Turkey Habitat Success Stories

Looking for real-world strategies to improve wild turkey habitat on your property?  Then this episode of Wildlife Investments is for you, because Will and Marcus join the podcast to share proven turkey management success stories and give you encouragement to make improvements on your property. They share anecdotes, observations, and some laughs while discussing stories of properties they've helped improve.

Transcript

Intro & Guest Welcome

How Landowners Have Evolved, And Where They Still Get Stuck

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. Thanks for listening to Wildlife Investments. We're back with another podcast. I'm Moriah Boggess. I've got Dr. Marcus Lashley and Dr. Will Gulsby with me today. So we're talking turkeys. And both Will and Marcus spent a lot of time working with private landowners, helping them implement management plans, helping landowners work through issues on their properties. And so obviously they have the Wild Turkey Science podcast, and there's tons and tons of information on there. One thing that we've realized, you know, with time is that a lot of times landowners need or sometimes benefit from having sort of an expert work through their issues that are unique to their property with them and helping them identify what to focus on, what not to focus on. In other words, prioritizing management actions so that they can get the most out of the work, limited work time, limited resources they have to put into their properties. And so today we were thinking we would just walk through some examples that Will and Marcus have from different properties that they've worked with so that you, the listener, can hear some firsthand experiences of some successes, sort of where some properties were, issues they were having, what they did to overcome those problems, and then where they ended up in the past. So with that, I'm gonna toss it over to you guys. Go ahead and get started. Marcus, I think that means you.

Marcus Lashley 1:51

Okay. Well, you know, we we recently did an episode about low-hanging fruit, and I think that is good and needed by some, but at least in my experience here recently with clients that are coming to Wildlife Investments and that I have started working with what I have realized is because we've been doing a lot of this work and trying to get it to people, is that they often already have a really good idea of the kinds of things they need to be implementing and even maybe what some of that should look like. And they are looking to us to provide them with some structure on how to lay that out on their property, how it's going to be organized. In some cases, they already have done that and they want us to vet it. You know, they want some confidence from the experts, so to speak, on that what they how they have taken our information and and tried to fit it into their landscape is the best way to do it, and how we should change it or tweak it to make sure that it is. And you know, I think those kinds of of uh landowners often, at least in my experience of of several now that I can point to that they they're already getting in that mindset, and as soon as you say, Yeah, you're good to go, and then they they start implementing it, and then you see this huge response. In every case that that I've worked with, and I I think you probably share that, Will, where they have seen dramatic changes in their turkey populations fast and they're and they're hunting, turkey hunting really fast.

The Value of Expert Prioritization: Eat the Elephant One Bite at a Time

WIll Gulsby 3:46

Yeah, it's not uncommon at all for a landowner to year over year after we go in there, and it always depends on how aggressively they're able to start implementing the recommendations and where what their starting point is. But to see a three to fourfold increase in the number of gobblers on a property after a year or two, it can happen really fast, especially if there's source populations in the surrounding area, because sometimes it doesn't even take a couple of good reproduction years to get those numbers up because you see birds being drawn into that area like a magnet because the cover types that we're creating are just so sparse and low quality across most of the landscape. But yeah, I think you're right, Marcus, that many of the clients that we work with these days have listened to a lot of our episodes on turkey science and are familiar with a lot of the practices that we recommend, and many times are even starting to implement those practices. And it would have been crazy for me 10 years ago to see what I see now sometimes when I start working with a landowner and they they start pointing out native Forbes, right? And they already know them down the species because we've iterated to them the importance of knowing those plants to understand how you need to manage a plant community. So they're, I guess, for lack of a better word, much more evolved than they were in the past. And that's not ubiquitous to everybody. We we hold hands with people at the very first step sometimes, too, and that's all right. We'll meet you where you're where you're at. But they just feel overwhelmed. A lot of times I see them feel overwhelmed. They're like, okay, I know I need to do this timber management, I got to get this going with my fire, and like I don't even have fire breaks yet, and I've got this invasive plant issue over here, and that invasive plant over issue over here, and oh my God, it's almost time to plant my food plots again. And it's just they're tearing their hair out, and they get to this point of paralysis analysis where they just don't know what to do first. And that's I think one of the greatest value ads that we have when we come out and we work work on them is we work with them, is we tell them, take a deep breath. This is where you're gonna get your greatest return on investment on your particular property as I'm seeing it right now, and let's follow this list. You can't do this till next year. Okay, so forget about that right now. This is what you can change right now that is gonna yield the most bang for your buck, and it gives them that confidence, as you said, Marcus, to just proceed knowing that it's got our stamp of approval on it, that it's somebody that's trusted that has experience doing this repeatedly across many properties in various contexts, and they can know that they're gonna see your ROI on what they start doing to that property.

