And this is the one I feel like when I'm meeting with landowners and, you know, helping them put together a management strategy on their land, this is probably the one I spend the most time talking through and trying to get them to envision what we're trying to accomplish in terms of a blueprint across the property, you know, why we are arranging things in a particular way, and it's related to the connectivity.
And one area that I think that a lot of hunters overlook how beneficial that they could be to the turkeys on their property or their food plots.
Welcome to Wild Turkey Science, a podcast made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow.
I'm Dr. Marcus Lashley, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida.
And I'm Dr. Will Goolsby, professor of wildlife ecology and management at Auburn University.
We're both lifelong hunters and devoted scientists who are passionate about hunting, managing and researching wild turkeys.
In this podcast, we'll explore turkey research, speak to the experts in the field and address the difficult questions related to wild turkey ecology and management.
Our goal is to serve as your connection to wild turkey science.
You know, you and I were kind of talking earlier about what we're going to discuss today, and it is pretty apparent from the survey responses that we've had so far that folks never really get enough of us talking about habitat management and what they could potentially do to their land.
And so, you know, we would just, we would just kind of, you know, bounce some, some ideas and some thoughts back and forth on that today.
No, I think that's a good idea.
And particularly, you know, our recent episode where we got into monitoring folks, it's obviously really important this time of year.
And that's also something that I still get probably the majority of the questions about.
So I think it would be a good idea to talk about habitat management from that point of view, at least part of the time as well.
Absolutely.
So starting with, starting out with that, you know, we're kind of, I mean, pretty much everywhere, except maybe, you know, if you get into the extreme Northern part of the country or, you know, Southern Canada, most poults are getting pretty big by now.
Right.
So that specialized, you know, vegetation that we talk about them needing a lot on, on this show is not as important to them right now.
I'm not saying it's not, it's unimportant.
It's not as important.
Um, but it will be important again next year.
And so I feel like if we're going to talk about habitat for turkeys, we always have to start with brooding habitat.
And, um, as far as that goes, the lowest hanging fruit that I see on the vast majority of properties is that the open areas, like their food plots and their roadsides and powerline right-of-ways, gasline right-of-ways, odd areas as Craig calls them, you know, fruit tree orchards, whatever.
Any area that has enough sunlight that it could probably grow grass is that it's growing exotic grass.
Yeah.
And so this is something that people that even, you know, if they lease land, they can get out there with an herbicide and, you know, change that plant community that is preexisting.
They don't have to cut any trees or anything like that into something that's more usable by turkeys.
Yeah, I think that you're exactly right.
That is a low hanging fruit.
It's also, if you remember our episode where we were talking about what if I don't own land?
Yeah.
It's also air area that you could target on those places.
A long time ago.
Yeah.
It's been a while.
I'm sure we have a few folks that weren't listening back then.
They're listening now.
Yeah.
Well, our audience is definitely growing.
I don't know if they, if our new audience has, uh, you know, gone back through all the
episodes or not, but we did have an episode if you're in that boat that we kind of tried to
unpack the issue of, I don't own land, I lease it, so I'm limited.
What are things I can do to improve habitat?
Right.
I think for brooding cover, you know, that might be one of the opportunities that you have more
opportunity in that situation to affect.
So one thing, this is going to be kind of a sidebar, but it's sort of similar.
It was just posed to me yesterday by a local up in Northern Michigan.
Um, and he, he asked me, I forgot how he phrased it, but he was asking me what was
limiting Turkey populations essentially, and why we see differences in populations in
different places.
And one of the things he asked me about folks, and I think we've talked to a few people
about this and, and data suggests that the pull for him ratios are usually much higher
in the Northern.
Yeah, I think that tends to be true.
So then I I've been contemplating that, and I'm just curious, what, do you have any
reaction to why they might be quite a bit higher in the Northern part of the range?
So the Southern part.
I don't know, Mark.
There's something that comes to mind, but I feel like.
I've been going all around and there's plenty of predators around.
Yeah.
And I also don't see a lot of what I would consider high quality brooding cover.
Yeah.
But then I'm like, well, what, why would their pull for him ratio be higher?
I had a facetious answer.
Okay.
