May 19, 2025 • 71 mins
Today we’re talking turkeys in Oklahoma with Marcus Thibodeau and Eric Suttles, wild turkey biologists for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. Join as they disclose the status of subspecies across the state, harvest rates, seasons dates, habitat challenges across the state, successful and unsuccessful restocking efforts, on-going research, assistance for landowners, and more.
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Marcus Thibodeau (Contact)
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Dr. Marcus Lashley @DrDisturbance, Publications
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Produced & edited by Charlotte Nowak
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
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 Gulsby, 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.
(00:33):
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.
(00:56):
Well, I'm pretty sure we pulled it off twice in a row.
did we pull off?
We gave Charlotte five seconds of silence so that she has it for editing purposes.
So if we sound particularly good on this episode, it's because we gave her that fiveseconds.
(01:18):
Yeah, it definitely doesn't have anything to do with you because we spent 10 minutessetting up your audio.
It is in spite of me.
He's going to sound really good because his office isn't a bathroom.
Is it going to bother y'all if I'm in the bathroom?
That looks good.
That's good looking bathroom stall.
(01:39):
You're in for our audio only listeners.
If you think there's a bit of an echo now, you know why.
I don't know how we're going to this with two Marcus's on the show today.
Yeah, this might be tough and
You know, I have a hard time pronouncing your last name, Yeah.
(02:04):
Is that where your lineages from?
We stayed up North.
didn't earn the X at the end of our name.
So, oh That's where the X comes from.
Yep.
That's what they say anyways.
So does that mean you're not true Cajun since you don't have the X?
I'm not, I'm a poser, I guess.
uh So it's confusing to spell and you don't even get the credit of the X at the end.
(02:26):
Yeah.
don't even get all the good food, just a really tough time in third grade.
Yeah.
I love it.
Well, uh, guys, I'm, really excited to have y'all Eric Suttles.
I guess you're the Turkey coordinator for the, Eastern part of the state and MarcusTibbado.
(02:48):
Uh, you're the coordinator for.
The Western part of the state.
that accurate?
I'll let you guys fill us in on whatever I missed there.
was a strong introduction, Marcus.
Yeah.
So we're going to talk Oklahoma today.
All things Turkey.
We're excited to have y'all.
Thanks for having us.
(03:09):
Glad to be here.
We have a lot of listeners in Oklahoma.
They're big fans of the show.
that's awesome.
Yeah.
And I know several folks from Alabama that traveled out to hunt in Oklahoma this year.
So.
Definitely a popular destination.
was not, we're going to change that.
Well, you and I remember ask a certain person to get us on some birds out there this yearand he never got around to it.
(03:33):
I told, I told y'all come on out.
That was not on him.
I actually wasn't talking about you, Marcus.
was talking about, I was talking about Mark.
Now we're really developing a trend.
Mark Marcus.
Wow.
This is going to get really confusing.
(03:54):
The R squared value on this is increasing rapidly.
Y'all should have come out and it's been a, been a banger of a season so far.
Yeah.
So tell us, tell us about, um, the season and what's been going on lately.
It's been a weird one.
It's been the wettest April that Oklahoma's ever had on record, but they are, man, they'reharvesting a lot of turkeys.
(04:16):
think I looked it up yesterday.
We do online check-in.
So.
The number of birds checked in so far, you know, we're over 7,000 already.
Uh, there's no telling how many got checked in this morning, but 7,300 last night when Ilooked.
(04:37):
So, do you ask when they check those birds, do they have to indicate what subspecies theyare?
Or do y'all just assign that based on the hunt unit?
Based on the county that it's checked in.
Okay.
So like in Oklahoma, we've got the Eastern.
turkeys in the Southeast part of the state, you know, along the Eastern border.
And then the, you know, about 70 % of the state is purely just Rio Grande turkeys.
(05:00):
And then we do have a little bit of Marriam's up in the panhandle.
So when you say the, the wettest on record, is that statewide or is that in a particulararea?
Statewide.
So y'all got two or three centimeters over there in the panhandle.
Yeah.
We got almost five inches last month.
That's in the panhandle.
(05:20):
Yeah.
Down where I live, we got almost five inches.
That's a quarter of what we get a year.
So I imagine the vegetation's responding.
yeah.
We needed it.
Yeah.
We needed it.
It's green.
It's looking good.
will flourish.
Yeah.
And you know, we had a bunch of wildfires this winter, so we needed that.
(05:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's cool.
So how many birds do you all typically harvest in a season?
And where how far are you into the season right now?
At the seven thousand mark.
Right now, we're at seven thousand three hundred, like Marcus said.
So we're up.
(06:02):
We're up quite a bit.
But now we've seen these numbers before.
We see them in 2017.
So we're seeing what we experienced in 2017.
And then we had like a reverse bell curve and it dropped down.
And now we're climbing back up.
And so we're seeing very strong numbers.
mean, last year, so, uh, 20, 23, we were about 5,600.
(06:29):
2024 we're at 6,300 now at 7,300.
So we're starting to see how is left in the season this year.
We go from where one month.
So April 16th to May 16th.
Okay.
Okay.
So y'all still have about 10 days left as the day we're recording this.
We'll get that, you know, end of the season rush.
(06:52):
So all those guys that haven't harvested don't have to get made fun of.
So what do y'all attribute that, that higher harvest to, was that reflected in your pulpper hen ratios from a couple of years ago or?
It has been reflected in our pulp per hen.
(07:14):
We felt strong going into the season that we were going to have a pretty good huntingseason based on pulp per hand last year.
And we're seeing that across the landscape of a lot of jakes being reported and a heart,strong Jake harvest this year also.
yeah.
Okay.
Good, good summer reproduction is definitely helping.
(07:35):
So, um, and then just, yeah, overall just, it's just sort of rebounding, you know,
So yes, we're a little different than some of those Eastern States, you know, in Oklahoma,a bearded Turkey is a legal Turkey.
So we do get, you know, some, some Jake harvest and this year it looks like it's been alittle heavy, but you know, a lot of those, you know, we call them turbo Jakes, you know,
(08:02):
they don't have them little bitty beards, but know, they're like four or five inches.
You know what I mean?
Just the ones that get you a ticket in Mississippi kind of a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we do have some states that are still bearded Turkey over in the East too, but, uh,what, I was just curious, like, what's the historical peak?
(08:27):
Like, what was the highest harvest that you've had?
you know?
It's hard because we used to not make people check in birds, right?
So it's like, we don't, it'd be.
It'd be saying a number, but you'd have to take it with a grain of salt.
You know what I mean?
But like we used to be a three bird state and with our decline, we, dropped that bag limitdown to one and we shifted the season back, you know?
(08:54):
Uh, so that's, that's really promising for this high harvest this year is that 7,300that's 7,300 Turkey hunters, know?
It's been really good for our recruitment and the, you know, guys, you know, like myself.
Take your kids youth weekend, shoot one opening first couple of days.
(09:14):
And then you got a month of season left.
So you're taking other people taking new people.
So it's been pretty good.
you all seen, I kind of wonder like where you're at and you know, kind of on the edge, Iwould say, and if, you guys disagree, tell me I'm wrong, but, um, the edge of like the
center of the really big Turkey hunting culture.
(09:36):
You you think about like in the classic States like Mississippi, Alabama, kind of be inthe heart of it.
Georgia for sure.
Like that core of the Southeast.
Have y'all seen the hunting culture in Oklahoma?
The Turkey hunting culture like really take off.
That's why I you join the SEC.
(09:56):
Cause we're going to dominate the Turkey hunting also now.
It is.
mean, you know, I think, I think we're.
We're the edge of it.
go a little bit farther West and those spring seasons kind of compete with, you know, bearhunting and stuff like that.
But Oklahoma, man, it's huge, you know, Turkey hunting culture in Oklahoma.
Okay.
(10:17):
And what about where non residents localized, you know, we get a lot of, especially outWest, you know, my, other hat that I wear for the department is managing public hunting
areas out West and they're pretty big.
destinations for people to come get their Rio, you know, like black kettle WMA that Imanage.
You know, we've had 167 birds checked in so far off of that piece of property.
(10:44):
So a lot of, a lot of non-residents come out there and you get that, you know, feedbackfrom the residents, but a lot of birds equals a lot of bird hunters.
So in that county, we, we take, you know, game harvest surveys, which is
What a of States do, they call hunters, you know, and try to get a report.
(11:06):
And so we have that data going back.
don't have the hunter check-in data that started in 2014, the online check-in statewide,but the game heart with survey data that that's more historic and goes back.
And, and we saw what most other States saw were early 2000s, 2005, six.
That was our peak.
(11:28):
The far as what we.
I was our peak harvest and all that.
and the culture has been strong.
hunting culture in Oklahoma has been strong for a long time.
Okay.
I don't know that we're just now catching up to those Southern States.
I think we've been a strong culture for a long time.
It's been pretty cool.
(11:49):
When I came into the Turkey part, you know, a lot of the program stuff, you know, like thebig game or up one game or the Turkey program stuff, like in Oklahoma when
We had our decline start going on with the turkeys.
We were met with just a lot of support from turkey hunters.
wasn't, you know, we're going to tell you what needs to happen.
was, what do you need from us?
(12:11):
The one bird bag limit.
I mean, that was a result of, you know, feedback on proposed rule changes.
We were going to go from three birds to two birds.
And the feedback from the public was, no, we're so worried about it and want to help.
Let's go from three to one.
Like it was.
That's how concerned everybody was.
And I know out West, you know, lot of outfitters and stuff like that.
(12:34):
They're calling me saying, Hey, we're not going to take any clients this spring seat, youknow, for a few spring seasons.
Like that's, that's how serious they were taking it.
Wow.
So that, culture part of it, that's, that's pretty big when you're making money on it.
So for sure.
We've talked about this a couple of times already, but would y'all mind kind of describingthe changes that you see across the state in terms of, you know, the, the ecosystems, for
(13:02):
those, those listeners that aren't as familiar with the geography of Oklahoma.
Now I'll talk about the eastern.
So, you know, we have the Wausau National Forest comes in.
So we have this mountain range that, that enters into Oklahoma, uh, in the Southeast.
And we even have.
golf, golf coastal plane that comes into the very Southern tip of Oklahoma.
(13:27):
And so we had some alligators even in Oklahoma, the far Southeast oh of the state.
And then we go into these mountains and uh then we have timber companies and timberharvest and all that, that you would, you know, see in the other Southern States.
And then, uh, we kind of, then if you
(13:49):
travel north, just is really pretty called Green Country up there by Tulsa.
And it's just, you know, nice rolling hills and nice streams and it's just beautifullandscape.
And so that's sort of the eastern side.
Just think of timber and some harvest, uh farming.
(14:13):
just, yeah, that's where you kind of get out east.
And then that transitions into
Um, the cross timbers, now that timber, that timber is going to give way to the greatplane and to grasslands.
And now you start to see more of a, if managed properly, you're going to have more of aSavannah, more, trees, more grass and a lot of grazing.
(14:38):
And is that a precipitation gradient, Eric?
Yeah.
So you go from like Eric's part of the state where he's at.
You know, 50, 60 inches of rain a year to like where I'm at, which is like what we gethere.
14 to 20 is what we get in a year.
So it's pretty drastic across the state.
(15:00):
Yeah.
Or just for my information, I guess on listeners, if they don't know, is that sort of, uh,showing the break and the distribution of the subspecies as well.
So we're kind of are looking at that.
doing like a, we got several research projects going on, some statewide, some kind ofregional.
(15:23):
We did a genetic research project.
It's ongoing, but we're done collecting the samples across the entire state to kind oflook at that overlap and some hybridization areas and things like that.
we looked at uh habitat suitability between like Easterns and Rios.
And it's, a lot of that middle part of the state, you can see that transition from
(15:46):
habitat suitability with kind of the hybridization is what's looking like.
So it kind of just, you know, fades out.
There's no hard distinct line or anything like that.
So I bet you get a lot of pictures from hunters asking, this an Eastern or a Rio?
Oh yeah.
Or is this a Marriam's or, know, but it's so muddied up, but now we have like, you know,some real genetic information that kind of shows, you know, exactly what percentage of
(16:13):
birds from that County, like what
percentage Eastern they might be and stuff like that.
that's all the phone calls I get all years from all the guys from the Southeast wanting tocome kill a true Rio out West.
So they can, we can back it up now and say it is a full blooded one.
So you were saying the Miriams, where are they located?
(16:35):
Very tip of the panhandle.
Okay.
So very, very small portion of the panhandle.
mean,
exclusively on private property.
we just we get updates from the guys out there.
They sell a few hunts and things like that.
They're saying the Miriams are looking pretty good this year.
They're seeing a lot of jakes kind of like what we're seeing across the state.
(16:58):
It's been often big reproduction to your sounds like.
Yeah.
They used to call it the sooner slam when we were a three bird state and shoot all threesubspecies in Oklahoma.
So that's really cool.
I don't know about the sooner part, but.
uh
Well, so going back to the, that transition that you see across the state.
(17:22):
So is it, are the, are the Easterns and Rio's relatively equal aside from the hybrid zonein terms of their proportion of the, States?
No, no, Eastern is really very small.
if you want the true blood Eastern, you're really only having one County.
Okay.
The Curtin County.
(17:42):
Okay.
So most of the state is Rio then.
Yeah.
Most of us Rio and a lot of hybridization.
Yep.
Gotcha.