Marcus Lashley 6:25

Yeah, I think that overwhelms a good way to put it. You know, I've heard it said multiple times from multiple people now. The this you know, way to think about like this is an elephant, it's a huge task, right?

Moriah Boggess 6:41

Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 6:42

You don't eat the elephant all at once, eat it one bite at a time. So thinking about it that way, and I think they're you know you're making big decisions. You're you're sinking time and money into it.

WIll Gulsby 6:55

Yeah, you want to make very expensive decisions.

Marcus Lashley 6:58

Yeah. And and ones that could carry a lot of weight for long term, like in the timber harvest, for example. You know, how are we going to proceed with this this clear cut that you've inherited that, you know, we might be talking about the next generation and what they're going to be dealing with when you're making decisions at that point. So that you know, some of those carry a lot of weight, and it is overwhelming when you know you have lots of things that you're trying to accomplish. You are trying to weigh those options, and some of them have, you know, they they are they are changing the whole course of the property, uh, potentially for your lifetime.

WIll Gulsby 7:42

Yeah. I mean, though some of these, especially timber harvest decisions or 30-year-plus commitments, and I just recently walked a client through a decision-making process related to some timber harvest on their property in South Carolina, where the forester was recommending, you know, made it made up a certain recommendation to them, and they came to me and said, Hey, what do you think about this? And I said, Hey, this is probably why the forester wants to do that. And, you know, Forrester had explained his rationale for that, and I said, This is what it's gonna give you, versus this other option, which would be better for the deer and the turkey hunting on your property, that's not gonna give you those same benefits, but it gives you different benefits. And it's not that I told them, you know, to don't go with the forester's advice, go with mine instead, but rather this is what's gonna happen if you go with that advice versus this advice, and then give it turn it over to them to make the decision what they want to do with their land.

Marcus Lashley 8:45

Yeah, because it ultimately could be influencing it for a long time, especially you know, if you're thinking about turkey hunting. You know, when you start when you're thinking about the huntability of the property and whether or not you're gonna have flourishing populations of turkeys to hunt, you know, that's a a decision of consequence. And I think that's one thing that that we have helped provide some folks is that the confidence that they need to make those kinds of decisions rather than just not do anything.

WIll Gulsby 9:16

Right. Yeah, I think another another really important thing that happens a lot, and I know Marcus, you and I have talked about this some and you have examples of it as well, but everything that we recommend doesn't always cost money. Sometimes we come out and we we result in significant cost savings to the landowner depending on on what they're already doing. I got one that comes to mind immediately on that one.

Moriah Boggess 9:42

Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 9:42

I figured you did, and I think I know what it is. Turn the feeders off. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, that that one that actually is becoming less common now, which I think is because they've been listening to us. They've already done that. So, but a couple of examples where the feed bill was pretty extensive. It's not uncommon to see a five-figure feed bill annually this year. Yeah. And then one case, I mean, it was way on up into the five figures. So Yeah, I think you're right, Will. It isn't necessarily always a cost, but there are some practices. Feeding would be one that that works perfectly here. Another one that I can think of right off the top of my head that is they know that they were probably right, but you're not gonna lose anything from this, but you're gonna save some time or effort or money. Another one is mowing. Yeah. They cannot stand it.