What's that?
They don't bait as much up there.
Oh, that is not, that is not the case.
I know that is not the case for the state that you're in.
Absolutely.
Um, that was my facetious answer.
My more serious answer now that I've had a little bit of time to think about it is I
wonder if it doesn't have something to do with the fact that they're growing season is so
much shorter.
And so succession takes longer to occur.
Thus, if you have an area that is in the early successional cover that oftentimes
supports brooding is necessary to support brooding, that it will be a more long lasting
feature on the landscape than it would be say in Alabama or Florida where we've got,
you know, a 10 month growing season or a nine month growing season, or even a 12
month, you know, down into peninsula Florida.
Yeah, I can see that.
And I've been noticing places that have been cut, you know, that it's impressive how
slow succession is occurring compared to what I'm used to.
Yeah.
So I could see that happening, but I also contemplated another answer and I know, say,
you know, we're on a sidebar, but it is related here.
It's still habitat related, but I started thinking, you know, we focus a lot on bolts
and when we're thinking about exposure with cold temperatures and maybe less, or
I would say most people don't immediately go into extreme heat temperature exposure.
And then I started wondering, I wonder if that is a big difference because here it's
not getting, you know, really hot on any day, basically on brooding.
Right.
Not compared to, you know, what the average temperature is basically daily.
And particularly at night, the temperatures are quite a bit cooler here
than what I'm accustomed to.
So I started wondering, I wonder if we're kind of on that other side of the, the
thermo neutral zone where, yeah, if you had a cold snap, that could be a real
problem, but it's usually not getting too hot.
Maybe it's often getting too hot for West and South, making that vegetation
structure way more important.
Yeah, maybe so.
But I think the other important thing to keep in mind too, is a lot of times we fall
into this fallacy of thinking that it has to be one thing when the reality is that
it's probably multiple contributing factors.
So, you know, you start thinking about everything that's different between here
and there, and you've got different land uses, different, you know, successional
trajectories, like we talked about, different species composition, different
invasives, both plant and animal, you know, like think about feral pigs, um, in the
South compared to the Northeast.
I mean, just so many things that you can stack up and add, um, that would make it
reasonable for there to be a difference between the North and the South.
Right.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Anyway, well, how, how do you, what, I guess, uh, if you're thinking about the
typical place, you know, that you're going to try to improve brooding cover, you
talked about the areas that are often, we'll say neglected, that could be improved.
So what, how are you going through your thought process when you're trying to
evaluate where am I going to focus my efforts?
Yeah.
So if I'm on a property where turkeys are a management priority, I'm going to, I'm
going to focus that on all of the open areas on the property, I think.
Um, and, and one area that I think that a lot of hunters overlook how beneficial
that they could be to the turkeys on their property or their food plots.
Um, and specifically what I mean is on the average hunting club, you know, what
do people do with their food plots?
They plant them in fall, they hunt them through the end of deer season.
And then they, especially if they're not turkey hunters, they don't look at them
again until they come back and plant them in fall, right?
Yeah.
I mean, maybe they come out a couple of days during summer and mess around with
tree stands and stuff like that.
But other than that, they're probably not doing much with the food plot.
So one of the things...
Other than maybe driving past them when they're on the property or something.
Not necessarily paying attention to what they look like.
Yeah.
So if you're not planning a warm season food plot, there is no reason, if you're
not planning a warm season crop, you're only planning cool season annual plants
in your food plots, there is no reason that you should not be managing for
brooding cover during the summertime.
Do you agree?
I think that's an obvious way that you can integrate your
deer and turkey management.
Right.
And the biggest problem that you're probably going to initially face when
trying to manage food plots for turkey brooding cover is ryegrass.
And we've talked about ryegrass quite a bit on here.
At least in the deep South.
Yeah.
And in the deep South, but then like, as you go further north, you're probably
going to have problems with like fescue and orchard grass and smooth brome.
And those are going to be a challenge.
Luckily, if you get the timing of application right, you can just use like
a generic glyphosate-based herbicide and deal with a lot of those cool
season grasses pretty easily.
And, you know, generally speaking, if you're spraying cool season grasses,
the best time to do it is when they start, you know, actively growing.
