Turkey Habitat Management Basics

If you're wondering how to tweak management on your property for better quality turkey habitat, look no further. Drs Marcus Lashley and Will Gulsby talk with Moriah about the most common issues they see on properties and how a few simple tweaks can greatly move the needle for turkey management. From prescribed fire to food plots, brooding plots, and more, the guys discuss some clear achievable improvements you can make on your property to create better turkey hunting.

Transcript

Intro & Guest Welcome

The Most Common Property We Walk Into

Moriah Boggess 0:02

Welcome to Wildlife Investments, where we discuss wildlife research, habitat, hunting, and land management with our panel of leading resource managers. Wildlife Investments. Resource management by scientists. Alright, everybody, welcome back to the Wildlife Investments Podcast. I'm Mariah Boggus, and I have Dr. Marcus Lashley and Dr. Will Goldsby with me today, and we are going to talk about turkeys. I know it's it's finally turkey season, so we're gonna shift the focus towards sort of just the basics of wild turkey management. And I know if you know Marcus and Will, it's from the Wild Turkey Science Podcast, and they cover everything and anything you want to know about turkey management, the most recent research. And today we thought we would sort of take a step back and focus on sort of the basics of property management for turkeys and looking at kind of the typical southern property that's maybe being managed somewhat for deer, but maybe not well. And I'm gonna let Marks and Will sort of work through how they often see marks being missed for turkeys and what are those basics that any landowner can start adopting without having to spend a whole bunch of time in research, what are all the basics, the low-hanging fruit that they can adopt to really maximize the value of their property for turkeys. So, guys, what I would love to do is just start this off in consideration of let's say somebody has a 100 to 200 acre property. So those turkeys are obviously the birds are moving in and off of that property. They don't it's not so large that it contains, I mean, even daily move necessarily, you guys can speak to that of the turkeys, but they might do some burning every three, four, five years when they kind of think of it. They probably have some pretty dense ponds. There's some woody understory in those ponds. They probably have some clover food plots that has a bunch of ryegrass in it. That's the condition you walk in on. So I guess you guys take it from there, and I just want to hear you know all the basics and everything that those someone like that could be adopting.

Dr Will Gulsby 2:13

Well, Mariah, I was kind of wondering when y'all were gonna turn to the light and start talking turkeys on here because I've been listening to the other episodes, and they're all good, but they've been real deer focused. So I'm glad you've finally come around. So thanks for having us. No, absolutely. It's time. You're you're describing a property context that is, I would say, the most common context that I walk into for sure. I mean, it's essentially what you just described, almost always.

Dr Marcus Lashley 2:46

Yeah. I would say one of the few things that does tend to be changing over the years is you mentioned, you know, maybe they're burning a little bit. It seems like when I first started working with landowners years ago, it was not uncommon at all to step onto a property that had never, you know, it was just totally dense forest, never been burned. I think folks are starting to understand the benefits of thinning and burning their woods now, but I think the the next major hurdles to get through are how often should they be burning, when should they be burning, and then also, and perhaps even more importantly, is how they should be managing their fields.

Dr Will Gulsby 3:31

Yeah, well, when you were saying that it made me reflect real real fast. And I'm wondering if that I'm wondering if that is a true trend, or if folks have been hearing us talk about it and they start dabbling in it, and by the time they get to us, yeah, they've started dabbling and then they realize they need some help to actually plan this out into a plan that will work to maximize turkeys.

Dr Marcus Lashley 4:02

Well, that does seem to be a common theme when we do site visits with landowners, is many of them have listened to m a lot of our podcasts, if not all of them, and they understand all the tools in the toolbox that they should be applying, but they just don't know when, where, and how.

Dr Will Gulsby 4:18

Yeah. And I but you you said another thing that I think is absolutely the case because even those people, when I go onto most properties, their food pots look shitty.

Moriah Boggess 4:31

Yeah.

Dr Will Gulsby 4:31

I mean, they're like if we're talking about a low-hanging fruit, wouldn't I step onto a property, something that could immediately be changed, where you could realize a gain in the same year, is just to change how you how you prepare your f warm your uh cool season food plots to transition into something, you know, in the spring, starting a warm season that will be beneficial for turkeys. Because what typically is the case is what Mariah described earlier, where they are planting something in the food plot, and it's generally decent for deer, but they're not dealing with the weed problems, and if they're in the south, that's going to include ryegrass. And by the time you get around to turkey season, a lot of the time it's too tall already to hunt turkeys there. And by the time you get around to May, when we're starting to get some pults on the ground, or you may may even have some late nests in, that field is is terrible for a turkey. Like it's as bad as you can make it, just about. So I I agree with you when when you said the low-hanging fruit is fields, and changing that, that's one thing you can do right away. That you're almost always going to realize a real gain from it really fast, is let's change the way that we're implementing our food pot program for deer. Not really that much in some cases. You don't necessarily have to completely reinvent what you're doing in the fall food pots, but taking a few extra steps to make sure that that field is going to be usable for turkeys in the spring turkey season, and more importantly, when there's a brood on the ground, that that is a really low-hanging fruit that could substantially affect the huntability and productivity of your turkey population.

Moriah Boggess 6:38

So at a high level, most commonly, what are those basic steps you're talking about, Marcus?