And, so, but more, but I tell fan, you know, what you're going to get.
mean, if you're, if you're east of 69 highway, you're probably going to have an Easternmuckingbird and 69 on highway sort of a barrier and a break, you know, there's so much
(18:11):
traffic on that highway.
And then that's just where.
urbanization and everything else is happening along the highway, it's preventing uh abottleneck.
know, mean, the genetics isn't really crossing the C29 highway a lot unless it's up anddown streams, rivers and creeks.
And the hybridization thing, that was just a small part of the genetic stuff.
(18:31):
You it was more of like a, like you could call it like a conservation genetics projectlooking more like, you know, genetic isolation, looking where we need to focus corridor
work, things like that.
Cool, interesting part to put into it.
But y'all did see that that highway was a major barrier.
Yeah, we're seeing some like really major highways.
(18:51):
gene flow, it's pretty crazy on that.
Isn't that crazy?
Like you wouldn't think that just, I mean, like even like a four lane interstate highwaydoesn't seem like it would be that big of a barrier to Turkey genetics, but it Might as
well be the Pacific Ocean.
know?
Wow.
It's crazy.
And that research will be coming out soon.
that the full report and that'll be a really fun paper to dig into.
(19:15):
And like when that gets fully completed, um, a lot of work by the biologist and ourhunters across the state to collect the genetic samples and get those turned in.
So we, we, I think we got, we try to get every 70 set.
have 77 counties.
try to get genetics from every single county.
You know, um, I think we did a pretty good job, but.
(19:40):
So did y'all ever have to bring in birds from anywhere else?
Did y'all or did y'all translocate around the state or how did that work?
that some of the hybridization from that do you think?
Some of it.
Yeah.
So, you know, we started our, our relocation program in 1948.
(20:02):
we'll actually before that, because we have a story of, we have two stories.
We have.
the relocation program for the Easterns and the relocation program for the Rio.
They're sort of different timelines and different stories.
in 1948, when we embarked on the relocation for the Rios, we got 21 Rios that we trappedin the panhandle and took them to Harper County.
(20:30):
And then we added 87 more birds into Harper County uh and Harper County became
our our main population.
We grew that up and then we trapped a relocated birds out of that county all across thewestern part of of Oklahoma.
(20:51):
And we did that in the 1950s and 60s.
And then in the 70s, we started taking that western population more central 70s and 80s.
And then the program uh
for the Rio reintroduction wind down and stopped in 1996.
(21:15):
And that's when we determined that we'd no further relocation was needed in the populationhad been and was being influenced mainly by recruitment at that point.
So many years, but the starting way back 1948 and.
They estimate from the records and stuff about 10,000 Rios.
(21:38):
trapped and relocated.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, that's really early.
A lot of, mean, that's way before a lot of States started working on this.
It's pretty cool.
mean, in 1925, they thought that there were zero turkeys in Oklahoma.
Wow.
And then the storage a little different for, for the Easter, um, from 1934 to 1964.
(22:05):
We.
We pin raised birds and re-released over 5,000 pin raised birds in the, in, in for theEastern.
And these came from what was the Dalenton game farm.
And they released a room in the Dalenton game farm and then released them.
And after 30 years, they determined that the population had not become established as aresult of these released pin raised birds.
(22:33):
many years did they try that?
30 years, 30 years in a row, not like they did it a few years.
then they look 30 years later and there weren't any, you mean they released it over andover.
We get that relatively common.
I was going to say this to you.
I'm glad you talked.
(22:54):
get questions about this and people ask, why don't we just release birds and do penraised?
uh several people have been fairly adamant that we could do that successfully.
But we keep running into this situation over and over where lots of States tried to dothat.
And in this case for 30 years in a row and still didn't work.
(23:17):
And so when what happened was in 1959, we were in Oklahoma, we're seeing the success thatwe're having out West, the traffic and relations.
So that method to the Southeast Oklahoma.
we went to Arkansas.
We got 16 wild birds from them for 8 million walleye fry.
(23:40):
I love these trades.
These are, this is like one of my favorite things.
We should be making notes on all the trades that went down.
I I think I would take the walleye fry over the otters.
don't know.
we have one that was beavers?
We traded, there's been some odd trades.
We traded out West Cheyenne, Oklahoma with Cheyenne Wyoming, Rios for Pronghorn.
(24:03):
Oh, nice.
See that's still a solid trade.
Yeah.
I mean, give them the walla fry.
Yeah.
Give them the pronghorn.
You know, like I'm down with it.
And so, so we got that and then we got a few more from Missouri and from Missouri, we, gotfour toms and eight hens for some prairie chickens.
We gave them 25 prairie chickens.
(24:24):
So, uh, we ended up on the better end of that trade also.
So that, that, and so we I'm wondering.
28th, these States thinking given away turkeys for some of this stuff?
I would've liked to been in on that deal making, you know what I I'll raise you two times.
(24:45):
Oh, you know, were some 12 ounce decisions for sure.
Hold on.
What do you give me for 12 stripes?
Gunks?
That's like one turkey egg.
Yeah.
considerations.
28 birds groomed the population we currently have in the Southeast.
(25:10):
So it's just a case study that the Penry bird just get really working.
And the traffic.
It's a pretty remarkably strong one too.
Like you tried to release birds for 30 years and it didn't work.
And then you traded, you know, a couple of pop rocks and you know, marbles for eight timesand whatever you said, 28 turkeys total.
(25:31):
And that.
You know that really established the population.
Like they're not even in the same realm of success.
Yeah.
That's becoming such a popular thing in Oklahoma is people wanting to turn out pen raisedbirds and you know, like with avian influenza the last couple of years, it's like, man,
(25:52):
that's a good way to just ruin all the bouncing back that we've done with the wildpopulations is introduce something like that.
Yeah.
And I mean, the other thing too is like, look what they're starting to find out with the,uh, the pin reared mallards, know, and those genetics starting to pollute the wild
genetics.
mean, I don't know about y'all, but I'm all about keeping wild turkeys wild.
(26:13):
I want to see those, those genetics.
yeah.
Look at all those white.
Tom's getting harvested nowadays.
You know, where was that at four years ago?
Yeah.
It does seem to be becoming pretty prevalent.
Yeah.
Lots of, lots of color phase things coming up now.
Aren't they?
(26:35):
Yeah, that that's really interesting.
I'm glad you brought up the, you know, that, that case study about the pen raise birds,because we, we have gotten up pretty commonly and folks just keep coming back to it and
we'll, probably got 10 or 12 comments and DMS about it this time.
How they didn't do it right.
But yeah, that's a, that's really.
(26:58):
Interesting.
So y'all already touched on the genetic study that you've got going on.
there any other research projects going on or recently completed?
Yeah, we've got several.
We got to do a statewide like, you know, mainly like a habitat focus study.
You might've seen some of the stuff recently, like on social media, some of the bandedbirds getting harvested, you know, being a big deal.
(27:25):
you know, some banding, some, a lot of nest habitat stuff, trying to fine tune, you know,nesting habitat across the state with it being so variable, you know what I mean?
seven different like eco regions make up Oklahoma and what is nesting habitat look likefor turkeys across that?
How can we do better management like with us on the wildlife management areas for makingbetter nesting habitat?
(27:49):
So doing a lot of like, you know, GPS collared hands, things like that.
Got some other stuff starting, lot of like, you know, our hardest problem right now, likeyou were talking about in a previous episode, trying to just survey turkey numbers.
How many turkeys do we have on the landscape?
know, we're, we, have surveys that we do, uh, for turkeys in Oklahoma and it's, it's hard,know, it's, it's hard to be confident in those really.
(28:18):
I was just curious about the, nesting when you're talking about the eco regions and whatdoes that look like?
Were there any stark differences structurally, or was it just the composition of plantschanged?
Like what?
What did that look like?
Do you have any insight on it?
(28:38):
Well, so the current research that our vital rates research that we have, you kind of havehad our vital rates started with the conversation with Dr.
Elmore, you had on here before.
it was where, what's the most important thing or what, where is the main problem?
mean, are we birds bred?
(28:59):
Are they putting, are they making, you know, are they laying eggs?
Are the poults dying?
And so it was really answering this broad
spectrum of questions.
And that's going to be wrapping up here pretty soon.
They're just finishing up this last year of the field season now.
And we split that research up into the Southeast and the Southwest, two extreme in abottle.
(29:25):
As, as different as we can get them, but they're both experiencing problems within thepopulation.
uh Once in the Southeast is sort of like.
struggling, it's sustainable and it's sustaining, but it's not growing.
And the Southwest, we had the decline and a noticeable decline.
(29:49):
so trying to answer what does that, what does that look like?
so, uh, been pretty interesting things coming out of that.
Um, but, uh, so yeah, so that's sort of what that research is, is looking at.
You know, I don't want to jump ahead of the research, but for the South, I'll speak of theSoutheast, the markets can speak of the Southwest, but the one thing that's caught my full
(30:17):
attention in the Southeast is the adult can survive it.
Yeah.
then I expect the number that we're expecting there.
Yeah.
I think I saw in the, I don't know if the, the peer reviewed version has come out yet, butin the, the thesis from the student that worked on it.
I can't remember her name, but Nicole Nicole Nicole.
(30:40):
Yeah.
It was in the low forties, right?
It's low.
Yeah.
And I think you even you mentioned in one of your papers there too, Marcus, I think youkind of looked at some of those.
Rotation put in one of your papers, I believe.
And it's just, yeah, it's it's high and high mortality on those result hands.
(31:02):
And yes, we can't.
keep a hen alive, how are you going to keep a nest going?
Right.
Yeah.
40%.
It doesn't really matter what your nest success and brood survival look like.
There's just not enough hens.
Yeah.
I mean, when it's that low, when your hen survival is that low, you could be, you wouldhave to be in the banner year reproduction to overcome it.
(31:27):
You'd have, and you can't have a banner year every year.
So.
Most years you're going be pawning.
all packaged up, know, there's a lot, as you guys know, there's so much information fromthe fieldwork that it has to go back to the lab.
It's got to be analyzed.
It's got to be packaged up and we'll see what it all says.
Looking forward to what that says for the Eastern part.
(31:49):
That's one thing that has my attention.
And then Marcus, what are you seeing in the Southwest part there?
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing predation.
We're seeing a lot of re-nesting attempts, which
You know, as used to be a thing of.
I don't know, I wouldn't say like debate, but you used to think a turkey wouldn't re nestif she got pushed off of her nest once or she might re nest a second time and that's it.
(32:14):
Man, we've we've seen some pretty cool stuff.
A lot of cool movement data with those GPS collars that has been really interesting.
But, you know, predation is always just kind of stuck out statewide.
You know, we are hearing about predation even before the decline became.
really popular, like with quail out west, predation became a big thing.
(32:35):
And it's something we've tackled head on, you know, only 3 % of Oklahoma is public land.
If we're going to make differences in the state habitat wise or predation wise, it's goingto happen on the private property level.
So like myself, a few other wildlife management, area biologists from over East, westarted a trapping workshop, right?
(32:57):
we, we host.
across the state at different wildlife management areas.
We host workshops to teach people how to furbear a know, trap raccoons with coon cuffs,know, put leg holds in the ground, how to do that, how to incorporate it into your habitat
management plan or your, you know, management plan for your property.
(33:17):
Fill that knowledge gap and man, it's been super successful.
A lot of interest in it.
People wanting to learn about it.
uh
The workshops have all maxed out and had giant waiting lists.
So it's, and it's made a big, big difference.
You know, you hear the stories from the people that attend the workshop and then call youa couple of years later and say, Hey, I, you know, I might not have trapped everything,
(33:42):
but I put out the coon cuffs and man, I'm having some turkeys now.
that the silver bullet?
You know, of course not.
There's no diet pill for making birds again, but you got to do a little bit of everything,but
I feel like it's a great way to get people started.
Cause once they start trapping, they get into now what else can I do?
You know, what other things can I start adding to it?
(34:05):
So I agree with that.
something.
Yeah.
Well, Marcus and I, think we've had that conversation on the air before that certainthings that we didn't think were really high return on investment.
We've started to appreciate more and more even in spite of that, because I think, youknow, the more you get people out there on the land or in times of the year where they're
not just hunting.
Not just trying to extract the resource, but they're trying to give back.
(34:26):
think that that just snowballs.
I think it's a mindset.
They change into the mind.
This isn't about taking now.
It's about giving back and starting that somewhere.
And investing.
Yeah.
It feels like more of an investment.
And it uh sounds like you guys probably
(34:47):
have some of the situation we certainly deal with it a ton where a lot of the huntingcommunity don't own the land they hunt on, but they're on private, but they don't have the
right to go in and manipulate habitat at the landscape level.
So, uh, you know, that that's a tool that most, most of those people in those situationshave at their disposal.
(35:12):
Yeah.
would guess a lot of y'all's private land hunters are probably leasing ranch.
like ranch rights, right of trespass on various ranches and things like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just, you know, hunting leases and things like that.
I've never heard it called right of trespass.
That's hilarious.
I throwing it back.
I was throwing it back.
(35:33):
I'm surprised he said ranch instead of farm.
uh If that was, if there was one thing I could get right, mean, I've already insultedtheir hunting culture today.
So their Turkey hunting culture.
So.
I want to make sure I get that part right.
I'm so naive.
didn't even realize you're insulting them.
We got some good ones, man.
(35:54):
you said that, I thought you were, it was the, the snarky remark about the Sooners thatyou were talking about.
well, yeah, man.
That's straight three for me, but.
Will your video is getting kind of grainy.
I'm just going to fade into the background here and disappear from the rest of thisepisode.