They're young and have vigorous growth in the fall.
And then if you have warm season exotic grasses, the ideal time is going to be
when they're young and vigorously growing in the spring.
That's when the best time to apply is.
Well, I think, you know, it may be a good time to talk about when you're using
herbicides to control something like that.
I think those plants are particularly problematic for you to reach your
objectives if it is, you know, if your objectives are relating to brooding
cover, those are particularly problematic.
And then, you know, if you don't take some effort to control them, it's going
to be very difficult for you to get to your objective.
Yeah.
So that's not to say we're necessarily trying to broadcast herbicide all the time.
I know, uh, there've been several people that have contacted me concerned about
that, but it may be necessary one time or some species multiple times
to get it under control.
And then the idea is you're trying to get to a place where you
don't need herbicide all the time.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't, I don't get any enjoyment out of having to put herbicide out.
And it's an expense for me, right.
But it's a tool that I'm not afraid to use either.
That's the way I look at it.
That I've run into this so many times where people talk about, you know, wanting
to improve brooding cover and then they just stop mowing their grass patch.
Yeah.
And it kind of starts getting rough and it's probably better than, uh, than
it just being a solid map of grass, but you know, the grass is still a problem.
If it's a patch underneath, you know, your, your forward cover or
whatever's regenerating in there.
Yeah.
Well, and that's still a problem.
So that, that is a really good, I think an important point.
And I have had people, you know, reach out to me and say, you know, in reference
to us talking about managing brooding cover with herbicides, I've had people
reach out and say, um, well, hasn't there been some paper, haven't there
been some papers published that show a negative effect of glyphosate on
pollinator communities, which of course, you know, pollinator communities would
make up a portion of the wild turkey's prey base.
I'm not familiar with that literature.
Um, maybe there are papers out there that have shown that, but the way that I...
There certainly are with some, some chemicals.
Yeah, but then, but then the way that I responded to that, to that message
was that very well may be the case, but I think what's more important is for
us to look at the net effect, right?
And I have seen many fescue fields, Bahia grass fields and Bermuda grass
fields that were converted to a native grass for mixture using herbicide.
And there is absolutely no question that the pollinators, the insects and the
overall native biodiversity benefited from that application.
Yeah.
You have a higher plant diversity and higher insect diversity.
That's obvious when you're...
No question.
I mean, just think about the amount of insects that you see on a Bermuda grass
hay field versus a field that's full of wildflowers, you know, and those
are the main species that we face.
If you're, if you're a turkey manager and you manage turkey habitat, you have no
excuse not to be able to identify, you know, fescue, Bahia grass, if you're in
the Southeast, Bermuda grass, if you're in the Southeast, um, what am I missing
Marcus?
Those are the ryegrass, obviously we've talked a lot about.
Yeah, the Bermuda, Bahia, ryegrass are the ones that I'm encountering by far.
Yeah.
Fescue as you get more into the Mid-South and then further North.
And I see orchard grass, a fair amount in that Mid-South region as well.
Yeah.
And so those were the main ones that you need to be able, be able to
identify and that we're targeting.
Um, Plateau can be a really good herbicide to use in, in battling some
of those exotic pasture grasses.
Um, Plateau does have some residual soil activity, so it'll help you out in that
regard.
Glyphosate tends to be my go-to chemical for most of our, um, most of our perennial
cool season grasses.
Um, Escort is what I typically use for Bahia grass, and then Arsenal is what I
typically use for Bermuda grass.
Um, but just, you know, beware of that if you're spraying under, under, um, non
pines, you know, if you're, you could, you could potentially damage them with
the Arsenal and some of the other, some of the others too.
Well, now, you know, even so, uh, we've, we've talked to a few people, it seems to
be a really contentious issue with, with, uh, in the community right now, uh, with
this regenerative approach and, you know, a lot of people, well, I guess part of
that approach includes excluding chemicals like herbicides.
So I think that's one thing that we need to work on and see what the trade-offs
are, right, because I think you're, most people that are engaged in that have a
different set of objectives.
Yeah, they are.
They might want to, to get, you know, turkey brooding cover out of it or, or
whatever else out of it, but it doesn't seem to be the overarching objective of
someone transitioning specifically to that practice.