Dr Will Gulsby 6:44

Yeah. You know, when when I'm thinking about turkeys as part of even if you're a deer first person, which I know there's there's plenty of folks that come to wildlife investments that are deer primary or or at least first, and a lot of those people like turkeys and want that too. And then if they're coming to me or willed, usually it's reverse of that. One thing that I would change immediately is I would think about which plants you're selecting in that plot. And are you trying to maximize deer forage? Which we might give you some recommendations throughout the year if you're trying to manage specifically for deer forage. A couple of the clovers in particular, like red clover and arrowleaf clover, was what's another one that we recommend really commonly, like balanza, some of those clovers that are lasting a little bit longer, they're stemmier and taller. I might drop those out and think about like a crimson clover with wheat or oats or or something something like that, where those plants are going to senesse relatively early in the new year and give way to some of our forbs. So that's one thing to consider at planting. Another thing that needs to be considered is what is our weed problem? And if you've got ryegrass, that needs to be dealt with. So if you're planting ryegrass, which is actually substantially more common than I would have ever believed, but people are still planting ryegrass in their plots. But even if you aren't, you probably still have a problem with it. Right now in the year is a good time to see if you've got that problem because there's a bunch of seed heads popping out, at least in North Florida, I'm seeing them already. So you can evaluate that problem, but it's too late to deal with it this year right now, unless you get up a little higher in latitude than I am. But taking some steps by using a grass-selective herbicide early in the year, so the the ryegrass has already gotten established but has not gone to seed yet, you can use an application of a product like clethodum to kill that grass selectively. And in my experience, the the ryegrass is kind of limpy. It's relatively easy to control. Yeah. If you've got uh some other grasses or if you have a mix of some Forbes that are problems in your food pot, you might do that a little differently. So we might use a soil residual herbicide in our, you know, if you have established crimson clover, you could use pursuit, for example, and that would allow you to control with soil residual activity some of the problematic plants. But the the main thing that you're doing is could make you might change the consideration of which plants you're planting, but the most important factor is to identify those weed problems and get rid of them. And if you do that, you can quickly have a really high quality field that's it that's fun to hunt in and attractive to turkeys, and then that transition can can be really valuable for brooding cover if you're playing your cards right.

Moriah Boggess 10:10

So what I'm hearing, Marcus, is you're not planting the 13-way mix. No.

Dr Will Gulsby 10:16

Not not I mean you know, like that's what I'm saying. You need to figure out what is your objective and and plant and manage that field to meet that objective. That doesn't mean you can't have some fields that you're trying to maximize forage production year-round for deer. If that's your objective, that's there's nothing wrong with that. But don't expect that to also yield turkey productivity. And you know, a lot of people have 10, 15, 20 fields on their property. There's nothing to say you can't do something different in it in one than another.

Dr Marcus Lashley 10:53

Yeah. To build off a couple of things that Marcus mentioned too, and I think that was a really good overview. Even if your objective is just to maximize deer forage and you're not really concerned about providing turkey brooding cover, I think you should be treating the the grass the ryegrass in your food plots anyway. So I've got an undergraduate researcher right now that's finishing up a little project looking at using clethodom to control ryegrass in clover food plots, and we've the final numbers aren't in yet, but we've seen a significant increase in the biomass production of clover just from that clethodom application. So you're accomplishing potentially two objectives at once. And in worst case scenario, you're accomplishing the objectives of maximizing deer forage. Best case, you get the deer forage and the brooding cover. So I think that's a no-brainer, especially as cheap as you can get generic clethedum and as little time as it takes to spray it, it's very effective. The other thing that I was going to mention kind of more broadly and at a higher level, even than Marcus got into, was that I feel like most folks that are deer first that also would like to have some turkeys just simply plant their fall food plots and they never do anything with them again throughout the year. Yeah, they just walk away and don't. They walk away from them. So over the years, oftentimes they've accumulated a pretty wide diversity and high abundance of warm season weeds throughout that food plot, some of which may be beneficial, but many of which are probably interfering with accomplishing that turkey habitat objective. So just by going in and doing something like he recommended, like maybe a pursuit application to deal with some of those problems pre-emergence in late winter, early spring, could go a long way towards bettering that area for turkeys throughout the hunting season and the brew rearing season, as well as controlling that ryegrass. So I think that's a first really good cut at it. And then I think as you move from that objective towards being more of a turkey first person, or even if you're not a turkey first, maybe the deer are doing great on your property, and you have certain food plots devoted to creating tonnage of forage for those, but you want to start specifically tailoring some food plots to turkeys, well, then you can start thinking about doing things like Marcus suggested, where you're removing, you know, some of the red clover, the arrowleaf clover, the blonza, and you're just going with a crimson, and not only that, but maybe you're even going with a crimson at a lower rate. We oftentimes recommend a lower seeding rate of that so that you get a little bit more open structure up underneath it while you've still got that overhead cover and that shade that broods can use.

Dr Will Gulsby 13:32

Yeah, I would uh you know, another thing that you can consider is you're not necessarily planting all of your openings and thinking about what you're doing in some of those other openings. For example, discing those in the the late winter and using an application of plateau can be a great way to start that field down a path that it's going to grow into early successional plant community and structure that will be beneficial in those odd areas that you may not be using for anything otherwise. Yeah, that's a great point.

Dr Marcus Lashley 14:10

I mean, to thinking about roadsides, little small food plots that you ask yourself every year why am I even wasting my time planting this? The big one that I encounter a lot in site visits with landowners is food plots that are unproductive or large food plots that have unproductive portions. Maybe they have low soil fertility or they're highly erodible. Maybe they've got too much of a slope on them. They just really never do that well. I've worked with several landowners and said, hey, let's just quit trying to fight and making this into productive soil that'll grow, you know, a large tonnage of food for deer or whatever other objective, and let's just manage this as native early succession because those lower fertility areas lend themselves to creating a better plant community for brooding anyway. So it's kind of a win-win situation where it's saving the landowner time, energy, and effort while also using a relatively low productivity area that they may not even be planting to begin with towards accomplishing another turkey-related objective.

Dr Will Gulsby 15:09

Yeah. That that's a great point and way to think about this. Another thing I wanted to ask you, Mariah, I know some of the folks with the wildlife investment team had been working on an analysis about buck use of food plots. Has that been discussed already?

