If the goal is to have a positive impact on overall turkey populations, then maybe the focus should be on methods that can actually be applied on a broad scale.
Fire & other habitat improvements are a pipe dream for the vast majority of hunters..
My question still remains. If the MAIN way to have an impact on the overall turkey population (habitat management) isn't to be the focus then what should be? Which methods would you suggest that could be applied on a broad scale. Where should the research focus? Or should we just say there isn't anything we can do?
That’s the million dollar question.
My ideas in a broad sense, would be as follows:
1. Work on landowner incentives to make the habitat impacts you refer to.
2. Focus research to establish the catalyst behind the turkey population decline. Mismanaged pine plantations took over the south, long before turkeys started declining. Could it be widespread feeding/baiting? Herbicide treatment of timberlands? Some disease? Increase in predators? Change in timber practices? Simply the ebb and flow of population trends? Hunters?
3. Study and promote less effective things, that can be easily implemented. Trapping, planting specifically for turkeys, etc.
I certainly don’t have many answers, except that burning can’t help on a broad scale, unless it’s implemented on a wide scale. And no matter how much research is produced about the wildlife benefits, landowners will not utilize it unless they get something in return or at very least shed some liability.