Yeah, I think you have people that are, that are transitioning to it just to
reduce their input costs and that you have other people that are doing it, you
know, more so for the environmental objectives or the health objectives.
Yeah.
And I'm not, uh, casting shade on anybody, but if your objective is poult
rearing cover and you have a problematic plant in that mix, you know, in the
plant community dominating like Bermuda, yeah, you know, you, it may require some
action to take care of it and, and, you know, maybe it, it takes some action up
front and then you transition away from it over time because you get rid of the
problem.
So I think there's a lot of work to be done on, on this deal, you know, in trying
to figure out how to integrate turkey management into that approach.
But I do feel like since we've talked about it recently and we've got a number
of comments from people about that topic, uh, people would probably want us to
cover it here, especially when we're talking about using herbicides.
Yeah.
And the way that I'm looking at it right now, as far as, you know, the region ag,
I look at it as, um, I'm glad people are doing it.
I'm glad people are discovering these new tools and techniques because those are
more tools and techniques that I have in my toolbox that I can choose from to try
to accomplish my objectives.
I'm not, I'm not the type of person that I'm going to go out and do regenerative
ag just for regenerative ag sake, but if regenerative ag can better help me
create turkey habitat, or at least it can create just as good of turkey habitat at
a lower cost than conventional agriculture, a hundred percent, you know,
why, why would I not use the regenerative practice?
Well, and you, you were talking about, uh, a few minutes ago, trying to kind of
fall in, in this trap of trying to point to one thing that it is or isn't.
Well, we do the same thing.
Well, you're not trying, you don't necessarily have to go all in, right?
Maybe you pick a few places that you do one thing where maybe you've got a few
region plots and you've got a few other ones that you're going to do intensively
and deliberately trying to produce full cover regardless of how you have to go about that.
Yeah.
And looking back at some of the comments that people made on that, on those region
ag episodes, it seemed like that was one of their major frustrations is that we
were framing it as a black and white thing, like you either did regen or you
didn't, um, that was never our intent.
In fact, our intent was to start by explaining what it was kind of
from like a purist perspective.
And then like what is, what is the entire practice at, if you implemented
every part of the strategy?
Yeah, but we fully recognize and think, you know, people should be, you know,
picking and choosing those practices to help meet their objectives.
We were never suggesting that it was an all or nothing proposition.
I think more so what we were trying to do is establish what it is before we started
talking about what we might do or not do with, you know, with it when
it came to managing turkeys.
Yeah.
Well, I have gotten feedback from a few people that are using
some version of that practice that have been concerned about
the structure during brooding.
Yeah.
You know that, and I'm very much still in the learning phase, but it's
something that, um, there are a lot of people interested in it and you know
how that goes when people get really interested in some sort of habitat
management strategy, you and I both do the same thing.
We start trying to learn as much as we can about it and then start
working on it in some cases.
And so what we may eventually find is that you can use regenerative ag
practices and still have quality brooding cover, but you have to change
something about the, you know, this, the blend that you plant in spring.
Maybe you reduce the seed population or something like that to leave
more bare ground between plants.
Right.
Or you change this, you tweak the suite of species or maybe the timing of
some of the key things that you're doing.
And, uh, so, and we've talked about that on the other episodes, but, uh, I felt
like when we're talking about field management, that's going to be on the
tip of a lot of people's mind because we just went through those, that series
recently and, uh, there are, you know, that is gaining, uh, gaining steam
in terms of interest for people.
Yeah.
So back to, um, after our little regen ag sidebar, um, you know, back to
talking about the food plots or the roadsides or whatever, you know, when
you start out managing those, if you have widespread problems with some of
those species that we mentioned, maybe it'll require a broadcast application,
but longer term, the hope would be that you can maintain those areas just by
spot spraying, you know, a broad spectrum like glyphosate herbicide to just take
out, you know, it's like, oh, I had another, you know, fescue patch pop up
over here, I'm just going to go spray that one patch and I'm done.
Um, so the hope would be that over time, as you do this repeatedly, that
you're intentionally selecting for a species composition of desirable plants
so that there's less and less work to do.