Moriah Boggess 15:28

I don't think we've discussed it at length, but you know, the the the bottom line is that there is a there's a point in time or there's a point in size around three or four acres where you start to hit diminishing returns where a larger plot's not accomplishing much from a deer total number of deer using it, unique deer using it. I think that's probably what you're getting at here, then yeah, larger opening.

Dr Will Gulsby 15:52

Well, let's just think about that for a minute. But and we can incorporate what Will just said, but also if you are trying to maximize your open space and you have food plots that are bigger than that three or four acre space, why not take part of that and make it really high quality early succession that can be high quality for brooding? You're not losing that from a deer standpoint, that's still good stuff, but you're also taking advantage of that open space for turkeys. And I think you know that that is a phenomenal way for people to use our research, the the stuff that we keep you know working on hard to try to maximize these objectives. That to me is a perfect example of where you can have both. You've got openings that are larger than what is optimal for for maximizing buck use, or at least you know buck use. So why not take some of that extra space to make it focal on turkeys? And by the way, when I'm looking at brooding cover, I'm thinking about forb-dominated communities, which happen to all pretty much be over 25% crude protein and highly selected by deer. So it's not like you're losing that space, but you are focusing your effort on creating something different in that case.

Dr Marcus Lashley 17:18

The property that I did the majority of my deer hunting on this fall and winter, the landowner had already taken a portion of it. The field, I think, is probably about three and a half, four acres in total area, and he took about an acre and a half or so out of production. It was kind of a long rectangle, and he took out one side of that rectangle out of production, has been managing it for native early successional vegetation, and of course, even if you're managing it for brooding cover, which we typically think of as low cover, forb dominated, as Marcus just mentioned, with bare ground underneath, even if you manage for that, by the time you get into late summer and early fall, that's going to grow up pretty tall and dense anyway, if you're in fairly productive soils. And that's this the site was pretty productive in a little floodplain of a creek. And it ended up being great structure for deer. And I sat in that stand overlooking that food plot many times, some you know, several of them with my kids. My daughter harvested deer out of that plot this year, and you could see, you know, those la that last hour, half hour of sunlight, deer would just pour out of that early successional area. And I think they were probably many of them were bedded in it. Some of them were transitioning through it, but a lot of them were bedding in it, and they would just pour out of that vegetation into the food plot, and many of them would even hug the edge of it. So I think you could probably increase your daytime use or your hunting hour use by deer by having areas like that adjacent to a productive food plot. And the food plot was planted in wheat and clover.

Dr Will Gulsby 18:54

Isn't that fun to hunt in? Yeah. Watching them walk around in that just that's so fun. One thing I was gonna add to what you just said, Will, I've worked with several landowners where we're we're talking about this very stuff and trying to design it to optimize you know the situation. So another you don't have to just randomly pick areas either. One thing that a couple of landowners that I've worked with have now done this and it's been really effective, they have situated their that fallow space that they're going to manage for brooding cover and and nesting cover right at the edge of the field between wherever their house is or their point of entry is and the field. So they've often got an elevated shooting house that's sitting off of the plot, in some cases it's right on top of the plot, and it's particularly important there. But they they have the, you know, ideally you'd have that that shooting house off of the plot, and you can access it with deer in the field or leave it with deer in the field without them ever knowing, and having that early succession in between can often provide you additional screening cover and help you do that. So I've seen that done really well a couple of times now, and you know, that's the same thing they report. Like it's so fun to hunt in that context, it's helping you reduce the the pressure that you're giving on deer when you're actually hunting it, because it's allowing you to access it safely and get a get down and leave when deer are in the field. And on top of that, you're getting this high-quality brooding cover in association with your food plot. So I yeah, I think they're those are great examples of how you can integrate these objectives into a really productive place for deer and turkey together.

Moriah Boggess 20:49

So, you know, one thing that I always notice too is that even if fields are relatively small on a property and they might need most of that room to plant, every property has so many odd little areas, roadsides, little logging decks or something. And it seems like the default it always turns into is it's just a mode plot. Even if it was never seeded with something, you end up with Bahia grass, maybe Bermuda grass in there. And so I'm I'm guessing that's something else you guys are focused a lot on, too, is trying to pull in all of those weird little areas and make them usable.

Dr Marcus Lashley 21:24

Yeah. The less open acreage there is across the property, the more emphasis I put on managing those areas well. Because they do add up, and you know, oftentimes we even recommend to landowners to expand those roadsides and daylight them so that we can create some brooding areas down through there, too.

Why Brooding Cover Is the Real Limiting Factor

Dr Will Gulsby 21:42

Yeah, and you know, it dawned on me. We we've spent the whole episode focused on these early successional communities in association with brooding. There's a reason why we're doing that. First of all, it's a low hand. Fruit, but also our data indicates that we have an issue. Turkey populations are have been struggling in some areas, and there is good evidence that we are not recruiting poles well. And there's also good evidence that that's not because of nesting. We just did an episode on this. We'll went through the literature, and I'm talking about all of the studies ever published on nesting. That hasn't changed over time, or it doesn't appear to have. But what we have seen is that the number of polts per hen has declined. So to me, that tells me it's not at the nesting stage, it's at the polt rearing stage. And it makes perfect sense when you go and look at at any property on the landscape. Generally, I would I would first be concerned about polt rearing cover. That's usually the limiting factor. Yeah, I mean it makes a lot of sense.

Dr Marcus Lashley 23:03

The first conversation that you start having with landowners during a site visit is about increasing the abundance and quality of that brooding cover. And as I'm describing it, oftentimes, Marcus, you and I have shared the story because the same thing happens to you all the time. The landowner will say, Okay, well, I want you to point it out to me when we see some, like what looks good. And on most properties, I can't find a good example. And it doesn't matter. And that's even been the case on you know 800, 900,000 acre plus properties. Yes. You have to be so intentional about it.

