing declines. And so it puts us as
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: hunters in kind of a conflict with the agencies because
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: they're making a change. We expect something to happen. It
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: doesn't happen, and now we're even more skeptical of any
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: management action. Really, And so to your original question, when
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: that when Bill brings that up. The first thing I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: say is I totally understand, one thousand percent understand, but.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: You would also or would you also ask him to
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: have a little bit of understanding for what they're trying
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: to do and hoping they can achieve.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I also think, and this is me speaking
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: as Mike the turkey hunter and Mike the person that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: interacts with state agency administrators, commissioners, and biological staff. I
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: think we as hunters are going to have to give
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: state agencies enough social license to make changes and be
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: patient to see if those changes have any influence on
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: the population, because that is what agencies are going to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: try to control harvest. That's the lever they're going to pull,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: whether we like it or not, because we can we
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: can scream in a state agency all day long, do
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: something about the habitat, do something about the predators. The
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: scale at which state agencies are thinking about turkeys is
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: not on your farm. They're thinking about it at a
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: statewide level, and so they're trying to enact things that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: are going to have potential to influence at that scale.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, and so I.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: Understand the frustration of saying, well, do something about habitat,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: but you have to understand that state agencies don't control most.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Habitat in any state.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: So at the end of the day, something we talked
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: about earlier is private landowners and our willingness to consider
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: ways that we can implement practices that can benefit the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: wild turkey. That's going to be key to the future
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: of the bird, because agencies are going through time, are
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: going to continue to make changes for I mean you,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: if populations respond, you'll see seasons liberalized again. But in
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: the face of ongoing declines, what you're seeing is agencies
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: controlling they what they can at that scale.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: A little thought exercise here, Imagine that you stumble into
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: an amazing windfall of power and you all of a
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: sudden control the management of turkeys across the entirety of
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: the United States, and you have full rain to adjust regulations,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: season length, bag limit, season timing, anything like that. And
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: I guess it's narrow downloabit We'll say we'll pick a state.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: In any one given state, you have the ability to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: adjust that regulatory framework in any way you possibly would
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: like to. I would like to know, number one, how
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: would you change hypothetical structure of these regulations if we're
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: in one of these states where declines are underway, So
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: I'd like to understand that it's the ideal as best
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: as you can think of. And then number two, as
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: an individual, what would you do to reflect these changes
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: to best account for the fact that these declines are happening?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: So what would you say, as an individual you would
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: do to adjust your hunting practices or strategies or approaches
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: or personal limits you might place on yourself given those realities.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So for the first question, would I would just
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: rely on the science, and there have been multiple documents,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: scientific documents written about this topic offering recommendations, some of
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: those authored by state agency biologists themselves, noting that the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: most conservative season framework for wild turkeys would be to
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: open the season timed around peaks and nest inc cubation,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: meaning a large percentage of your hens are sitting on
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: nest and at that point are not receptive to breeding anymore.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: So there's some percentage of toms that could be removed.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: A less conservative but also biologically appropriate season would be
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: to open at peaks and laying activity, and the reason
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: for that would be a lot of your hens are
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: starting to lay clutches and so they are well along
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: in the breeding process. Why is that less conservative, Well,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of breeding that also occurs during the
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: laying period, So hens are continuing to copulate with toms
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: during while they're laying eggs, and there's a lot of
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: competition at that time, which is why you see gobbling
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: activity often peaks when you have the peak and laying
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: activity because there's a lot of competition. Right then, Tom's
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: recognize if you think about it from their perspective, the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: hens are leaving them every day for some period of time,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: going to a nest, laying an egg, so they're not
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: available all the time, and Tom's are sensing that. They're
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: sensing that hens are starting to break up.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: They're leaving.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: She's not always around me, and so there's a lot
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: of competition. Okay, So if I were, if I were
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: in the position you gave me in the first question,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: I would time the season around one of those two periods,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: depending on when exactly that occurs in a given.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: Area and.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: What harvest would look like in general. So, in other words,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: if you have if I had data available to me
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: and I knew what harvest rates look like, if you
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: were in a situation where hunting activity is not very
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: it's not super high. In a particular state, then you
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: could probably support a little bit earlier harvest, say peaks
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: and laying. But if I were in a state where
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: my population has declined by fifty percent plus and it
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: is continuing to decline, then I would try to frame
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: the season in a way where a lot of the
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 4: breeding activity has already occurred by the time I start
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: removing birds, and I and the other thing I would do,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: which this is but you're giving me a scenario that
