BIOS The Wild Turkey in Iowa

The sound you just heard her gobbles of wild turkeys here in Stevens State Forest Not very many people have seen a wild turkey But there are literally hundreds of them in this small tract of forest land in south-central, Iowa They're scattered populations of the mills were in the state also that have been introduced by the Iowa, Conservation Commission tonight We're going to look at the eye of the wild turkey in Iowa Benjamin Franklin thought that the wild turkey out to be our national bird It's always been associated with wildness and naturalness and anyone who's ever seen one can tell you it's a very exciting experience Benjamin Franklin called them a noble bird well besides looking at that noble bird itself were going to look at some of these studies that wildlife biologists are doing with the population here in Stephens The wild turkey is native to Iowa, but was extinct in the state until it was reintroduced in this century Io used to have large areas covered with the kind of forest habitat that the wild turkey needs Most of those forest areas are gone now, but the Stevens State Forest is an exception So this is one of the areas where turkeys have thrived since they were brought back to the state The eastern wild turkey is the subspecies which was native in, Iowa This is only one of six subspecies that at one time covered a large portion of what is now the United States Our domestic birds are descendants of the Mexican wild turkey native to this area Turkeys were first domesticated by the Indians of Central America who raised them primarily on corn Teri little of the Iowa Conservation Commission explains the restocking program of eastern wild turkeys in Iowa We have been involved in fairly large turkey restoration program for about the past five years Transplanting wild birds to various timbered areas all over the state and As a result of this release program. We are seeing turkey populations in timber habitats that we did really not expect them to Survive and do well in at all where we release them on a pretty much on an experimental basis. We've Released these birds at approximately 54 different sites around the state now some of these sites are not too far apart but we've released birds in Northeast, Iowa and in the picturesque River Country up there and Ella McKee Clayton when she counties and we've released Birds All across the southern two tiers of counties the South particularly the southeast corner of the state where there's no again the large amounts of Timber remaining we've put Birds in the Loess Hills in western, Iowa, it's a string of steep Sandy hills that are extend from the Iowa, Missouri border almost a Sioux City We put several release sites there, and we've also stocked several of the central and north-central Iowa River valleys of the Des Moines River here had Boone and up by Fort Dodge both have some release sites And we put Birds on the Iowa River and the Cedar River and the lobster Pentagon River in east central Iowa in areas where there are still some timber remaining And we think that based on what we're seeing at these these other areas that may be birds could survive there So we really have stocked probably 75 to 80 percent of the remaining timber in the state with turkeys now Stephens State Forest is in south-central Iowa there are several tracts of land in this forest although the turkey studies confined mainly to this tract in Lucas County Stevens Forest is part of the Sheraton River drainage system this type of habitat hilly forested Upper River Valley is well suited to wild turkeys The oak and hickory trees and brushy undergrowth in this area were common in much of Iowa Stephens also has several stands of Planet evergreens Stephens State Forest includes several small lakes and is surrounded by cropland That would greet a visitor to Stevens early on a spring morning Most any sound will start a roost full of Turkey's gobbling We heard these turkeys along a major highway on the edge of the forest in The very early spring the gobblers the male turkeys travel in fairly large groups of 25 to 50 These groups generally roost together in tree tops. They gobble on the roost and shortly after flying off the roost about sunrise cars on the highway birds songs and even a dog's bark can start a round of gobbles The male turkey uses this striking sound to attract hens during the early spring By this time of year the male turkey has pretty much stopped eating for the duration of the mating season In order to be able to do that he has stored up energy by eating heavily to build a fat reserve in the so called breast sponge This situation presents a paradox at this time of the year food Supply is short for most wild animals At this same time the male turkey must find adequate food to build up the fat deposits that will carry him through his mating season a large part of what the biologists at Stevens State Forest are doing is to study what the turkeys eat where they find it and how they in general survive, Iowa's harsh winters Gay Krim is in charge of these aspects of the study The basic point of my study is to try and find out What parts of the forest the birds use in the winter we're trying to figure out? They say that besides its first two