November 25, 2024 • 40 mins
- Chester Moore revisits a topic very fitting for this week-wild turkeys.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome the More Outdoors on News Top five sixty klv I.
This is Chester Moore. If you've listened to this program
for more than probably a month or six weeks, you
know that I love wild turkeys are a very important animal.
I believe to our forest in North America. As I've
said before, as turkeys go so to America's forest. And
you know, Texas is really an awesome, unique turkey state.
(00:23):
And to talk about this, I got the best person
on the planet talk about turkeys in Texas. I got
Jason Harden. He is a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
turkey program coordinator. Welcome the More Outdoors.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, Chester, You're great, appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
You know, Texas is a huge state, but we've got
a really big turkey population, and just the kind of
the audience and maybe doesn't know a lot about wild turkeys.
Can I give just a basic overview of turkeys in
the state of Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure, So I'll start out in a little broader if
you go nationwide, we only have one species of turkey
in North American that's the North American wild turkey, but
there are five subspecies across the state, across the country,
and we had three of those here in Texas. Across
the nation, the eastern wild turkey is king. There's more
Eastern wad turkeys than any other subspecies, but in Texas,
(01:16):
the Rio Grand wild turkey rank the frame. We have
about a half million Rio Grand wild turkeys in the
state of Texas. It's a destination state for folks looking
to get their Grand Slam, and we get a lot
of folks coming from out of state to hunt those birds,
and a fair amount of harvest here in from our
resident hunters as well. Probably the second most populated in
(01:37):
Texas would be that Eastern wild turkey, but they're far behind,
probably on about ten thousands of those birds in East Texas,
and then just a handful of the Mirriams wild turkey,
the birds that you'd normally find across the Rocky Mountains
we were Historically their southern end of their range was
the Guadalupe Mountains right just on the edge of New
(01:59):
Mexico and Texas. We did some restoration in the early
nineteen eighties and the Davis Mountains and those birds did
really well for a long time, but the success of
the Rio Grand water at the same time kind of
was the end of that bird just through hybridization. So
now in the Davis Mountains we probably had more what
I like to call you know that hierburd mirios, So
(02:19):
Miriam's innerbred with rios, and that's what we have out
in that area now. But we've been pretty successful in Texas.
Got a lot of different habitat types and a lot
of different subspecies for our hunters and our general public
to enjoy.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, for those who are listening from East Texas right,
this is coming out of the Beaumont Station. You know,
we got birds in Newton County and all these areas,
some restored some native population. But I'd like to start
more with the Rio gram because that's that's when you
think Turkey's in Texas. That's pretty much the one people
have seen. So kind of where does their rain start?
I mean, where does it start an end in Texas?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Sure, So if you look the Grand Turkey, we get
up around Grayson County. So if you go due north
out of out of DFW A Highway seventy five, that's
kind of that demarcation zone. And we see some hybridization
between the eastern and the rio there in Grayson County
and just imagine a straight line going down to Wharton County.
(03:19):
We had some historic hybridization that occurred there as well,
So everything kind of that that line west is going
to be rios all the way out to the Pacas River,
and it bleeds over a little bit here and there
across that line. A few birds west of the Pacas
River out in the Transpacas, a few rios east of
that line in the black Land Prairie over going towards
(03:42):
the Triney River. But for the most part, you would
think about that I thirty five corridor west of the
Pacas River all the way down to the Valley of
South Texas and all the way up to Oklahoma and
pretty close to New Mexico line.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, and you know, Rio granz are a beautiful bird.
And you know, it's interesting though there are some gaps
like well you will hardly see turkeys in the range,
and then some areas in Rio grand seem to be
like infested with them.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah, So one thing that's really interesting about the
Rial Grandville trees and all turkeys, you know, they need
to have roosting habitat not an issue in East Texas.
You get east about thirty five plenty of trees, you know,
twenty five feet tall and up to one hundred and
twenty feet tall out in your area of South Texas.
But you get out in the rolling plane, you get
(04:32):
out in the western part of the hill country or
in South Texas, and roosting habitat becomes really limited. And
if you don't have those fingers of rock Aian habitats,
those creeks, the rivers, even the small streams that had
the big trees right next to them, and that might
be Hottonwoods, it might be small Hackberry or the countries,
whatever it is, depending on where you're at in that landscape.
(04:54):
If you don't have those trees, you don't have turkeys.
If they don't have a place to rest at not
then you're not gonna have those birds. So you'll go
through an area, say the soft Flour up in the
rolling Plain, soft Fork in the Red River, turkey's everywhere,
and then you get ten miles away and nothing, and
they're really tied to those Rypraian habitats. You go down
(05:15):
to South Texas, Brooks County, Enterity County, that area you
see a lot of that. They would call that the
coastal standsheet and there's a lot of live oak motts
out there, and turkeys are just everywhere, But you get
a few miles away from those oak monts, you won't
see them anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You know. That's really interesting because this comes back to
like a habitat conservation issue. And you know, I think
most land owners in Texas are probably tuned into, you know,
livestock first. It's a big money maker, it's a traditional
Texas thing, and livestock can work really well with wildlife.
And then you got the guys that are definitely tuned
into wildlife and white tail deer. But do you think
(05:52):
there's maybe some room for some of these guys to
maybe do a few things that could tweak and help
turkey habitat.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Absolutely, no matter where you're at in the state. If
that's managing pine forests out in East Texas, are managing
cattle out in the rolling Plains or South Texas, there
are all kinds of opportunities to manage for wild turkey.
That might be timber management, just regular timber thinning, prescribe
fires phenomenal in East Texas, or if you go out
(06:20):
to that rangeland country, just rotating cattle. Turkeys can live
just fine on a heavily grazed pasture. But that's those
mature birds. Whenever you have a hen sitting on a
nest for twenty eight days, she's going to lay an
egg a day, about twelve on average, and she's gonna
sit on that nest when she lays that last egg
for twenty eight days. So imagine that first eggs on
the ground for forty days. That's a long time for
(06:43):
an egg to survive, and we see a lot of failure.
And if you have an area that has some tall
grasses and weeds with some low growing woody cover, that's
going to provide phenomenal nesting cover. And that's what those
birds need, and you can do that through rotational grazing.
Once those birds hatch, there's a pasture not too far
away that's been grazed a little heavier, maybe it's a
few more weeks, it's going to provide a good brewed habitat.
(07:05):
There's lots of opportunities out there no matter where you're
at the state try to improve your habitat for wild turkeys,
and there's plenty of people out there with the knowledge
to help guide you along your way till you get
comfortable with those practices.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, you kind of segued right in the world and
talk about it's about what's happening this time of year.
I mean, it's turkey season across some of the state.
You know, we have the eastern turkey season in some
Pine Woods County is coming up. But this is the
time of year birds are breeding. So let's talk about
that breeding period. So kind of when does it start
in Texas and wind does it end, and when when
(07:40):
we start maybe seeing polts, for example, maybe in the
Texas hill country.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Sure, so whenever you look across Texas, a lot of
the breeding is going to be keyed in by daylight hours.
But once we start hitting about that twelve twelve where
we're at right now, twelve hours of daylight twelve hours
of dark, there's some there's some queues right out there
that's gonna make those birds start switching up into more
of a bringing behavior. See the flocks start to break up,
(08:07):
You're gonna see the gobblers and Jake's getting separate from
those hens, uh, and they're gonna start doing their thing.
Hens are gonna start breaking up from their flocks looking
for gobblers to breathe. So that's that's the approach to
this time of year. Now in Texas, we're really heavily
influenced by weather. And if you look at what's going
(08:27):
on across South Texas, the hill country, the rolling plains
right now, we're burning up figuratively and literally. We high wind,
low humidities, a lack of rainfall. That's a big impact.
I was down in South Texas hunging this past weekend
with my twelve year old son, and there's the breggest
(08:48):
pasture or the Fregas fire that just get burned over
fifty thousand acres uh. And you just go across that country,
the only thing green is a few mesquites. And when
I got back to home, I lived Leon County and
see the green pastures and the green trees. It really
made me feel uplifted to be in that green area.
And I really feel like those birds are kind of
(09:09):
the same way. You're out in that dry country and
no greens, no weeds, no very little green grass growing up.