Yeah.
I think that that's the ultimate goal is to get it into a maintenance stage
where, you know, it requires the minimum amount of time and resources to accomplish
your objective structurally and compositionally.
Yeah.
I had a quick question for you.
Uh, I would, I, it just popped into my head.
So for those out there, you know, just to kind of give you some context on what,
why I'm asking this, Will was doing some digging before the show and mentioned to
me that he had found an old forum or something that Love It was, was on and
answering questions, which is really cool.
And yeah, we're going to have to explore that a lot.
In fact, uh, we were thinking about covering some of the Q and A stuff that
he did, and maybe if there's new things that new data that have emerged that
could change what, how he answered things back in those days, if you'd like us to
do that, reach out to us, let us know that.
Yeah.
Uh, because I think that might be a fun episode.
And I think, you know, some of our audience might appreciate something like that.
Well, I had the idea.
I was like, I'm going to put the questions to you and we'll see how Marcus answers
and see and see if he was right by comparing to Love It, but I don't
think Marcus was crazy about that idea.
Yeah.
Well, I obviously have a lot of humility because how many times have you asked me
things that I just completely don't know or get it wrong, but I just let that go
on the air, you know, I don't, I don't know everything there is to know, but I'm
trying my best to become as knowledgeable about every aspect of this as I can.
There you go.
And that's the process, but the reason I brought it up, I was curious to you.
Did you see him talking about polts or poultry and cover anything?
And he had those Q and a no, I didn't notice any of that because I know he did
a lot of that imprinting work and I, I started thinking about that because they.
They didn't have the, the wide range of tools in terms of chemicals at their
disposal that we do.
So I'm really curious.
That's a really good point.
What their suggestions were to people, you know, I know we could glean that from
some of the early literature and I, and I have read through some of that, but I
was just curious if you had seen it, you know, since you were just on that forum.
I didn't, but you know, what's really interesting about that is that I didn't
see much information at all about habitat management coming from him.
And I, and I don't know if that was just because that's not what people were
asking about, cause I don't remember seeing a lot of questions, particular,
you know, in particular about it either.
But yeah, I didn't, I didn't see anything, any of his recommendations and you bring
up a good point, like they didn't have as many of the herbicide solutions that we
have now, but they also didn't have as many of the invasives as we have now.
That's right.
I was about to say that same thing.
Yeah.
They also probably weren't dealing with the same suite of particularly
sod forming grasses that we are now.
Yeah.
Well, that'd be interesting to look into, but if folks out there are interested
in hearing us talk about, you know, finding resources like that, I started
wondering if they, if there were actually multiple forums that we could find on
multiple historical figures like that, where they were doing sort of a Q and A type thing.
That'd be interesting to look into for sure.
Um, so I went, so I went first with talking about, you know, killing the grass, let's
say, uh, and stole that thunder from you.
So let's just, let's just continue with the theme.
And, um, so what's, what's going to be the next thing that you're going to look
at on the, on this hypothetical property?
In terms of like what I'm going to target?
Yeah.
Well, I think one thing we we've brought it up and some of our guests
have brought it up multiple times.
Brooding cover can be accomplished in fields, but it also exists elsewhere.
Right.
Or it can exist elsewhere.
And I think 100% look, looking at your forest management practices and, in
particular, making sure that you have some areas that have high sunlight
penetration to the forest floor and coupled with fire is a, another good way
that you can improve brooding cover.
And I think another advantage of that, depending on what stage it's in and
the fire return interval, you can simultaneously be providing brooding
and nesting cover in close proximity.
Right.
So that to me is another key thing.
It's not available to everybody because, you know, you may have a, you may not
own the land or some other suite of constraints that is keeping you from
just doing it optimally in terms of the distribution across the property.
But, you know, that's another key area to look.
I think in particular, I'm looking for areas that have, you know, at least 30%
penetration of sunlight, that could be much higher than that.
And I'm thinking about a fire return interval, you know, that is essentially
perpetually keeping it dominated by herbaceous species and, you know,
preventing succession of...
Yeah, it's just alternating back and forth between brooding, nesting, brooding,
nesting, it never gets past that.