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: would be cool.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: Unfortunately, the way our regulations work, and I say our
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: I don't. I don't set regulations, so but I'm telling
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: you the reality.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: It takes years.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: So, right, an agency recommends a change, it's it can
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 4: take years for that change to occur, and then.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: It can't like that.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: It's not an iterative type adaptive process in a lot
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: of situations. So it's not like let's see what nesting
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: season looks like this year, and let's make an immediate
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: change to the season next train.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: Right, that doesn't happen.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: So we are making changes that are going to occur
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: down the road, and then we're continuing to collect information.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: It may be another set of years before another change
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: is implemented, although the discussion surrounding that change started years earlier.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: And I'll give you an example regulations changes made in
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: and I won't name the state, but a southeastern state.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: There were regulation there were changes being discussed in an
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: agency a full eleven years before they were implemented. And
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: so it's very common for agencies to have these conversations
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: and then it take years to to make the change.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: The second question, what this is just me? I mean,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: as an individual hunter, I'm trying to assess what the
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: population looks like, you know, in the areas that I'm hunting,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: and and I'm just I'm using my my.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: Intel and my own observations to dictate how I behave.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: If that, If that requires me to take fewer birds
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: off of a particular property, then I do it. If
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: it involves me not taking any birds off of a property.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: I have a property right near my house that I
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: went fourteen years from what I you know, till I
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: shot a bird last year. And it was because I
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: just could not justify killing a bird on that property
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: given the abundance in the local area. But through years
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: of management, not just on this property, but the rounding neighborhood,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: our population now has come back and looks decent, you know,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: and so I felt comfortable shooting a bird there last year.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: So as a as an individual hunter, I'm just kind
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: of I'm trying to think through each year in the
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: places I go. You know, if I have history there,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: then I kind of know what the population is trending,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: and I'm going to adjust my behavior accordingly, and if
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: that involves taking fewer birds in certain places, and that's
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: what I'll.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: Do in the last five years or so where there's
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: been And tell me if you think I'm wrong on
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: this kind of broad strokes assessment here. But give or
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: take the last five years or so, this has become
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: a little bit more of a popularly discussed topic. Have
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: we made any progress? Has anything positive happened in the
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: last five years or so since this conversation has become
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: more public and Turkey hunters seem to be realizing that, oh,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: the the golden days maybe are are not here anymore,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: We're entering a new era. Has anything turned around? Have
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: we seen any changes in either hunter activities or regulations anywhere,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: or habitat or anything that makes you think like, oh,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: we sounded the alarm on some of this stuff and
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: we're actually seeing some positive shifts occurring.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Oh lot, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: I think in the last six years since COVID, that's
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: when it that's when it started to shift. In my opinion,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: is that spring. First of all, we were stuck. Second,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: we were told, like in many like in my case,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: I had to cancel multiple trips to go out of state.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: We couldn't interact with each other, We had nothing to do.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: We were we were concerned with what was going on,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: and we started communicating with each other through social media.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: And I think a lot of people in the Turkey
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: hunting world started listening to podcasts and having conversations and
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: they started one potentially seeing that a problem existed somewhere
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: and they weren't aware of it, or they started hearing
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: other people say the same thing they were seeing and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: they were like, oh shit, okay, that not just being
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: not just me. And they started having more conversations, and
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: they started becoming educated about what other people were experiencing.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: They started sharing perspectives, sometimes heatedly, right, and that's okay.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: And I think you started seeing this upswell of kind
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: of attention focused around turkeys and the ongoing declines, which
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: you know, we had been talking about since twenty fifteen.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: That was when we first published some of the work
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: showing regional declines in the south. And fast forward six
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: years and yeah, I think there's been a tremendous chain
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: and I think a lot of people are having these
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: conversations like we're having right now, wherein there's recognition that
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: we may need to change things we're doing, whether it's
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: it's management, whether it be our own behavior. I think
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: a lot of turkey hunters now understand that they can
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: be part of the solution in many cases, and they
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: can be part of the future, and they want they
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: see true value in that, and that's awesome. And so
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: I think if I look now at the conversations that
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: I have, they are comparatively way different than they were
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen, way different. And I think that's good
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: and that tells me the future of the bird. There's
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: a future there because turkey hunters are going to be
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, we are the ones that are going to
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: be the future.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: Our willingness and our passion to buy a hunting licenses,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: to purchase the things that we were talking about to
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: spend our money and our time focused on hunting this