It's a little depressing, and I think, not only for
my physical condition, those birds not getting the greens to
put on that fat reserve to help them start developing
eggs and help them start thinking about breeding, but even
(09:31):
some visual cues, you know, not having that green on
the landscape. Like I said, I think it was a
little depressing to me, and I know I feel like
the birds feel the same way physically, perhaps mentally. They
know they're trying to survive and they're kind of staying
in that winter mode of fine enough to eat, to
maintain myself. They're not getting those good greens and all
(09:52):
that extra food that they would normally get if we
had a wet winter or an early wet spring and
to getting that good physical condition for reproduction. The males
they're ready to go, but the hens are not. And
it's just kind of slowed down the hunting season. So
I expect that pulp production is going to be delayed
this year. Hopefully we get from you know, it's not
(10:15):
a common in Texas twenty eleven, zero reproduction, almost no
nesting effort. If we could turn it around and we
start getting some moisture in May in June, we'll get
a bit of a hatch, but it's not looking good
right now. All the other inspectrum in East Texas, a
little bit of drier conditions might not be that bad.
We don't have the hens getting wet on the nest.
(10:38):
That should help them. So hopefully, at least in East Texas,
we'll be going towards a more production and recruitment.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
We'll take a silver lining anytime we can for wild
turkeys and wildlife. And when we come back, we're going
to talk more with Jason Hart and Texas Park's a
Wildlife turkey program director about wild turkey's in Texas. Welcome
back to Moro Outdoors on News Talk five sixty k
l v I don't forget. You can listen at KLVI
(11:08):
dot com. You can also get the iHeartRadio app and listen. Also,
go to archival sections of this program. We get archives
going back three years. You can also get that at
KALVI dot com. Click on the podcast link at the
top of the page you'll get the More Outdoors podcast
ere From this live broadcast, we have Jason Harden, Texas
Parks and Wildlife Departments turkey program leader, and we've been
(11:31):
talking about all things turkey in Texas and we kind
of ended there talking about might be a rough season
and part of the state because of the fires, the
drought conditions on the ground, but maybe East Texas is
a little bit better, so that eggs out there in
the nest. You know, mom's gotta you know, hang around.
It's got to be good conditions. But I know any
ground nesting bird has predators to deal with. Can kind
(11:53):
of talk about predators in the life of turkeys?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Sure absolutely? I mean dreading through a pub location learner
today that to friends of mine from LSU and UGA
put out looking at some of their nesting you know,
twenty twenty two percent nest success. If you think about that,
I mean that is that is really really low. And
you imagine a turkey trying to sustain itself a population
(12:18):
from year to year. You've got to make new folks,
you got to you've got to recruit new birds into
that system. And historically we you know, based on VHF data,
you know, the backpacks we used put on most birds,
we would see, well it's about fifty percent. Actually it's
really low in some years of zero. Some years it
might be fifty in a really good year. But we're
(12:38):
seeing that twenty five percent of twenty twenty five percent
nest success and uh and it's kind of eye opening
for us, and you realize just how valuable every nest
out there is to sustaining your turkey population, and not
a lot of nests are just turkeys. Hens don't just
get up and walk away and give up on it.
For the most part, most of those in the es
(12:59):
are to fill due to predation. And a turkey is
going to walk around the landscape and she's coming up,
getting ready to start laying eggs. She's going to find
a location somewhere to no, she's not going to not nest.
And if it's send for habitat, that ness is going
to be more exposed to predators. If it's in quality habitat,
(13:23):
then she will not have a little better chance. And
on top of that, you have all that alternative prey
that's living in that better habitat. Your mice, other ground
nesting birds, rabbits, things like that. They can be alternative
prey that allows those hens to be on the landscape
(13:44):
and sitting on the nest longer. That's the only part
of a hen's life other than being a pole for
the annual lifecycle of that bird, that's the only time
she's going to stay on the ground the rest of
her life. She's going to be up in a tree
every night safing predators for those twenty eight days, and
in some cases that else she's going to do a
second nest. So every day she sits on that nest,
(14:04):
the likelihood of her being killed or her eggs being
depredated goes up.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, you think twenty something percent. I mean, that's that's low.
I've heard success rates of pintails when I was working
on my Texas Waterfowl book here is and go like
six percent in part of Saskatchewan because of predation, because
of degraded habitat. And you think about taking a twenty
two percent nest rate for these birds, you know, kind
(14:32):
of concerning, especially from the you know idea, we don't
necessarily have in a lot of areas optimal turkey habitat.
I know that snakes like rat snakes can be a
predator raccoons, but what are some of the other potential
predators of the wild turkeys.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
The list is long. I mean it can range from
you know, you mentioned raccoons, rat snakes, the big nest predators, skunks, awesomes.
Any of your small mammals are gonna are gonna potentially
depredate your nests. But even some of the larger ones
you can see things like coyotes and podcasts, but usually
(15:09):
we think about those smaller the rackings of possums and skunks,
fox having the data's impact. One thing that people don't
think about are things like American crows or ravens out
in the western part of the state. They will take
their share of nests as well. We did an artificial
nest study in East Texas and almost fifty percent of
(15:30):
the nests that were depredated or by American crows. So
it's different all the diversity of animals out there that
are looking to eat those eggs.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I knew I didn't like crows for a reason. They
drive me absolutely nuts on my dear least, they hang
out by my stand and go crazy. Now I have
another reason not to like, you can't do anything about it,
but uh, you know, and they annoy me, now they
really annoy me. But you know, it's it's interesting to
look at all the things just in this, you know,
the fifteen minutes or so we've been speaking. They are
(15:59):
like a challenge to get to the point where you
can go hunt that turkey, where that turkey can reproduce,
and it shows are just a lot of things, a
lot of factors out there, and there's a new study
LSU was doing in conjunction with Texas Parks and Wildlife,
and I was so honored to get to go out
and kind of shoot the first photos of this where
(16:19):
y'all are placing GPS trackers on birds mainly hens here
in East Texas.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Correct. Yeah, we're doing what we can to try to
continue to gain knowledge on how we can best manage
the wild turkey in Texas. And GPS technologist Phenomenal I
mentioned earlier VHS units, So that's just a radio kind
of like the transmitter on the back of a bird,
(16:49):
and we're walking around listening for a ping. We maybe
go out and track that bird once or twice a week.
The GPS units we're collecting a location every hour throughout
the day in the location and midnight, very precise data
that we're getting off of that, so we're able to
use that to better manage to track there in East Texas.
You know, what is the scale of fire that we
(17:10):
want to be approaching, What is the timing of that fire?
Are these birds utilizing findings? Are they utilizing food plots?
How our feeder is impacting the movement of these birds?
And even hunters. So there's a lot of information to
be a gain. You're very well aware of our restoration
efforts in East Texas. Are we doing it the right way?
(17:31):
Are we going to the right places? And that GPSDA
is going to help us continue to improve our approach
to not only management through the habitat, but management through
restocking of birds.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
If I had, like Elon musk money, I would have,
like the Chester more put a tracker on every wildlife
foundation because I'm so intrigued by wildlife movements. I mean,
And the thing in East Texas that I thought was
interesting was that I was talking with you about the
first time you mention that one of the goals was
to kind of look at some of these maybe native populations,
(18:05):
the ones that have kind of taken and they're not
necessarily the most optimal turkey habitat, but for whatever reason
or thriving.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah. Absolutely. You look over it at Newton County and
we have places like the more plantations to be national forests,
nice beautiful open understories, lots of her bases cover and
turkeys do well in that landscape. But some of that
landscape next door is yo pond, choked forest, understory, and
these birds are making do with daylight and roads and
(18:35):
clearcuts and finding efforts where they go in and disturb
that they're finding enough habitat to sustain themselves. One of
the benefits of that landscape is it's right next to
Louisiana and you get south of the dam at Toledo
Ben and there's nothing to prevent those birds, and they
are connected to the Louisiana population. So we're part of
(18:57):
that meta population down there, rather than being an island population,
which we end up with at some our restock sites.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, I discovered that by reaching out to you a
couple of years back when I was working on my
Turkey Revolution project year two, and that was the photograph
of wild eastern Turkey in East Texas and I got
one in Newton County and I kind of ask you,
you know, when when was the last time there was
a stocking. It was like a handful of birds in
two thousand, like there were no real stocking efforts. And
you mentioned that this was part of this population south
(19:26):
of the dam, and I thought that was really really
interesting right there, that there is some tradeover and things
like that, and I'm really excited to see what maybe
the results of this study are in the next few years.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah. Now, and part of that study, you know, we're
actually marking some of our restock birds as well, the
nations river ties in over to that landscape where we
had those native populations. Are we seeing our restock birds,
we're taking DNA off those birds. Are we going to
over time see that that DNA showing up in that
in that native population or vice versa, and so at
(20:00):
lots of different tentacles going out in different directions trying
to figure out whatever we can to improve the management
of that species on public and private lands in Texas.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, and it's a great species, a cornerstone species. I mean,
people aren't willing to spend tons of money to save
the eastern indigo snake or the gopher tortoise, the red
cockaded woodpecker maybe, but there's a couple hundred thousand people
that belong to the National Wild Turkey Federation and people
will buy an upland games bird stamp here in Texas
and all of that contribute. So that's one of the
(20:37):
reasons that I'm excited about getting the word out on
what you guys are doing for turkeys because in my opinion,
at least if more people kind of think about turkeys
and maybe turkey habitat, then maybe they'll think more about
habitat issues overall, and we'll see maybe a reversal to
some trends that aren't positive and more people focused on
(20:57):
this great game burden. We'll talk more about the So
we come back on More Outdoors. Welcome back to More
Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv I. This is
Chester Moore And if you've missed the first couple of segments,
you want to go back klv I dot com click
on the podcast link at the top of the page,
and you don't want to miss this. It's a cool show.