Right.
And they typically, on most sites, the year of fire and sometimes the year
after fire, at least in the South, are pretty good brooding, structurally.
Yeah.
And then a little bit longer in the interval, like the second year and third
year after fire, might be really good for nesting that might extend a little
bit longer in some places, and it may be relatively short in some places as
well, in terms of that time interval.
With really long growing seasons and high rainfall in productive soil, like
you see in some places in the deep cell, you know, the two-year return interval
is almost necessary to avoid transitioning, you know, into the
mid-story with your hardwood.
Yeah.
I almost never, I almost never recommend that a landowner intentionally go three
years or more between burns in the Southeast when they're, when turkeys are
a priority, most of the time, it's going to be max two years, you know, as
fast as things grow down here.
Yeah.
But I think that-
But sometimes in poor soil productivity in particular, a little bit longer is fine.
Yeah.
And then also, you know, if they have deer objectives too, there's some
potential reasons that you would let it go a little bit longer.
That's an important point to make, but I'm glad that you brought up, brought up
the topic of brooding cover in the woods too, I think that's super important.
Um, and the reason that I normally think of it as being important is just because
that typically represents most of the acreage, you know, that a landowner
has, unless there may be like an ag-heavy area or something like that.
Um, so it's like, yeah, that's going to be the bulk of your property.
Let's make sure that we've got some good brooding and nesting there.
Um, let's create more brooding and nesting, uh, and typically cutting
trees is the number one way for a landowner to do that on the average
property, cutting trees is what's going to be required to do that or cutting or
killing, I guess I should say, because we can, you know, we can use herbicide to
treat trees and reduce the canopy as well.
But the other reason-
Yeah, forest stand improvement is really effective in some scenarios.
But the other reason that just occurred to me right now for the first time, um,
is that I think it could be super useful because of a reason that you pointed out
earlier, which is that most people think about poults getting, or turkeys in
general, getting too cold and not too hot.
Um, but while we're on the topic of thinking about them getting too hot, if
you're on a property where the only place that brooding cover is provided is out in
the opening, out in the opening, during summertime, like we're in right now,
especially for a late hatch brood, the amount, the duration of, um, availability
of those areas to, to young poults is going to be very limited during the
summertime because it's so hot, right?
So if you think about, if you're providing, if you're providing some of that in the
woods too, especially if you're in a, in an area that's had forest stand improvement
and there's been like a variable retention harvest implemented, which all that means
is in some areas you have more trees in some areas you have fewer, and that pattern
naturally oftentimes creates itself when we go in and we start selectively
removing trees that aren't beneficial to turkeys because they grow in clumps.
So I'll kill a clump of sweetgums, for example, over here and have a lot of
sunlight, so I've got brooding plants, you know, plants that are conducive
to brooding cover there.
And over here I had a bunch of oaks, so I've got more shade because I retained
those, so now we've got a situation where, okay, the sun's getting up, it's
getting a little bit of hot, that hen moves into the adjacent woodland with
her poults, so they have some shade, but because you've created that additional
habitat within the woodlands, now they can continue to feed, which means that
they're still growing, they're still gaining mass, and they're still going
through that, they're still putting on those feathers that they need to fly.
And all that adds up to faster growth and development equals
more poults that survive.
That's right.
And there was some of Lovett's work that showed that how long it takes
birds to get to flight can vary, and, you know, the higher availability of
high quality, uh, food and less stressful on the animals, the faster you get to
flight in a, you know, day or two may make a big difference in survival.
Yeah.
I mean, you think about it, like imagine if you weigh a quarter of a pound and
you can barely, yeah, you're a little quarter pounder, you're a quarter pounder
walking around in the woods, you can't even fly up in a tree at night, all that
kind of stuff, you know, one, two, three, four, a week, you know, like if we can
get a poult flighted in one week versus two weeks, you can imagine how profoundly
that would affect your rival probability.
Oh yeah, that could be, could be substantial.
So there was another thing that, while you were talking, it was
it came to mind for me in a sort of that third step, and this is the one I, I, I
feel like when I'm meeting with landowners and, you know, helping them
put together a management strategy on their land, this is probably the one I
spend the most time talking through and trying to get them to envision what
we're trying to accomplish in terms of a blueprint across the property.