Moriah Boggess 10:46

Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 10:47

They gotta be on that mower and make sure everything looks kept.

Moriah Boggess 10:51

Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 10:51

So that'll be another practice.

WIll Gulsby 10:53

Planting is another big one, especially on tur on properties where turkey are a priority or the only priority sometimes. It's like, hey, look, we don't have to plant every open acre you have out here. We can manage some of this as native early succession. We we damn sure don't have to plant every acre of it in chufa. Yeah, that's another one. I've gotten uh I don't know about you, Marcus, but uh have you ever gotten a plan back or a comment back from a client after delivering a plan? And they're like, I noticed that you didn't put anything in here about planting chufa. Cause I have.

Marcus Lashley 11:28

I don't know if I've gotten it in that form, but I have gotten that from a few people because they had chufa everywhere. Yeah. And I was like, Well, I thought chufa was good. It's like, well, it's attractive, and there's nothing wrong with having some chufa plots to hunt on. I I love that. If you don't have pigs, you know, having some places, especially a sandy place that they can dig it up real easily, that's a great place to attract turkeys to. But we don't need 50 fields of it. You know what I mean? Like, I haven't seen fifty, I've seen fifteen to twenty. Yeah, so there's nothing wrong with it, but it's that classic thing where you don't have to do something that's good everywhere, and if you do it everywhere, it may not be so good anymore. Yeah, that that one's another one that kind of pokes its head. But one of the things that you were saying about the the forester, that that's a common thing as well, where I am working with landowners and they usually already have a forester, which is great.

WIll Gulsby 12:32

Yeah, and you you and a forester advice is often the first touch point for the landowner with a land management professional.

Marcus Lashley 12:40

Yeah. And that that is absolutely great. I actually am a forester also, but I don't practice. It that's important for them to have that, and I think my background there helps me to work with the forester, which is almost always the case. The landowner already has the forester. But what happens really commonly is that similar to what you talked about, is I will make some recommendations based on their objective focused on turkeys, which will not sound like what the forester recommendations are, which is often not focused on turkey as the primary objective. And that's where what where the rubber meets the road is what is your objective and how much are you weighting these different objectives relative to one another? Like how much do you want to maximize timber production or turkey production or huntability?

WIll Gulsby 13:41

Yeah.

Navigating Timber Decisions: Balancing Forester & Turkey Objectives

Marcus Lashley 13:42

And what I have found, and I have a really good example of this recently, where we in my last site visit with with the this property owner, he had me come out what with his forester at the same time. And I think what we I was recommending they implement a variable retention approach to to bit better fit the owner objectives of turkeys. But they also had the the timber harvest was being covered under a CSP contract where they had specific targets that they had to meet to be compliant. And actually the the NRCS agent came out as well, and we worked together, and I think what we ultimately found out is the recommendations from the Forester and what was it's the expectations to be compliant from the NRCS under that contract, and then what I was recommending were not really that far apart. What we ultimately were doing was just redistributing the way we were selecting trees in the stand and making sure that the expectation from the NRCS wasn't for it to be a uniform distribution of trees, was that was the compliance part. The the forester typically would also be thinning to a particular basal area with that kind of approach where you're trying to maximize space, you end up with a relatively uniform distribution of trees. Yes, operationally efficient. Yeah. Yeah, and that makes perfect sense. But we can tweak that by changing that selection process a little bit so that we have a non-uniform distribution of trees on purpose, which is variable retention. That's all we're accomplishing is we have some places within the stand that are more dense and some areas that are more sparse and everywhere in between, and we're meeting our target basal area with that thinning operation in aggregate, but not necessarily at the the sub the substand level where you can't level. Yeah. If you get in any particular area within the stand, it may not be the right basal area, but if you average all of the plots within the stand, they're at the right level. So that was a great example. We spent a couple hours together, and I kind of walked them through what my vision was for achieving the turkey objective, and then we quickly came to consensus on how to make that operationally efficient and compliant with that contract.

