Habitat = turkeys. If you have it, they will use it. If you don’t, they will go find it. Pines with overgrown understory will only make predators and decent deer cover. Take all the money spent on studies and overpriced researchers and put it into fuel for machinery and burning...the employees are already there and so is the infrastructure. Then create an incentive based program for private and timber companies to burn and plant perennials, like Florida does, and watch the turkey populations flourish. How is that pay to hunt places and private land managed for turkeys can take so many birds every year and still have plenty to hunt? Simple, they make them. You’ll never “save” enough gobblers through regulation to sustain a huntable population.
I’ve realized, what turkey can use and thrive as moderate to above average habitat - is much different than what people think is turkey habitat. Take what you’ve always thought, always been told about habitat - and flush that utopian crap out the window. Come drive around with me at work for a year or two, and I’ll show a bunch of y’all where turkey can live just fine and it won’t look like what you think. I’ll warn you - it will change your thinking. They are adaptive. They have adapted. And we really should give them more credit for it.