He was talking about that right to trespass and I see a WMA boundary sign in his office.
(36:16):
don't pay attention to that.
Man, he's just like broadcasting it to the world.
I'm at our headquarters.
I'm going to go grab a warden real quick.
I think the statute of limitations is up on that one.
I'm not sure.
But Marcus, about, you talked about y'all are doing the trapping workshops.
(36:38):
What are y'all doing um as far as like technical assistance with landowners for habitatstuff?
like, what are, or I mean, maybe a better place to start is like, what are the majorhabitat challenges that turkeys face in Oklahoma?
So, you know, like we keep saying, it changes from East to West, but we do host workshopsand field days, educating landowners.
(37:00):
Like, so out West, uh
We do a lot of cedar tree removal.
So root roosting areas is really important.
And like Dwayne Elmore, you know, he and I did a lot of work together, uh, and learned alot from him.
He's a great quail hunter, by the way.
He can outpace the dogs, quite the walker.
I've watched him do that with mountain quail one time.
(37:22):
it's nuts.
I'm like, he bird dogged him out.
I keep telling them, I'm like, man, slow down.
My dogs will stop when they smell those quail, you know, like you don't have to, you don'thave to ride them.
But, you know, we did a bunch of research at pack saddle.
One of the WMAs that uh I'm over when I first started with GPS colored birds are backpackturkeys, you know, and looking at roosting habitat, habitat utilization, things like that.
(37:49):
And we found that roost tree availability in the Western part of the state is the biggestlimiting factor.
It's not that we don't have roost trees.
It's that they get so choked out by cedar trees and other woody vegetation.
I love that you said that because I've, I've been thinking a lot about that.
That the turkeys physically can't pitch up into the trees.
Yeah.
(38:09):
And so we've done a ton of work.
mean, uh, over a million dollars through NGO partners and stuff like that since 2017,after we figured this all out and restoring riparian areas, increasing roost tree
availability, uh,
And it's been a game changer.
mean, I've got a picture that I use in every one of my PowerPoints and we'll have henturkeys and turkeys moving into these project areas where we've never seen turkeys before
(38:38):
with the equipment still there.
know, like it's the return on it is immediate.
It's, been awesome.
So that's our big push.
And then you can maintain that with prescribed burning.
Cause if you would have, you know, uh
If you don't do that, you're going to have to exclude those areas from your prescribedburn.
Otherwise the cedar trees are going to ladder fuel up and destroy your cottonwoods.
(39:01):
So we've been doing a ton of that and it's been, it's been remarkable to see the responseto it.
Yeah.
And with the cedars, are you primarily relying on mechanical removal just followed up byprescribed fire to maintain?
Yeah.
I mean, we all have our different.
preferred method, you know, like I just do this straight up mulching.
know, we go in there with grinders and just turn it into mulch.
(39:23):
other guys like, uh, fad pots, he's biologist over at Canton WMA and it's been a hugesuccess story out West.
The thing was so covered up with cedar trees.
You literally couldn't walk through parts of the WMA and he's been stacking them and we'vebeen going in and burning them later.
And, you know, like cat, uh, cut stack and burn and
(39:45):
Yeah.
It's been awesome.
It's turned into one of our most popular WMAs, know, top five in just the last five yearsfrom all the work he's been doing out there.
So.
that case, you've not just enhanced habitat for turkeys, but you have actually taken whatwas previously unusable space is what you described.
So that was a hole in the landscape that they could not use for anything.
(40:06):
And you've changed it back into Turkey habitat.
And especially if you're fire in there, it could potentially be high quality.
So it's gone from.
They won't even use it or walk through it to high quality.
It isn't even just that area.
It sounds like to me, those are anchors for roosting.
So the birds are probably anchored there and now all the space around it is usable becauseit's close enough to a roost area.
(40:32):
Is that, yeah, you know, like, and when we were having this talk about like themulti-state project, we tried to get going, you know,
I was just kicking myself.
It's like, man, I wish we could have had some GPS backpacks on birds when we were doingthese huge projects.
yeah.
That would be so insightful.
them come in and break up.
Like even in our winter roosts, we'll see that, you know, like Roger Mills County wherewe're at, you know, 10 years ago, the roosts, the winter flocks would be, you know, just
(41:02):
giant, you know, handful across the whole county.
And now it's just a bunch of smaller ones, know, a hundred, 200 birds only just all overthe place.
And I would like to say it's because of opening up lots of more roosting areas, but youknow, who knows, but that project would have kind of answered some of that.
Well, that roost issue, I'm glad you brought that up to circle back to it, because I thinkthat the same thing happens in Eastern forest, especially like with a privet invasion into
(41:30):
hardwood forest, roof sites that are traditionally used or have been for a long time.
And then you get a privet.
dense privet bit story in there and they just quit receiving any use.
It's basically the same thing.
I mean, Dwayne could talk more about it because it was his project and stuff, but youknow, the thermal suitability for that habitat was a big part of it too.
(41:51):
know, that when turkeys were seeking, you know, like thermal refuge, you know, Oklahoma,Western Oklahoma, we can get up to like 115 degrees in the summertime.
that thermally suitable habitat really important.
And when you have cedar trees in your riparian areas, you know, have a lot of top covershade, but if there's no wind to come through there and kind of cool it off, you're just
(42:13):
making an oven instead of having the opposite effect.
they're cut out, you can get some of that breeze through the bottom of it and make it acooler habitat.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And we've seen it with quail too.
So I'm going to try not to talk too much about quail, but no, that's my...
That's my first love.
(42:35):
Quail or just turkey poles, right?
so to answer that question, know, habitat in the, the Eastern part of the state, it's,it's, um, timber, stem improvement.
Yeah.
It's, it's your traditional, what you would see across the other states, you know, know,if you're, if you're walking, I always kind of.
(43:03):
If you're walking on uh pine needles, you need to do something.
If you're, if you're walking on deciduous leaves, you need to do something, right?
We got to have more diversity, as we walk through the forest and then that, pretty simplenow on what, your needs are there.
Um, at least the starting point, what, where you might want to start.
(43:27):
So, so that's what we see here.
then in the central part, it's at Cedars too.
Um, the cross timbers is just being choked out by Cedars.
Uh, what's left of the prairies or what's left of, of a usable space is being choked outby Cedars.
So it's not a home, it's a Cedar.
(43:48):
And so got to stay out to the Cedars.
And I imagine a lot of that, Eric is, is due to, you know, inadequate use of prescribedfire.
Um, so what are y'all seeing as far as, as trends and prescribed fire use?
Is that something that has, I mean, I'm sure it's not back up to where you'd want it tobe, but are you seeing a positive trend in that regard?
(44:12):
Yeah.
I think so.
know, OSU does a great job of, with their extension services, OSU extension to get themessage out to those people.
It's just, it's a risk, you know,
And you got to find the individuals that are willing to put in the work, the labor, thetime, and a little bit of risk.
(44:33):
You know, we are protected under the law to do prescribed fire or as protections if youfollow the steps.
we're prescribed for our happy state.
mean, we're, we're allowed to do it.
but, uh, yeah, just kind of find it, you know, trying to find those.
And so we do have associations that help with that.
And then.
Within the Department of Wildlife, we also have private lands biologists to also help andassist that.
(44:59):
so almost every region, North East, Southwest, all has a private lands biologist that cancome out to your property and help you with uh the plan, the funding, the implementation,
help you get it going.
(45:20):
That's very good.
I know I was aware of, uh, the pers prescribed burn associations and the seem to reallytaken off in Oklahoma and I did a online prescribed fire training and that opened my eyes
to that.
Cause we used a resource from your state to connect people to their, Yeah.
(45:44):
To try to connect people to that, that network, I guess.
oh
PBAs, regardless of which state you're in, there's a tool online that, that we linked tothat helps people find one local to them.
But when you look at that, it became evident to me, those things are all over Oklahoma andit's just been a really successful model.
(46:10):
seems like.
it, it's, know, and I'm part of the one in our County and man, it's, awesome to see ittake off.
Cause once you get enough guys into it.
You know, we, we get, get in a situation now where if we're burning on someone's property,you know, we're calling their neighbor and telling them, Hey, we're going to be over here
burning this field.
You better get yours ready.
We're going to burn it too.
(46:31):
You know, like we're over here that that's going to be a problem during wildfire season.
So let's get it.
Take care of right now.
And have you seen receptiveness of those people?
Yeah.
mean, especially with some of the recent wildfires y'all have had.
Yeah.
You know, we've had all these wildfires and it's just.
raised the awareness of the need for prescribed fires, really.
(46:54):
And one day, you know, here just lately, March 14th was the windiest day in Oklahomahistory.
As I know, have 20, we have Meso net stations across the state.
That's like, places to check weather, right?
And then those are the stations.
And so a 63 of those stations all hit greater than 58 miles per hour.
(47:19):
And on March 14th, and we had a wildfire outbreak.
Oh man.
Out West is like 75, know, 70 plus mile an hour winds when our wildfire started out there.
Oh my God.
So you can imagine the kind of, when we talk about a wildfire out West, know, with bluestem that's waist high.
I wouldn't want to be within a mile of that thing.
(47:41):
They've documented some of those head fires moving 70 miles an hour and then just theamount of acreage they can cover.
Couple of years ago, we had the smokehouse fire come out of the Texas Panhandle intoOklahoma.
Million and a half acres in two days.
Two, three days, million and a half acres.
It was insane.
Yeah, that reminds me of some of the historic writings that I've read of, you know, someof the Plains Indians and the Buffalo hunters and stuff talking about those prairie fires
(48:09):
and.
Yeah, this is where it would have happened at.
uh exactly.
And they talk about jumping in like a Buffalo carcass or a stream or something like thatas it goes over them.
And that's how much the landscapes change.
So like our fire department that I'm on, uh, when it first started, they used to go fightwildfires with gunny sacks.
(48:30):
They would dip them in a bucket, a barrel of water and literally beat down the fire to putit out.
And now we have to use like, you know, these.
big military trucks that were chasing them in and spraying water, you know, hundreds ofgallons of water at a time.
It's, it's nuts.
Yeah.
What about Marcus in the, in the Western part of the state?
(48:52):
y'all, um, doing like, you know, some patch burn grazing too?
Yeah.
So like on the wall, you landowners starting to adopt that.
Yeah.
I mean, so, you know, where I'm at specifically is in the middle of the, what would havebeen the dust bowl.
So guys that, you know, are
On family land, they know a lot more about soil health than I do because their families,you know, invented that.
(49:14):
They lived it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shelter belts, no till, no till planting, and then a lot more of this patch burn grazingstuff.
We do a lot of it on the areas that I manage.
um And it's, it's awesome.
It makes great habitat.
You know, I keep coming back to quail because a lot of that it's the same thing that we'retalking about, right?
That, that habitat for brooding when it comes to quail or turkeys.
(49:37):
that nesting habitat, it's, all the same when you break it down.
So one thing that I've always wondered about patch burn grazing is if it's better atcreating some bare ground between the plants than just fire alone.
Have you noticed any differences there?
think it's really good for like our woody control or woody bro, like that, know, woodyencroachment in the great plains is the fight, right?
(50:00):
Yeah.
to fight that woody encroachment.
And so now that we're doing a lot more growing season burning,
with, you know, cattle on pastures.
It's a great way to put weight on cattle.
And it's also just, man, when you talk about getting rid of that woody component orlimiting it to some favorable percentages, it's awesome.
mean, it's been great.
(50:21):
sense.
And to Willie bring that up, that, you know, bare ground, our summer burns in the Easternpart of the state provide much better bare ground and better pulp.
Turkey, you know, um, quail, um, better habitat for a longer period of time.
(50:41):
Dormant season burn has its purpose and it's a tool, but once you get the rains that we'regetting, you get some vegetation growth.
It's, it's, you know, it's going to grow up pretty thick.
It happens so fast.
Yeah.
Right.
Where if you do it in the summertime, you get that bare ground and those, and that's aslower plant response over time.
(51:02):
And it's actually more favorable.
plant response, honestly, too, more Forbes.
Um, and you get, and it lasts longer, lasts in all winter, all month, you know, severalmonths.
So, uh, summer burning is really important in the, in the timber part, from central to theWestern, or from central to Eastern part of the state.
(51:25):
Very important for that cattle grazing.
Very important from central to Western.
Yeah, that makes sense.
We'll find it a bit, but.
I was curious along these lines, just thinking about over a longer time period, have youguys, or I guess, I'll ask you a different way.
Have there been any dramatic land use changes or anything over the past decades inOklahoma and what are those?
(51:55):
Yeah.
mean, in the Western part of the state, when you talk about agriculture, right?
So like kind of just shifts with what's making money.
A lot of it.
stuff that's going to go to cotton.
That's, you know, we're kind of seeing that in some areas where, you know, you might havea wildlife management area or outfit or property, something like that.
(52:15):
And then it becomes almost isolated, like cotton fields all the way around it.
So just kind of that agricultural change.
like right now it's kind of oh shifting back a lot of this ag lad that used to be plantedto wheat and things like that.
It's going back to native grass.
People are playing it back to grass.
(52:35):
Uh, the agriculture where, where I live at, you know, Durham, Oklahoma, they used to callit the broom corn capital of the world.
And we used to have pheasants and prairie chickens and everybody used to plant a lot of,you know, sorghum, things like that.
And they don't now, you know what I mean?
It's, uh, it's stuff like that.
(52:56):
It's just, it's kind of changed slowly over time to where nobody really notices it.
You know what I mean?