Jason Hard and Texas Park's a while department's turkey program
(21:20):
director and glad to have him on the program. And
we were talking about, you know, this cool study. Matter
of fact, the cover story for the March April Texas
Fishing Game is a story I did on this You
can check that out on newsstands also at fishgame dot com.
And you know, there's a lot of turkey management and
a lot of it has to do with human management,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Absolutely, you know, from a habitat standpoint, from a harvest standpoint,
there's a lot of things that we have to consider
from from hunting to habitat and they all tie in
really well together.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, and it's really unique to see that technology is
being a very beneficial factor to this. And one of
these things is harvest requirement. So if you harvest an
eastern Turkey in that season hasn't opened yet, you have
to report that and there's an app and you can
use that. But you also have you said, a new
area where you're requiring harvest requirements.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, so we've had the East Texas counties with an
open season for a long time. For twenty plus years,
we've had mandatory harvest recording. Used to be a physical
check station that hunters can take their births to, you know,
take a few photos next to the sign and all that.
But we switched that over to it to an app
or our only partial life website a few years back,
(22:41):
and that app has kind of grown. People are reporting
gar wide tailed, your doze and some landscapes to that app,
and we recently added ten new counties. So it's a
one Gobbler county landscape going from Milham County south of
Mattagorda County includes bast say It Call It will, Colorado, Jackson,
(23:03):
and a few others, and we've implemented mandatory harvest reporting
in those counties. This is the first year that it's
on the books. We've already received I think close to
fifty harvest reports from those ten counties this year April
one April thirty season, so it's given us phenomenal data.
I've already mapped out those harvest locations and we're seeing
(23:24):
distribution of birds that we weren't even aware of. So
it's great information. Using the apps on your phone, your smartphone,
or even on the website reporting those harvests. We can
do it voluntary for rios across the state, but it
is mandatory and eat sexes in that Kent County area,
and it's going to provide us great information, especially in
the areas where we have lighter populations, where we don't
(23:45):
capture that harvest through our through our paper survey that
we've set up the past. So going in the right direction.
I think now on.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
The counties with the new RIO requirements is that because
maybe those are marginal population counties, are just that there's
not enough data out there on those areas.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
It's both. So if you look at that landscape, that's
the eastern edge of the Rio Grand turkey population. So
I mentioned that I thirty five four to or all
these counties are east of by thirty five, and we
just dis light populations one bird compared to the rest
of real Grand rangements. The four bird annual bag limits
(24:25):
spring and fall season. For the most part, these are
thirty day season spring only April and April thirty And
like I said, there are turkeys there huntable populations, but
the numbers just aren't as robust is what we see
in some areas like Minard or Slipher County. So we
had to do something to try to get a better
handle on what is harvest like in that area. We
(24:47):
can use that harvest data to extrapolate that to get
answers to populations and density distribution those birds and how
are they spreading out over time. So lots of good
information on a population that that we just don't have
much information of.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, you know, it's amazing you think about trying to
manage how many counties take two hundred and fifty counties.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Plus in Texas were four counties across the state, and
I would say over half of them have turkey populations.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, so think you know one hundred and twenty five
plus counties with turkeys, that's all. That's a lot to
manage and get information on. And I'm sure that's a
constant challenge trying to figure out, Okay, how can we
best manage this area and sustain this or and you
know in these maybe not necessarily in the UH, in
these new requirements of reporting, but then just maybe talking
(25:37):
with different people in private land. Ever, since Texas is
ninety seven percent privately owned, have you ever been kind
of shocked, like some branch here and maybe you thought
was a nominal area, go, oh, there's hundreds of turkeys
and there turns out to be hundreds of turkeys on
a ranch. You ever had that happen?
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Absolutely. I can remember driving through the rolling Plane and
going through just cotton field, cotton field, cotton till and
thinking where we go and then you go down a
little up a little bluff, down another one, and you
run across these cottonwood draws and they're just turkeys everywhere.
It is amazing how much life can exist in some
(26:15):
areas where you didn't think.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
It was Now with that, I would like to talk
a little bit about drought situation. So Texas kind of
broken strout for a while, but we're having a situation
this year in areas which is pretty nasty. So obviously
drought's gonna be a big impact on birds. But you know,
for example, coyotes, there's research that shows when coyotes get
pounded really hard, the moms will have more babies. Is
(26:40):
there any kind of mechanism that's been recognized? And maybe
wild turkeys where you have a really bad season or
two of recruitment and then maybe there's more production.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, I mean usually that's going to occur more in
our semi arid regions the state, so across that Rio
Grande range. But it's cycles. You've seen that for decades
and decades, where you have a drought year and then
you'll have an average year and above average year, and
then you have another drought year. So it just cycles
back and forth, and our populations follows cycles. So we'll
(27:13):
have a year like we're having right now where it's
just not looking very promising, but hopefully next year of
the year after we'll get those winter and spring rains
and the populations will boom. The good thing about turkeys
is they have great survival when they're not sitting on
the nest. So a lot of those hens, if they
end up not attentioning to nest this year, they're going
(27:34):
to carry over to next year. The survival is going
to go up and compared to what it would be
and hopefully have an opportunity to nest next year. So
that's a good thing about turkeys. They're a little longer
to live than some other ground nesting birds like quail,
and more opportunity and they can have a much quicker rebound.
We look at twenty eleven where we had just horrible
(27:56):
droughts of wildfires, kind of setting up a situation like
what we're having this year and our populations we just
didn't get the recruitment. Yeah, but did you go to
fourteen fifteen, sixteen and you see this boom in the
population turkeys and areas they'd never been before. And we're
back going back to the other direction. But again it's
cycles every five years, every decade or so. You see
(28:18):
that those ups and downs.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah, very interesting stuff. It's good to hear that. You know,
on those drought years you have good hens survival I
mean even going back to like you know, Moses, the
Lord gave Moses instructions, if you come into an area
in the Holy Land, you don't take the mother off
the nest. You can only take the eggs. You know,
we didn't figure out that the in the West until
the eighteen hundreds, right, But so mom would mat lay again,
(28:42):
and maybe the next year she would lay. But if
you lose that mom, and you know, then you lose
maybe a generation. If you had if you had a
year where like they're just hens got wiped out, that
would be nasty.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah. Yeah, the hens are critical. We had the males
out there, but the males don't contribute to anything other
than bringing the in. He doesn't incubate eggs, he doesn't
raise pulls. So we can we can really afford to
harvest at least a certain percentage of our gobblers during
the spring season. But when we start taking hens off
(29:14):
the landscape, you know, dead, dead hens don't lay eggs.
So we got to protect our hens and we want
to grow that population.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And that's a big part of this study in East
Texas right now. If I'm correct as monitoring.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
These hens, absolutely we have a good idea of what
the males do and what they don't do. But having
a very good understanding of nesting behavior, renesting effort, nest success,
hoult survival windows, polts are hitting the ground. All that
will help us make other management decisions and hopefully improve
(29:50):
habitat for those birds and keep them around for decades
to come.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
All right, we come back on More Outdoors, wrap up
our conversation about turkeys with restoration efforts in the Ponne Woods.
Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV.