Dr Will Gulsby 23:39

Yeah, and when it is available, it's because they've got something they just burned. Yes. It's normally not in the openings, but you know, the context you described, Mariah, where they're not burning actively and frequently in the woods, and the woods aren't open, you know, at the canopy level to allow the response to fire, we're we are more reliant on the fields being in good shape for that. The turkeys are more dependent on the fields to be good brooding cover when you're in that forest context. Yeah. You know, in other words, if you're managing your forest and you have areas that are relatively low tree density where you're getting plenty of sunlight into the forest floor and you're burning frequently, those can serve as really high quality brooding cover, and you're less reliant on producing all of that in fields. But uh, you know, a lot of properties they don't have either one. And then, you know, they're asking me why their turkey population is suffering, and then to me that's pretty obvious. There's nowhere that a POLT can be raised, you're not gonna have any raised.

Dr Marcus Lashley 24:53

Yeah, and continuing off of that, as I alluded to earlier, oftentimes landowners aren't burning frequently enough to provide that brooding and nesting cover within their open forest. So, you know, it varies by where you are and your soil productivity and you know, your climate, all those types of things. But generally speaking, if you let an area go three plus years, unless it has a lot of canopy or it's poor soils or has a very short growing season, like we see at further north latitudes, if you're not disturbing it every two years, you're starting to form a pretty significant hardwood component in the understory. And, you know, that's fine if you're trying to manage for maximizing deer forage and cover. You know, I have some data that suggests that a three-year burn rotation is associated with an abundance of forage biomass, maybe not the highest quality. You know, we get a highest quality often for deer from a shorter return. But, you know, with turkeys, oftentimes, you know, you get a year of brooding cover following the burn, and then the next year it's nesting cover. And if you don't set it back again, it's gonna continue to be nesting cover, but it quickly becomes too dense to provide brooding opportunities. And also the hardwood encroachment starts, and then we may be at a point, and this is the other common scenario that we see, where it's gonna be very difficult to get that plant community back to a forb-dominated community conducive to brooding without going in with an herbicide application as well. So oftentimes we're having to pair fire with herbicide, as I often refer to it as a restoration step before we can get to the maintenance phase with just fire. We don't want to have to continue to you know spray herbicide for a variety of reasons. You know, the obvious one is expensive, right? And it sets us back a couple of years on our plant community, but we don't want to have to continue to do that over time. We want to get to the place where we can just manage that with fire. I'm kind of curious.

Moriah Boggess 26:51

This is a question for both of you guys. With deer, and you said this will, you know, sometimes we do try to lengthen out that burn rotation a little bit, and that might be to help better develop cover, some escape cover, some holding cover, diversify plant communities for forages. But oftentimes, yeah, like we're somewhere around that two-year rotation, it especially in the deep south. But I'm I'm curious for both of you if we were to apply that two-year rotation and think about some of the areas you've worked farther north, maybe this in the Carolinas, Tennessee, or even farther north, do you think that anyone that's really focused on turkeys can go wrong with a short rotation like that? Can it ever be too short for turkeys, I guess, is my question. If you're getting good consumption, you're getting enough fuel to carry a fire. Good question.

Dr Will Gulsby 27:40

The only place that I have seen it where I might be a little concerned about it is when we're in really poor sites. Deep sands. Yeah, and in that case, with a relatively frequent fire, you have a lot of brooding cover, but not very much nesting cover. But then I say that, and one of the studies I participated in, there was still the sand hill was dominating the upland, and the it was on a three-year rotation, and it still didn't have that much nesting cover in the uplands, but the turkeys that we were tracking were using the wetter areas that the fringe of those wetter areas for nesting, and their nesting success was exceptional. So you know, when I'm thinking about this, uh I I have realized over time, and Will and I have had this discussion multiple times, that my recommendations early on in my career were heavily influenced by the previous generation of scientists and what they were recommending. And as I have focused more and more on fire research and more and more on turkeys and what turkeys need, I have gotten shorter and shorter on what I think is the appropriate fire return interval.

Dr Marcus Lashley 29:05

I think that's a that's a really good point, Marcus. And I'll provide another example kind of on the opposite extreme end of this of the spectrum. I've encountered a couple of properties where they burned annually and always in the winter, and over time, and it was on fairly productive soils, and over time they developed a very dense, rank, tall stand of native warm season grasses throughout all their woodlands and savannah to the point that turkeys were almost no longer utilizing those areas. So that can happen too. So you know, we're trying to find the balance between those two extremes.

Dr Will Gulsby 29:44

Yeah, and you might you might use some other another time of fire, like we talked a lot about moving it around to the the late growing season, that can be an effective way to deal with some of the grass issues or herbicide or disking in fifth rows, you know, things like that can be used to help deal with with issues. But yeah, if you're burning every two years for the next ten years in in February, you're you're gonna shift dominance to grass.

Dr Marcus Lashley 30:16

Yeah, and I'll say one other thing that can lead to that problem as well is when you have really open stands. So you start getting into like savannah type structure, you know, grass is gonna be the most sunlight-dependent functional group of of any of those groups compared to you know, Forbes and Woody plants, etc. So it can when you get in that really high sunlight environment, so we're talking about like 20, 30, maybe 40 basal area stands, you can end up fighting grass a little bit in those situations just because it does so well in that high sunlight environment. So there are places where I know that I'm intentionally going to manage a woodland. Notice I use the term woodland, not savanna, so we're talking about a higher canopy cover, maybe 30 to 80 percent canopy cover throughout the stand. I'll intentionally carry a little bit more canopy so that I don't have to fight quite as hard to keep that grass density low. But most landowners aren't even to that point yet where they can start worrying about tweaks like that.