Moriah Boggess 16:33

You know, a I've got a scenario. I'm curious if you guys have some firsthand examples you can walk through on. Something I commonly hear from landowners is I've got a bunch of turkeys through winter. You know, it's very typical in like a bottom-on-hardwood setting or something. I've got all these turkeys all through winter, I'm on deer plots or whatever, and then it comes spring, there's not a turkey around. Yeah. It's because you don't have reproductive habitat.

WIll Gulsby 17:00

And that's the most common issue that we run into. That's the most common issue that we run into, is that people don't have good reproductive habitat.

Moriah Boggess 17:09

Yeah, so so walk through some examples where that was the issue and how quickly you're able to turn that around for a landowner.

WIll Gulsby 17:16

Yeah, it depends a lot on the you know, the obviously in a lot of those cases you're talking about some kind of timber harvest to get there in the southeast, especially, or so heavily forested. So it's going to be dependent on your local market and how quickly you're able to move that wood. But I mean, it is not uncommon at all just to see from people that open up properties through thinning and other practices and start implementing some fire to see numerical increases in the turkey population, sometimes you know, twofold, threefold, fourfold, maybe even more within a a year or less. It can happen really fast when you start opening it up a lot. And that's what we generally see is that most properties aren't as open as turkeys would like for them to be in order to maximize abundance.

Marcus Lashley 18:05

Yeah, and actually, Mariah, I'll kind of turn that around. I've seen the opposing problem too, which is a little dip more difficult to deal with. Like they don't have any aware any places that are, you know, bottom on hardwood where turkeys like to overwinter. But what they do, what they have done is implement some of the types of things that we recommend, where they're managing their forest well with frequent fire and their openings are in good shape, and what they end up with is maybe in the first week or two of season, there's not so many turkeys, but then all of a sudden they got everybody's turkeys. They have piled in from the surrounding, and they they often are the only game in town. You know what's funny about that market?

WIll Gulsby 18:56

Is just in the in the past, I don't know when this is gonna air, but we're recording this in the third week of March. But it's funny because I have a couple friends and clients that have reached out to me recently and said, you know, they started listening early in March and weren't really hearing much to little to nothing on their property, and then it was like all of a sudden, it was just like the floodgates opened as we got into this third week of March, and there's just birds everywhere. And based on that listening, and they were so they were so ambitious and so eager for the turkey season to start, and they just couldn't wait to get out there and listen, that they thought that that they were gonna have they were gonna have that a sizable huntable population that year, but it just took them a little while to break up from the winter flocks and get there.

Marcus Lashley 19:43

Yeah, and you know, if you've gotten really good n nesting and brooding cover and there are turkeys that are overwintering nearby, and you're the only game in town, that is exactly what you're gonna get. They're going to flood in. You know, and that that's often the second or third week of of season. Yeah. And I have seen that multiple times now, where it's sort of it's dead up front, and then all of a sudden all the hens are looking for a place to lay some eggs, and all the gobblers are looking for where the hens are.

WIll Gulsby 20:15

Yeah. I've got that just prompted another recollection from recently, too, on another client that had a property where they hadn't seen a turkey on the property in over ten years. Although they did see turkeys in the surrounding area and just kind of general neighborhood, not on their particular property, which is a fairly small tract. And over the past two years they've started opening up that property considerably, and they've seen their first three gobblers and a couple of hens on the property this spring for the first time in that 10-year period, and it's just you know, it's so powerful when when that happens, and it's just kind of a hallelujah moment, not only for the landowner, but for me, I get just as excited about it because not only have I been successful in what I was tasked by them to help them do and accomplish, but just because, you know, in our day jobs as as academics, professors, and particularly those that can concern ourselves with extending that knowledge to the public, we're trying to serve the greater conservation purpose as well. So we're creating more turkey habitat lending towards cot turkey conservation across the landscape.