This is Chester More. You can follow me at the
Chester More on Instagram, Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook, and
my blog at Higher Kaling dot and that of course
my work in Texas Fishing Game every issue and at
(30:16):
fishgame dot Com all over the place out there. Sometimes
it's kind of hard to keep up with myself. So
I'd like to give it to you guys here on
the air so you can connect with all these different
stories and things. Wrapping up our conversation with Jason Harden,
Texas Park's a Wildlife Department's turkey program leader, and we
really appreciate you being on the show today.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Hey, I'm happy to be here Chester. I appreciate all
you do to get the word out on what we
do at Parks and Wildlife National Wantrik Federation. You've been
a big supporter of ours, and we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
It's my honor and privilege. So one of the coolest
things I've gotten to do is go photograph a bunch
of turkey releases. And I think the turkey release thing
has an interesting history, so kind of a you know,
like maybe late seventies somewhere in there, there were some
efforts to put turkeys back in East Texas, but didn't
what they're using like pen raised birds.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
If you look at the history of restoration in the
Pinting Woods of East Texas. You know, the our predecessor
with the Game Fish Norse Commission back in nineteen forty
two estimated probably only one hundred eastern wild turkeys. So
native birds remained turkey settlement and you're talking about millions
and millions of acres all the way from the Red
River down to your country, all over to the Trinity River,
(31:32):
and so there weren't birds out there to trap and restock.
So early efforts around the nineteen twenties and thirties, they
were catching rios in South Texas and up around Concho
and Coma County and bringing those all over the state.
Huge success. But they were also bringing the pony witho
to be Texas and they stuck around for a decade
or so, but eventually started to fade away. In the
(31:55):
going into the sixties and seventies, there was a lot
of pen raise efforts were going on the ground. Again
we know today those fail. Today our state legislatures has
made it where it's illegal to release pen raise birds
in the Wall just due to the failure and the
negative impacts on our wild populations. It wasn't until nineteen
seventy nine that we moved exclusively to wild trapped Eastern
(32:18):
subspecies in the Pine Woods to East Texas, and from
nineteen seventy nine to two thousand and three, over seven
thousand Eastern Wall turches were released across I thinks like
fifty six counties across the Black Lamb Prairie, post Oke,
Savannah and Pine Woods, and they used of blockstocking approach.
They released fifteen to twenty birds per county in about
(32:38):
five to ten locations per county, and it was successful
in some areas like you mentioned, you know, the Newton,
Jasper Sabine County, Nacinoch's County, Folk County. They have open
seasons today and part of that driven by those restoration efforts.
But the vast majority of those restocking efforts failed, and
(32:58):
we think part of that was the method that we
went with. You might let three birds go today, you
might let five birds go a week later, and when
you only let three males go on twelve hens, you
lose the three males in your stockings filled. So it
just wasn't as successful. We'd hope it wasn't a successful
(33:18):
We saw a lot of other states that got an
earlier starts than us using that same approach. During the
latter part of the blockstocking era, we were doing some
research with Texas A and M and doctor Roal Lopez
did some modeling off of some of the birds he
marked and came up with what he called a super
stocking approach to restoration. He said that we've let these
(33:39):
large numbers of birds go and did a mix of
juvenile adults that by year four and five we'd have
a much better chance of success. We were putting all
our eggs in one basket with those fifteen birds out
there get production year one, they prepair together and we
have this county wide population. We manage hardest at the
county scale rather than at an eco reaching scale, and
(34:01):
so that was the approach. Let's pre stock this county.
So following doctor Rolopez is a superstocking model. In around
two thousand and seven, we'd walked away from blockstocking, were
put birds in the ground. So we had a lot
of landowners NWTF and our own staff clamoring let's get
back in the turkey restoration business. We were not as
successful as we thought we were. Let's get back into this,
(34:24):
let's do it. And we didn't want to jump back
in just do the same thing we'd been doing. So
we did funder some research through student f Fosston, Texas,
A and M. We tested, which it was just a
mathematical mode at the time, a super stockings. We wanted
to do some empirical testing on the ground to release
eighty birds per site at four sites and basically had
(34:45):
the population establishment that we would see in nesting effort,
pope recruitment like what we'd see in southeastern states. Established population.
So we felt like we had a good approach. Now
looking back at some of those sites, we stocked a
site in Montgomery County stock to side in Houston County,
and they were very far removed from other existing populations.
(35:05):
And today those populations are are blinking out because they're
still removed from other populations. So what that told us
is we need to if we're going to do restoration,
we need to do it in these priority landscapes we're
over time. These first have opportunities to exchange genetics across
a large landscape. So the Natures River Priory landscape is
one approach that we took leased birds down on Angelina
(35:26):
National Forest at least a little further up in along
with Angelina where you were at a little further up
in Cherokee County, and just create this daisy chain of
populations where there's an opportunities to exchange genetics over time,
so one population is not relying on itself. To go
from an island population to a landscape of established purpose, it.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Makes perfect sense. And I believe you guys are trying
to make a minimum, but eighty to one hundred turkeys.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Per site, yeah, I don't think we released on a
site that wasn't at least eighty birds. Yeah, And some
of them, you know, over one hundred, and that has
its own drawbacks. You know, it's hard to get those birds.
They're all coming from out of state for the most part, Southeastern, Northeastern,
and Midwestern states, and it's getting harder and hard to
(36:13):
get our hands on birds. We feel like we've had
a lot of success up to this point, but it's
always a struggle.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Well, I know, just from going to photograph there's a
lot of start and stop, Like the birds will come in,
they got to get a test. It's not just like, hey,
go set a trap and catch birds. I mean it's
a challenging thing. And then you've got to get them
from state to state. I mean most of the birds
in the last year have come from Maine, right.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, so we received birds from from, like I said,
across the southeast, Midwest, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Missouri,
West Virginia, our you know, just all over the Midwest, Southeast,
and now the Northeast. Remain getting those birds. And it's
(36:57):
not just like you said, go sheer rocket over bring
them back to Texas. We have to assure they don't
have avan influenza. You know, we're having a big issue
across the country with high pathagenic avian influenza wiping out
commercial and back to our birds. That's always a concern
here in Texas. So we bring birds across state lines,
got tested for that, We've got tested for salmonella. We
(37:19):
have to have a vet look at them. We have
to get them here, you know, we don't drive them
from Mayne. We work with the National Ball Turkey Federation.
They throw them on a Delta cargo plane, they fly
them here. We pick them up in the middle of
the night, take them through our facilities, work them over.
Maybe we're gonna put a GPS unit on their back,
whatever the case may be. Meant a lot of effort
(37:41):
in those states that are doing the trapping, getting those
birds worked up, taking bloodrom those birds overnight in that
blood to our lab and center, our Textaventary Medical Diagnostic
labin center, running a twenty four hour test to see
if they have it avian influenza or salmonila, getting the
vet there at our facilities. So and then after all that,
(38:01):
getting the birds to re lease side and releasing them
safely and healthy. So it's always a struggle, but we've
we've got it down pretty good. But there's always bumps
in the road.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, and I really want to get that out there
just to show the level. Like you got National Law
Turkey Federation covering like moving costs and boxes, and you've
got other states cooperating, you know, having people out there
setting out of airports, catching news in the turkeys.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
And you know traps and absolutely and and you know
we have to do evaluations all the sites. Those landowners
to pass an evaluation to qualify, they have to be
doing the habitat work. We're not going to let birds
go on a site that doesn't have good quality habitats,
So helping them find the funding for them funding it themselves.
So there's a lot of work from the private landowners
(38:49):
to the National Aultraity Federation, to the state agency to
Texas Hunters to combine all this costs money. And it's
our upland game birst stamp the people buying that supercommon
buying up on game versus stamps that are paying the
tab to restore turkeys in East Texas. So it's always
been that way. Hunters are the reason why we have
turkeys in East Texas, waite tail deer, all these other
(39:11):
gang species. And it continues to be that way, they're
putting the bill for for getting those birds in the ground.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, and that's a great conservation success story and that's
going to continue, I believe, and thank you for all
your efforts.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well, I appreciate Chester and you play a role as well,
like I've said, you know, getting out there and getting
the word out. Even with this interview, letting folks know
that the state and all our partners are continuing to
do what we can to get the birds on the
ground to their historic range one thousand, over one thousand
birds in twenty fourteen release all over East Texas and
(39:44):
these priority landscapes, and we'll continue to do the work
and hopefully over the next few decades we'll have huntable
populations in those areas.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
All right, Well, thanks for being on the show, and
thank you all for listening to more Outdoors. God bless
and have a great, awesome outdoors weekend.