When you talk to those landowners and they say, my properties look like this for forever.
And it's like, man, it never looked like that 50 years ago.
It's just happened so slowly.
didn't notice.
What do you think has driven that conversion back to, back to pasture or grass?
(53:21):
that, um, are they switching over to beef from row crop or no row crop out of production?
Like out, where we're at winter wheat.
mean, you're just really planting it for.
for hay.
if you can graze smorter on native grass, it's saving you a lot of just money.
Okay.
And equipment, things like that.
I winter wheat, I don't know, it hadn't been profitable in a long time.
(53:44):
It's just been getting planted for subsidies really.
I think guys are just wising up to it.
Grazing grazing smorter, you know?
What about in the Eastern part of the state?
I mean, I don't know that our practice of a change much.
(54:06):
I mean, we didn't in the central part of the state, of course, we're seeing some of theshift.
You're starting to see what we used to be.
Farms or ranches that was in production or kind of being broken up.
And not going so much in production and then you're starting to see the cedar encroachmentand these other things because they're production quite so much.
(54:27):
uh In Eastern where we had the mountains and the trees, it's all pretty much been timberand has been timber and it still is timber.
know, um some of those practices have changed.
were trying to, at one point, try to put cattle on the bottom and grow pine trees on top.
So you have a, you know, a.
(54:49):
There's probably still some of that going on, but I think I see less of that.
What's happening when as as recreation and the need for recreation and the price ofproperty for recreational use has gone up a lot of the property in the Eastern parts,
(55:10):
especially the Southeast has gone recreation.
So they're buying this property not to make money off of it.
solely for recreation.
so they are taking some of that timber, but what might've been a timber harvest, they'retaking that out, you know, they're not harvesting it.
so, or what they might've had cattle underneath and timber on top.
(55:32):
Now they don't have the cattle.
So you are seeing that shift because it's shifting over to recreation, deer hunting,turkey hunting, uh, deer hunting is the primary driver.
for those, for the property.
We're seeing the same thing.
Yeah.
On rural land for sure.
(55:53):
And so it just that need to educate people that, yeah, even though you, you're buying thatfor recreation and for hunting, don't forget the management.
You know, it might do you some good, you know, you're not going to, may not get rich, butit probably going to do you some good.
If you can cut some pine off of there, get some timber off there, open that
(56:16):
open that hillside up a little bit.
Like I said, if you're walking on pine needles, we need to do something.
Not just feed corn to coons the whole time.
Good stuff.
And then we have the oil and gas industry, know, lot of windmills coming.
mean, that's Marcus Buck about the windmills, but that is also changing the landscapeacross Oklahoma.
(56:40):
Hmm.
Well, Eric, I know you mentioned before the show started that you had some interestingstuff related to weather.
I was just curious if you could, you know, talk to us about that a little bit, likechanges in weather extremes and weather.
Right.
So, you know, Oklahoma definitely is a state with extreme weather.
(57:03):
Everybody's seen us on the news at one point or another with our tornadoes and our events.
And so.
The weather definitely drives our Turkey population locally.
You know, when we have these local events, it's going to affect the Turkey population, youknow?
And so we do need, so the importance of that is we need habitat connectivity so that whenwe have these events, there's a source sync population dynamic going on, you know, in
(57:33):
these events.
at 2011, well 2010 was extreme.
and persistent flooding, kind of what we're seeing this year.
But 2010 we had flooding and then 2011 came and we had a lot of storms in the beginning inthe spring.
(57:56):
And on April uh 14th, we had 33 tornadoes.
And then that, so that rainy period of 2010, 2011 gave way to the heat of the summer of2011.
And that was the driest on record.
Triple heat digits, we had 60 to 70 plus days of temperature over 100 degrees in thatsummer of 2011.
(58:22):
so just some of the highlights of 2011 that broke the records and still hold records todayis the lowest temperature was actually in 2011 at minus 31 degrees.
We had a 24-hour snowfall of 27 inches in 2011.
We had the highest wind gust of 151 in 2011.
(58:42):
We had the largest hail storm of six inches in 2011.
We had the most 100 days, the most days over 100 degrees.
We had 101 days in Granfield, which is in Southwest Oklahoma.
So Southwest Oklahoma had 101 days above.
(59:05):
So that a hundred degrees.
thought Florida was bad.
Yeah.
That was in, yeah.
2011.
then we that.
I'm how are the dry heat though?
It's a dry humidity to get you.
Well, it might be the negative 31 happening in the same year as a hundred days.
Like how I'm sitting here wondering how are there turkeys?
(59:29):
Oh, you gotta be tough to live in Oklahoma.
20 was a 27 inches of and 24 hours.
Six inches of hail.
No, the hail was six inches.
The hell was six inches.
The hell was six inches.
It wasn't six inches.
was thinking the balls were six inches.
So they don't call that.
So, know, they have like, they'll say golf ball size hail.
(59:51):
Yeah.
Baseball.
They call that gorilla hail in Oklahoma.
That's a real thing.
You'll see it.
swear.
We call it than a softball gorilla.
We don't even have a ball that big.
We'll call it a gorilla.
That's all right.
That's our unit of measurement.
So if a Turkey gets hit by one nose, it's dead.
(01:00:14):
Yeah.
I mean, are they abandoned their nest?
Right.
That's like, you know,
I mean, that would be a prudent thing to do.
I mean, I think I might be dead if I got hit by six, six inch hail ball.
you talk about some of those things and they're coming, they'll cut the go throughpeople's roofs.
mean, it's like a cannonball.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
You can have a hail storm that comes through like out West and it'll be really bad likethat.
(01:00:37):
And it looks like someone's disc up to earth.
You know what I mean?
You'll just see the stretch of ground that looks like it's been disc up.
That's why.
And then, and then in 2024, just last year, we had the most tornadoes with 150k tornadoes.
And some of those aren't super large tornadoes, right?
(01:00:59):
They're fairly localized.
if that tornado hit your property, it's probably going to affect those turkeys in thatparticular year.
Now they may bounce back and come on, you know, come back pretty quick, but you could havea regional effect.
And then the flooding can have a regional effect.
It can be negative or positive.
You know, if you're happened to be in that van where there's a lot of rain and the creeksare coming out of their banks, that's probably going be negative, but rain, uh, outside
(01:01:29):
that band, you know, we're may not be so, you know, don't have that much rain, but it'sgoing to be a positive because you're going to have vegetation response and you know,
grasshoppers and everything else respond to that, you know, positively.
So, but if you're in that.
band of 10 plus inches of rain.
could be pretty much of a good thing.
(01:01:53):
So that's what we deal with with Oklahoma a lot with our turkeys, just the extremeweather.
man.
Yeah.
I mean, that's gotta be super frustrating.
You can do everything right and still have, you know, a random event like that comethrough.
Gorilla hail just wipes it off.
(01:02:14):
Gorilla hail.
That's a real big, man.
You know, we were talking about how important overhead cover was for hands when they'renesting.
Need some helmets for them now.
When y'all are banding them, you should just.
fit them with a little helmet and some shoulder pads.
right.
(01:02:36):
But that does bring up the good point though of habitat and habitat is a lot.
And if everybody closed their eyes and kind of picture what habitat looks like, those thathunt or manage turkeys in Western Oklahoma are going to see a totally different picture
than those that manage or hunt turkeys in Florida or what that picture looks like.
But habitat is, is it, we talk about nesting and brood cover and all that, but
(01:03:01):
Don't forget that that habitat is also helping protect these species from these eventsalso.
It gives them shelter.
And if they have shelter, they, they're resilient and they will, I mean, they will willthemselves to survival.
Yeah.
If they have to.
so habitat and good habitat plays a big role in them being able to handle these extremes.
(01:03:27):
Yeah.
And I would add to that.
I think that's a very important point.
But I'd add to it that I think that's why diversity is key because you never know in anyparticular year, what, what cover type might be most important.
And that might change based on random weather events.
So which don't seem that random.
(01:03:49):
Yeah.
I don't know what an average year looks like.
It's just, you pull something out of the hat.
The people in the Turkey Oklahoma are built different.
don't know.
I've met some of y'all guys from the Southeast come out there chasing Rios.
I I don't know if you're saying that as a good thing or bad thing, Marcus.
(01:04:16):
just like you're saying depends on the day, guess.
Yeah.
Nah, they've all been super cool.
Pat man.
But like you were saying, the Turkey culture thing.
the passion of the guys from the, you know, the Southeast part of the country that comeout, finish their slam or at least that's what they say when they're asking you where to
(01:04:39):
go on the public property, right?
Is this is the last bird I need for my slam, you know, passionate man.
And they're doing a good job.
They'll call us after they've had their hunt and talk about the habitat and things likethat.
And just, you know, things that you don't usually hear from just like a guy that's not
ate up with turkey hunting or anything really paid a lot of attention to it.
(01:05:05):
Yeah, that's really cool.
What have we not asked y'all about?
I feel like we have covered, we've covered a lot of ground.
I've a lot.
given some updates on Marcus's turkey hunting adventures?
You're talking about mine?
Yeah.
Has there been any more mishaps or have you gotten one yet or what?
No, I think I've hung it up.
(01:05:28):
I was going to go to Michigan and I still could, but I'm going to be a brew brewing heresoon.
So I think most of my mate is going to be, you know, as a pseudo hen.
(01:05:48):
So, which I'm super excited about, but, uh, you know, our season's closed here.
I haven't been able to get back to some of the other states I hunt in commonly.
And, uh, I have some access in Michigan, but I don't think I'm going to get to go thisyear because of that.
But I'm not complaining because I've gotten to do something that I've dreamed of doingsince I've read Illumination of the Flatwoods.
(01:06:17):
Well, that just more of an excuse to come out West next season.
We have to make it happen next year.
Yep.
We say that every year.
Well, I'm starting to know more and more people in Oklahoma for some random reason.
You know, it seems like every other month, somebody's moving out there for a job.
So I have no excuse now.
(01:06:39):
Yeah.
I hope y'all enjoy having Mark Turner out there.
yeah.
He out to come out there.
Yeah.
You already come out to pack saddle.
think we're going to do some scribe burn research plots out there and we already have afield day that he and I are supposed to put on.
So, Yeah.
(01:06:59):
I think, uh, he sent me some pictures he and his wife tagged out.
And, uh, I think those were their first Rio's too.
So yeah, think Chitwood was with them.
Yes.
Yeah.
He was.
That's right.
Yeah.
So I've got a lot of good folks working out there.
Yep.
We do.
Very passionate, very talented folks.
(01:07:22):
So, cool.
Uh, yeah, I guess anything else that we forgot or that you want to leave the audiencewith?
the only thing I could think of, you know, with this being the Turkey for tomorrow thingis we've had Jason come to our headquarters here pretty recently, the CEO.
Turkeys for tomorrow.
(01:07:43):
He's come to Oklahoma, met with all of our high up guys, telling them about theorganization and looking forward to kind of hopefully working on some projects with, with
turkeys for tomorrow, getting them in Oklahoma.
So was cool.
Yeah.
I heard that they were potentially getting in on something that Mark was starting up.
(01:08:03):
Yeah.
I think some of that hopefully that works out.
know that Jason was pretty interested in the trap and stuff.
And, know, he and I got to hang out at the Western Turkey meeting, do a little fish andthat dude fished me under the table, man.
He can fish, but now great, great guy.
I'm looking forward to it.
And whatever way they end up working with us.
(01:08:24):
Cause it'll happen.
You know, you can just kind of tell.
So, yeah, good.
Good.
Well, I appreciate y'all's time.
learned a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks guys.
Fun talking to you.
hearing about what you're dealing with over there, you know, the status of turkeys isreally good information.
We've a lot of research still going.
(01:08:47):
We're very committed, you know, to finding, find out how we can better manage them, whatthe cause is, if you know, it's, it's by million cuts in many ways, but do our part for
Turkey science.
And so we have our current research going on and we have
(01:09:09):
ah Another one on baiting that's and nest survival ah that's going on now too.
And we have one about uh how can we better count birds.
We that one starting up.
ah one did I miss, Marcus?
We have another one.
(01:09:30):
But a lot of research going on, not just for turkeys either.
We're looking at...
species and where, know, all kinds of pieces of black bears, turkeys, whale, pronghorn,mule deer, mule deer.
I mean, we're putting a lot of emphasis on, on research in Oklahoma.
(01:09:50):
That's great.
Yeah.
I think one thing that's evident and has been evident from our discussions withcoordinators and lots of states is you guys are dedicated to this and trying to find
answers to be stewards of the resource, which I really appreciate.
Yeah.
Yup.
Glad y'all are out there doing it.
(01:10:11):
That's the best job in the world, Agreed.
Yeah.
Well, thanks everybody out there for listening.
We appreciate all the support and feedback and everything.
and, uh, you know, we're trying to, to make our way around the, the wild turkey range to,you know, support.
(01:10:34):
folks in various places and get information to our listeners there.
So yeah, Oklahoma's slogan is make Turkey habitat great again.
Maybe, maybe we'll make that the title of the episode.
There you go.
That's right.
I'll throw out there too, Marcus, since you, kind of brought this up, uh, Marcus Lashleythat is, but, uh, you know, it'd be in Turkey season and Turkey's on everybody's mind
(01:11:01):
right now.
I have been getting a ton.
of messages and emails and I appreciate all those and there's been lots of good advice andsuggestions for episodes.
Sorry I have not gotten back to y'all on a bunch of those but uh give me some time, I'mNot ignoring those.
(01:11:22):
Alright, well thanks guys, we appreciate your time and thanks everybody for listening.
