Whether you oversee a large tract of land or own a smaller parcel, there are many wildlife management techniques you can use to help attract wild turkeys in the area to your property – and keep the ones there that already call it home. Wild turkeys, like white-tailed deer, are referred to as “edge species,” because of their need for more than one type of habitat. Most of the time, with large tracts of land, this isn’t a problem because the vast landscape is diverse enough. But in the case of limited acreage or one-habitat properties, it’s up to you as the landowner to create varied, preferred habitats if you expect turkeys to use your land.
For optimal turkey habitat, most experts believe a “rule of halves” should be applied to the landscape. What that means is that half of your property should be in mature forests and the other half in early-succession “openings,” such as fields, clear-cuts or forests that have been “plantation cut.”
Early-succession habitat can be achieved on plantation-cut areas because the trees are spaced out enough for sunlight to penetrate the forest floor, where frequent fire enables new growth of succulent woody ornamentals, native wiregrass and goldenrod.
It also is important to keep any hardwood hammocks, drains, ravines, bottoms, wetlands and other unique habitats intact and free from timbering. Hardwoods are an essential element of wild turkey management and should be left in their natural state, if at all possible.
These thick hardwood lowlands provide travel corridors that turkeys and deer use extensively and feel comfortable moving through. And, most wild turkeys prefer to roost in trees over or near water, so any pond or creek offers great potential roosting sites.
“Buffer” strips of native grasses, weeds and woody ornamentals should be left unmowed where clear-cut areas meet pine or hardwood forests. Hens require this thick understory cover for nesting. When possible, prescribed burning should be applied that allows for a low, woody component to be scattered throughout most of the timber stands. Periodically lengthening your burning rotations will give you this desired effect and help provide suitable nesting habitat.
In Florida, most hens lay their eggs in late March or early April and the eggs take about 26 days to hatch. If your schedule allows, wait until July to burn and mow. After hatching, poults will roost on the ground for the first 14 days but, during this period, up to 70 percent of these young birds won’t survive, primarily because of predation from raccoons, hawks, foxes and bobcats.
Attempts to control these predators are usually ineffective and economically unfeasible, so your efforts are better spent creating and maintaining good-quality brood habitat. To do this, leave certain areas in unplanted fields or in open woodlands containing an herbaceous understory so adequate brood-rearing can take place.
Good brood habitat should hold food in the form of seeds, insects (an invaluable protein source) and tender new-growth vegetation for young poults to feed upon throughout the summer. It should consist of 1- to 3-foot-tall grass and weeds open enough to enable the young poults to move about, yet dense enough to provide cover from the above-mentioned predators.
There is great interest nationally in the planting of food plots for wildlife, including turkeys. Where an open forest structure is maintained by adequate timber thinning and the use of fire, such supplemental feeding is not as necessary because there is enough natural “browse” vegetation on which game can feed. However, food plots and feeders do attract turkeys and help localize their movements.
On very large tracts of land, sufficient supplemental feeding can be quite expensive. In these cases, proper use of burning and timber-thinning management are more economical ways of providing food for turkeys and other wildlife.
Food plots, though, are a lot more cost-effective at feeding game than using feeders on moderate-sized pieces of property. In cases of smaller tracts, perhaps where food plots can’t be utilized because the landscape is all lowland and you have a closed canopy, game feeders filled with corn or soybeans are your only option for attracting turkeys.
Once the decision has been made to create food plots, you need to know “where” to put them and how big and what shape you should make them. When thinking about good food plot sites, avoid excessively wet or dry areas and don’t place them along heavily used roads, to minimize disturbance and possible poaching.
Look to create these openings along an edge where upland pines meet a hardwood drain – which, I already mentioned, turkeys like to use. This way, you’ll have an area where three separate habitats converge. Try to evenly distribute these types of food plots throughout the property. Keep in mind it is recommended that 2 to 3 percent of the land should be in these permanent openings.
Food plots should follow the contour of the land, and when possible, create them where the length (longest part) runs east to west. That way, the planted crops will receive the most direct sunlight.
In the fall, cereal grains like wheat, oats and rye can be planted along with Austrian winter peas, clover and brassicas such as turnips, rape and kale. Turkeys like all of these. Except for clover, these crops grow well in most of Florida.
Clover requires a higher soil pH – between 6.5 and 7 – and it often won’t grow in the sandy soils that make up most of our state. In the northern-tiered counties that border Alabama and Georgia, the soil is richer with red clay, so several varieties of clover and other legumes will grow well there. In poorer, sandier soils, if you still want to plant clover, a soil test should be done, and lime should be applied at the recommended rate.
All of the above-mentioned cool-season forages can be planted by broadcasting over a tilled field as early as October in north Florida. At least twice as much fertilizer should be used per pound of seed, if not more. Slightly cover the seed by pulling a drag over it, and try to put your crop in the ground when the soil is holding some moisture and rain is in the forecast.
In May, you can plow under your “browned-up” fall crop and replace it with any combination of soybeans, cowpeas, browntop millet, sorghum or peanuts. Turkeys are especially fond of chufa, if you can afford it. That, along with the other warm-season forages, can be broadcasted and planted just like the cool-weather crops.
Another good thing about chufa, as with most clover varieties, is that it’s a perennial and will regenerate – “come back” – for a few years. The secret to growing chufa, though, is not to replant it in the exact same location, because it really strips nitrogen from the soil, and if you try to replant it in the same spot, it won’t come up as well.
Using some or all of these wildlife-management practices will help bring in turkeys and increase the habitat’s carrying capacity for birds on your property. Here’s wishing you luck obtaining your management goals and objectives.
| Tony Young has many years of experience managing small to medium sized properties. He also worked seven years with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, before being employed by the FWC. |