Welcome the More Outdoors on News Top five sixty klv I.
This is Chester Moore. If you've listened to this program
for more than probably a month or six weeks, you
know that I love wild turkeys are a very important animal.
I believe to our forest in North America. As I've
said before, as turkeys go so to America's forest. And
you know, Texas is really an awesome, unique turkey state.
(00:23):
And to talk about this, I got the best person
on the planet talk about turkeys in Texas. I got
Jason Harden. He is a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
turkey program coordinator. Welcome the More Outdoors.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, Chester, You're great, appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
You know, Texas is a huge state, but we've got
a really big turkey population, and just the kind of
the audience and maybe doesn't know a lot about wild turkeys.
Can I give just a basic overview of turkeys in
the state of Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure, So I'll start out in a little broader if
you go nationwide, we only have one species of turkey
in North American that's the North American wild turkey, but
there are five subspecies across the state, across the country,
and we had three of those here in Texas. Across
the nation, the eastern wild turkey is king. There's more
Eastern wad turkeys than any other subspecies, but in Texas,
(01:16):
the Rio Grand wild turkey rank the frame. We have
about a half million Rio Grand wild turkeys in the
state of Texas. It's a destination state for folks looking
to get their Grand Slam, and we get a lot
of folks coming from out of state to hunt those birds,
and a fair amount of harvest here in from our
resident hunters as well. Probably the second most populated in
(01:37):
Texas would be that Eastern wild turkey, but they're far behind,
probably on about ten thousands of those birds in East Texas,
and then just a handful of the Mirriams wild turkey,
the birds that you'd normally find across the Rocky Mountains
we were Historically their southern end of their range was
the Guadalupe Mountains right just on the edge of New
(01:59):
Mexico and Texas. We did some restoration in the early
nineteen eighties and the Davis Mountains and those birds did
really well for a long time, but the success of
the Rio Grand water at the same time kind of
was the end of that bird just through hybridization. So
now in the Davis Mountains we probably had more what
I like to call you know that hierburd mirios, So
(02:19):
Miriam's innerbred with rios, and that's what we have out
in that area now. But we've been pretty successful in Texas.
Got a lot of different habitat types and a lot
of different subspecies for our hunters and our general public
to enjoy.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, for those who are listening from East Texas right,
this is coming out of the Beaumont Station. You know,
we got birds in Newton County and all these areas,
some restored some native population. But I'd like to start
more with the Rio gram because that's that's when you
think Turkey's in Texas. That's pretty much the one people
have seen. So kind of where does their rain start?
I mean, where does it start an end in Texas?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Sure, So if you look the Grand Turkey, we get
up around Grayson County. So if you go due north
out of out of DFW A Highway seventy five, that's
kind of that demarcation zone. And we see some hybridization
between the eastern and the rio there in Grayson County
and just imagine a straight line going down to Wharton County.
(03:19):
We had some historic hybridization that occurred there as well,
So everything kind of that that line west is going
to be rios all the way out to the Pacas River,
and it bleeds over a little bit here and there
across that line. A few birds west of the Pacas
River out in the Transpacas, a few rios east of
that line in the black Land Prairie over going towards
(03:42):
the Triney River. But for the most part, you would
think about that I thirty five corridor west of the
Pacas River all the way down to the Valley of
South Texas and all the way up to Oklahoma and
pretty close to New Mexico line.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, and you know, Rio granz are a beautiful bird.
And you know, it's interesting though there are some gaps
like well you will hardly see turkeys in the range,
and then some areas in Rio grand seem to be
like infested with them.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah, So one thing that's really interesting about the
Rial Grandville trees and all turkeys, you know, they need
to have roosting habitat not an issue in East Texas.
You get east about thirty five plenty of trees, you know,
twenty five feet tall and up to one hundred and
twenty feet tall out in your area of South Texas.
But you get out in the rolling plane, you get
(04:32):
out in the western part of the hill country or
in South Texas, and roosting habitat becomes really limited. And
if you don't have those fingers of rock Aian habitats,
those creeks, the rivers, even the small streams that had
the big trees right next to them, and that might
be Hottonwoods, it might be small Hackberry or the countries,
whatever it is, depending on where you're at in that landscape.
(04:54):
If you don't have those trees, you don't have turkeys.
If they don't have a place to rest at not
then you're not gonna have those birds. So you'll go
through an area, say the soft Flour up in the
rolling Plain, soft Fork in the Red River, turkey's everywhere,
and then you get ten miles away and nothing, and
they're really tied to those Rypraian habitats. You go down
(05:15):
to South Texas, Brooks County, Enterity County, that area you
see a lot of that. They would call that the
coastal standsheet and there's a lot of live oak motts
out there, and turkeys are just everywhere, But you get
a few miles away from those oak monts, you won't
see them anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You know. That's really interesting because this comes back to
like a habitat conservation issue. And you know, I think
most land owners in Texas are probably tuned into, you know,
livestock first. It's a big money maker, it's a traditional
Texas thing, and livestock can work really well with wildlife.
And then you got the guys that are definitely tuned
into wildlife and white tail deer. But do you think
(05:52):
there's maybe some room for some of these guys to
maybe do a few things that could tweak and help
turkey habitat.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Absolutely, no matter where you're at in the state. If
that's managing pine forests out in East Texas, are managing
cattle out in the rolling Plains or South Texas, there
are all kinds of opportunities to manage for wild turkey.
That might be timber management, just regular timber thinning, prescribe
fires phenomenal in East Texas, or if you go out
(06:20):
to that rangeland country, just rotating cattle. Turkeys can live
just fine on a heavily grazed pasture. But that's those
mature birds. Whenever you have a hen sitting on a
nest for twenty eight days, she's going to lay an
egg a day, about twelve on average, and she's gonna
sit on that nest when she lays that last egg
for twenty eight days. So imagine that first eggs on
the ground for forty days. That's a long time for
(06:43):
an egg to survive, and we see a lot of failure.
And if you have an area that has some tall
grasses and weeds with some low growing woody cover, that's
going to provide phenomenal nesting cover. And that's what those
birds need, and you can do that through rotational grazing.
Once those birds hatch, there's a pasture not too far
away that's been grazed a little heavier, maybe it's a
few more weeks, it's going to provide a good brewed habitat.
(07:05):
There's lots of opportunities out there no matter where you're
at the state try to improve your habitat for wild turkeys,
and there's plenty of people out there with the knowledge
to help guide you along your way till you get
comfortable with those practices.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, you kind of segued right in the world and
talk about it's about what's happening this time of year.
I mean, it's turkey season across some of the state.
You know, we have the eastern turkey season in some
Pine Woods County is coming up. But this is the
time of year birds are breeding. So let's talk about
that breeding period. So kind of when does it start
in Texas and wind does it end, and when when
(07:40):
we start maybe seeing polts, for example, maybe in the
Texas hill country.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Sure, so whenever you look across Texas, a lot of
the breeding is going to be keyed in by daylight hours.
But once we start hitting about that twelve twelve where
we're at right now, twelve hours of daylight twelve hours
of dark, there's some there's some queues right out there
that's gonna make those birds start switching up into more
of a bringing behavior. See the flocks start to break up,
(08:07):
You're gonna see the gobblers and Jake's getting separate from
those hens, uh, and they're gonna start doing their thing.
Hens are gonna start breaking up from their flocks looking
for gobblers to breathe. So that's that's the approach to
this time of year. Now in Texas, we're really heavily
influenced by weather. And if you look at what's going
(08:27):
on across South Texas, the hill country, the rolling plains
right now, we're burning up figuratively and literally. We high wind,
low humidities, a lack of rainfall. That's a big impact.
I was down in South Texas hunging this past weekend
with my twelve year old son, and there's the breggest
(08:48):
pasture or the Fregas fire that just get burned over
fifty thousand acres uh. And you just go across that country,
the only thing green is a few mesquites. And when
I got back to home, I lived Leon County and
see the green pastures and the green trees. It really
made me feel uplifted to be in that green area.
And I really feel like those birds are kind of
(09:09):
the same way. You're out in that dry country and
no greens, no weeds, no very little green grass growing up.