Yep, thank y'all.
Wild Turkey Science is part of the Natural Resources University podcast network and ismade possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots organization dedicated to the wild
turkey.
To learn more about TFT, check out turkeysfortomorrow.org.
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 Gulsby, 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.
(00:33):
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.
(00:56):
Well, I'm pretty sure we pulled it off twice in a row.
did we pull off?
We gave Charlotte five seconds of silence so that she has it for editing purposes.
So if we sound particularly good on this episode, it's because we gave her that fiveseconds.
(01:18):
Yeah, it definitely doesn't have anything to do with you because we spent 10 minutessetting up your audio.
It is in spite of me.
He's going to sound really good because his office isn't a bathroom.
Is it going to bother y'all if I'm in the bathroom?
That looks good.
That's good looking bathroom stall.
(01:39):
You're in for our audio only listeners.
If you think there's a bit of an echo now, you know why.
I don't know how we're going to this with two Marcus's on the show today.
Yeah, this might be tough and
You know, I have a hard time pronouncing your last name, Yeah.
(02:04):
Is that where your lineages from?
We stayed up North.
didn't earn the X at the end of our name.
So, oh That's where the X comes from.
Yep.
That's what they say anyways.
So does that mean you're not true Cajun since you don't have the X?
I'm not, I'm a poser, I guess.
uh So it's confusing to spell and you don't even get the credit of the X at the end.
(02:26):
Yeah.
don't even get all the good food, just a really tough time in third grade.
Yeah.
I love it.
Well, uh, guys, I'm, really excited to have y'all Eric Suttles.
I guess you're the Turkey coordinator for the, Eastern part of the state and MarcusTibbado.
(02:48):
Uh, you're the coordinator for.
The Western part of the state.
that accurate?
I'll let you guys fill us in on whatever I missed there.
was a strong introduction, Marcus.
Yeah.
So we're going to talk Oklahoma today.
All things Turkey.
We're excited to have y'all.
Thanks for having us.
(03:09):
Glad to be here.
We have a lot of listeners in Oklahoma.
They're big fans of the show.
that's awesome.
Yeah.
And I know several folks from Alabama that traveled out to hunt in Oklahoma this year.
So.
Definitely a popular destination.
was not, we're going to change that.
Well, you and I remember ask a certain person to get us on some birds out there this yearand he never got around to it.
(03:33):
I told, I told y'all come on out.
That was not on him.
I actually wasn't talking about you, Marcus.
was talking about, I was talking about Mark.
Now we're really developing a trend.
Mark Marcus.
Wow.
This is going to get really confusing.
(03:54):
The R squared value on this is increasing rapidly.
Y'all should have come out and it's been a, been a banger of a season so far.
Yeah.
So tell us, tell us about, um, the season and what's been going on lately.
It's been a weird one.
It's been the wettest April that Oklahoma's ever had on record, but they are, man, they'reharvesting a lot of turkeys.
(04:16):
think I looked it up yesterday.
We do online check-in.
So.
The number of birds checked in so far, you know, we're over 7,000 already.
Uh, there's no telling how many got checked in this morning, but 7,300 last night when Ilooked.
(04:37):
So, do you ask when they check those birds, do they have to indicate what subspecies theyare?
Or do y'all just assign that based on the hunt unit?
Based on the county that it's checked in.
Okay.
So like in Oklahoma, we've got the Eastern.
turkeys in the Southeast part of the state, you know, along the Eastern border.
And then the, you know, about 70 % of the state is purely just Rio Grande turkeys.
(05:00):
And then we do have a little bit of Marriam's up in the panhandle.
So when you say the, the wettest on record, is that statewide or is that in a particulararea?
Statewide.
So y'all got two or three centimeters over there in the panhandle.
Yeah.
We got almost five inches last month.
That's in the panhandle.
(05:20):
Yeah.
Down where I live, we got almost five inches.
That's a quarter of what we get a year.
So I imagine the vegetation's responding.
yeah.
We needed it.
Yeah.
We needed it.
It's green.
It's looking good.
will flourish.
Yeah.
And you know, we had a bunch of wildfires this winter, so we needed that.
(05:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's cool.
So how many birds do you all typically harvest in a season?
And where how far are you into the season right now?
At the seven thousand mark.
Right now, we're at seven thousand three hundred, like Marcus said.
So we're up.
(06:02):
We're up quite a bit.
But now we've seen these numbers before.
We see them in 2017.
So we're seeing what we experienced in 2017.
And then we had like a reverse bell curve and it dropped down.
And now we're climbing back up.
And so we're seeing very strong numbers.
mean, last year, so, uh, 20, 23, we were about 5,600.
(06:29):
2024 we're at 6,300 now at 7,300.
So we're starting to see how is left in the season this year.
We go from where one month.
So April 16th to May 16th.
Okay.
Okay.
So y'all still have about 10 days left as the day we're recording this.
We'll get that, you know, end of the season rush.
(06:52):
So all those guys that haven't harvested don't have to get made fun of.
So what do y'all attribute that, that higher harvest to, was that reflected in your pulpper hen ratios from a couple of years ago or?
It has been reflected in our pulp per hen.
(07:14):
We felt strong going into the season that we were going to have a pretty good huntingseason based on pulp per hand last year.
And we're seeing that across the landscape of a lot of jakes being reported and a heart,strong Jake harvest this year also.
yeah.
Okay.
Good, good summer reproduction is definitely helping.
(07:35):
So, um, and then just, yeah, overall just, it's just sort of rebounding, you know,
So yes, we're a little different than some of those Eastern States, you know, in Oklahoma,a bearded Turkey is a legal Turkey.
So we do get, you know, some, some Jake harvest and this year it looks like it's been alittle heavy, but you know, a lot of those, you know, we call them turbo Jakes, you know,
(08:02):
they don't have them little bitty beards, but know, they're like four or five inches.
You know what I mean?
Just the ones that get you a ticket in Mississippi kind of a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we do have some states that are still bearded Turkey over in the East too, but, uh,what, I was just curious, like, what's the historical peak?
(08:27):
Like, what was the highest harvest that you've had?
you know?
It's hard because we used to not make people check in birds, right?
So it's like, we don't, it'd be.
It'd be saying a number, but you'd have to take it with a grain of salt.
You know what I mean?
But like we used to be a three bird state and with our decline, we, dropped that bag limitdown to one and we shifted the season back, you know?
(08:54):
Uh, so that's, that's really promising for this high harvest this year is that 7,300that's 7,300 Turkey hunters, know?
It's been really good for our recruitment and the, you know, guys, you know, like myself.
Take your kids youth weekend, shoot one opening first couple of days.
(09:14):
And then you got a month of season left.
So you're taking other people taking new people.
So it's been pretty good.
you all seen, I kind of wonder like where you're at and you know, kind of on the edge, Iwould say, and if, you guys disagree, tell me I'm wrong, but, um, the edge of like the
center of the really big Turkey hunting culture.
(09:36):
You you think about like in the classic States like Mississippi, Alabama, kind of be inthe heart of it.
Georgia for sure.
Like that core of the Southeast.
Have y'all seen the hunting culture in Oklahoma?
The Turkey hunting culture like really take off.
That's why I you join the SEC.
(09:56):
Cause we're going to dominate the Turkey hunting also now.
It is.
mean, you know, I think, I think we're.
We're the edge of it.
go a little bit farther West and those spring seasons kind of compete with, you know, bearhunting and stuff like that.
But Oklahoma, man, it's huge, you know, Turkey hunting culture in Oklahoma.
Okay.
(10:17):
And what about where non residents localized, you know, we get a lot of, especially outWest, you know, my, other hat that I wear for the department is managing public hunting
areas out West and they're pretty big.
destinations for people to come get their Rio, you know, like black kettle WMA that Imanage.
You know, we've had 167 birds checked in so far off of that piece of property.
(10:44):
So a lot of, a lot of non-residents come out there and you get that, you know, feedbackfrom the residents, but a lot of birds equals a lot of bird hunters.
So in that county, we, we take, you know, game harvest surveys, which is
What a of States do, they call hunters, you know, and try to get a report.
(11:06):
And so we have that data going back.
don't have the hunter check-in data that started in 2014, the online check-in statewide,but the game heart with survey data that that's more historic and goes back.
And, and we saw what most other States saw were early 2000s, 2005, six.
That was our peak.
(11:28):
The far as what we.
I was our peak harvest and all that.
and the culture has been strong.
hunting culture in Oklahoma has been strong for a long time.
Okay.
I don't know that we're just now catching up to those Southern States.
I think we've been a strong culture for a long time.
It's been pretty cool.
(11:49):
When I came into the Turkey part, you know, a lot of the program stuff, you know, like thebig game or up one game or the Turkey program stuff, like in Oklahoma when
We had our decline start going on with the turkeys.
We were met with just a lot of support from turkey hunters.
wasn't, you know, we're going to tell you what needs to happen.
was, what do you need from us?
(12:11):
The one bird bag limit.
I mean, that was a result of, you know, feedback on proposed rule changes.
We were going to go from three birds to two birds.
And the feedback from the public was, no, we're so worried about it and want to help.
Let's go from three to one.
Like it was.
That's how concerned everybody was.
And I know out West, you know, lot of outfitters and stuff like that.
(12:34):
They're calling me saying, Hey, we're not going to take any clients this spring seat, youknow, for a few spring seasons.
Like that's, that's how serious they were taking it.
Wow.
So that, culture part of it, that's, that's pretty big when you're making money on it.
So for sure.
We've talked about this a couple of times already, but would y'all mind kind of describingthe changes that you see across the state in terms of, you know, the, the ecosystems, for
(13:02):
those, those listeners that aren't as familiar with the geography of Oklahoma.
Now I'll talk about the eastern.
So, you know, we have the Wausau National Forest comes in.
So we have this mountain range that, that enters into Oklahoma, uh, in the Southeast.
And we even have.
golf, golf coastal plane that comes into the very Southern tip of Oklahoma.
(13:27):
And so we had some alligators even in Oklahoma, the far Southeast oh of the state.
And then we go into these mountains and uh then we have timber companies and timberharvest and all that, that you would, you know, see in the other Southern States.
And then, uh, we kind of, then if you
(13:49):
travel north, just is really pretty called Green Country up there by Tulsa.
And it's just, you know, nice rolling hills and nice streams and it's just beautifullandscape.
And so that's sort of the eastern side.
Just think of timber and some harvest, uh farming.
(14:13):
just, yeah, that's where you kind of get out east.
And then that transitions into
Um, the cross timbers, now that timber, that timber is going to give way to the greatplane and to grasslands.
And now you start to see more of a, if managed properly, you're going to have more of aSavannah, more, trees, more grass and a lot of grazing.
(14:38):
And is that a precipitation gradient, Eric?
Yeah.
So you go from like Eric's part of the state where he's at.
You know, 50, 60 inches of rain a year to like where I'm at, which is like what we gethere.
14 to 20 is what we get in a year.
So it's pretty drastic across the state.
(15:00):
Yeah.
Or just for my information, I guess on listeners, if they don't know, is that sort of, uh,showing the break and the distribution of the subspecies as well.
So we're kind of are looking at that.
doing like a, we got several research projects going on, some statewide, some kind ofregional.
(15:23):
We did a genetic research project.
It's ongoing, but we're done collecting the samples across the entire state to kind oflook at that overlap and some hybridization areas and things like that.
we looked at uh habitat suitability between like Easterns and Rios.
And it's, a lot of that middle part of the state, you can see that transition from
(15:46):
habitat suitability with kind of the hybridization is what's looking like.
So it kind of just, you know, fades out.
There's no hard distinct line or anything like that.
So I bet you get a lot of pictures from hunters asking, this an Eastern or a Rio?
Oh yeah.
Or is this a Marriam's or, know, but it's so muddied up, but now we have like, you know,some real genetic information that kind of shows, you know, exactly what percentage of
(16:13):
birds from that County, like what
percentage Eastern they might be and stuff like that.
that's all the phone calls I get all years from all the guys from the Southeast wanting tocome kill a true Rio out West.
So they can, we can back it up now and say it is a full blooded one.
So you were saying the Miriams, where are they located?
(16:35):
Very tip of the panhandle.
Okay.
So very, very small portion of the panhandle.
mean,
exclusively on private property.
we just we get updates from the guys out there.
They sell a few hunts and things like that.
They're saying the Miriams are looking pretty good this year.
They're seeing a lot of jakes kind of like what we're seeing across the state.
(16:58):
It's been often big reproduction to your sounds like.
Yeah.
They used to call it the sooner slam when we were a three bird state and shoot all threesubspecies in Oklahoma.
So that's really cool.
I don't know about the sooner part, but.
uh
Well, so going back to the, that transition that you see across the state.
(17:22):
So is it, are the, are the Easterns and Rio's relatively equal aside from the hybrid zonein terms of their proportion of the, States?
No, no, Eastern is really very small.
if you want the true blood Eastern, you're really only having one County.
Okay.
The Curtin County.
(17:42):
Okay.
So most of the state is Rio then.
Yeah.
Most of us Rio and a lot of hybridization.
Yep.
Gotcha.
And, so, but more, but I tell fan, you know, what you're going to get.
mean, if you're, if you're east of 69 highway, you're probably going to have an Easternmuckingbird and 69 on highway sort of a barrier and a break, you know, there's so much
(18:11):
traffic on that highway.
And then that's just where.
urbanization and everything else is happening along the highway, it's preventing uh abottleneck.
know, mean, the genetics isn't really crossing the C29 highway a lot unless it's up anddown streams, rivers and creeks.
