With many states experiencing a decline in wild turkey populations, the National Wild Turkey Federation and two state agencies are invested in a four-year project to better understand America’s favorite game bird.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Kentucky Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Resources, Tennessee Tech University and the NWTF are engaged the second year of gathering biological (mating phenology or timing), landscape (habitat quality) and regulatory factors (season timing, bag limits) data that influence male harvest and survival rates across both states.
Harvest rates influence populations by direct removal of juvenile and adult gobblers and removal of dominant males from the population.
“In the first case, harvesting too many adult males can shift the population balance to younger males, which makes the gobbler population highly dependent on annual recruitment and could negatively impact populations, not to mention hunting satisfaction, if too few adult males remain,” said Roger Shields, Tennessee wild turkey program coordinator. “The latter may affect the reproductive rates of females and lead to a population decline.”
Unlike other upland game birds in North America, wild turkeys are hunted and harvested during their breeding season, making spring turkey season timing, duration and bag limits critical for population management.
It is vital for state agencies to understand the harvest rates of gobblers across the state to better inform their season-setting recommendations.
Dozens of study sites are located on varying landscapes across both states on public and private land. Data between the two agencies is aggregated for a comprehensive picture of wild turkey harvest and survival information, previously unprecedented for both states.
“Kentucky is very similar to Tennessee in most physical respects, yet Kentucky has not had reports of declining populations to the same degree as Tennessee, nor have they recorded the same declines in productivity that we have experienced,” Shields said. “The differences in spring harvest season dates and bag limits between years within Tennessee, and between Kentucky and Tennessee, can allow the influence of harvest regulations to be directly modeled and sensitivity of harvest rates to the various components assessed [such as season frameworks and habitat quality].”
Since 2021, and until 2024, researchers have trapped birds over baited sites with rocket nets, classifying each male as a juvenile or adult, and then fitting each bird with a numbered, riveted aluminum leg band.
“Our goal is to capture more than 300 male wild turkeys annually within each state, broadly distributed on public and private properties,” said Zak Danks, Kentucky wild turkey program coordinator. “Four years of trapping is necessary because our analyses require at least three years of capture-recapture-recovery data from at least one cohort to effectively estimate survival and harvest rates.”
To date, 669 birds have been banded in Tennessee; 178 in 2021, 208 in 2022 and 283 in 2023, of which 359 were adults and 310 were jakes. So far hunters have recovered 107 bands, with more to follow as the 2023 spring season opens up.
In Kentucky, where banding began in 2022, a total of 659 male turkeys have been banded. This includes 234 birds banded in 2022 and 425 in 2023. KDFWR staff are also capturing female turkeys (140 to date) and collecting blood and other biological samples from birds of both sexes for disease surveillance.
Collaborating on the shared project will give both state agencies the science to guide management decisions. The project remains in full swing, and many questions remain.
“Right now, it is too early to tell what is similar or different [between Tennessee and Kentucky],” said Abigail Riggs, graduate research assistant at TTU’s Cohen Wildlife Laboratory. “We are using the information on hunting regulations from both states to determine how harvest rates are affected by regulations.
“This project is intriguing because of the collaborative effort from the state agencies, law enforcement, private landowners and the general public,” Riggs said. “We’ve had tremendous support from these groups, and seeing how passionate people are in aiding this effort has been encouraging. Plus, the project furthers awareness of Eastern wild turkey populations in the two states and the potential issues facing them. I’ll be curious what the data reveals to us and what that might mean for the two states.”
NWTF chapters are also helping fund two other wild turkey research projects in Tennessee, one that is investigating egg fertilization and evidence of early embryo mortality in wild turkey eggs, and one studying reproductive success, habitat use, disease ecology and more.