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: bird and supporting conservation of the bird. We are the
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 4: future of this bird, period. And so like our earlier
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: discussions about students and you know who populates our agencies,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: and how do we incentivize landowners to manage how it's
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: have for turkeys, and how do we ensure cost share
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: programs and farm bills that are going to target management.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: Turkey hunters are going to be front and center of
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: that because turkey hunters are the ones that most value
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: the wild turkey and most want to see this bird
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: on our landscapes in the future. So the future of
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: the turkeys starts with us.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: So would that be the case? Paint for me two pictures.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: This will be the last thing I asked, and it's
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: a doozy, but paint me a picture of a world
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: twenty years from now. I want to imagine my youngest
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: son will be twenty six, my oldest son will be
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: twenty eight, adults on their own, hopefully avid turkey hunters.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: Maybe they're starting their own young families at that point.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: Possibly in that world that I'm hoping for and imagining
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: for my kids. Paint from a picture of first a
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: worst case scenario, what that would look like and what
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: would have to happen for that to come to be,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: and then a best case scenario twenty years from now,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: what the best case could possibly be for turkeys and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: turkey hunting and what would have had to happen for
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: that to come to life.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: Damn, that is a doozy. Oh.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: I almost don't even want to ponder the worst case scenarios,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: you know, honestly, and I'm not trying to skirch your answer,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: but sure, I think I'm going to stick those two
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: scenarios into what I think is going to be the future.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: I think what you're going to be looking at is
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: a world where there there is a lot of demand
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: for a shrinking supply, and basic math and laws of
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: economics are going to tell you that your opportunity to
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: to be part of consuming this bird right through through
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: harvest is going to change as the future progresses, and
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: so the world that I think we're going to live
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: in a few decades from now, I think you're going
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: to see a continued use of quota systems by state agencies.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: I think you're going to see situations where harvest is
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: going to be increasingly more limited on public lands because
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: that's the properties.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: That agencies can control.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: I think you're going to continue to see, at least
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: for the foreseeable future, situations where states are going to
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: try to regulate non resident access because non resident hunters
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: kill a lot of turkeys. And I'm part of that
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: problem myself. You know, my calendar is full go every
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: spring because I love to do that, and so I
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: see that, and so I see your kids hunting in
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: a world where activity and opportunity is going to in
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: some cases be limited because of the availability of the resource.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: I also think you're going to continue to see situations
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: where competing land use essentially causes turkeys to disappear from
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: parts of the landscape, and so our collective population inevitably
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: are going to have to decline, particularly in local areas,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: and in some places, I think you may actually see
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: the reverse. You may see populations respond like we've talked
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: about very early on and start to do much better.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: But across the bird's range, I think you're going to
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: be looking at situations where pockets of turkeys that are
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: existing now will not exist in twenty years, and so
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: what that's going to cause is a shrinking land base,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: right that contains turkeys, and that's going to put more
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: attention on the dwindling supply of turkeys, which again is
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 4: going to prompt agencies to.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: Change how we're able to pursue the bird.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: And that's just the that's the reality answer, if you know,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 4: whether you like it or not. I think that's where
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: we're headed with not just turkeys, many many species. As
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: you know, if you go out wes you know, I
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: mean in the big game world. You know, preference points
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: rules the world, you know, in many states, and that
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 4: could we be in a situation where we're applying for
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 4: preference points to hunt turkeys. I don't I don't think
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: that's far fetched.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: All Right.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: I told you that's gonna be my last question, but
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask one more. Now, give me one reason
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: for hope on this front. What's one thing that encourages
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: you that, hey, you know what, while all those things
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: are possible and maybe even likely, uh, there there's some
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: silver lining. There's some avenues for for moving things in
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: a more positive direction. Because I do think that one
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: thing about the hunting conservation community that has always almost
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: always been true has that has been that while we
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: have faced serious challenges in the past, very often unique
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: within the broader environmental or conservation community, we've always been
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: a very much let's pull on the gloves and get
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: to work. You know, we haven't been the group that
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: just moans and bitches about how things are all going
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: to hell, but instead we've actually been quite hands on
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: and saying, all right, well, I'm gonna do something about it.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: That's something that hunters and anglers have always done a
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: pretty darn good job of the last one hundred and
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: twenty some years. So with that in mind, give me
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: something to be hopeful about.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: That's an easy one to answer. Turkey hunters interacting with
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 4: turkey hunters. I see, you know, it doesn't matter if
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: you you can get on social media and find somebody
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: that that hates on this or hates on that, or
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: it doesn't matter because every turkey hunter at their core