Dr Will Gulsby 31:18

Well, I also I kind of want to reverse back to something that that Mariah said earlier that made me want want to say this. I I see this pretty commonly where people are managing for deer and they're using a little bit longer rotation and they're it's sort of like they want everything to be bedding cover because bedding cover holds deer. But even when I'm managing for deer, that's not what I want to do. And I I've heard people respond with man, I'm managing so well that now I can't even see the deer. I got them. They're all here. But I don't have anywhere, like I don't know where they're at, you know. I think one another thing that people could be thinking about, maybe you you want the longer rotation for deer for bedding cover, but you don't want that everywhere. They're still going to benefit from that more frequent fire return because it's producing tons of literally tons and tons of food that's high quality, and then be really strategic about where you put the bedding cover. So when I'm working with landowners, I'm immediately I like to focus on fields or stands where they already have they already know there's deer here, and this is where they're concentrating some of their hunting activity. And then let's think about how we access that stand and food, you know, softening on a food plot, and where can we put bedding cover so that they can access it and get out of there without ever disturbing deer in the bedding cover, and then we're gonna dedicate that space. And it might only be five to ten acres, but we're doing that really strategically to make sure they can access where they want to hunt and get out of there without bothering the deer in the bedding cover. And it's such a transformative thing for your hunting experience because you're not wondering where the deer are now. They're all over there in that bedding cover. If you're in there at two o'clock in the afternoon, that's where the deer are gonna be. They're in that bedding cover and you've you've anchored them to that. And you can distribute those strategically throughout your property so that you know those locations, and maybe you have stands between them to take advantage of advantage of rutting behavior, where they're gonna bounce between the the cover, or you're between the cover and the food pot if you're you know hunting, bow hunting or something, or you're just situating it such that you can get in your stand that's sitting on the food pot to take advantage of them coming out in that in the evening. But I don't want the whole property to be bedding cover. You know, that that's the context where you're really setting it up to be huntable for deer, and then it's otherwise really productive for deer, and in that case, that kind of landscape will also be much more productive and safer generally for turkeys.

Dr Marcus Lashley 34:23

Yeah, I'm glad you made that last point, Marcus, because what we typically think of as bedding cover, you know, a turkey cannot walk through it and stick its head up above it and see, you know, any predators that may be around. And so you don't want too much of that on the property. Generally speaking, you want them to be able to detect predators well in advance and take advantage of how fast they are and how well they can fly, you know, to get away from that. So they make their living from their eyesight.

Dr Will Gulsby 34:50

That's right. And, you know, we we have some work coming out. Uh I just got the note that it's good that it's gonna be accepted in the journal. So one thing that we're really concerned about is nesting success has not declined generally over time based on the stuff Wheels worked on. But one thing has been illuminated from one of our recent projects is what we would typically associate with high quality bedding cover for deer, where it's a woody thicket, you know, mess where it has a lot of of uh hardwood stems in in it or pine stems. Hens might choose that for nesting, and they may have very similar nesting success. But one thing that's very different is when she's detected by a predator, she's much more likely to die in that interaction. She cannot escape the predation. And that that, you know, the hen's survival is the most important thing, and that was a red flag for me immediately that's coming straight from our research. When you have high visual obstruction that we typically think of for good nesting cover for turkeys, that's great. It increases nesting success. We're seeing uh a 5% increase in nesting success for one every 1% increase in visual obstruction. So you just if you're wondering what that is, kneel down and see how far you can see. The less far you can see, the more visual obstruction there is. Okay, so we're thinking about that from that point of view. When that visual obstruction is being driven by by trees, so you think about saplings of pines and hardwoods, that is making her really vulnerable to predators. When she gets detected, she dies much more frequently in that context.

Dr Marcus Lashley 36:42

And I think, too, the the really great thing about that from looking at it from a hunting perspective when it comes down to the stand level management, is that it makes for a better hunt when you have a more herbaceous understory as well, based on our gobbling data that we collected several years ago in Alabama, that shows that probability of gobbling within a stand decreases with woody coverage in the understory, and it increases with forb cover in the understory. So by managing for that forb-dominated understory, you're not only increasing the likelihood that that hen will, you know, potentially successfully nest and more importantly live to nest again next year, but you're also enhancing the hontability of that stand as well and the attractiveness of it to gobblers in the spring.

Moriah Boggess 37:28

So I I love all that talk about how many different vegetative conditions you can have in a quote unquote burn stand, right? Like a managed pine stand that's been burned. And obviously, we we know from a deer perspective, they they can live under a lot wider variety of conditions and still do well. Like a property that isn't getting burned is still gonna have deer on it. They just that's why they're not as fun to manage for Mariah. Hey now, I'm trying to set you up with a good question here.

Dr Will Gulsby 38:03

If you do all the stuff we're talking about, you're gonna have really good deer hunting. Okay. So focus on turkeys.

Moriah Boggess 38:10

Here's my here's my my I guess my point is that even from a deer perspective where we're like, okay, yeah, you can't mess up deer, but you can improve them a lot. I see a lot of burning happening where I and this is I'm making an out outside you know judgment or or assessment of what I think is going on. It seems like a lot of managers, landowners burn because it's good, but maybe don't understand why. You know, they're not necessarily managing a plant community, they're just burning. They're not looking at it at that level. So if we now you know think about, I can recognize those problems with deer, and usually, like to Marx's point, it's just that those plant communities aren't putting deer where we want them. We're not really making deer more predictable, and we might not even be providing all the different conditions that we want to provide deer because it's just somewhat random. But now if we think about that from a turkey perspective, and you guys said earlier on how it seems like more and more people are burning, which is awesome. But when you go out to a property that's being burned on some frequency, how often would you say that there's a lack of planning that's leading to a lot left on the table? In other words, they might be burning a stand, but it's still just not providing what turkeys need from a vegetation community standpoint.

