I’ve got a theory for what may be causing some of our turkey issues……The turkeys reproductive cycle occurs in synch with spring green up…….This technically started about 2 weeks ago in my area…..We should be doing dormant season burning from October through January with Feb being the absolute latest….I believe that once “green-up” begins, then the later and later you wait to burn, the more you get the vegetation out of synch….Folks may be resetting “green-up” by a month or more the way we do it now and the out of synch vegetation is likely somehow effecting the maternal health of the mothers and the young and their reproductive success.
A couple things I think may have changed to exacerbate this issue are the fact that we pushed deer season back 10 days which means many folks are getting an even later start with their burning as well as the fact that we are in a warming trend with climate change that may actually be moving the turkeys reproductive timing forward by a week or two. I think back when we ended deer season on Jan 31 and spring green up didn’t start until nearly March 1 then we weren’t burning as much past the start of this green-up threshold…..Now, if we were to have a wet Feb where nobody gets to burn right after deer season then it may push large amounts of prescribed burning into March and this may be where we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
It would be interesting to pull the burn permits from that green circled area for the last few years and see when most of them were issued in comparison to the red circle.
CNC there is not enough burning on the landscape scale, generally speaking, to impact turkey nesting success. Not enough people burn. I’d argue more need to burn. There’s been a lot of research funding go into burn timing and impacts on wildlife. Growing season fires are still a great tool and useful at improving habitat. A handful of growing season burns in a county has absolutely no impact on the county wide nest success. Actually, if you break down on a smaller scale, properties who are using dormant and growing season fires regularly have better habitat, and usually more turkeys as well. Habitat is key. The size of growing season burns is also important. Having smaller burn units rather than large and vast acreages is much better. It does way more good than harm.