It's a little depressing, and I think, not only for
my physical condition, those birds not getting the greens to
put on that fat reserve to help them start developing
eggs and help them start thinking about breeding, but even
(09:31):
some visual cues, you know, not having that green on
the landscape. Like I said, I think it was a
little depressing to me, and I know I feel like
the birds feel the same way physically, perhaps mentally. They
know they're trying to survive and they're kind of staying
in that winter mode of fine enough to eat, to
maintain myself. They're not getting those good greens and all
(09:52):
that extra food that they would normally get if we
had a wet winter or an early wet spring and
to getting that good physical condition for reproduction. The males
they're ready to go, but the hens are not. And
it's just kind of slowed down the hunting season. So
I expect that pulp production is going to be delayed
this year. Hopefully we get from you know, it's not
(10:15):
a common in Texas twenty eleven, zero reproduction, almost no
nesting effort. If we could turn it around and we
start getting some moisture in May in June, we'll get
a bit of a hatch, but it's not looking good
right now. All the other inspectrum in East Texas, a
little bit of drier conditions might not be that bad.
We don't have the hens getting wet on the nest.
(10:38):
That should help them. So hopefully, at least in East Texas,
we'll be going towards a more production and recruitment.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
We'll take a silver lining anytime we can for wild
turkeys and wildlife. And when we come back, we're going
to talk more with Jason Hart and Texas Park's a
Wildlife turkey program director about wild turkey's in Texas. Welcome
back to Moro Outdoors on News Talk five sixty k
l v I don't forget. You can listen at KLVI
(11:08):
dot com. You can also get the iHeartRadio app and listen. Also,
go to archival sections of this program. We get archives
going back three years. You can also get that at
KALVI dot com. Click on the podcast link at the
top of the page you'll get the More Outdoors podcast
ere From this live broadcast, we have Jason Harden, Texas
Parks and Wildlife Departments turkey program leader, and we've been
(11:31):
talking about all things turkey in Texas and we kind
of ended there talking about might be a rough season
and part of the state because of the fires, the
drought conditions on the ground, but maybe East Texas is
a little bit better, so that eggs out there in
the nest. You know, mom's gotta you know, hang around.
It's got to be good conditions. But I know any
ground nesting bird has predators to deal with. Can kind
(11:53):
of talk about predators in the life of turkeys?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Sure absolutely? I mean dreading through a pub location learner
today that to friends of mine from LSU and UGA
put out looking at some of their nesting you know,
twenty twenty two percent nest success. If you think about that,
I mean that is that is really really low. And
you imagine a turkey trying to sustain itself a population
(12:18):
from year to year. You've got to make new folks,
you got to you've got to recruit new birds into
that system. And historically we you know, based on VHF data,
you know, the backpacks we used put on most birds,
we would see, well it's about fifty percent. Actually it's
really low in some years of zero. Some years it
might be fifty in a really good year. But we're
(12:38):
seeing that twenty five percent of twenty twenty five percent
nest success and uh and it's kind of eye opening
for us, and you realize just how valuable every nest
out there is to sustaining your turkey population, and not
a lot of nests are just turkeys. Hens don't just
get up and walk away and give up on it.
For the most part, most of those in the es
(12:59):
are to fill due to predation. And a turkey is
going to walk around the landscape and she's coming up,
getting ready to start laying eggs. She's going to find
a location somewhere to no, she's not going to not nest.
And if it's send for habitat, that ness is going
to be more exposed to predators. If it's in quality habitat,
(13:23):
then she will not have a little better chance. And
on top of that, you have all that alternative prey
that's living in that better habitat. Your mice, other ground
nesting birds, rabbits, things like that. They can be alternative
prey that allows those hens to be on the landscape
(13:44):
and sitting on the nest longer. That's the only part
of a hen's life other than being a pole for
the annual lifecycle of that bird, that's the only time
she's going to stay on the ground the rest of
her life. She's going to be up in a tree
every night safing predators for those twenty eight days, and
in some cases that else she's going to do a
second nest. So every day she sits on that nest,
(14:04):
the likelihood of her being killed or her eggs being
depredated goes up.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, you think twenty something percent. I mean, that's that's low.
I've heard success rates of pintails when I was working
on my Texas Waterfowl book here is and go like
six percent in part of Saskatchewan because of predation, because
of degraded habitat. And you think about taking a twenty
two percent nest rate for these birds, you know, kind
(14:32):
of concerning, especially from the you know idea, we don't
necessarily have in a lot of areas optimal turkey habitat.
I know that snakes like rat snakes can be a
predator raccoons, but what are some of the other potential
predators of the wild turkeys.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
The list is long. I mean it can range from
you know, you mentioned raccoons, rat snakes, the big nest predators, skunks, awesomes.
Any of your small mammals are gonna are gonna potentially
depredate your nests. But even some of the larger ones
you can see things like coyotes and podcasts, but usually
(15:09):
we think about those smaller the rackings of possums and skunks,
fox having the data's impact. One thing that people don't
think about are things like American crows or ravens out
in the western part of the state. They will take
their share of nests as well. We did an artificial
nest study in East Texas and almost fifty percent of
(15:30):
the nests that were depredated or by American crows. So
it's different all the diversity of animals out there that
are looking to eat those eggs.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I knew I didn't like crows for a reason. They
drive me absolutely nuts on my dear least, they hang
out by my stand and go crazy. Now I have
another reason not to like, you can't do anything about it,
but uh, you know, and they annoy me, now they
really annoy me. But you know, it's it's interesting to
look at all the things just in this, you know,
the fifteen minutes or so we've been speaking. They are
(15:59):
like a challenge to get to the point where you
can go hunt that turkey, where that turkey can reproduce,
and it shows are just a lot of things, a
lot of factors out there, and there's a new study
LSU was doing in conjunction with Texas Parks and Wildlife,
and I was so honored to get to go out
and kind of shoot the first photos of this where
(16:19):
y'all are placing GPS trackers on birds mainly hens here
in East Texas.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Correct. Yeah, we're doing what we can to try to
continue to gain knowledge on how we can best manage
the wild turkey in Texas. And GPS technologist Phenomenal I
mentioned earlier VHS units, So that's just a radio kind
of like the transmitter on the back of a bird,
(16:49):
and we're walking around listening for a ping. We maybe
go out and track that bird once or twice a week.
The GPS units we're collecting a location every hour throughout
the day in the location and midnight, very precise data
that we're getting off of that, so we're able to
use that to better manage to track there in East Texas.
You know, what is the scale of fire that we
(17:10):
want to be approaching, What is the timing of that fire?
Are these birds utilizing findings? Are they utilizing food plots?
How our feeder is impacting the movement of these birds?
And even hunters. So there's a lot of information to
be a gain. You're very well aware of our restoration
efforts in East Texas. Are we doing it the right way?
(17:31):
Are we going to the right places? And that GPSDA
is going to help us continue to improve our approach
to not only management through the habitat, but management through
restocking of birds.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
If I had, like Elon musk money, I would have,
like the Chester more put a tracker on every wildlife
foundation because I'm so intrigued by wildlife movements. I mean,
And the thing in East Texas that I thought was
interesting was that I was talking with you about the
first time you mention that one of the goals was
to kind of look at some of these maybe native populations,
(18:05):
the ones that have kind of taken and they're not
necessarily the most optimal turkey habitat, but for whatever reason
or thriving.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah. Absolutely. You look over it at Newton County and
we have places like the more plantations to be national forests,
nice beautiful open understories, lots of her bases cover and
turkeys do well in that landscape. But some of that
landscape next door is yo pond, choked forest, understory, and
these birds are making do with daylight and roads and
(18:35):
clearcuts and finding efforts where they go in and disturb
that they're finding enough habitat to sustain themselves. One of
the benefits of that landscape is it's right next to
Louisiana and you get south of the dam at Toledo
Ben and there's nothing to prevent those birds, and they
are connected to the Louisiana population. So we're part of
(18:57):
that meta population down there, rather than being an island population,
which we end up with at some our restock sites.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, I discovered that by reaching out to you a
couple of years back when I was working on my
Turkey Revolution project year two, and that was the photograph
of wild eastern Turkey in East Texas and I got
one in Newton County and I kind of ask you,
you know, when when was the last time there was
a stocking. It was like a handful of birds in
two thousand, like there were no real stocking efforts. And
you mentioned that this was part of this population south
(19:26):
of the dam, and I thought that was really really
interesting right there, that there is some tradeover and things
like that, and I'm really excited to see what maybe
the results of this study are in the next few years.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah. Now, and part of that study, you know, we're
actually marking some of our restock birds as well, the
nations river ties in over to that landscape where we
had those native populations. Are we seeing our restock birds,
we're taking DNA off those birds. Are we going to
over time see that that DNA showing up in that
in that native population or vice versa, and so at
(20:00):
lots of different tentacles going out in different directions trying
to figure out whatever we can to improve the management
of that species on public and private lands in Texas.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, and it's a great species, a cornerstone species. I mean,
people aren't willing to spend tons of money to save
the eastern indigo snake or the gopher tortoise, the red
cockaded woodpecker maybe, but there's a couple hundred thousand people
that belong to the National Wild Turkey Federation and people
will buy an upland games bird stamp here in Texas
and all of that contribute. So that's one of the
(20:37):
reasons that I'm excited about getting the word out on
what you guys are doing for turkeys because in my opinion,
at least if more people kind of think about turkeys
and maybe turkey habitat, then maybe they'll think more about
habitat issues overall, and we'll see maybe a reversal to
some trends that aren't positive and more people focused on
(20:57):
this great game burden. We'll talk more about the So
we come back on More Outdoors. Welcome back to More
Outdoors on News Talk five sixty klv I. This is
Chester Moore And if you've missed the first couple of segments,
you want to go back klv I dot com click
on the podcast link at the top of the page,
and you don't want to miss this. It's a cool show.