weeks of life For a turkey the most critical time form is in the winter When they're going to be hard-pressed for food with the snow cover So we're trying to figure out What part of this forest area they prefer what they like the best as far as just general cover and food and then that way? We can maybe extrapolate that to other parts of the state and figure out where else we could put Birds Well, this was a particularly rough winter. What mostly did the birds eat this winter Can you tell when the really heavy snow came they did move down to the cornfields but? In between times they did stay in the timber some days And we weren't really sure what they are eating from the droppings that we've analyzed they seemed to have eaten found some insects either on a trees or underneath and then corn They've also Was a poor mass deer, but they did seem to find some acorns early in the year So we did find that they would hit like either our bait sites or the cornfields and then maybe for a couple days They'd stay in the timber and then they'd go back to the cornfields again So it was almost like they'd hit the corn when they needed an energy boost and then they'd move off and maybe for a couple Days, they could scratch around in the timber and find enough and then they'd go back to the cornfields again the turkeys there in Stevens seem to be relying rather heavily on some of the line crop land and some of the farmers had contracted some other land for Supporting the turkeys I guess Well that you think having a major effect on maintaining populations in Iowa I think that's probably the one single key to the reason we have such excellent turkey populations probably on the Crim study area in a shimming State Forest in Lee County and in Yellow River State Forest in almaty County we have enough timber remaining that we could support turkeys in the traditional manner without reliance on corn But we have turkeys in many many areas Other than those and we're convinced at this time that it's the presence of that waste grain in the wintertime that allows those bird to survive And that's really why they're doing that study is to document that but we're just we can't believe us anything else at this time It's allowing such excellent overwinter survival of our Birds even Though the turkeys seem to depend on the corn to a great extent There is a wide variety of natural food available to them in Stevens forests Biologists call this general food supply massed the eastern wild turkey seems to prefer acorns and hickory nuts But particularly around the edge of cornfields roads and other disturbed areas The turkeys may find the seeds of black locust And when the snow is deep the turkeys may also feed on taller plants such as the seed heads of sumac Winter provides an opportunity to study the wild turkey in many ways simply because snow cover makes it relatively easy to see the birds And the scarcity of food makes it relatively easy to lure them to bait sites where they can be captured tagged and studied Gaye and Lloyd Krim, Iowa State University graduate students and Marlene and Bruce ayersman who work for the Conservation Commission do the field work involved in the study Using pink-red old birds and yellow for the juvenile birds see this and be bird number 12. Where is the Master bird number she'll be known as bird number nine Individuals in the field which is the basic point of putting them on so that we can? Be out on the road and see the bird in the field look out in the cornfield and know which bird. That is Is there much trouble with them losing the Poncho's well, that's They could that's why we put that potato man D. And that burden should be permanently marked now on 15.7. Leg And 8.1 on the toe The ninth primary is 28.5 In fact she's like mine just because she's having I believe that's probably yeah, I've got 24 We're cooperating with dr. John Barnes at the V MRI of Ames he's doing a lot of work on the turkeys and We're sending him the blood or blood smears, and he's looking for parasites or various aspects to the blood This is a solar-powered radio that is being attached by lightweight cords around the front of the body of a gobbler We'll talk more about these radios later The turkeys are also carefully weighed Hens average about 8 to 11 pounds. That's three and a half to five kilograms on the metric scale that the biologists use gobblers average about twice that weight Males about this time The juvenile hands of private win About what seven eight pounds somewhere in there do the juvenile heads missed the first year yeah Maybe not all of them. That's one thing we're gonna find out but What data we do have they will nest the first year? We've looked now at what the biologists at Stephens State Forest are doing with the wild turkeys in a moment? We'll look at the birds in their natural habitat The chances of seeing a wild turkey like this are slim at least during most of the year Generally it's nearly impossible to get very close to them except during the mating season when they seem to be much less wearing Most people who see a wild turkey probably will see it from a distance like this in Case you're wondering the turkeys in this picture are in the lower center of the screen These birds were about 300 yards away