Dr Marcus Lashley 39:29

Almost every one of them.

Moriah Boggess 39:31

So how can they fix that?

Dr Marcus Lashley 39:32

Almost every one of them. And and I even see, you know, landowners that I visited with that have, you know, site management plans from other people or organizations, and it just recommends a blanket, you know, return frequency, and that's it. You should burn every you know X to Y years to provide good understory diversity for wildlife. I read that all the time. And that is, you know, fire is a means to an end, just like herbicide is a means to an end. If you don't know what you're after when you apply it, then how do you know how to apply it or when to apply it? And so what I always thought it was successful. Right. Or if it was, yeah, if it was even successful. So you need to start with understanding what it is that you're actually trying to achieve from a from a plant community structure and species composition perspective. Once you understand that, the the line that I always use is let the plants tell you when to burn. And use a burn frequency and a burn season, and it and it's not always going to be the same, right? Like even on the same property, I may need to burn a certain stand at times on a two-year rotation, but then every now and then I may need to burn it for a couple of consecutive years, or you know, change up in my seasons periodically based on what I'm seeing from a plant response. So the important thing is to know what the plant community should look like and to apply a fire prescription that keeps you within those parameters for as long a duration as possible, so that we have that usable space available on the landscape in the abundance and the for the duration that is optimal.

Habitat Diversity: Roost Sites, Loafing Areas & What Not to Over-Manage

Dr Will Gulsby 41:20

And let me let me uh add to this. One one thing that I see you kind of ignored, but I think it it absolutely should be considered heavily here is what soil types you have and their productivity. That's not often considered. Some of your less productive stuff often can be maintained as really high quality brooding cover, and you might want to focus that effort there, or you might be adjusting fire return, like if you've got an area that's super productive and wet, and you got green ash trying to invade it, you know, you might want to burn that more frequently if you're trying to keep it in that that same structure. So, you know, that should be considered. But another thing that I always consider I I'm a hunter, been a hunter my entire life, and I'm think like that's the whole reason all these people are doing this. There's nothing wrong with you having an exceptional roost site where you've got, you know, 30, 40, 50 years of family memories of turkey hunting there, and it's just always been productive. Well, maybe that stand that's you know, that strip of woods right next to that you can keep burned every year so that it's always exceptional for a strutting turkey because it's right next to this historical roost. And you know, I I've had a few landowners, one in particular that you know, we talked about that one when I've been on his property every time, where he has a place that's just sentimental to him. Like he's his first turkey was there, and his kid's first turkey was there, and his brother's first turkey was there. You know, like it's been this critical point in space. Why not keep that in an annual turn return? And that's the place where you're gonna keep it in that condition that you have all these great memories and and you know facilitate that hunting success from that major route site. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with structuring the way that you're doing this and considering the huntability and the sentimental value in that plan. You don't just have to do a blanket, oh, two years best, I'm gonna do that everywhere. No, you c this is your land and you get to decide what you do with it, and you're doing it often because you love hunting. So why not consider that in it and tweak it to maximize that? Yeah.

Dr Marcus Lashley 43:53

I mean, I hunted a place this this past weekend for youth season with my daughter, and There's some food plots on that place that are just mowed right now. They're going to be transitioning into summer forage plots for deer, you know, being probably plants going in the ground in the next few weeks. But right now they're just mowed and open for strut zones. And there's nothing wrong with that. And and then also on the opposite end of that extreme, there's nothing wrong. You know, turkeys need shady areas, they need roosts. So there's nothing wrong with having some closed canopy deciduous forest on the property, too.

Dr Will Gulsby 44:27

Yeah, that's needed.

Dr Marcus Lashley 44:29

Yeah. I mean, who doesn't like to see a strutting turkey coming through big beautiful hardwoods?

Dr Will Gulsby 44:33

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 44:34

You don't have to do the same thing everywhere. I think that's a good point to bring up here, because if we have a really zealous landowner listening, they might say, hey, we need to go out and thin every square inch and start burning it on a you know real short interval.

Dr Marcus Lashley 44:45

That but that is a concern. Yeah. You you need loafing areas, you need roost sites. We talk about this commonly, I've heard Will talk about it a bunch. You you're you know, if you've got this this historical roost site, you need to be very careful to maintain it. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen landowners go in and cut those and just lose the turkeys. That roost is gone. Turkeys don't roost in that part of the property anymore.

Dr Will Gulsby 45:11

Yeah, or or cut it off because of some timber work. That's a possibility too. Yeah, so it you know that d that can't be understated, like the diversity in management practices and considering all the needs and having some closed canopy hardwood that's a nice little cool area that's really high visibility. That's good. It just doesn't need to all be that.

Dr Marcus Lashley 45:35

Yeah, we talk a lot about you know, open canopy woodland or savannah that's frequently burned for turkeys because that's what we commonly see is most lacking across the landscape. But I have a good friend who is a forester and a wildlife biologist that does a lot of work on really well-managed lands and does a lot of burning and things like that. And he often says, and I totally agree with him, that the best way to screw up a good turkey property is to turn it into a good bobwite property. You know, a quail plantation is not the look you want to manage for to maximize turkey abundance. If your goal is to maximize turkey abundance, we don't want it that open. You know, we want and we want it more diverse than you would typically manage a quail property to be.

