They aint thriving around here......Too many hawks and coyotes

Damn I go my the golf course here near me I can't stand it some times during the spring . I cross the toll bridge the strutting evervwhere

They are everywhere in Nashville suburbs. It's the craziest thing to see a boss gobbler strutting on a sidewalk.

I've seen videos of them chasing folks . They hit you just right its gonna hurt. We had a old tame gobbler here as a kid I killed it with a stick and took that butt whooping with pride . Lol

LOL. If a Banty weighed 20 pounds he would kill yer azz.........

Yeap . That's a fact .

When my wife and I went on our New England odyssey back in August , they were everywhere you looked . Especially around and in small towns. The largest flock we saw was in the yard at a local Game and Fish Office. Go figure , LOL.

When I hunted Maine a few seasons ago, I saw more turkeys eating under bird feeders in people's yards than anywhere.

They hate postal workers from all the videos I’ve seen of Jake’s flogging those carriers

I see more turkeys around the cities here in the shoals than in the woods so to speak

I’d be owl hooting at the Waffle House if they were like that here.

My theory, that probably no biologist would buy, is that cities offer the one thing that is missing on most rural properties - lawns. For the first few days of life a poult needs an unusual habit that contains cover that has bugs, yet is short enough that they can easily walk over it. A lawn is perfect for those few days.

Every year, I have hens bring their newly hatched poults to my centipede lawn and they will spend about a week in the area. After the poults get a little taller they are gone. It's a type of habitat that doesn't occur very often naturally, but the cities have plenty of it.

I could be wrong, but there is no doubt they like my lawn. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

the suburban hunters gonna be killin these domesticated gobblers soon

Yeah,,, Jive turkeys !!!

Habitat doesn't really matter when there's no predators........

yeah, cats and dogs don't live in cities.......

Damn sure aint none around Auburn……Stray dogs get posted on social media and picked up almost immediately. Rarely see a stray cat......See plenty of hawks and coyotes though......Never seen a single turkey anywhere close to town

People will always blame the big bad wolf for poor habitat.

Cities can offer some good habitat for generalist species.

I’ve got a video from Idaho of 20 longbeards in a tree huggers yard walking all around a Great Dane while the lady walks out the door feeding them. If they are getting fed and nothing chasing them, they won’t budge. Those same turkeys travel 200 yards to an alfalfa field and they act like every stubborn bird you’ve ever dealt with. They know where they are safe.

It’s fun to watch those guys throwing their calls at them (practicing) on those city birds.

Had 28 hens on camera this afternoon. Saw 16 longbeards in one of my plots last week. Taking 85 coons off our place in the last 3 years has helped!!

I saw probably 200 different turkeys last week. Didn't trap anything.

I’ve hunted some places in Illinois that have the most Easterns I’ve ever seen…the property also has the most raccoons and coyotes I’ve ever seen. I think the crp nesting cover makes the difference and maybe the open crop fields or cow pastures for poults. I’m not sure. I have witnessed a hen turkey break out into a sprint to get out of a huge field when a bald eagle showed up circling overhead.

That’s the thing. How can someone say for certain anything is absolute.

At the farm best hatch in several years and I’ve gotten more coons and yotes in camera than ever before. Hunters are seeing lots of bobcats too. They’ve been green lighted to kill em all

I’ve often wondered if that’s is what’s missing. You’ve lays mentioned that short grass brings them in when they’re fresh off the nest. I know I see lots of hens with small poults in freshly disked and planted fields.

I agree. Predator control helps, but I've always been more of a habitat and weather guy.

I wouldn’t say there are absolutes either…..rarely is anything ever always or never…….but there are definitely rules of thumb that tend to hold true…….There’s more going on that JUST you seeing more predators and whether that equates to more or less turkeys in any particular year……There’s also the total amount of other prey that’s present this year that’s figuring into the equation……….Maybe due to environmental conditions of some sort there’s lots of rabbits this year and lots of rodents and lots of whatever else turkey predators eat……Maybe next year there isnt nearly as many…….That matters…..As a rule of thumb though you can just about take it to the bank that the more predators you have in an area the more prime habitat you gotta have to be successful. Take away the prime habitat and leave the predator load high and you’ll likely not have many turkeys…..The problem we have in a lot of areas is that taking away or losing the prime habitat doesnt take away the predators.....they just adapt to different conditions

