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