You know, why, where you're organ or arranging things in, in a particular way.
And it's related to the connectivity.
So if you have like what you were talking about, if you're on a two year
return interval, well, that naturally creates a situation where you have
brooding cover the year of fire next to nesting cover the year after fire, and
they just kind of always switch places.
And if you're doing that across a large portion of the property, you're
not, and if you're doing that across a large portion of the upland, you know,
you're, you're sort of creating a situation where the nesting and
brooding are together and that's good.
But another thing that I think about quite a bit, and that it's been
influenced by several people over the years that are really knowledgeable
about all this, is thinking about connectivity throughout the property.
And maybe, you know, I run into this situation.
I'm sure you do where maybe you have a few upland pine, you know, plantation
type spots in this part of the property.
And then maybe you have some hardwoods and some fields and stuff
like that in between them.
And then you have another patch where you can manage for a lower basal area.
You know, they're not connected across the property in other words.
So that's what I'm doing when I'm visiting with folks is trying to figure
out how can we connect areas, particularly with brooding cover, so that
a hen with a brood could get from one patch to another while never leaving
relatively high quality brooding cover.
And that could be accomplished in a few ways, but one that I am, I think
is often a good way to do that is to use your road systems with daylighting.
So basically you're just, you're just pushing the woods back, pushing
the woods back away from your road.
Yeah.
And, you know, when I'm talking to landowners, there's several
things that come to mind for them.
A lot of people were thinking about, oh, if we need a 30 foot buffer, we'll
just split it and have 15 on each side.
Well, I tend to try to concentrate it on one side of the road so that it's wider.
Mm-hmm.
And also you, you kind of move your, your road traffic to one side of it.
And it's just easier from my point of view to, to manage it and have
it accomplish what you're trying.
Yeah.
If you couple that with some other practices like edge feathering, for
example, you can really create a nice layout where you could have brooding
and nesting cover together throughout the property where a hen, if she
chose, you know, you've got 300 acres and she's nested and hatched a brood
in one corner, she could get across to the other corner without ever leaving
a place that's safe to brood in.
Mm-hmm.
And I feel like that strategy, it is a really effective way for you to ensure
that you're providing adequate nesting and brooding cover throughout the property.
It's already, in most cases, the road system is designed for, well, in all
cases, I guess, designed for connectivity for you so that you can get around in
the property, but it's also often associated with the high ground.
So you kind of end up in this really nice situation where it's
distributed through the property.
It's often associated with high ground that you're going to be disturbing
frequently and it also, by design, gives you access to it where you're going
to be implementing disking or burning or herbicide applications or whatever
is associated with your road system.
And that, you know, those kinds of things are making your management
more efficient and, you know, distributing it throughout your
property, which I think are, you know, valuable traits of that management
approach, so I think that, you know, just kind of going through that
thought process is often really helpful for people to think through where
they should target and how should they should try to distribute
those things throughout the property.
Yeah.
And to your, you know, to your point, so not only if you do that, let's
just say, you know, you take your property and you go ahead and you put
a 30 foot, you know, opening along all of your roads, so you're accomplishing
that objective that you just talked about of improving connectivity, but
you're also accomplishing the objective that I talked about just a minute ago,
which is increasing early successional cover.
Yes.
Right.
So you're, you're doing both of those things at the same time.
Yeah.
You're hitting on many points, right.
That, that are necessary to be an effective manager.
Yeah.
You're, you're, you know, the connectivity, the amount available, uh, it being
distributed so that many hands that might be defending good patches from
each other or whatever's going on socially, you know, uh, they, they have
access to it, maybe they, for some reason want to travel, they can do that, but
it's also making it more efficient for you to implement the things you need to,
to manage it.
And it's a lot of ground to play with too, you know, like as soon as you open
that up, especially if you have a, like, I understand where you were coming from
talking about doing the one roadside, but then, you know, if there's, I've
been on some properties where landowners do 30 feet on both sides of the road.
You know?
Yeah.
