I know we have had some lively debates about gobbler home ranges. This is an interesting study looking at that issue recently.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.11302

In a nutshell
Mean gobbler home range in breeding season was 2,894 acres with a range of 1,525 - 15,607 acres
Daily home range in breeding season was 384 acres with a range of 7 - 6,501 acres
Distance between nightly roost sites averaged .74 miles and ranged from 0 - 3.8 miles
Just thought it was interesting!

Now now. Hold up. What about that gobbler that roosts in the same spot every night?! 😜

That's why you hear 5 one morning then none for three days then 1 then 4 then none. The stupid things just ramble around and get killed everywhere. Also why they just fire up at 9am some times, cause they finally walked into hearing.

All season! Some are special

Great info!

It shows the fallacy of thinking you can somehow "manage" the gobblers on properties of a few hundred acres.

I read some where awhile back that they could walk up to 12 miles a day

Thanks for the useful, factual info!!!

Stories suck when you cannot have a chess match with the same bird. Hard to feel vindicated after hunting a bird all season and finally killing a 2 year old that wandered in that morning. Therefore I am invoking my right to forget the story and continue my ignorance of naming turkeys!!!!

They walk just as fast as you would leisurely stroll. They could make 12 miles pretty easy.

I’m pretty sure turkeys in Nebraska walk 12 miles in the first hour of the day. Those suckers can be on a mission when they are on public land and need to get to safety

So do they move that far every day or just thruout the season? Sarc

I know of an area the birds move a good distance every day it seems.
I know the creek bottom I hunted for so long. All 8 miles of it. The exact same number of birds would pitch into the field first thing in the morning and then at last light they’ll comeback in. Hens leading the way. There were certain spots that historically held birds during the season. The drain at the farm side of Jerry’s would usually harbor 2 longbeards and a hen or two. They’d pitch down and head to the adjoining landowners field. Then to the next landowner. Then in the evening they make their way back. If they didn’t play and went straight to the field it was over. You could see them from the gravel road thru the gap.

We had a bird named sprout. He was Jerry’s for a few days and then two landowners over and then the last place I saw him was about 6 miles north in a field along the same creek bottom. Jerry saw him a week or so after the season ended. We guessed he was as shot by a road hunter. His beard literally shot straight out and then drooped a little.

There’s a lot of “ifs” “ands” or “buts” and it depends scenarios as point out by the narrow to wide range of movements.

I’ve always been told turkeys move in circles. Read where in Texas they live in up to 60 mile circles.
I always assumed at Jerry’s we had the staging area of transitioning between the hardwood hills and the springtime nesting, bugging and brood rearing habitat of the creek bottom with ag land. Too much hunting pressure from down on the creek and birds would end back up at Jerry’s.

I imagine some subspecies movement differs. Rios seemed to hit the ground running

To be fair - one of those jokers in the study roosted in the same tree apparently and used a total of 7 acres on the regular.

7 acres in one day. But, yes they vary



I feel the same - conflicted!

It seems that one of the more beautiful and yet maddening parts of wildlife research is the wide ranging variability in such things as population dynamics and home range...

Yep. It don’t matter if it’s home ranges and habitat use on snakes, bats, turkeys or deer, the variability in what an individual might do compared to the collective average is amazing. I’ve learned to not say never or always in wildlife cause it’s just not so.

I think that’s my point of contention. Absolutes rarely exist and anomalies are more commonplace.

Like dealing with digital files especially in the early days. 90% of the time everything fell into place. That remaining 10% of images I spent 90% of my time fixing them. I feel everything else falls similarly. That’s why I pointed out in the podcast saying it’s not all or nothing.

On further examination - it could be that only one bird roosted in the same tree, two nights in a row. And one strutted around on 7 acres one individual day.

However - we don’t get that breakdown.

It’s hard to argue with tracking data saying he moved 3 miles when you have turkeys that seem to roost on the same 2 acres day in and day out. Only way I can make it make sense in my head is turkeys are like largemouth bass. You catch one off a good stump and there is another one there the next day. For whatever the reason bass just like that stump and gravitate to it. Seems to be the same with turkeys. That 2 acres always has a turkey roosted on it because turkeys just gravitate to it. It’s rarely the same turkey but there is always one there.

Mostly horseshit I know but it’s the only way I can make it seem logical in my head.

It’s been my experience that in the early season when gobbling is at a minimum, they don’t move very much at all. Like not off 40 acres or less type movement. When the hens start nesting, the gobbling starts to peak, and they get to moving. Gobblers are like migrant workers in late season. They’ll set up shop in one tract of timber and gobble. If there’s no work there(hens to breed), then they keep moving til they find work. This phase of the season is when you start hearing birds in places you don’t normally hear them in.

It’s been this way for as long as I can remember every single year.

yeap !!!!!! people that do say never or wont probably aint hunted much .

This^^

im pretty sure the roaming part could different from place to place . animal is a animal they get what they need in a small area they stay in the smaller area be predator or prey .



like you its been the same where ive hunted . the turkeys didnt seem to roam that way . in places it seemed they did have patterens for part of the year then a different one for the other part . then for some it was pretty much the same tree ever night . weather would change up roosting .

ive seen a lot of gooblers in the same spot at dinner time ever day just strutting his ass off . or so i thought it was the same ones ?