And the hybridization thing, that was just a small part of the genetic stuff.
(18:31):
You it was more of like a, like you could call it like a conservation genetics projectlooking more like, you know, genetic isolation, looking where we need to focus corridor
work, things like that.
Cool, interesting part to put into it.
But y'all did see that that highway was a major barrier.
Yeah, we're seeing some like really major highways.
(18:51):
gene flow, it's pretty crazy on that.
Isn't that crazy?
Like you wouldn't think that just, I mean, like even like a four lane interstate highwaydoesn't seem like it would be that big of a barrier to Turkey genetics, but it Might as
well be the Pacific Ocean.
know?
Wow.
It's crazy.
And that research will be coming out soon.
that the full report and that'll be a really fun paper to dig into.
(19:15):
And like when that gets fully completed, um, a lot of work by the biologist and ourhunters across the state to collect the genetic samples and get those turned in.
So we, we, I think we got, we try to get every 70 set.
have 77 counties.
try to get genetics from every single county.
You know, um, I think we did a pretty good job, but.
(19:40):
So did y'all ever have to bring in birds from anywhere else?
Did y'all or did y'all translocate around the state or how did that work?
that some of the hybridization from that do you think?
Some of it.
Yeah.
So, you know, we started our, our relocation program in 1948.
(20:02):
we'll actually before that, because we have a story of, we have two stories.
We have.
the relocation program for the Easterns and the relocation program for the Rio.
They're sort of different timelines and different stories.
in 1948, when we embarked on the relocation for the Rios, we got 21 Rios that we trappedin the panhandle and took them to Harper County.
(20:30):
And then we added 87 more birds into Harper County uh and Harper County became
our our main population.
We grew that up and then we trapped a relocated birds out of that county all across thewestern part of of Oklahoma.
(20:51):
And we did that in the 1950s and 60s.
And then in the 70s, we started taking that western population more central 70s and 80s.
And then the program uh
for the Rio reintroduction wind down and stopped in 1996.
(21:15):
And that's when we determined that we'd no further relocation was needed in the populationhad been and was being influenced mainly by recruitment at that point.
So many years, but the starting way back 1948 and.
They estimate from the records and stuff about 10,000 Rios.
(21:38):
trapped and relocated.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, that's really early.
A lot of, mean, that's way before a lot of States started working on this.
It's pretty cool.
mean, in 1925, they thought that there were zero turkeys in Oklahoma.
Wow.
And then the storage a little different for, for the Easter, um, from 1934 to 1964.
(22:05):
We.
We pin raised birds and re-released over 5,000 pin raised birds in the, in, in for theEastern.
And these came from what was the Dalenton game farm.
And they released a room in the Dalenton game farm and then released them.
And after 30 years, they determined that the population had not become established as aresult of these released pin raised birds.
(22:33):
many years did they try that?
30 years, 30 years in a row, not like they did it a few years.
then they look 30 years later and there weren't any, you mean they released it over andover.
We get that relatively common.
I was going to say this to you.
I'm glad you talked.
(22:54):
get questions about this and people ask, why don't we just release birds and do penraised?
uh several people have been fairly adamant that we could do that successfully.
But we keep running into this situation over and over where lots of States tried to dothat.
And in this case for 30 years in a row and still didn't work.
(23:17):
And so when what happened was in 1959, we were in Oklahoma, we're seeing the success thatwe're having out West, the traffic and relations.
So that method to the Southeast Oklahoma.
we went to Arkansas.
We got 16 wild birds from them for 8 million walleye fry.
(23:40):
I love these trades.
These are, this is like one of my favorite things.
We should be making notes on all the trades that went down.
I I think I would take the walleye fry over the otters.
don't know.
we have one that was beavers?
We traded, there's been some odd trades.
We traded out West Cheyenne, Oklahoma with Cheyenne Wyoming, Rios for Pronghorn.
(24:03):
Oh, nice.
See that's still a solid trade.
Yeah.
I mean, give them the walla fry.
Yeah.
Give them the pronghorn.
You know, like I'm down with it.
And so, so we got that and then we got a few more from Missouri and from Missouri, we, gotfour toms and eight hens for some prairie chickens.
We gave them 25 prairie chickens.
(24:24):
So, uh, we ended up on the better end of that trade also.
So that, that, and so we I'm wondering.
28th, these States thinking given away turkeys for some of this stuff?
I would've liked to been in on that deal making, you know what I I'll raise you two times.
(24:45):
Oh, you know, were some 12 ounce decisions for sure.
Hold on.
What do you give me for 12 stripes?
Gunks?
That's like one turkey egg.
Yeah.
considerations.
28 birds groomed the population we currently have in the Southeast.
(25:10):
So it's just a case study that the Penry bird just get really working.
And the traffic.
It's a pretty remarkably strong one too.
Like you tried to release birds for 30 years and it didn't work.
And then you traded, you know, a couple of pop rocks and you know, marbles for eight timesand whatever you said, 28 turkeys total.
(25:31):
And that.
You know that really established the population.
Like they're not even in the same realm of success.
Yeah.
That's becoming such a popular thing in Oklahoma is people wanting to turn out pen raisedbirds and you know, like with avian influenza the last couple of years, it's like, man,
(25:52):
that's a good way to just ruin all the bouncing back that we've done with the wildpopulations is introduce something like that.
Yeah.
And I mean, the other thing too is like, look what they're starting to find out with the,uh, the pin reared mallards, know, and those genetics starting to pollute the wild
genetics.
mean, I don't know about y'all, but I'm all about keeping wild turkeys wild.
(26:13):
I want to see those, those genetics.
yeah.
Look at all those white.
Tom's getting harvested nowadays.
You know, where was that at four years ago?
Yeah.
It does seem to be becoming pretty prevalent.
Yeah.
Lots of, lots of color phase things coming up now.
Aren't they?
(26:35):
Yeah, that that's really interesting.
I'm glad you brought up the, you know, that, that case study about the pen raise birds,because we, we have gotten up pretty commonly and folks just keep coming back to it and
we'll, probably got 10 or 12 comments and DMS about it this time.
How they didn't do it right.
But yeah, that's a, that's really.
(26:58):
Interesting.
So y'all already touched on the genetic study that you've got going on.
there any other research projects going on or recently completed?
Yeah, we've got several.
We got to do a statewide like, you know, mainly like a habitat focus study.
You might've seen some of the stuff recently, like on social media, some of the bandedbirds getting harvested, you know, being a big deal.
(27:25):
you know, some banding, some, a lot of nest habitat stuff, trying to fine tune, you know,nesting habitat across the state with it being so variable, you know what I mean?
seven different like eco regions make up Oklahoma and what is nesting habitat look likefor turkeys across that?
How can we do better management like with us on the wildlife management areas for makingbetter nesting habitat?
(27:49):
So doing a lot of like, you know, GPS collared hands, things like that.
Got some other stuff starting, lot of like, you know, our hardest problem right now, likeyou were talking about in a previous episode, trying to just survey turkey numbers.
How many turkeys do we have on the landscape?
know, we're, we, have surveys that we do, uh, for turkeys in Oklahoma and it's, it's hard,know, it's, it's hard to be confident in those really.
(28:18):
I was just curious about the, nesting when you're talking about the eco regions and whatdoes that look like?
Were there any stark differences structurally, or was it just the composition of plantschanged?
Like what?
What did that look like?
Do you have any insight on it?
(28:38):
Well, so the current research that our vital rates research that we have, you kind of havehad our vital rates started with the conversation with Dr.
Elmore, you had on here before.
it was where, what's the most important thing or what, where is the main problem?
mean, are we birds bred?
(28:59):
Are they putting, are they making, you know, are they laying eggs?
Are the poults dying?
And so it was really answering this broad
spectrum of questions.
And that's going to be wrapping up here pretty soon.
They're just finishing up this last year of the field season now.
And we split that research up into the Southeast and the Southwest, two extreme in abottle.
(29:25):
As, as different as we can get them, but they're both experiencing problems within thepopulation.
uh Once in the Southeast is sort of like.
struggling, it's sustainable and it's sustaining, but it's not growing.
And the Southwest, we had the decline and a noticeable decline.
(29:49):
so trying to answer what does that, what does that look like?
so, uh, been pretty interesting things coming out of that.
Um, but, uh, so yeah, so that's sort of what that research is, is looking at.
You know, I don't want to jump ahead of the research, but for the South, I'll speak of theSoutheast, the markets can speak of the Southwest, but the one thing that's caught my full
(30:17):
attention in the Southeast is the adult can survive it.
Yeah.
then I expect the number that we're expecting there.
Yeah.
I think I saw in the, I don't know if the, the peer reviewed version has come out yet, butin the, the thesis from the student that worked on it.
I can't remember her name, but Nicole Nicole Nicole.
(30:40):
Yeah.
It was in the low forties, right?
It's low.
Yeah.
And I think you even you mentioned in one of your papers there too, Marcus, I think youkind of looked at some of those.
Rotation put in one of your papers, I believe.
And it's just, yeah, it's it's high and high mortality on those result hands.
(31:02):
And yes, we can't.
keep a hen alive, how are you going to keep a nest going?
Right.
Yeah.
40%.
It doesn't really matter what your nest success and brood survival look like.
There's just not enough hens.
Yeah.
I mean, when it's that low, when your hen survival is that low, you could be, you wouldhave to be in the banner year reproduction to overcome it.
(31:27):
You'd have, and you can't have a banner year every year.
So.
Most years you're going be pawning.
all packaged up, know, there's a lot, as you guys know, there's so much information fromthe fieldwork that it has to go back to the lab.
It's got to be analyzed.
It's got to be packaged up and we'll see what it all says.
Looking forward to what that says for the Eastern part.
(31:49):
That's one thing that has my attention.
And then Marcus, what are you seeing in the Southwest part there?
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing predation.
We're seeing a lot of re-nesting attempts, which
You know, as used to be a thing of.
I don't know, I wouldn't say like debate, but you used to think a turkey wouldn't re nestif she got pushed off of her nest once or she might re nest a second time and that's it.
(32:14):
Man, we've we've seen some pretty cool stuff.
A lot of cool movement data with those GPS collars that has been really interesting.
But, you know, predation is always just kind of stuck out statewide.
You know, we are hearing about predation even before the decline became.
really popular, like with quail out west, predation became a big thing.
(32:35):
And it's something we've tackled head on, you know, only 3 % of Oklahoma is public land.
If we're going to make differences in the state habitat wise or predation wise, it's goingto happen on the private property level.
So like myself, a few other wildlife management, area biologists from over East, westarted a trapping workshop, right?
(32:57):
we, we host.
across the state at different wildlife management areas.
We host workshops to teach people how to furbear a know, trap raccoons with coon cuffs,know, put leg holds in the ground, how to do that, how to incorporate it into your habitat
management plan or your, you know, management plan for your property.
(33:17):
Fill that knowledge gap and man, it's been super successful.
A lot of interest in it.
People wanting to learn about it.
uh
The workshops have all maxed out and had giant waiting lists.
So it's, and it's made a big, big difference.
You know, you hear the stories from the people that attend the workshop and then call youa couple of years later and say, Hey, I, you know, I might not have trapped everything,
(33:42):
but I put out the coon cuffs and man, I'm having some turkeys now.
that the silver bullet?
You know, of course not.
There's no diet pill for making birds again, but you got to do a little bit of everything,but
I feel like it's a great way to get people started.
Cause once they start trapping, they get into now what else can I do?
You know, what other things can I start adding to it?
(34:05):
So I agree with that.
something.
Yeah.
Well, Marcus and I, think we've had that conversation on the air before that certainthings that we didn't think were really high return on investment.
We've started to appreciate more and more even in spite of that, because I think, youknow, the more you get people out there on the land or in times of the year where they're
not just hunting.
Not just trying to extract the resource, but they're trying to give back.
(34:26):
think that that just snowballs.
I think it's a mindset.
They change into the mind.
This isn't about taking now.
It's about giving back and starting that somewhere.
And investing.
Yeah.
It feels like more of an investment.
And it uh sounds like you guys probably
(34:47):
have some of the situation we certainly deal with it a ton where a lot of the huntingcommunity don't own the land they hunt on, but they're on private, but they don't have the
right to go in and manipulate habitat at the landscape level.
So, uh, you know, that that's a tool that most, most of those people in those situationshave at their disposal.
(35:12):
Yeah.
would guess a lot of y'all's private land hunters are probably leasing ranch.
like ranch rights, right of trespass on various ranches and things like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just, you know, hunting leases and things like that.
I've never heard it called right of trespass.
That's hilarious.
I throwing it back.
I was throwing it back.
(35:33):
I'm surprised he said ranch instead of farm.
uh If that was, if there was one thing I could get right, mean, I've already insultedtheir hunting culture today.
So their Turkey hunting culture.
So.
I want to make sure I get that part right.
I'm so naive.
didn't even realize you're insulting them.
We got some good ones, man.
(35:54):
you said that, I thought you were, it was the, the snarky remark about the Sooners thatyou were talking about.
well, yeah, man.
That's straight three for me, but.
Will your video is getting kind of grainy.
I'm just going to fade into the background here and disappear from the rest of thisepisode.
He was talking about that right to trespass and I see a WMA boundary sign in his office.
(36:16):
don't pay attention to that.
Man, he's just like broadcasting it to the world.
I'm at our headquarters.
I'm going to go grab a warden real quick.
I think the statute of limitations is up on that one.