Marcus Lashley 21:29

I cannot tell you uh the especially to start with, and and this has changed over time, I've gained more and more confidence because of the these positive outcomes over and over again. But that's a lot of pressure. Like folks are bringing this in to help them turn things around or or make things better, and then you help them put in all this stuff, and there's there's nothing better than them to respond to you, you know. After they've done a bunch of work with we've got the most turkeys I've ever seen. I've got a group of a hundred. I got that this year. Who when's the last time you saw a group of a hundred turkeys together? That's crazy. You know, sending me videos from the deer stand where they have 15 gobblers in a group walking around. Like people just that sort of feedback, it it kind of gives you this relief, but it's also the exciting. It's like wow, like we can make a huge difference at the property scale with productivity and and turn this around. Yeah.

WIll Gulsby 22:42

I remember I had a client a couple of years ago that I was a little bit, I feel like now compared to then I was I was a little bit more conservative with some of my recommendations for brooding cover management. And he started implementing it in the places I'd recommended, and he saw such a favorable turkey response to those areas that he reached out. And I've had this happen more times since. He's like, Can I do more of this? Are there other places on the property where I can do it? Like I love this. I I not only love how many turkeys I'm seeing here, but it's beautiful. Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 23:14

Well, one of them, you know, you get that that's one thing that you're you're sort of describing this when you start doing this, it's like intoxicating. Like you get addicted to it. It's like, all right, I gotta do more. Like you can't. When you see the responses, you just get excited and you want to do more and more and more, and then and one of them responded to me in a similar way, where he's like, Man, I like I did this stuff and I've seen all this, like, what else can I do? And I was like, Well, what all did you do? And he's like, I did all of it. It's like wow, okay, you ate all the elephant. So, you know, then we started building out from that. But I think that that speaks to it. Like this, you know, we've done research on this for years and years. We have a really great handle on it with data on things that can enhance your productivity and and huntability of properties, and some of that stuff happens and makes things better really fast. And you know, implementing it yields results. We see it time and time again. There's nothing better from my perspective of you know, working with somebody and then them constantly feeding you that bags like, wow, this is this is blowing up. The the turkey population is just exploding.

WIll Gulsby 24:41

And that I mean, and that's your simple answer to folks that ask us pretty regularly why do we focus so much of our time, effort, and energy on habitat and talking about habitat on our show and things like that. It's because we see these types of responses in regards to the practices that we're recommending. So why would we do it differently?

Marcus Lashley 25:00

Yeah, I need a hundred turkeys in the groups on my property.

WIll Gulsby 25:04

Like who doesn't need that? Marcus, what I'm hearing from you is you come with a hundred turkey guarantee.

Moriah Boggess 25:10

Yeah.

WIll Gulsby 25:11

I wish I could guarantee that. You know what?

Marcus Lashley 25:13

I would stamp it on everything. The hundred turkey guarantee. Well, you know, that one was just striking. Yeah. But it's not the only example.

WIll Gulsby 25:22

Yeah, and to be fair, you know, this is landscape context dependent. You know.

Marcus Lashley 25:28

You're not going to get the same exact thing everywhere, but what we consistently do is get a lot more turkeys.

Moriah Boggess 25:33

Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 25:34

Than whatever your context was before that.

WIll Gulsby 25:37

Going to none from none to three or four is a three or four three or four hundred percent increase, you know. So it's actually an infinite.

Marcus Lashley 25:48

Yeah. Hold on, I gotta do some math real quick. Divide by zero. Or divide zero by. I don't know if you can cut in like the numbers going in front of us with the equations.

WIll Gulsby 26:02

If I decide by zero. Hey, I'm not a I'm I'm not a mathematical consultant. I'm a turkey habitat consultant.

