Steve Knight

KIOMATIA - When Paul Day got a reading on the two eastern wild turkey hens, they were moving about in the Red River County woods, searching either for a suitable nest site or a friendly tom.

When he next caught up with them, they were five miles north of the river near Valliant, Okla.

Day is a wildlife technician for a Stephen F. Austin State University nesting ecology project. The project is being conducted by graduate student Jason Isabelle. Now in its second year, technicians scattered around East Texas are tracking eastern turkey hens that have been fitted with radio transmitting collars. Some are wild birds caught with a rocket net after being drawn to bait. Others were fitted with collars when released the last two years on sites in Anderson, Houston and Nacogdoches counties.

The true purpose of the study, a joint project with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the National Wild Turkey Federation, is to look at nesting site selection, nesting rate and success and poult survival. There is also a component that is looking at DNA to determine if birds stocked on different sites expanded and overlapped. However, it is also providing an interesting look at a year in the life of the birds.

Day began his trapping efforts exclusively in Red River County in January. Despite plenty of signs that turkeys existed, and game camera photos full of both hens and toms, he struggled to get collars on just nine hens.

Day trapped his birds on three ranches, including the 4,200-acre Graff Ranch, one of the original turkey release sites in Northeast Texas. TPWD released nine hens and three toms on the ranch in 1989 as part of a restocking effort.

Prior to the 1920s, wild turkeys flourished throughout eastern Texas, but became victim to an uncontrolled market and meat hunting, plus the loss of the region's first generation forest.

Efforts to restock the birds go back to the 1950s. However, using Rio Grande, eastern-Rio Grande crosses that were pen-reared, and Florida birds, the projects were mostly folly.

By the 1970s other states began to have a surplus of wild birds and through deals brokered with the assistance of the NWTF, Texas received more than 7,000 wild-trapped birds for restocking mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. They were released on more than 300 sites in counties spread across the Pineywoods, Post Oak and Gulf Coast Prairies regions. Like the Graff Ranch, most of the stockings included four times as many hens as toms, and were conducted on contiguous blocks of habitat 5,000 acres or larger.

With the exception of populations in Red River and Lamar counties to the north and the San Augustine, Sabine and Angelina national forests, the birds have struggled or disappeared. Experts believe several factors are to blame including stocking rates that were too low and the lack of fire to open lower vegetation growth in forest land.

For the last two years, the department has restocked 340 birds obtained from South Carolina and Tennessee on the tracts in Anderson, Houston and Nacogdoches counties as part of a super-stocking research project. Unlike the earlier efforts, these 20,000-acre sites were stocked with as many as 60 hens and 20 gobblers. Many of the hens were collared with radio transmitters as part of Isabelle's study.

While much of the data is still to be gathered, Isabelle has already received information from the wild birds trapped a year ago and the entire collared population this year.

"This year I would say roughly 10 percent are on the nest right now. They are barely getting started," he said a week ago. "We found last year that the media incubation date was about the 18th of April."

Using a small sample size last spring, Isabelle said he found nesting success to be about 30 percent and poult survival about 35 percent, both comparable to what is found in eastern turkey populations in other parts of the country.

"Considering the weather last May and June being so wet and cold, I thought (poult survival) was very good. We had about a three-week period of rain and that is when we first started seeing poults hatch," Isabelle said.

Isabelle's research has also shown how much range the birds need.

Day, who follows his collared birds daily, said as soon as the winter groups began to separate, the hens began to wander.

"They are just roaming the country. Maybe looking for nesting cover or returning to areas they have nested in before," said Day, who has had another bird move seven miles since he began to track it. He said he wouldn't be able to determine if the birds were bred before they began their walk or after until the hens actually begin to nest.

Isabelle, who has also tracked wild turkeys in Wisconsin and seen them travel as much as 25 miles, said the quality of habitat the birds are in seems to impact the distance they cover.

"It depends a lot on the site. From my experience, the more open the area they seem to be moving more than in the forested areas," Isabelle said.

One of those following the research with interest is TPWD turkey program leader Jason Hardin. Since the collars can last as long as five years, he said he expects the department to continue to follow them after the completion of Isabelle's study to see if it stays static or disappears. If the new stocking regime works, then the department could be back in the stocking business with money raised from hunters through the Upland Game Bird stamp.

"We have a lot of country that needs to be restocked. It we find areas with suitable habitat we will continue to restock," Hardin said.

The eastern turkey season remains open through April 30.

STEVE KNIGHT
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