I'm not sure.
But Marcus, about, you talked about y'all are doing the trapping workshops.
(36:38):
What are y'all doing um as far as like technical assistance with landowners for habitatstuff?
like, what are, or I mean, maybe a better place to start is like, what are the majorhabitat challenges that turkeys face in Oklahoma?
So, you know, like we keep saying, it changes from East to West, but we do host workshopsand field days, educating landowners.
(37:00):
Like, so out West, uh
We do a lot of cedar tree removal.
So root roosting areas is really important.
And like Dwayne Elmore, you know, he and I did a lot of work together, uh, and learned alot from him.
He's a great quail hunter, by the way.
He can outpace the dogs, quite the walker.
I've watched him do that with mountain quail one time.
(37:22):
it's nuts.
I'm like, he bird dogged him out.
I keep telling them, I'm like, man, slow down.
My dogs will stop when they smell those quail, you know, like you don't have to, you don'thave to ride them.
But, you know, we did a bunch of research at pack saddle.
One of the WMAs that uh I'm over when I first started with GPS colored birds are backpackturkeys, you know, and looking at roosting habitat, habitat utilization, things like that.
(37:49):
And we found that roost tree availability in the Western part of the state is the biggestlimiting factor.
It's not that we don't have roost trees.
It's that they get so choked out by cedar trees and other woody vegetation.
I love that you said that because I've, I've been thinking a lot about that.
That the turkeys physically can't pitch up into the trees.
Yeah.
(38:09):
And so we've done a ton of work.
mean, uh, over a million dollars through NGO partners and stuff like that since 2017,after we figured this all out and restoring riparian areas, increasing roost tree
availability, uh,
And it's been a game changer.
mean, I've got a picture that I use in every one of my PowerPoints and we'll have henturkeys and turkeys moving into these project areas where we've never seen turkeys before
(38:38):
with the equipment still there.
know, like it's the return on it is immediate.
It's, been awesome.
So that's our big push.
And then you can maintain that with prescribed burning.
Cause if you would have, you know, uh
If you don't do that, you're going to have to exclude those areas from your prescribedburn.
Otherwise the cedar trees are going to ladder fuel up and destroy your cottonwoods.
(39:01):
So we've been doing a ton of that and it's been, it's been remarkable to see the responseto it.
Yeah.
And with the cedars, are you primarily relying on mechanical removal just followed up byprescribed fire to maintain?
Yeah.
I mean, we all have our different.
preferred method, you know, like I just do this straight up mulching.
know, we go in there with grinders and just turn it into mulch.
(39:23):
other guys like, uh, fad pots, he's biologist over at Canton WMA and it's been a hugesuccess story out West.
The thing was so covered up with cedar trees.
You literally couldn't walk through parts of the WMA and he's been stacking them and we'vebeen going in and burning them later.
And, you know, like cat, uh, cut stack and burn and
(39:45):
Yeah.
It's been awesome.
It's turned into one of our most popular WMAs, know, top five in just the last five yearsfrom all the work he's been doing out there.
So.
that case, you've not just enhanced habitat for turkeys, but you have actually taken whatwas previously unusable space is what you described.
So that was a hole in the landscape that they could not use for anything.
(40:06):
And you've changed it back into Turkey habitat.
And especially if you're fire in there, it could potentially be high quality.
So it's gone from.
They won't even use it or walk through it to high quality.
It isn't even just that area.
It sounds like to me, those are anchors for roosting.
So the birds are probably anchored there and now all the space around it is usable becauseit's close enough to a roost area.
(40:32):
Is that, yeah, you know, like, and when we were having this talk about like themulti-state project, we tried to get going, you know,
I was just kicking myself.
It's like, man, I wish we could have had some GPS backpacks on birds when we were doingthese huge projects.
yeah.
That would be so insightful.
them come in and break up.
Like even in our winter roosts, we'll see that, you know, like Roger Mills County wherewe're at, you know, 10 years ago, the roosts, the winter flocks would be, you know, just
(41:02):
giant, you know, handful across the whole county.
And now it's just a bunch of smaller ones, know, a hundred, 200 birds only just all overthe place.
And I would like to say it's because of opening up lots of more roosting areas, but youknow, who knows, but that project would have kind of answered some of that.
Well, that roost issue, I'm glad you brought that up to circle back to it, because I thinkthat the same thing happens in Eastern forest, especially like with a privet invasion into
(41:30):
hardwood forest, roof sites that are traditionally used or have been for a long time.
And then you get a privet.
dense privet bit story in there and they just quit receiving any use.
It's basically the same thing.
I mean, Dwayne could talk more about it because it was his project and stuff, but youknow, the thermal suitability for that habitat was a big part of it too.
(41:51):
know, that when turkeys were seeking, you know, like thermal refuge, you know, Oklahoma,Western Oklahoma, we can get up to like 115 degrees in the summertime.
that thermally suitable habitat really important.
And when you have cedar trees in your riparian areas, you know, have a lot of top covershade, but if there's no wind to come through there and kind of cool it off, you're just
(42:13):
making an oven instead of having the opposite effect.
they're cut out, you can get some of that breeze through the bottom of it and make it acooler habitat.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And we've seen it with quail too.
So I'm going to try not to talk too much about quail, but no, that's my...
That's my first love.
(42:35):
Quail or just turkey poles, right?
so to answer that question, know, habitat in the, the Eastern part of the state, it's,it's, um, timber, stem improvement.
Yeah.
It's, it's your traditional, what you would see across the other states, you know, know,if you're, if you're walking, I always kind of.
(43:03):
If you're walking on uh pine needles, you need to do something.
If you're, if you're walking on deciduous leaves, you need to do something, right?
We got to have more diversity, as we walk through the forest and then that, pretty simplenow on what, your needs are there.
Um, at least the starting point, what, where you might want to start.
(43:27):
So, so that's what we see here.
then in the central part, it's at Cedars too.
Um, the cross timbers is just being choked out by Cedars.
Uh, what's left of the prairies or what's left of, of a usable space is being choked outby Cedars.
So it's not a home, it's a Cedar.
(43:48):
And so got to stay out to the Cedars.
And I imagine a lot of that, Eric is, is due to, you know, inadequate use of prescribedfire.
Um, so what are y'all seeing as far as, as trends and prescribed fire use?
Is that something that has, I mean, I'm sure it's not back up to where you'd want it tobe, but are you seeing a positive trend in that regard?
(44:12):
Yeah.
I think so.
know, OSU does a great job of, with their extension services, OSU extension to get themessage out to those people.
It's just, it's a risk, you know,
And you got to find the individuals that are willing to put in the work, the labor, thetime, and a little bit of risk.
(44:33):
You know, we are protected under the law to do prescribed fire or as protections if youfollow the steps.
we're prescribed for our happy state.
mean, we're, we're allowed to do it.
but, uh, yeah, just kind of find it, you know, trying to find those.
And so we do have associations that help with that.
And then.
Within the Department of Wildlife, we also have private lands biologists to also help andassist that.
(44:59):
so almost every region, North East, Southwest, all has a private lands biologist that cancome out to your property and help you with uh the plan, the funding, the implementation,
help you get it going.
(45:20):
That's very good.
I know I was aware of, uh, the pers prescribed burn associations and the seem to reallytaken off in Oklahoma and I did a online prescribed fire training and that opened my eyes
to that.
Cause we used a resource from your state to connect people to their, Yeah.
(45:44):
To try to connect people to that, that network, I guess.
oh
PBAs, regardless of which state you're in, there's a tool online that, that we linked tothat helps people find one local to them.
But when you look at that, it became evident to me, those things are all over Oklahoma andit's just been a really successful model.
(46:10):
seems like.
it, it's, know, and I'm part of the one in our County and man, it's, awesome to see ittake off.
Cause once you get enough guys into it.
You know, we, we get, get in a situation now where if we're burning on someone's property,you know, we're calling their neighbor and telling them, Hey, we're going to be over here
burning this field.
You better get yours ready.
We're going to burn it too.
(46:31):
You know, like we're over here that that's going to be a problem during wildfire season.
So let's get it.
Take care of right now.
And have you seen receptiveness of those people?
Yeah.
mean, especially with some of the recent wildfires y'all have had.
Yeah.
You know, we've had all these wildfires and it's just.
raised the awareness of the need for prescribed fires, really.
(46:54):
And one day, you know, here just lately, March 14th was the windiest day in Oklahomahistory.
As I know, have 20, we have Meso net stations across the state.
That's like, places to check weather, right?
And then those are the stations.
And so a 63 of those stations all hit greater than 58 miles per hour.
(47:19):
And on March 14th, and we had a wildfire outbreak.
Oh man.
Out West is like 75, know, 70 plus mile an hour winds when our wildfire started out there.
Oh my God.
So you can imagine the kind of, when we talk about a wildfire out West, know, with bluestem that's waist high.
I wouldn't want to be within a mile of that thing.
(47:41):
They've documented some of those head fires moving 70 miles an hour and then just theamount of acreage they can cover.
Couple of years ago, we had the smokehouse fire come out of the Texas Panhandle intoOklahoma.
Million and a half acres in two days.
Two, three days, million and a half acres.
It was insane.
Yeah, that reminds me of some of the historic writings that I've read of, you know, someof the Plains Indians and the Buffalo hunters and stuff talking about those prairie fires
(48:09):
and.
Yeah, this is where it would have happened at.
uh exactly.
And they talk about jumping in like a Buffalo carcass or a stream or something like thatas it goes over them.
And that's how much the landscapes change.
So like our fire department that I'm on, uh, when it first started, they used to go fightwildfires with gunny sacks.
(48:30):
They would dip them in a bucket, a barrel of water and literally beat down the fire to putit out.
And now we have to use like, you know, these.
big military trucks that were chasing them in and spraying water, you know, hundreds ofgallons of water at a time.
It's, it's nuts.
Yeah.
What about Marcus in the, in the Western part of the state?
(48:52):
y'all, um, doing like, you know, some patch burn grazing too?
Yeah.
So like on the wall, you landowners starting to adopt that.
Yeah.
I mean, so, you know, where I'm at specifically is in the middle of the, what would havebeen the dust bowl.
So guys that, you know, are
On family land, they know a lot more about soil health than I do because their families,you know, invented that.
(49:14):
They lived it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shelter belts, no till, no till planting, and then a lot more of this patch burn grazingstuff.
We do a lot of it on the areas that I manage.
um And it's, it's awesome.
It makes great habitat.
You know, I keep coming back to quail because a lot of that it's the same thing that we'retalking about, right?
That, that habitat for brooding when it comes to quail or turkeys.
(49:37):
that nesting habitat, it's, all the same when you break it down.
So one thing that I've always wondered about patch burn grazing is if it's better atcreating some bare ground between the plants than just fire alone.
Have you noticed any differences there?
think it's really good for like our woody control or woody bro, like that, know, woodyencroachment in the great plains is the fight, right?
(50:00):
Yeah.
to fight that woody encroachment.
And so now that we're doing a lot more growing season burning,
with, you know, cattle on pastures.
It's a great way to put weight on cattle.
And it's also just, man, when you talk about getting rid of that woody component orlimiting it to some favorable percentages, it's awesome.
mean, it's been great.
(50:21):
sense.
And to Willie bring that up, that, you know, bare ground, our summer burns in the Easternpart of the state provide much better bare ground and better pulp.
Turkey, you know, um, quail, um, better habitat for a longer period of time.
(50:41):
Dormant season burn has its purpose and it's a tool, but once you get the rains that we'regetting, you get some vegetation growth.
It's, it's, you know, it's going to grow up pretty thick.
It happens so fast.
Yeah.
Right.
Where if you do it in the summertime, you get that bare ground and those, and that's aslower plant response over time.
(51:02):
And it's actually more favorable.
plant response, honestly, too, more Forbes.
Um, and you get, and it lasts longer, lasts in all winter, all month, you know, severalmonths.
So, uh, summer burning is really important in the, in the timber part, from central to theWestern, or from central to Eastern part of the state.
(51:25):
Very important for that cattle grazing.
Very important from central to Western.
Yeah, that makes sense.
We'll find it a bit, but.
I was curious along these lines, just thinking about over a longer time period, have youguys, or I guess, I'll ask you a different way.
Have there been any dramatic land use changes or anything over the past decades inOklahoma and what are those?
(51:55):
Yeah.
mean, in the Western part of the state, when you talk about agriculture, right?
So like kind of just shifts with what's making money.
A lot of it.
stuff that's going to go to cotton.
That's, you know, we're kind of seeing that in some areas where, you know, you might havea wildlife management area or outfit or property, something like that.
(52:15):
And then it becomes almost isolated, like cotton fields all the way around it.
So just kind of that agricultural change.
like right now it's kind of oh shifting back a lot of this ag lad that used to be plantedto wheat and things like that.
It's going back to native grass.
People are playing it back to grass.
(52:35):
Uh, the agriculture where, where I live at, you know, Durham, Oklahoma, they used to callit the broom corn capital of the world.
And we used to have pheasants and prairie chickens and everybody used to plant a lot of,you know, sorghum, things like that.
And they don't now, you know what I mean?
It's, uh, it's stuff like that.
(52:56):
It's just, it's kind of changed slowly over time to where nobody really notices it.
You know what I mean?
When you talk to those landowners and they say, my properties look like this for forever.
And it's like, man, it never looked like that 50 years ago.
It's just happened so slowly.
didn't notice.
What do you think has driven that conversion back to, back to pasture or grass?
(53:21):
that, um, are they switching over to beef from row crop or no row crop out of production?