When It Doesn't Work: Neighbor Feeders, Landscape Context & Expectations

Marcus Lashley 26:10

Exactly.

Moriah Boggess 26:11

Do you guys have any examples of properties where it didn't work how it was supposed to at first, and you had to kind of drill down to find some other competing issue that was kind of intertwined and compounding and leading to further frustrations? Anything like that come to mind? Because I'm sure there's probably someone listening that feels like, man, I've done everything, but I feel like I just haven't haven't got there. Well, I think uh that yes.

Marcus Lashley 26:41

So you've got to meet your expectations with realities. And sometimes it that's hard to un it's hard to understand and figure out what's going on. And I can think of a couple of examples where they are implementing things really well and they're not realizing the responses that they that they want. And maybe that some of that could be expectation or you know, maybe you're in a landscape context where that's not conducive. But the other thing that I think is really frustrating to people and it's it's difficult to navigate, is they are producing lots of turkeys, and those turkeys end up on their neighbors in a feeder. And that one is a difficult thing to to deal with. Like how do you combat that? Their answer often is to try to outfeed them. But we're in a root situation where we we're gonna have to deal with that. You know, the the surrounding properties are gonna influence your success, and it may be because of their lack of productivity or because of the the feeding, you know, or some combination. They're they're definitely influencing things, and I would say that frustration right there is probably the leading frustration that I have worked with with the landowners I've worked with, where they I would agree, they do all this work to be so productive and their neighbors aren't, but they're pouring out feed everywhere.

WIll Gulsby 28:23

Yeah. The other thing, and I just recently had uh this conversation with a landowner a few weeks ago in reference to something that I recently presented about how the landscape is changing at a whole throughout the southeast, and he was talking about how you know that's really depressing and it makes you think that there's like almost nothing you can do, that you know, abundance of turkeys is always going to be limited because of that landscape context, and I only have control of this many acres. But what I reminded him is that the vast majority of properties, while while that landscape situation may be limiting what your ultimate carrying capacity ceiling is, most people aren't even near that that ultimate carrying capacity ceiling. So, yeah, that ceiling may be lower because of what's going on around you, but you're not even up to that ceiling yet. That's a good point.

Moriah Boggess 29:18

And that's probably like why I hear you guys focusing so much on early succession, right? Thinking about that landscape limitation.

Marcus Lashley 29:26

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 29:27

And it's just and it and it's not just the the early succession, but it's the type. You know, when we start to try to get into optimizing an area for turkeys versus making it ideal, right, to maximize abundance. Those are different things.

Marcus Lashley 29:42

I mean, for folks out there, if you want to think about how quickly you can turn things around, what let's take a the typical property where their brooding success because of the lack of high quality brooding cover is probably in the teens or 20%, let's say conservatively high. We implement some of this stuff and we could expect it based on the literature to jump up into the 40-something percent. We're talking about doubling pulp survival or more. And then nesting success. We might be, if you have ter a terrible context to nest in in the 20s, and we can get that up near 50% with really high quality management. Like that's an expectation that's reasonable. Like we're doubling the number of nests and then doubling the number of polts that survive.

Moriah Boggess 30:32

Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 30:34

That's a shit ton of turkeys real fast.

WIll Gulsby 30:36

Yeah. Yeah. I went through, and there's an example of all this that I give in in many talks that I deliver today. And, you know, if you add up all the ways that you can positively impact vital rate, turkey vital rates through habitat management throughout that whole annual life history, you can increase the average number of gobblers produced per year by about two and a half fold.

Marcus Lashley 31:02

That's huge. And that and that is a conservative, you you were conservative at each juncture on what we could expect based on the research that's been done on turkeys all over the eastern United States in particular. And conservatively, at every single point in their life cycle, you would still expect two and a half times the production of gobblers.

WIll Gulsby 31:28

And that's ignoring the attraction component of enhancing habitat, as we've already been talking about, you know, throughout this recording. So you have immigration and increased reproduction at the same time on many of these places.