Dr Will Gulsby 46:26

So when you're saying that, I immediately think we don't want it that open everywhere. Exactly. Like with quail, when you're maximizing quail, you're looking for that open structure like over the the entire property. Right. Or nearly ubiquitous. Whereas with turkeys, you need some other habitat components mixed into it that wouldn't be habitat for a quail.

Moriah Boggess 46:50

Well, I think a real temptation with somebody for somebody with smaller acreage, I'm gonna say anything under you know 200 acres or something, is that you want in in that context, you want to maximize your property's value. And I think a a real temptation is to say, hey, maybe your uplands are pines, you get those thin, you're burning those, and then you start to look at the riparians and you just start wanting to apply like FSI, go through maybe crop tree release and and thinning those way down. And I'm not saying that that's bad, but from what you guys are saying here, I think that's obviously worth just highlighting the value of those natural riparians running through are a great corridor, right? They're loafing cover in their transition and leaving them as such, especially if they're narrow, from a turkey standpoint, it's a good thing, right?

Dr Marcus Lashley 47:39

Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, if as you get down into that riparian area, that that's a great place where you can apply variable retention or edge feathering, where the edges of that, as you start to transition into the more riparian forest type, you can have the edges of it more open, and that's probably where you're gonna have most of your oaks anyway. And then as you get down into the wetter, higher fertility site, and maybe it transitions more into like beech and maple and things like that, leave it more closed canopy, and it's not gonna lend itself well to burning anyway, or or having a uh herbaceous dominated plant community. So it can kind of I mean you're working with the ecology of the system, right?

Moriah Boggess 48:18

Okay, so we've covered managing food plots, dialing in food plot management, plantings, ryegrass control, in general, weed control. We've talked about fire return, we've talked a little bit about thinning, now loafing cover, roosting areas. Is there anything else that we're missing? Do you guys want to touch on warm season food plots, any? Is there anything we really need to dive into there for the average landowner?

Dr Marcus Lashley 48:46

We can. I am, I think Marcus and I both are kind of at a phase right now where we are experimenting with different food plot plantings and combinations to create quality brooding cover. We have a whole protocol that we often recommend and implement related to managing those areas for native early successional plants that provide quality brooding cover, but we don't have as much experience with the plantings, and we have some ideas of some things that we're trying to use, and I alluded earlier to going with like a lower clover planting rate, for example, so that you have more space between plants for pults to move through and still have a little bit of shade and overhead structure. But like for instance, I'm starting to trial this growing season a combination of buckwheat and vetch, which you guys talk about vetch for deer food plots on here, I'm sure, all the time, and talk about you know how high in protein it is, it can withstand heavy browsing pressure, easy to grow, all those all those advantages, but it also planted at the correct rate, which is kind of what part of what we're tweaking right now, can provide some pretty good pulp rearing cover too. And you add in buckwheat to that because the buckwheat jumps out of the ground so quickly while that vetch is still establishing, and buckwheat obviously attracts a lot of insects that are beneficial to polts too. So I think that's a pairing that lends itself towards creating some of that breeding cover while still accomplishing the deer objective that almost everyone has in their in their warm season plots as well. But it's still kind of early for me to kind of put my full stamp of approval on that.

Dr Will Gulsby 50:19

Yeah, I like the the bottom line. If you're doing some of this other stuff that we're talking about with field management, in terms of productivity for turkeys, I don't think that you can go wrong. Like when I'm saying productivity, I wanted to be very clear what I mean. I mean that polts are able to forage efficiently and safely in it to maximize their success and growth rate. So we can accomplish that by tweaking the cool season stuff, but Will is right. We also realize that people like to plant stuff for warm season, and I'm looking for answers on how can we integrate what you would be planting for deer in the warm season to also make it really high quality for polt rearing. And you know, we're we have active work going on right now where we're gonna be rearing polts in different plots that we you know, different combinations, and the data just isn't available yet, but it will be soon. So stay tuned because I'm really excited about that, and that's principally because everywhere I go, we need better brood rearing cover, and folks are they're often in a setting where they don't have enough open space where they want to give up any, or at least they view it as giving it up, they don't want to give that space for to to focus on brood rearing, they want to plant it for warm season food pots for deer. So if we can come up with a similar strategy as what we've described from that cool season planting, where we can have our cake and eat it too, so to speak, where you can get that high-quality food production for deer and structure and and everything for pulps, you know, I I'm excited to roll that out as soon as we can figure it out.

Moriah Boggess 52:17

Yeah, for sure. Well, okay, I got one last thing, and I think it's the one that everyone's wondering about. If a landowner only has so much effort, so much money, so much time to put into managing their property, how much of that effort should they put into trapping predators?

Dr Marcus Lashley 52:38

If it's preventing them from doing other things related to habitat, I would suggest that they don't do it at all.

Dr Will Gulsby 52:43

I I agree with that. And let me just say it really succinctly why. Marcus has to manage on it because he's been burned by the these comments too many times. When when you manage for high quality habitat, it principally is effective because it reduces predation. The vegetation management that we're talking about is predator management. You are managing predation. Habitat quality works. It's high quality because it reduced predation, principally. That's not the only thing it did, but that's one thing it did. So adding predator removal on top of that's fine. Absolutely. But doing it in place of it is not.

Dr Marcus Lashley 53:44

I mean, that's the extreme example, but you know, turkeys are a gradient of that. They're along that same gradient. So habitat, I think, and I don't have research that necessarily supports this, it's be a really hard thing to study, but I think it gets you three-fourths or you know, maybe even four-fifths of the way there in terms of achieving the maximum abundance of turkeys that your property can support, and you get that extra 20, maybe 25% on top of that, if you are able to effectively trap predators as well. And that's that's an important term to throw in there, is effectively, because if you're talking about a time-limited landowner, they're probably not going to be able to effectively control predators out there, you know, just going on a weekend here and there.