And then there's nothing wrong with that.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so in that scenario, it's like, oh, well, I'll disc one half of one side of
the road this year and one half the next year, or, you know, you can start patch
working down your road system and, and you can, you know, burn it and you can
do all, you can plant some, it's just, it's fun.
You can get really creative with it.
There, and, uh, another thing that I think comes with it is it improves
the unability of the property at the same time.
And I have seen landowners, like you said, they'll take patches and plant it.
You know, it's an awesome place to sit in the house during the rut.
Yeah.
Uh, you know, you can kind of sneak around the roads.
Often that the cover associated with them is helping you do that.
And, uh, in many cases, it's a good place for gobbler to strut.
And that's what I tell landowners all the time.
It's like, if you've got enough good nesting and brooding cover, it's like,
there's nothing wrong with throwing in some clover food plots here and
there is like strut plots, you know?
Yeah.
You don't need, you don't have to do and don't need to do the same thing everywhere.
No.
You're trying to address what is limiting.
And if you don't have adequate nesting or brooding cover,
then you need to address that.
That's right.
But, uh, you know, let's keep in mind while we're all in this.
And yeah, why, why we want to make more turkeys in the, in the first places.
So we can hunt more turkeys.
So there's nothing wrong with that being part of your strategy is trying to
maximize the huntability of the, all the birds you're making.
Yeah.
I don't feel bad about it.
It's good stuff.
I don't feel bad about it.
I mean, I see people go through an, an incredible amount of effort and
spend an incredible amount of money because of that passion.
And that, uh, that I appreciate a lot.
I do too.
And, and that's the thing, man, is like people can and do make this much more
complicated than what we just laid out.
And it gets complicated, especially like his property size and complexity
increase, and then you've got these specific situations and then, um, you
start layering on constraints, like, you know, this person also grows some
crop over here and they've got some cows over in like, once you start doing all
that, that's when it gets complicated.
But kind of what we laid out is really the nuts and bolts of what I pay
attention to when I first start going on a property managed for turkeys.
Yeah.
What is, what is the current status and species composition of my openings?
How many openings do I have and do I need to create more of that?
And then once I have it, what is my disturbance regime look like and
what tools do I use to implement it?
Right.
And I think where it gets really tricky is when you have several
competing objectives and that might be because you have, you know, a family
of landowners or a bunch of friends together, or, you know, uh, someone
else owns the land or you need to generate revenue from it, you know,
there's all kinds of reasons.
There's competing objectives.
Yeah, it's like, my uncle won't let me manage that food plot for brooding.
Cause he likes to hunt armadillos out there.
I don't know how I haven't gotten that one, but yeah.
So, I mean, you, you never know what, like, that's one of the fun things
about going and meeting with people is you get into all kinds of situations.
Like, wow, I just had no idea that people, like that there was
anybody that cared about that, you know?
So that's fun.
But, uh, you know, I think that's the, the, the art of it.
Right.
You're trying to take a strategy and lay that over competing
objectives and try to do that in a way that still, you know, is beneficial
producing more of the bird and, and hunting it.
That's it.
So, well, they got your, they got your burger ready yet.
Yeah, man.
I got a big old cheeseburger.
So for those out there wondering why he's picking on me, I'm sitting
at a, like a chain restaurant because it was the only place I could find
wifi because apparently up here, when it rains, everybody's wifi wires
get wet and the wifi doesn't work anywhere.
I just think this is all an elaborate ruse.
You know, you're talking about your fly fishing for trout in Northern
Michigan, and I think reality is you've just gone on a road trip to sample
fast food burgers across the country.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
It's hard to, it's hard to detangle the two, to be honest with you.
All right.
Well, yeah, that was good stuff.
Hopefully, uh, that addressed some of the questions we've been getting.
It certainly, I feel like it gave us a chance to tie up some loose ends
related to, you know, some recent topics and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So appreciate everybody, all the support.
So it's been great.
And that, you know, we're trying to do what you're saying, you know, with the
questions and comments and everything people want to hear about habitat.
So we're trying to stay there.
Wild Turkey Science is part of the Natural Resources University
Podcast Network and is made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots
organization dedicated to the wild turkey.
To learn more about TFT, check out turkeysfortomorrow.org.
Thanks for watching.