Moriah Boggess 31:42

Do you ever do you guys ever have properties that are already in a decent landscape context for productivity where you're focused more on making the property more attractive just in the hunting season and making it more huntable? Like you're really just honing it on that time of year for hunting success?

WIll Gulsby 31:57

I would say that it's rare that I find a property that has all the reproductive cover cover that's needed. Now, there's some that we have to tweak less than others, and there are certainly places that we can inc improve huntability, and I I've worked with clients to do that, but I can't think of an example of a property that I've been on that I didn't have to address reproductive cover.

Marcus Lashley 32:22

I have not been on one, not a single one that thought this is perfect.

WIll Gulsby 32:27

And I think that that's something else that has really surprised several folks that we visited with, and Marcus and I have even done a joint consult with a landowner previously that are putting lots of time, energy, effort, money into their property, and they're implementing all of the practices that we talk about. They just weren't implementing them correctly. And so they weren't getting their ROA on it that that they really thought that they should be. And so we had to tweak, like you're they're still implementing all the same things. They're just maybe tweaking a rate here, a frequency there, thinning recommendation there. It's like all those things are just being dialed in to where they need to be to really realize the maximum gains that they can.

Marcus Lashley 33:13

It's sort of like they they've got all the puzzle pieces, but they haven't gotten them putting together correctly yet.

Moriah Boggess 33:19

Yeah, I can see that being one of the bigger things, especially with turkeys that are a little bit more sensitive to scale of management and and juxtaposition for reproduction. Where like we know deer can I mean they'll drop fawns in a Walmart parking lot and some will survive. But I can see French fries yesterday. But like when you guys come on a property, you guys are fine-tuning it, you know, for the the the turkey question. So I can see, and that was my question earlier about the you know, properties where people are frustrated because they feel like they're doing things right, but they're not seeing the right gains. I imagine there's a lot of those that end up wanting to hire you and kind of bring in the expert to say, hey, man, I think we're checking these boxes. But to your example before, it's like oh, it's like a puzzle piece. All the you know, it's just kind of shuffled out there. It's not ordered. Yeah.

Marcus Lashley 34:14

Well, no, you know, uh, I think Will and I have ex have talked about this sometimes. It sometimes it's really difficult to figure out what what's going on. Like why why are they not yielding results? Or at least the results that they want. So you know, this it can be challenging to figure out how those puzzle pieces need to go together and what your what are realistic expectations for you in your context.

WIll Gulsby 34:44

Yeah. But I mean to add to that, Moriah, I have seen, you know, almost every property, like I said, does need some enhancement to to brooding and nesting cover. But I have also been on properties that need enhancement of roof sites, or they need some kind of specific manage to improve the the attractiveness of root s roof sites. And I let's see, there's another example that I had in mind of something that was oh yeah, and I've seen examples of places that are too open and too and burn too frequently as well. So it's not always just the same, you know, formulaic, like we come in, we recommend the same thing to every landowner. No, every situation is different, and some of them need to be, you know, addressed differently than the status quo.

Moriah Boggess 35:30

That's something I to me is so cool about plant communities, is that no two are alike. Like the same practice on one place is never gonna, you know, yield the exact same result elsewhere.

WIll Gulsby 35:43

Yeah. And I think that's also why, you know, we both have several clients that like us to come out on a recurring basis is because you know, that the development of that understory plant community can be so complicated over time that you have to be able to be ready to improvise and adapt to the situations that it presents you. And then sometimes it's not necessarily the practices that have been implemented in the seed bank, but rather, you know, Mother Nature ther throws you a curveball with in the form of a hurricane or a drought or late freeze or a hard winter. There's all sorts of things that could come in that we have to adapt to over time.