The biggest component to the quote unquote “turkey decline” imo is the fact that we’ve increased predator loads across the board and therefore eliminated many marginal habitats as potential nesting and brooding grounds….In most places you gotta have the good-good now if you want turkeys due to there being so many hawks and so many coyotes and so many coons. etc. We’ve boosted their populations with human influenced subsidies……I just about guarantee you that if you look at any these urban areas with lots of turkeys the common theme will be that they are lacking in major predator populations…..Maybe avian predators like Cooper hawks are few and far between in some of these urban places and poult survival is really high

seen a bunch this year for sure

So what turkey predator is NOT found in the urban areas? Seems to be plenty of coons, possums, hawks, owls, coyotes, etc. I can't think of any that aren't found in back yards.

I don't have any personal experience with city turkeys. I don't think they will ever be a problem here in Alabama where there are plenty of folks who would shoot one off the Capitol steps while the governor was giving a speech. But I still would think that the poults are being produced in the transitional areas where a hen has enough cover to set on a nest for nearly a month without being disturbed. There have gotta have that and then they have gotta have places for the poults to grow up without getting eaten by something.

Once they get a little age on them they can survive most anywhere.

Probably more predators in the city than out in the boonies . Lol


But ,,,,, its easy for them to stay fat on people trash

I’d have to do more research on the individual situation to know for sure…..Arent most of these urban areas with turkeys in the northeast?.....I’m not sure what kind of avian predator situations they have going on up there but that would be my first guess as to what is lacking compared to places around here….. ……My second guess would be a lack of urban coyotes compared to around here…..Are coyotes as prevalent in the northeast?......It wouldn’t make any sense for those areas to be full of predators with very limited amounts of nestin/brooding cover and the turkeys thriving…..They gotta avoid being eaten first and foremost

Gotta agree that the most important stage is the first 14 days or so

Also I think there are years where the weather etc…. Something happens and we have an incredible hatch that overcomes all other factors. Friends in MS and TN are seeing banner hatches and poult recruitment. Doesn’t matter what folks think, etc. it just happens as a part of nature and then things get back to normalcy of cause and effect is my belief.

Your centipede grass recruitment center tells me they need short grass for the early phase of their life. I believe they seek what they need or the next best thing.

Don’t forget you’ll also have an increase in other predators like dogs and especially feral cats.

I see almost as many Cooper’s hawks around town. Enough trees to suffice I’d guess. Lots of red tails and red shoulders and I see an occasional broadwing. The squirrels around here are not safe. Watched a Sharpshin work on a flock of cowbirds the other day. To no avail but for an hour those cowbird wouldn’t hardly come out of the bushes.

Its probably just magic then and not something we can understand

You definitely take it to the next level.

I don’t necessarily disagree with your positions it’s just this one isn’t as complicated or involved as you want it to be.
Sometimes things just happen

A wet spring is supposed to bad for poult survival and nesting hens yet this past spring being really wet up here to the point implanted a month later than normal yet somehow we’ve seen more poults this year than we have in years.


We have had decent hatches the past few years so the laws of exponentiality may have played a part. Predator control has never been done except Killeen when we see them but we don’t seek them out

No they don’t……Things don’t “just happen”……There is an explainable reason for all of it…..Sometimes you just don’t understand it….Turkeys arent thriving in some cities “just because”

I’ll await your thesis

Yep, sometimes there’s just so many contributing factors one will never know any and or all. Some will assume they know but they don’t. We get that a lot now don’t we. Causation versus correlation 🤷‍♂️

Sometimes I think cherry picking has become a sport

The new sport is to run interference for the truth and act like some things just cant be understood so that everything stays as cloudy as possible for the general public……Come to think of it, maybe that's not such a new tactic

One thing is most people can't wrap their minds around is cities being prime habitat for certain species.

Then why arent all cities overrun with turkeys??.....They arent that much different as far as composition….What kind of prime turkey habitat do these northern cities have that Auburn or Montgomery or Huntsville or Birmingham doesn’t have??