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: wants the same thing. We want to be able to
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: hunt turkeys in the future, and we want our kids
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: and our grandkids to be able to hunt turkeys. We
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: all at our heart want the same So that's what
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 4: tells me there's hope, because there is a turkey hunting
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: community that is fanatical.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: About this bird.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: Turkey hunters, I say this, I've said it hundreds of times,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: are just different.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: They're just different people.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: They are cerebral and they have a passion that is
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: borders fanatical, right, And so you have people that are
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: that vested in this bird that it consumes their year,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: it consumes how they behave, it consumes who they are
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 4: as a person. It's their fabric. That is what gives
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: me hope because, like you've said, we've done this before.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: We've faced existential crisis, which we're not there with turkeys now,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: but we've faced situations where we didn't have turkeys and
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: we put our innovative caps on and we figured out
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 4: a way to make it happen. And now we've gotten
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 4: a little behind and our populations have declined, and now
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: we have to figure out how to reverse the ship.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: Understanding that, like we've talked about, there's all these challenges
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: and face things that we're going to have to face
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: and hoops we're going to have to jump through. Okay,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: let's just jump through them. Let's figure it out. Let's
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: let's put our innovative caps back on. Be willing to
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: give a little bit and figure out what the future
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: for this bird looks like and then be part of it.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 4: And that's that that gives me hope, and that starts
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: with turkey hunters.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe that's possible, and I have to I
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: have to thank you and give you, give you credit
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: for helping a lot of people start that journey. The
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: work you've done, the research, the broader communication effort that
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: you've led over the last hand, you know, however many
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: years you've been, you know, really be in the public eye.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: It's been tremendous and it's making a difference. So first
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: to thank you, and secondly, if there's people out there
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: listening who want to dive deeper into this, who want
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: to start engaging more and understanding what's going on with
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: turkeys and all the many, many different things that you share,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: could you tell folks about the Wild Turkey Lab and
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: other platforms or places where they can connect with you
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: or the information that you're sharing with the world.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Yeah.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: So I have a website, wild Turkey lab dot com
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: that is kind of a clearinghouse for the work i've done.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: All of the research articles that we've published are there
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 4: posted with a summary of what we did, what we found,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 4: and why you should care if you don't feel like
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 4: reading the entire paper. All of the social media posts
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 4: I've ever done our archive there, a bunch of the
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: podcasts that I've done our archive there, so you can
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: find all of that material if you're on social media.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: If you're on Facebook, if you just type my name in,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: you'll see my account. I post on Facebook, Instagram and
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 4: X every week. If you're on Instagram or X, it's
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: wild Turkey Doc, Wild Turkey Doc one word UH. Pretty
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 4: much the same content within reason, on on all of
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: those platforms, although I tend to post more on Instagram
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: than I do on the others because I share some
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: personal stuff there.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: But and lastly, if you're interested in.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: UH, we launched a huge nationwide genetics project last spring
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: called Wild Turkey DNA, and that's a project that's really
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 4: starting to expand this spring, and we're super excited about it.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: If you go to wald Turkey dna dot com, you
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: can see that that stuff there, and and we also
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: have socials. Wild Turkey DNA is on all three of
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 4: those platforms that I mentioned previously. So yeah, if you're
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: interested in any of that stuff. Check it out, and man,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: thank you for for being interested enough to go to
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: go to those pages and take a look.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great stuff. You've You've been a wealth of
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: information for for so many people, and I'm appreciative of
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: that and really appreciate you taking the time today to
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: talk turkey. While some of this, you know, is a
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: little bit a little bit discouraging when you dive into it,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: there's also a whole lot to be excited about turkey
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: season kicking off in a lot of parts of the country.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: And like you said, turkey hunting is a thing to celebrate,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: and it's a thing to get us off our tails
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: and work for these birds too. And so I think,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: you know, let's get out there, let's have an amazing season,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: let's enjoy it, and let's let that kind of refill
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: our reservoir with energy to go and do some of
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: these good things to keep it around for many, many
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: generations to come.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: Right, I completely agree, Get out there and spend some
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 4: time in the woods and the presence of this bird
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 4: and let it reach ourge reingines and then get to work,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: you know, in the summer, when the summer gets here,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: don't stop thinking about turkeys.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 3: And slow down and take a breath. Man.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 4: It spring goes by really quick, and it ends so
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 4: quickly for me every year, and then I have to
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 4: live all year to.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: Get back to slow down and soak it in. So true.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: All right, Thank you, Mike Man. All right, and that's
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: gonna do it for us today. Thanks for joining me,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: thanks for tuning in to this one. Good luck on
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: your future turkey hunts, and until next time, stay wired
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: to hunt.