And don’t forget and leave out context. Aka cherry picking

Uncle called me one afternoon years ago and said 2 gobblers just walked across the pasture come up here in the morning and kill one of them. He almost never saw a turkey on his 60 acres of mostly pasture and a 20 acre draw on the west side. I thought what a waste of time. No reason for those turkeys to be there tomorrow, but I went anyway. Went to the 20 acre draw not expecting to hear anything and at daylight both sounded off. Set up and was having breakfast and coffee with them an hour later with a gobbler dead. I asked him why he thought those turkeys would still be there this morning. He said they were walking and looking. His little draw was a likely looking place to have a turkey hen so the gobblers would give it a day to see if there was, if not they would start walking and looking again. I've seen that play out many many times after he taught me that lesson 30 some odd years ago. And those moving and looking turkeys can be some of the easiest to kill.

yep, I took a movement ecology class in grad school and it is very interesting how different phyla in the animal kingdom act in similar dispersal patterns. You almost always have that same % of long range dispersal (most of the time it is young males). It would be very interesting to know the age classes and the range size in this study. My guess is the older birds (>3 or4 years) don't have as large of ranges. But, there are so many other variables to consider. My guess is that this study relies on a lot of pseudo replication making their sample size seem much larger than it probably is. That is what happens most of the time in wildlife studies anyway. Got to get those good AIC numbers or low P-values and to hell with experimental design.

The study site was in South Carolina.......That seems pretty applicable to much of Alabama, no?

We conducted research on the Savannah River Site (SRS), a 78,000-ha U.S. Department of Energy property located in the Atlantic Coastal plain of South Carolina, USA. Approximately 94% of SRS was forested, dominated by loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), longleaf pine (P. palustris), and slash pine (P. elliottii) managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service for timber production and wildlife habitat, particularly the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus borealis), which involved use of prescribed fire applied on a 3–5-year rotation (White & Gaines, 2000). Remaining forest cover consisted primarily of bottomland hardwood forests along drainages and the Savannah River. Interspersed within the forest matrix were several nuclear industrial and research facilities, with non-developed openings consisting of powerline rights-of-way and wildlife food plots.

Read what I highlighted. I didn't say it they did and one of which was chamberlain. That’s why I mention cherry-picking. You gotta take the study in its entirety!



Doesn’t apply across the board. I mentioned I knew of an hardwood tract where that held true. I hunted it back in the early 90s and those birds were never in the same spot. I moved on to ag fields and clusters of hardwoods where you could watch and see the birds. It was obvious they were the same birds. I seriously doubt the exact same number of birds and ratios of hens to gobblers cruise that area over 8 miles of creek bottom.

I could see where sampling from an unhunted population might skew travel data as well because I would think you would have a much different ratio of gobblers to hens with no gobblers being killed yet hens still suffering the same likely mortality as a hunted population……The extra competition amongst males should cause more traveling for the average gobbler I would suspect.

Still though, I’ve yet to see any evidence that would lead someone to believe breeding is being negatively impacted…..Is there any study that shows nesting timing having a lot of variability?.....Seems like they all show a pretty consistent average nesting date don’t they whether hunted or not?.....I’ll give you that I can see where a hen might choose the dominant male to breed to if given the choice……But apparently if she’s ready to breed she’ll settle for the next available pretty quickly or you’d be seeing differences in nest timing of the hunted and non-hunted areas….correct??

I don’t know how one could have a perfect control or even if you have to? I think there are so many variables that influence the outcome and year to year is different. I’ve not seen many poults yet and lot of single hens. By now I’d usually would have seen numerous hens with poults. The two hens I’ve seen with poults have had very few. 1 poult today and 3 last week. Weather? Predation? Whatever?

I do know in my area a few things that have changed

Way more turkey hunters
Way more turkey hunters hunting all day

Back when we were hard at it we were done well before 10
My cutoff to get home and cleaned up and open my studio by 10:30 I could push it to 9 if I had to but most days I was leaving by 8. Jerry would leave too so birds had no bother the rest of the day. If I wanted fro try an afternoon I as in the creek on TVA land. That was usually trying o roost one though.

The thing I saw on FB but seems to be more scolding is hunters haplessly busting a hen off the nest and taking pics of the nest and posting on fb. It was pretty often but now they get scolded thank goodness.

Times have changed

How would y’all feel about a noon cutoff?
I just see so many similarities between turkey and duck hunting as far as popularity and the competition of being the it on social media.

It’s both good and bad at the same time I’m just curious as how to temper that. Maybe there is nothing to do but let it run its course?

Back in subject I do believe the study has a lot of merit. “But it depends” is the only point I’m trying to make

The true nature of the wild turkey will never be known. They are subject to do anything you can and can't think of.

Some have random roost and others definitely stay in a very small area. I believe when they bust up and establish pecking order the older birds select the areas with most hens and prime nesting habitat. The 2 year old birds end up high on side of mtn or in areas of marginal habitat. The older birds I’m lucky to kill are often just above fields etc and gobble very little. The younger birds seem to roam about a lot more. That’s in the mtns on very pressured birds. I’m going with the older the gobbler the smaller his range.

Don't forget the roaming bands of jakes that run off the older gobblers. I've got some "bad" problems with those suckers always running off the birds I'm calling. Last year I had a group of 17 jakes. This year I've seen different groups of 11, 13, and 15.

So are you saying I can’t trust these “I’ve been hunting this same turkey for 4 years” stories??

yeap you can, same with honey holes , if that term is still used these days . lol