Dr Will Gulsby 54:30

Yeah. You know, we we borrow the data that's been collected from quail showing that this can be effective at some scale and intensity, it can make a difference in some contexts. But the quail community also call it an add-on. That is what it is. Even in the quail world, that is an add-on. If you take fire away from the system and all of the associated habitat effects that fire has, you don't have quail regardless of the predators. Right? The the adding adding predator management on top of the habitat management, it is an add-on practice when your objective is to maximize that species, even in the quail world, where we have really good data on the effectiveness of trapping, and we borrow that all the time for turkeys. Even in the quail world, it's considered an add-on.

Dr Marcus Lashley 55:26

Yeah. And especially when you consider the primary nest predators of turkeys, you know, a lot of the things that we do to improve habitat quality for turkeys, and to provide a little bit more detail on that, expand foraging and cover opportunities for turkeys are decreasing the foraging and cover opportunities for their nest predators. So you're making turkey habitat better while making nest predator habitat worse. That's a win-win.

Moriah Boggess 55:55

Yeah. Well, I think it's a topic, and you know, the the reason I bring it up is man, the first thing you guys talked about is the first number one priority that people are overlooking is managing their openings, whether that's improving the food plot quality or managing old fields, stop mowing old odd areas, that sort of thing. That is so uncommon to walk onto a property and that already be dialed. Yeah. But it is very common to walk on a property that is dabbling and trapping.

Dr Marcus Lashley 56:25

Yeah. Well, because it's a lot easier than knowing your plants and knowing what's good and bad. Yeah. And then taking it a step further and knowing what to actually do about that and what you do know.

Moriah Boggess 56:36

And that's what I want like this podcast hopefully will serve as sort of a priority list. Your guys' priority list. So where people can focus. Because so often that's, you know, on a site visit, I find that most people understand what needs to be done. Like they understand disturbance is important. They understand the the broad goal, right, of habitat management. But there's so many options out there. They can spend their time and money in so many different ways to potentially affect a change in the population they care about. But prioritizing, which I think is what this conversation has really been all about, is the most important way to get the low-hanging fruit, right? And that was all those things you guys have mentioned.

Dr Marcus Lashley 57:18

Yeah. Well, what else they all want to hear is more gobbling, right? That's why we're doing all this. And at the end of the day, that that gobbling study that we wrapped up a little while back showed two major factors at the property level scale that were the most important predictors of gobbling activity. One was bottom one hardwood forest, and that's just simply associated with because those are roof sites, right? So you expect more gobbling in your roof sites. And two was the percentage of the property in early successional vegetation. And we saw that for each one percent increase in that early successional vegetation across a property, the predicted probability of gobbling went up 10%, all the way to a percent cover of 30% of the property being comprised of native early successional vegetation. So, you know, you increase it on most properties, you know, the data say that we have less than 10% on the average southeastern property. So you think about going from 10% to 30%, you've increased your gobbling by over 200%.

Moriah Boggess 58:19

Yeah. I think most people would like that. I think they would. I certainly would. And just for clarification, early successional vegetation in that context also included early successional plant communities underneath a pine forest. Right.

Dr Marcus Lashley 58:34

Yes, it did. And and that's a good point. Like I look I look to have when I'm setting up a property, about 30% of it in early succession. That can be in woodland, savanna, or old field, but I think that you do need some of it to be in old field because we see that regardless of how much frequently burned woodland or savannah you have, turkeys will continue to brood in particular in old field. So I try to make at least five or so percent of that and have it have it ensure that that is in old field.

Dr Will Gulsby 59:10

While we're while we're right here, if you really want to optimize, you need at least a little bit in both. And I the reason I'm saying that, a lot of folks have been following our work here in Florida know that we've been raising broods, so I have first hand experience watching what what means good successful brooding versus not. And the fields are really important when uh at the beginning of the day, when it's kind of cool outside, you know, you get that radiant heat in there pretty quickly, and that seems to be when that's pretty critical because of the exposure part of it early in brooding. The the polts cannot deal with swings in temperature and exposure to that. You even see adult turkeys do that, flying down into a field in the morning and then moving more towards shade. Yeah. So and then in, you know, to reverse that in the afternoon when it's sweltering hot, it's just awful outside. Being in that other brooding context in the woodland where there's some shade because there's some trees, you know, and they can kind of pop in and around that is just as important. So having both together, you know, I think is a really good strategy to make sure that you're giving them the opportunity to be successful.

Dr Marcus Lashley 1:00:31

And that's another reason that I really like variable retention for turkeys, because you're gonna inevitably end up with some areas that are stocked more densely with trees where they're cooler, but then immediately surrounding that, they don't have to travel far to get again to an open place that's gonna have an abundance of seeds and insects.

Moriah Boggess 1:00:48

Sweet. Anything else you guys want to add to that? We pretty well covered that topic, small property management.

Wrap-Up & What's Coming Next

Dr Will Gulsby 1:00:56

If they implement what we just talked about, they're gonna have more turkeys and better hunting.

Moriah Boggess 1:01:02

I'm just gonna end it with that. So I think that's it, that's a good way to just put a put a chapter end on it. So for everybody listening, if you haven't yet, we would really appreciate any ratings or reviews you would give the podcast. We're still early on in this, and so we also would appreciate any input you have on topics you want to hear more about. And we're just starting to scratch the surface on some of the more turkey focused management as we get into spring. So be patient, and after this episode, there will be more with Marcus and Will getting into more advanced topics in turkey management. So this was more of kind of scratching the surface. Fun intended. Yeah, scratching. We'll see you all next time. Thanks for listening to the Wildlife Investments podcast. For more information on these topics or to see some of the projects our team is working on, follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Wildlife Investments, or visit wildlifeinvestments.com.