Jason Hard and Texas Park's a while department's turkey program
(21:20):
director and glad to have him on the program. And
we were talking about, you know, this cool study. Matter
of fact, the cover story for the March April Texas
Fishing Game is a story I did on this You
can check that out on newsstands also at fishgame dot com.
And you know, there's a lot of turkey management and
a lot of it has to do with human management,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Absolutely, you know, from a habitat standpoint, from a harvest standpoint,
there's a lot of things that we have to consider
from from hunting to habitat and they all tie in
really well together.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, and it's really unique to see that technology is
being a very beneficial factor to this. And one of
these things is harvest requirement. So if you harvest an
eastern Turkey in that season hasn't opened yet, you have
to report that and there's an app and you can
use that. But you also have you said, a new
area where you're requiring harvest requirements.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, so we've had the East Texas counties with an
open season for a long time. For twenty plus years,
we've had mandatory harvest recording. Used to be a physical
check station that hunters can take their births to, you know,
take a few photos next to the sign and all that.
But we switched that over to it to an app
or our only partial life website a few years back,
(22:41):
and that app has kind of grown. People are reporting
gar wide tailed, your doze and some landscapes to that app,
and we recently added ten new counties. So it's a
one Gobbler county landscape going from Milham County south of
Mattagorda County includes bast say It Call It will, Colorado, Jackson,
(23:03):
and a few others, and we've implemented mandatory harvest reporting
in those counties. This is the first year that it's
on the books. We've already received I think close to
fifty harvest reports from those ten counties this year April
one April thirty season, so it's given us phenomenal data.
I've already mapped out those harvest locations and we're seeing
(23:24):
distribution of birds that we weren't even aware of. So
it's great information. Using the apps on your phone, your smartphone,
or even on the website reporting those harvests. We can
do it voluntary for rios across the state, but it
is mandatory and eat sexes in that Kent County area,
and it's going to provide us great information, especially in
the areas where we have lighter populations, where we don't
(23:45):
capture that harvest through our through our paper survey that
we've set up the past. So going in the right direction.
I think now on.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
The counties with the new RIO requirements is that because
maybe those are marginal population counties, are just that there's
not enough data out there on those areas.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
It's both. So if you look at that landscape, that's
the eastern edge of the Rio Grand turkey population. So
I mentioned that I thirty five four to or all
these counties are east of by thirty five, and we
just dis light populations one bird compared to the rest
of real Grand rangements. The four bird annual bag limits
(24:25):
spring and fall season. For the most part, these are
thirty day season spring only April and April thirty And
like I said, there are turkeys there huntable populations, but
the numbers just aren't as robust is what we see
in some areas like Minard or Slipher County. So we
had to do something to try to get a better
handle on what is harvest like in that area. We
(24:47):
can use that harvest data to extrapolate that to get
answers to populations and density distribution those birds and how
are they spreading out over time. So lots of good
information on a population that that we just don't have
much information of.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, you know, it's amazing you think about trying to
manage how many counties take two hundred and fifty counties.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Plus in Texas were four counties across the state, and
I would say over half of them have turkey populations.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, so think you know one hundred and twenty five
plus counties with turkeys, that's all. That's a lot to
manage and get information on. And I'm sure that's a
constant challenge trying to figure out, Okay, how can we
best manage this area and sustain this or and you
know in these maybe not necessarily in the UH, in
these new requirements of reporting, but then just maybe talking
(25:37):
with different people in private land. Ever, since Texas is
ninety seven percent privately owned, have you ever been kind
of shocked, like some branch here and maybe you thought
was a nominal area, go, oh, there's hundreds of turkeys
and there turns out to be hundreds of turkeys on
a ranch. You ever had that happen?
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Absolutely. I can remember driving through the rolling Plane and
going through just cotton field, cotton field, cotton till and
thinking where we go and then you go down a
little up a little bluff, down another one, and you
run across these cottonwood draws and they're just turkeys everywhere.
It is amazing how much life can exist in some
(26:15):
areas where you didn't think.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
It was Now with that, I would like to talk
a little bit about drought situation. So Texas kind of
broken strout for a while, but we're having a situation
this year in areas which is pretty nasty. So obviously
drought's gonna be a big impact on birds. But you know,
for example, coyotes, there's research that shows when coyotes get
pounded really hard, the moms will have more babies. Is
(26:40):
there any kind of mechanism that's been recognized? And maybe
wild turkeys where you have a really bad season or
two of recruitment and then maybe there's more production.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah, I mean usually that's going to occur more in
our semi arid regions the state, so across that Rio
Grande range. But it's cycles. You've seen that for decades
and decades, where you have a drought year and then
you'll have an average year and above average year, and
then you have another drought year. So it just cycles
back and forth, and our populations follows cycles. So we'll
(27:13):
have a year like we're having right now where it's
just not looking very promising, but hopefully next year of
the year after we'll get those winter and spring rains
and the populations will boom. The good thing about turkeys
is they have great survival when they're not sitting on
the nest. So a lot of those hens, if they
end up not attentioning to nest this year, they're going
(27:34):
to carry over to next year. The survival is going
to go up and compared to what it would be
and hopefully have an opportunity to nest next year. So
that's a good thing about turkeys. They're a little longer
to live than some other ground nesting birds like quail,
and more opportunity and they can have a much quicker rebound.
We look at twenty eleven where we had just horrible
(27:56):
droughts of wildfires, kind of setting up a situation like
what we're having this year and our populations we just
didn't get the recruitment. Yeah, but did you go to
fourteen fifteen, sixteen and you see this boom in the
population turkeys and areas they'd never been before. And we're
back going back to the other direction. But again it's
cycles every five years, every decade or so. You see
(28:18):
that those ups and downs.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah, very interesting stuff. It's good to hear that. You know,
on those drought years you have good hens survival I
mean even going back to like you know, Moses, the
Lord gave Moses instructions, if you come into an area
in the Holy Land, you don't take the mother off
the nest. You can only take the eggs. You know,
we didn't figure out that the in the West until
the eighteen hundreds, right, But so mom would mat lay again,
(28:42):
and maybe the next year she would lay. But if
you lose that mom, and you know, then you lose
maybe a generation. If you had if you had a
year where like they're just hens got wiped out, that
would be nasty.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah. Yeah, the hens are critical. We had the males
out there, but the males don't contribute to anything other
than bringing the in. He doesn't incubate eggs, he doesn't
raise pulls. So we can we can really afford to
harvest at least a certain percentage of our gobblers during
the spring season. But when we start taking hens off
(29:14):
the landscape, you know, dead, dead hens don't lay eggs.
So we got to protect our hens and we want
to grow that population.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
And that's a big part of this study in East
Texas right now. If I'm correct as monitoring.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
These hens, absolutely we have a good idea of what
the males do and what they don't do. But having
a very good understanding of nesting behavior, renesting effort, nest success,
hoult survival windows, polts are hitting the ground. All that
will help us make other management decisions and hopefully improve
(29:50):
habitat for those birds and keep them around for decades
to come.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
All right, we come back on More Outdoors, wrap up
our conversation about turkeys with restoration efforts in the Ponne Woods.
Welcome back to More Outdoors on News Talk five sixty KLV.