Like out, where we're at winter wheat.
mean, you're just really planting it for.
for hay.
if you can graze smorter on native grass, it's saving you a lot of just money.
Okay.
And equipment, things like that.
I winter wheat, I don't know, it hadn't been profitable in a long time.
(53:44):
It's just been getting planted for subsidies really.
I think guys are just wising up to it.
Grazing grazing smorter, you know?
What about in the Eastern part of the state?
I mean, I don't know that our practice of a change much.
(54:06):
I mean, we didn't in the central part of the state, of course, we're seeing some of theshift.
You're starting to see what we used to be.
Farms or ranches that was in production or kind of being broken up.
And not going so much in production and then you're starting to see the cedar encroachmentand these other things because they're production quite so much.
(54:27):
uh In Eastern where we had the mountains and the trees, it's all pretty much been timberand has been timber and it still is timber.
know, um some of those practices have changed.
were trying to, at one point, try to put cattle on the bottom and grow pine trees on top.
So you have a, you know, a.
(54:49):
There's probably still some of that going on, but I think I see less of that.
What's happening when as as recreation and the need for recreation and the price ofproperty for recreational use has gone up a lot of the property in the Eastern parts,
(55:10):
especially the Southeast has gone recreation.
So they're buying this property not to make money off of it.
solely for recreation.
so they are taking some of that timber, but what might've been a timber harvest, they'retaking that out, you know, they're not harvesting it.
so, or what they might've had cattle underneath and timber on top.
(55:32):
Now they don't have the cattle.
So you are seeing that shift because it's shifting over to recreation, deer hunting,turkey hunting, uh, deer hunting is the primary driver.
for those, for the property.
We're seeing the same thing.
Yeah.
On rural land for sure.
(55:53):
And so it just that need to educate people that, yeah, even though you, you're buying thatfor recreation and for hunting, don't forget the management.
You know, it might do you some good, you know, you're not going to, may not get rich, butit probably going to do you some good.
If you can cut some pine off of there, get some timber off there, open that
(56:16):
open that hillside up a little bit.
Like I said, if you're walking on pine needles, we need to do something.
Not just feed corn to coons the whole time.
Good stuff.
And then we have the oil and gas industry, know, lot of windmills coming.
mean, that's Marcus Buck about the windmills, but that is also changing the landscapeacross Oklahoma.
(56:40):
Hmm.
Well, Eric, I know you mentioned before the show started that you had some interestingstuff related to weather.
I was just curious if you could, you know, talk to us about that a little bit, likechanges in weather extremes and weather.
Right.
So, you know, Oklahoma definitely is a state with extreme weather.
(57:03):
Everybody's seen us on the news at one point or another with our tornadoes and our events.
And so.
The weather definitely drives our Turkey population locally.
You know, when we have these local events, it's going to affect the Turkey population, youknow?
And so we do need, so the importance of that is we need habitat connectivity so that whenwe have these events, there's a source sync population dynamic going on, you know, in
(57:33):
these events.
at 2011, well 2010 was extreme.
and persistent flooding, kind of what we're seeing this year.
But 2010 we had flooding and then 2011 came and we had a lot of storms in the beginning inthe spring.
(57:56):
And on April uh 14th, we had 33 tornadoes.
And then that, so that rainy period of 2010, 2011 gave way to the heat of the summer of2011.
And that was the driest on record.
Triple heat digits, we had 60 to 70 plus days of temperature over 100 degrees in thatsummer of 2011.
(58:22):
so just some of the highlights of 2011 that broke the records and still hold records todayis the lowest temperature was actually in 2011 at minus 31 degrees.
We had a 24-hour snowfall of 27 inches in 2011.
We had the highest wind gust of 151 in 2011.
(58:42):
We had the largest hail storm of six inches in 2011.
We had the most 100 days, the most days over 100 degrees.
We had 101 days in Granfield, which is in Southwest Oklahoma.
So Southwest Oklahoma had 101 days above.
(59:05):
So that a hundred degrees.
thought Florida was bad.
Yeah.
That was in, yeah.
2011.
then we that.
I'm how are the dry heat though?
It's a dry humidity to get you.
Well, it might be the negative 31 happening in the same year as a hundred days.
Like how I'm sitting here wondering how are there turkeys?
(59:29):
Oh, you gotta be tough to live in Oklahoma.
20 was a 27 inches of and 24 hours.
Six inches of hail.
No, the hail was six inches.
The hell was six inches.
The hell was six inches.
It wasn't six inches.
was thinking the balls were six inches.
So they don't call that.
So, know, they have like, they'll say golf ball size hail.
(59:51):
Yeah.
Baseball.
They call that gorilla hail in Oklahoma.
That's a real thing.
You'll see it.
swear.
We call it than a softball gorilla.
We don't even have a ball that big.
We'll call it a gorilla.
That's all right.
That's our unit of measurement.
So if a Turkey gets hit by one nose, it's dead.
(01:00:14):
Yeah.
I mean, are they abandoned their nest?
Right.
That's like, you know,
I mean, that would be a prudent thing to do.
I mean, I think I might be dead if I got hit by six, six inch hail ball.
you talk about some of those things and they're coming, they'll cut the go throughpeople's roofs.
mean, it's like a cannonball.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
You can have a hail storm that comes through like out West and it'll be really bad likethat.
(01:00:37):
And it looks like someone's disc up to earth.
You know what I mean?
You'll just see the stretch of ground that looks like it's been disc up.
That's why.
And then, and then in 2024, just last year, we had the most tornadoes with 150k tornadoes.
And some of those aren't super large tornadoes, right?
(01:00:59):
They're fairly localized.
if that tornado hit your property, it's probably going to affect those turkeys in thatparticular year.
Now they may bounce back and come on, you know, come back pretty quick, but you could havea regional effect.
And then the flooding can have a regional effect.
It can be negative or positive.
You know, if you're happened to be in that van where there's a lot of rain and the creeksare coming out of their banks, that's probably going be negative, but rain, uh, outside
(01:01:29):
that band, you know, we're may not be so, you know, don't have that much rain, but it'sgoing to be a positive because you're going to have vegetation response and you know,
grasshoppers and everything else respond to that, you know, positively.
So, but if you're in that.
band of 10 plus inches of rain.
could be pretty much of a good thing.
(01:01:53):
So that's what we deal with with Oklahoma a lot with our turkeys, just the extremeweather.
man.
Yeah.
I mean, that's gotta be super frustrating.
You can do everything right and still have, you know, a random event like that comethrough.
Gorilla hail just wipes it off.
(01:02:14):
Gorilla hail.
That's a real big, man.
You know, we were talking about how important overhead cover was for hands when they'renesting.
Need some helmets for them now.
When y'all are banding them, you should just.
fit them with a little helmet and some shoulder pads.
right.
(01:02:36):
But that does bring up the good point though of habitat and habitat is a lot.
And if everybody closed their eyes and kind of picture what habitat looks like, those thathunt or manage turkeys in Western Oklahoma are going to see a totally different picture
than those that manage or hunt turkeys in Florida or what that picture looks like.
But habitat is, is it, we talk about nesting and brood cover and all that, but
(01:03:01):
Don't forget that that habitat is also helping protect these species from these eventsalso.
It gives them shelter.
And if they have shelter, they, they're resilient and they will, I mean, they will willthemselves to survival.
Yeah.
If they have to.
so habitat and good habitat plays a big role in them being able to handle these extremes.
(01:03:27):
Yeah.
And I would add to that.
I think that's a very important point.
But I'd add to it that I think that's why diversity is key because you never know in anyparticular year, what, what cover type might be most important.
And that might change based on random weather events.
So which don't seem that random.
(01:03:49):
Yeah.
I don't know what an average year looks like.
It's just, you pull something out of the hat.
The people in the Turkey Oklahoma are built different.
don't know.
I've met some of y'all guys from the Southeast come out there chasing Rios.
I I don't know if you're saying that as a good thing or bad thing, Marcus.
(01:04:16):
just like you're saying depends on the day, guess.
Yeah.
Nah, they've all been super cool.
Pat man.
But like you were saying, the Turkey culture thing.
the passion of the guys from the, you know, the Southeast part of the country that comeout, finish their slam or at least that's what they say when they're asking you where to
(01:04:39):
go on the public property, right?
Is this is the last bird I need for my slam, you know, passionate man.
And they're doing a good job.
They'll call us after they've had their hunt and talk about the habitat and things likethat.
And just, you know, things that you don't usually hear from just like a guy that's not
ate up with turkey hunting or anything really paid a lot of attention to it.
(01:05:05):
Yeah, that's really cool.
What have we not asked y'all about?
I feel like we have covered, we've covered a lot of ground.
I've a lot.
given some updates on Marcus's turkey hunting adventures?
You're talking about mine?
Yeah.
Has there been any more mishaps or have you gotten one yet or what?
No, I think I've hung it up.
(01:05:28):
I was going to go to Michigan and I still could, but I'm going to be a brew brewing heresoon.
So I think most of my mate is going to be, you know, as a pseudo hen.
(01:05:48):
So, which I'm super excited about, but, uh, you know, our season's closed here.
I haven't been able to get back to some of the other states I hunt in commonly.
And, uh, I have some access in Michigan, but I don't think I'm going to get to go thisyear because of that.
But I'm not complaining because I've gotten to do something that I've dreamed of doingsince I've read Illumination of the Flatwoods.
(01:06:17):
Well, that just more of an excuse to come out West next season.
We have to make it happen next year.
Yep.
We say that every year.
Well, I'm starting to know more and more people in Oklahoma for some random reason.
You know, it seems like every other month, somebody's moving out there for a job.
So I have no excuse now.
(01:06:39):
Yeah.
I hope y'all enjoy having Mark Turner out there.
yeah.
He out to come out there.
Yeah.
You already come out to pack saddle.
think we're going to do some scribe burn research plots out there and we already have afield day that he and I are supposed to put on.
So, Yeah.
(01:06:59):
I think, uh, he sent me some pictures he and his wife tagged out.
And, uh, I think those were their first Rio's too.
So yeah, think Chitwood was with them.
Yes.
Yeah.
He was.
That's right.
Yeah.
So I've got a lot of good folks working out there.
Yep.
We do.
Very passionate, very talented folks.
(01:07:22):
So, cool.
Uh, yeah, I guess anything else that we forgot or that you want to leave the audiencewith?
the only thing I could think of, you know, with this being the Turkey for tomorrow thingis we've had Jason come to our headquarters here pretty recently, the CEO.
Turkeys for tomorrow.
(01:07:43):
He's come to Oklahoma, met with all of our high up guys, telling them about theorganization and looking forward to kind of hopefully working on some projects with, with
turkeys for tomorrow, getting them in Oklahoma.
So was cool.
Yeah.
I heard that they were potentially getting in on something that Mark was starting up.
(01:08:03):
Yeah.
I think some of that hopefully that works out.
know that Jason was pretty interested in the trap and stuff.
And, know, he and I got to hang out at the Western Turkey meeting, do a little fish andthat dude fished me under the table, man.
He can fish, but now great, great guy.
I'm looking forward to it.
And whatever way they end up working with us.
(01:08:24):
Cause it'll happen.
You know, you can just kind of tell.
So, yeah, good.
Good.
Well, I appreciate y'all's time.
learned a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks guys.
Fun talking to you.
hearing about what you're dealing with over there, you know, the status of turkeys isreally good information.
We've a lot of research still going.
(01:08:47):
We're very committed, you know, to finding, find out how we can better manage them, whatthe cause is, if you know, it's, it's by million cuts in many ways, but do our part for
Turkey science.
And so we have our current research going on and we have
(01:09:09):
ah Another one on baiting that's and nest survival ah that's going on now too.
And we have one about uh how can we better count birds.
We that one starting up.
ah one did I miss, Marcus?
We have another one.
(01:09:30):
But a lot of research going on, not just for turkeys either.
We're looking at...
species and where, know, all kinds of pieces of black bears, turkeys, whale, pronghorn,mule deer, mule deer.
I mean, we're putting a lot of emphasis on, on research in Oklahoma.
(01:09:50):
That's great.
Yeah.
I think one thing that's evident and has been evident from our discussions withcoordinators and lots of states is you guys are dedicated to this and trying to find
answers to be stewards of the resource, which I really appreciate.
Yeah.
Yup.
Glad y'all are out there doing it.
(01:10:11):
That's the best job in the world, Agreed.
Yeah.
Well, thanks everybody out there for listening.
We appreciate all the support and feedback and everything.
and, uh, you know, we're trying to, to make our way around the, the wild turkey range to,you know, support.
(01:10:34):
folks in various places and get information to our listeners there.
So yeah, Oklahoma's slogan is make Turkey habitat great again.
Maybe, maybe we'll make that the title of the episode.
There you go.
That's right.
I'll throw out there too, Marcus, since you, kind of brought this up, uh, Marcus Lashleythat is, but, uh, you know, it'd be in Turkey season and Turkey's on everybody's mind
(01:11:01):
right now.
I have been getting a ton.
of messages and emails and I appreciate all those and there's been lots of good advice andsuggestions for episodes.
Sorry I have not gotten back to y'all on a bunch of those but uh give me some time, I'mNot ignoring those.
(01:11:22):
Alright, well thanks guys, we appreciate your time and thanks everybody for listening.
Yep, thank y'all.
Wild Turkey Science is part of the Natural Resources University podcast network and ismade possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots organization dedicated to the wild
turkey.
To learn more about TFT, check out turkeysfortomorrow.org.
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