Is Tennessee’s wild turkey population declining?
KNOXVILLE — David Buehler says for wild turkey and those who hunt them “the good old days are right now.”
And, through a joint research project in which he is involved, Buehler would like to help keep it that way.
Buehler, a University of Tennessee professor in forestry, wildlife and fisheries, is involved in one of the largest wildlife research projects ever undertaken in the state to try to determine what is causing a wild turkey population decline in the state’s best wild turkey counties.
“Turkey populations have been declining in some of the best counties in the state over the last five years,” he said. “There are five counties in the study — Bedford, Maury, Lawrence, Wayne and Giles — these are the nexus counties in the South Central area that historically have had the best turkey population and most harvest.
“The harvest there is down by 50 percent and the population is down probably more than that. Unlike in East Tennessee, they are just not seeing or hearing any birds.”
It’s not exactly time to panic. Those counties and the state still have plenty of turkeys.
That wasn’t always the case. A report on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934 estimated the wild turkey population in the park at 315. Many counties had no hunting season because there were hardly any turkeys.
The state’s population took off thanks to a decades-long Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency stocking program that involved trapping and moving a total of 13,761 turkeys across the state from 1951 to 2000.
According to the TWRA, the statewide population is estimated at 300,000. The harvest numbers have steadily risen in the last three years from 33,238 in 2015 to 35,306 this year with fall season just concluded.
“East Tennessee is still at a high level,” Buehler said. “But there has also been some decline in Region 1 along the Mississippi River. There has also been some decline reported in Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri. It’s a trend in the Southeast that we are trying to get a handle on.”
TWRA, UT WORK ON THE PROBLEM
In August 2016, TWRA approached the University of Tennessee about participating in a study to better understand the dynamics of the state’s wild turkey population.
The massive project has other partners including the Wild Turkey Federation, wildlife directors in the counties involved, property owners and the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission. Buehler said the cost is about $170,000 a year and should
total more than $1 million by its completion.
The six-year project is three-pronged. Rick Gerhold of UT’s College of Veterinary Medicine will be examining the birds for disease issues that could be behind the decline. Gerhold has been particularly focused on a disease called blackhead that involves turkeys ingesting potentially fatal parasites.
A second aspect involves talking with hunters in the region about their feelings on the decline and what can be done by perhaps manipulating the hunting season and bag limits to bring the birds back. The third part involves field dynamics, tagging turkeys and following them around.
OUT STANDING IN THE FIELD
Vinnie Johnson has been one busy UT graduate student.
Chasing a master’s degree in wildlife sciences, Johnson has been also chasing wild turkeys in Middle Tennessee … many turkeys.
“We started out with 200 turkeys,” said Johnson referring to the number tagged.
He explained how the birds were caught.
“We set up a bait site with a trail camera, and once we know when birds show up to the site we will set up rocket nets,” he said. A rocket net is launched by small rockets that spread out a net and snare the wildlife.
“We shoot the rockets, trap them and put them in holding boxes. Then we pull the birds out, weigh them and put the transmitter on them,” he said. They also band the leg, draw blood and take fecal samples before releasing the birds where they were caught.
“With a good crew, the process takes just a few minutes,” Johnson said.
Then the fun really begins as Johnson tracks the birds through signals given off by the transmitters.
Johnson takes the spring semester off from classes for the study while other project members do most of the tracking in other months.
He said he’s found it interesting that some turkeys have a small range — “In Bedford County, the birds pretty much never leave the farm we trapped them on” — while others might move five or six miles from where they were trapped.
“The biggest surprise really has been the amount of mortality,” Johnson said. “It’s a lot higher than I expected.”
He said after starting with 200 turkeys tagged, that number is down to 130.
“We are trying to figure out what is going on with the population,” he said.
The high rate could be natural and be offset by the bird’s large number of offspring. Turkeys routinely will have 11 eggs in a nest. Johnson said he found one with 21 eggs.
It’s too early in the project to determine any results.
“I can’t say anything positively at this point,” Johnson said, “but if we start seeing some kind of trend in these counties, it could potentially start being seen in other counties across the state. If it is a natural boom-bust cycle maybe it’s nothing at all. Maybe there were just too many birds in this area.”
WHAT TO DO NEXT?
Joy Sweaney isn’t sure either about whether the decrease in the five-county area is a serious thing.
“The thing we use as an index is the harvest from the spring hunting season,” said Sweaney, a wildlife biologist who is TWRA’s project representative. “That is our indicator that a decline could be happening.
“The harvest has a negative trend for the last 10 years are so in southern Middle Tennessee. But we don’t know for sure [that the population is declining]; that is kind of the thing that instigated this whole project — our lack of knowledge on whether the population is stable, declining or growing.
“[Hunters’] observations are a concern there [in the study area],” Sweaney said. “But it’s time to put some science to it. As long as harvest is looking good, there is no indicator that more effort, money and time are warranted, but once things start to throw up red flags … ”
UT’s Buehler said a great aspect of the study is that its six-year length will allow time to make adjustments and see how they work.
“One of the reasons that we are collecting five years of data is so that if TWRA wants to try to change regulations we have enough time to access the effects on the harvest. It allows us time to try some remedies and evaluate effects.”
Sweaney is enthusiastic about the project’s benefits.
“I don’t know that we have ever had a major turkey research project before in Tennessee,” she said. “This will be helpful for everybody in the South. I hope what it will do is give us some statistical dynamics. So now we will have some research models from our own state that will help us and others with management of the turkey population.”