No not at all
You’re assuming too much with that

I struggle to believe in absolutes when dealing with a fluid population and so many factors will sway in differing directions

I believe things are cyclical. I’d heard ruffed grouse cycle on an 8-10 yr population swing. I’ve mentioned here and wondered if turkeys being somewhat similar have a similar cycle. There’s not much other influence other than that is what happens.

https://www.grandforksherald.com/sp...ctable-10-year-cycle-the-question-is-why

Some think killing off certain predators will help and be a huge difference in population. Does it help? I’d bet it does help some but what other predators come into take advantage of the opening. That’s the fluid part in my opinion. There are always limiting factors of some sort

You can kill all the yotes on your property and I do advocate for that. What are you gonna do about those 5-10-15-20 miles away that are looking for a new home range. You gonna get all those land owners to work congruently to eliminate the yote population?
There’s too many variables

It depends should be where most studies should start

Surely you understand the “butterfly effect” otherwise a part of chaos theory.

https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/economics/the-butterfly-effect

Why does a new transplanted population go thru a huge boom. Lack of predators etc…. Name them all

Is that the case as in always 100 percent of the time.

I’d guess habitat is the limiting factor or multiplier

If I have some time tomorrow when I get on my laptop I may write a real response. But, consider why northeast cities had urban deer problems before the rest of the country. Also, why do they have bear issues? Some of this is the structure of how cities are developed and some of it has to do with barriers of population establishment in certain cities. Auburn and some random city in Jersey are quite different due to urban development and greenspaces. Additionally, attitudes toward wildlife management vary greatly.

There are countless studies comparing urban ecosystems and just like rural human altered landscapes they can vary greatly due to both biological/habitat mosaics and human dimensions. If you compare deer populations in a row crop area in randolph county is it analogous to a row crop area in the rural Midwest?

So are you saying the northern cities have more “green spaces”?? I’ve tracked a bunch deer for hunters in and around every city in my area…..Montgomery, Auburn, Phenix City, Columbus, Alexander City and so on……There are plenty of “green spaces” that offer good hiding habitat in these cities mainly for bucks……but not as good for does to hide fawns from coyotes……Same goes for turkey hens trying to raise poults……What is considered “good” habitat for reproduction is only relative to the amount of predators present……The more predators you start adding in, the less habitat there is that can be considered “good”……Keep increasing the predator load and you get to a point where only the best of the best habitat is “good” as well as needing it to be in big blocks and not fragmented…..I still stand by what I said that the only reason fragmented green spaces inside of town could be considered “good” habitat for turkey reproduction is if the predator load was low enough for that to be possible.

Ok……I’ve given what you said some more thought… …There is the possibility that you could surround the northern cities with prime turkey habitat that had burgeoning flocks that were pushing into the urban spaces.....I guess that would be a possibility

Ooh, ooh, I know the answer to this one! The yankee cities don't have rednecks who would shoot a gobbler off a neighbor's lawn without thinking twice about it. You will not live long enough to see it get to the point that any of those AL cities don't have people willing to do that. Turkey hunting is ingrained into our culture and some will do anything to kill one.

My son-in-law lives in Mobile and a couple years ago a friend called him and said there was a gobbler on his lawn. It was in February and turkey season wasn't even in, but within an hour a guy had shot the turkey with a 22 rifle. The turkey got away and became coyote bait, but that was the end of his urban adventure.

This can't be happening in the cities with a turkey problem. If it did, they would quickly decide to move back to the country. Turkeys learn quickly where places are that they are safe and have plenty of food. If that's in a town, why wouldn't they live there? All it would take to end it is a few of them getting shot.

If you drive to Birmingham on 280 you can see geese on lawns that are ignoring thousands of people and cars. They do that because nobody has ever shot them there. If they were turkeys, there are people in this forum who would figure out how to kill one and get away with it.

I don't think this is all that complicated. Somewhere around these cities is good nesting habitat and poults are being produced. The adult turkeys go to where they have food and safety. If they are safer in town, that's where they will go.

That was a more fun way than saying attitudes toward wildlife management vary greatly. Truth is, I erased a sentence that said those cities didn't have a bubba on every block trying to figure out how to kill them. Haha

They wouldn’t last a day around here ur exactly right

The amount of people in this thread that don’t understand the importance of nest predator control blows my mind. And PCP is correct on his short grass theory for poults.

So cattle pastures are good habitat during egg laying to poult rearing season

I kinda thought this was funny
says with sarcasm

says with all seriousness

Sometimes folks purposely act like something we already know cant be understood in order to try and keep the truth cloudy…….Other times we legitimately haven’t gotten the reason for something figured out yet……There’s a big difference in the two…..I’m sure most folks don’t have a problem understanding that….