Marcus Lashley 36:21

Yeah, and you know, some of it may you there there's a legacy effect of the previous land use that may not be obvious, right? So we might start you down a path, and I think that's one of the I think that's a real value of of us with the the folks that we're working with long term is that we get them to start implementing things and then we come back and help them work through whether or not they achieved what they were trying to, and if not, how can we change it to try to better achieve that? So there's some degree of tinkering here because I don't know what was done on the land last 150 years, right? So what what I know is what it's supposed to look like and how we can get there in most contexts, and then evaluate that with you to see did that happen, and if not, what can we do different to try to make it happen? And you know, we s we over time develop a management maintenance management strategy that is context specific for your property. And you know, we can't we can plan that out, but there's often curveballs in some of the context. Most of the time it's it's not much of it, honestly. But sometimes there's things that's like, wow, that yeah, that didn't go the way that should have. This is what you should do to do it, you know, to get a better response.

Wrap-Up & How to Work With Marcus & Will

WIll Gulsby 37:58

And I think, you know, where people really get the the diploma and graduate from the Will and Marcus School of Wild Turkey Management is when we have worked with them long enough that they've seen they've had this variety of scenarios thrown at them and they've seen, you know, the responses that they incur as as a result of those scenarios, and they've had to adapt to an adequate number and variety of them, that they get to the point where I mean this is the most important point, right? Is that they understand the philosophy of our management rather than just the formula of our management. And once you get a landowner to understand the philosophy, and then they also understand the tools that they compare with that philosophy to make sure that their plan continues to be aligned with it. I mean, that's like the PhD in managing a property for turkeys.

Moriah Boggess 38:47

Yeah, I think that's the interesting thing about habitat management and like you guys put out so much information, you don't hold anything back. And I I would wager that the nuts and bolts of the information you share with a landowner is the same as on a podcast, but it's not in context. It's not in their context. Right. You're helping them to understand, to see, to make those decisions, to evaluate, to assess. Like you said, working towards that PhD, they're starting to learn how.

Marcus Lashley 39:17

Well, and you're also providing them c some confidence and reassurance that they have internalized what we were talking about. They've got the information and they understand how to implement it. And you know, that to some landowners, that that uh confidence and reassurance is really valuable.

WIll Gulsby 39:37

Yeah. And it's context-specific, as you said, Moriah. We we uh by default have to speak to averages when we're recording like this, but you know, we can't get down to that granular level of detail and understand how the specific plant community responds on your property. And you'll even hear us throw things out like that. Well, this is my baseline, but it depends on this, that, and the other thing. Well, when we come out and do a site visit, that's when we're looking at all those dependent factors and addressing them.

Moriah Boggess 40:04

Yeah. Well, I think that's a good time to throw out there for those listening that you guys are available for for consultation. And for anyone who is interested in having Marcus or or Will on their property working through some of these same situations with them, go to wildlifeinvestments.com and you can find more information there and reach out to us. And I know both of you stay pretty busy, so I don't want to put out a blanket, oh, we you know, that you'll be able to get well full time. But yeah, but but there is still some availability there and and and uh so definitely reach out and you know, in the right situation, you guys do work with people, quote unquote, you know, full time in in our premium consulting context where they get you once or twice a year on the property. You guys are available for consultation even off property that to answer questions, you you you become familiar with the property with them, there's a relationship there, and I think that's that's something that's really unique and definitely wasn't out there previously. So for anyone listening, you can do this too. Yep. Cool. Absolutely enjoy that, guys.

WIll Gulsby 41:12

Yeah, likewise.

Marcus Lashley 41:14

And I love uh look love working with folks and seeing their positive turkey responses.

Moriah Boggess 41:20

Well, super rewarding. And turkey hunting with them a little bit. Occasionally I like to do that too, yeah. I've seen enough pictures of Marcus on a consult with a dead bird, so I know how that goes. Well, everybody, thanks for listening to another podcast. We're gonna have some more turkey focused stuff coming your way in the coming week, so definitely stay tuned there. If you haven't, give us a rating and review for the podcast and always check us out at wildlifeinvestments.com. 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.