This is Chester More. You can follow me at the
Chester More on Instagram, Higher Calling Wildlife on Facebook, and
my blog at Higher Kaling dot and that of course
my work in Texas Fishing Game every issue and at
(30:16):
fishgame dot Com all over the place out there. Sometimes
it's kind of hard to keep up with myself. So
I'd like to give it to you guys here on
the air so you can connect with all these different
stories and things. Wrapping up our conversation with Jason Harden,
Texas Park's a Wildlife Department's turkey program leader, and we
really appreciate you being on the show today.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Hey, I'm happy to be here Chester. I appreciate all
you do to get the word out on what we
do at Parks and Wildlife National Wantrik Federation. You've been
a big supporter of ours, and we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
It's my honor and privilege. So one of the coolest
things I've gotten to do is go photograph a bunch
of turkey releases. And I think the turkey release thing
has an interesting history, so kind of a you know,
like maybe late seventies somewhere in there, there were some
efforts to put turkeys back in East Texas, but didn't
what they're using like pen raised birds.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
If you look at the history of restoration in the
Pinting Woods of East Texas. You know, the our predecessor
with the Game Fish Norse Commission back in nineteen forty
two estimated probably only one hundred eastern wild turkeys. So
native birds remained turkey settlement and you're talking about millions
and millions of acres all the way from the Red
River down to your country, all over to the Trinity River,
(31:32):
and so there weren't birds out there to trap and restock.
So early efforts around the nineteen twenties and thirties, they
were catching rios in South Texas and up around Concho
and Coma County and bringing those all over the state.
Huge success. But they were also bringing the pony witho
to be Texas and they stuck around for a decade
or so, but eventually started to fade away. In the
(31:55):
going into the sixties and seventies, there was a lot
of pen raise efforts were going on the ground. Again
we know today those fail. Today our state legislatures has
made it where it's illegal to release pen raise birds
in the Wall just due to the failure and the
negative impacts on our wild populations. It wasn't until nineteen
seventy nine that we moved exclusively to wild trapped Eastern
(32:18):
subspecies in the Pine Woods to East Texas, and from
nineteen seventy nine to two thousand and three, over seven
thousand Eastern Wall turches were released across I thinks like
fifty six counties across the Black Lamb Prairie, post Oke,
Savannah and Pine Woods, and they used of blockstocking approach.
They released fifteen to twenty birds per county in about
(32:38):
five to ten locations per county, and it was successful
in some areas like you mentioned, you know, the Newton,
Jasper Sabine County, Nacinoch's County, Folk County. They have open
seasons today and part of that driven by those restoration efforts.
But the vast majority of those restocking efforts failed, and
(32:58):
we think part of that was the method that we
went with. You might let three birds go today, you
might let five birds go a week later, and when
you only let three males go on twelve hens, you
lose the three males in your stockings filled. So it
just wasn't as successful. We'd hope it wasn't a successful
(33:18):
We saw a lot of other states that got an
earlier starts than us using that same approach. During the
latter part of the blockstocking era, we were doing some
research with Texas A and M and doctor Roal Lopez
did some modeling off of some of the birds he
marked and came up with what he called a super
stocking approach to restoration. He said that we've let these
(33:39):
large numbers of birds go and did a mix of
juvenile adults that by year four and five we'd have
a much better chance of success. We were putting all
our eggs in one basket with those fifteen birds out
there get production year one, they prepair together and we
have this county wide population. We manage hardest at the
county scale rather than at an eco reaching scale, and
(34:01):
so that was the approach. Let's pre stock this county.
So following doctor Rolopez is a superstocking model. In around
two thousand and seven, we'd walked away from blockstocking, were
put birds in the ground. So we had a lot
of landowners NWTF and our own staff clamoring let's get
back in the turkey restoration business. We were not as
successful as we thought we were. Let's get back into this,
(34:24):
let's do it. And we didn't want to jump back
in just do the same thing we'd been doing. So
we did funder some research through student f Fosston, Texas,
A and M. We tested, which it was just a
mathematical mode at the time, a super stockings. We wanted
to do some empirical testing on the ground to release
eighty birds per site at four sites and basically had
(34:45):
the population establishment that we would see in nesting effort,
pope recruitment like what we'd see in southeastern states. Established population.
So we felt like we had a good approach. Now
looking back at some of those sites, we stocked a
site in Montgomery County stock to side in Houston County,
and they were very far removed from other existing populations.
(35:05):
And today those populations are are blinking out because they're
still removed from other populations. So what that told us
is we need to if we're going to do restoration,
we need to do it in these priority landscapes we're
over time. These first have opportunities to exchange genetics across
a large landscape. So the Natures River Priory landscape is
one approach that we took leased birds down on Angelina
(35:26):
National Forest at least a little further up in along
with Angelina where you were at a little further up
in Cherokee County, and just create this daisy chain of
populations where there's an opportunities to exchange genetics over time,
so one population is not relying on itself. To go
from an island population to a landscape of established purpose, it.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Makes perfect sense. And I believe you guys are trying
to make a minimum, but eighty to one hundred turkeys.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Per site, yeah, I don't think we released on a
site that wasn't at least eighty birds. Yeah, And some
of them, you know, over one hundred, and that has
its own drawbacks. You know, it's hard to get those birds.
They're all coming from out of state for the most part, Southeastern, Northeastern,
and Midwestern states, and it's getting harder and hard to
(36:13):
get our hands on birds. We feel like we've had
a lot of success up to this point, but it's
always a struggle.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Well, I know, just from going to photograph there's a
lot of start and stop, Like the birds will come in,
they got to get a test. It's not just like, hey,
go set a trap and catch birds. I mean it's
a challenging thing. And then you've got to get them
from state to state. I mean most of the birds
in the last year have come from Maine, right.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, so we received birds from from, like I said,
across the southeast, Midwest, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Missouri,
West Virginia, our you know, just all over the Midwest, Southeast,
and now the Northeast. Remain getting those birds. And it's
(36:57):
not just like you said, go sheer rocket over bring
them back to Texas. We have to assure they don't
have avan influenza. You know, we're having a big issue
across the country with high pathagenic avian influenza wiping out
commercial and back to our birds. That's always a concern
here in Texas. So we bring birds across state lines,
got tested for that, We've got tested for salmonella. We
(37:19):
have to have a vet look at them. We have
to get them here, you know, we don't drive them
from Mayne. We work with the National Ball Turkey Federation.
They throw them on a Delta cargo plane, they fly
them here. We pick them up in the middle of
the night, take them through our facilities, work them over.
Maybe we're gonna put a GPS unit on their back,
whatever the case may be. Meant a lot of effort
(37:41):
in those states that are doing the trapping, getting those
birds worked up, taking bloodrom those birds overnight in that
blood to our lab and center, our Textaventary Medical Diagnostic
labin center, running a twenty four hour test to see
if they have it avian influenza or salmonila, getting the
vet there at our facilities. So and then after all that,
(38:01):
getting the birds to re lease side and releasing them
safely and healthy. So it's always a struggle, but we've
we've got it down pretty good. But there's always bumps
in the road.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, and I really want to get that out there
just to show the level. Like you got National Law
Turkey Federation covering like moving costs and boxes, and you've
got other states cooperating, you know, having people out there
setting out of airports, catching news in the turkeys.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
And you know traps and absolutely and and you know
we have to do evaluations all the sites. Those landowners
to pass an evaluation to qualify, they have to be
doing the habitat work. We're not going to let birds
go on a site that doesn't have good quality habitats,
So helping them find the funding for them funding it themselves.
So there's a lot of work from the private landowners
(38:49):
to the National Aultraity Federation, to the state agency to
Texas Hunters to combine all this costs money. And it's
our upland game birst stamp the people buying that supercommon
buying up on game versus stamps that are paying the
tab to restore turkeys in East Texas. So it's always
been that way. Hunters are the reason why we have
turkeys in East Texas, waite tail deer, all these other
(39:11):
gang species. And it continues to be that way, they're
putting the bill for for getting those birds in the ground.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, and that's a great conservation success story and that's
going to continue, I believe, and thank you for all
your efforts.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Well, I appreciate Chester and you play a role as well,
like I've said, you know, getting out there and getting
the word out. Even with this interview, letting folks know
that the state and all our partners are continuing to
do what we can to get the birds on the
ground to their historic range one thousand, over one thousand
birds in twenty fourteen release all over East Texas and
(39:44):
these priority landscapes, and we'll continue to do the work
and hopefully over the next few decades we'll have huntable
populations in those areas.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
All right, Well, thanks for being on the show, and
thank you all for listening to more Outdoors. God bless
and have a great, awesome outdoors weekend.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.