from our camera we found the birds positioned on the side of a hill in a way that allowed them to see a large portion of the countryside for Every chance to see a turkey there are many chances to see turkey tracks like these in the snow During our winter filming we saw a lot of these tracks wildlife biologists sometimes call them turkey highways The wild turkeys eyesight is exceptionally keen they're able to see bright colors and movements over enormous distance One of the ways the ayersman and the crims keep track of the birds. They are studying is through radio tracking By attaching a self-contained radio transmitter to the birds they're able to find a given Turkey Or a group of turkeys by tracking the individual signals those radios send out The tracking antennae are mounted on the cars and pickups, and they have handheld units that they can use in the woods Probably the most reliable way to see wild turkeys is by blind sitting Wild turkeys are most sensitive to movement so even when sitting in a blind one has to be very still The ayersman Xand Crim's set up several blinds in the stevens forest Adjacent to bait sites where they use corn to lure turkeys into a clearing We found it could be many cold hours before the turkeys show up if they ever do But the weight is made Pleasant by the sights and sounds of the forest The corn at the bait sites attracts not only the turkeys for whom it's intended, but just about any other hungry forest creature as well Besides the chickadees and Cardinals and other songbirds we watched these quail for about 15 minutes Birds aren't the only ones to take advantage of an easy winter meal squirrels nearly always hang around these bait stations But of course it's the turkeys we came to see and eventually they did arrive the large neck tag You'll see identifies bird number five in the study When turkeys come into debate science biologists can't wrap them with what is called a cannon net In order for the net to work the turkeys have to be in a particular place at the bait site In order to catch the group of gobblers we watched being tagged Bruce ayersman waited four hours after the turkeys arrived at the site for them to get in proper position just next to the net So that they could be trapped The net is camouflaged and attached to heavy weights set on poles From inside the blind explosive charges in the back of the weights are detonated The charges fire the weights out pulling the net over the birds Biologists, then remove the turkeys from the net this isn't always a simple process They hold the birds in individual boxes until they're able to work with them We were struck with how docile wild turkeys seemed to be? They didn't Peck or they didn't struggle very much while they were being held during the complicated process of being tagged Wade and generally handled The hand turkey is generally lighter in color than the gobbler the hens body and tail feathers have light-colored tips Hens are smaller and their heads are partially feathered This hen has what's called a beard. This is a clump of unique feathers, which grows out of the breast The beard is typically a male characteristic, but there are a few hens that may develop a beard The gobbler or male turkey has several distinctive physical traits The fleshy growths that hang around the gobblers head and neck are called waddles and care uncles During courtship and mating these growths swell with blood and become brightly colored in shades of blue and red in both the hand and the gobbler on top of the head is a fleshy pointed growth called the Fertile caracal a lot of Drawings or pictures of turkeys and they'll have a big thing hanging down off their bill Frond and it's this is what it is, and then the gobbler. It's a little little bigger than the longer nipple In long eight and lay down or the bill especially when they're godly Right now in the winter the gobblers will just be short Just like the head and just like the hands right now but then there is a it's a little bigger and a little long and just fall down over the over the bill like that you see a lot of drawings like that is just another characteristic of An older gobbler can weigh as much as 25 or 30 pounds Cobblers are also considerably darker than hens because their feathers are tipped and black From the time. They're about a year old gobblers will have a beard of some size or shape cobblers also grow spurs that they may use as weapons during the mating season the American Indians found turkey Spurs hard enough and sharp enough to use as arrowheads During the short days of winter the turkeys travel in fairly large flocks with hens and gobblers together the critical problems facing them are finding food and maintaining their body temperature They presumably spend most of the daylight hours looking for food and the long cold nights roosting in trees We noticed on the Crim study area that a lot of the turkeys were seem to be roosting in the conifer trees There is that a necessity do they have to have that type of treat well I'm I don't think personally think it's a necessity There are turkeys surviving on up into southeastern Minnesota doing quite well in areas where they don't have conifers to roost I think it's more a matter of preference There's a lot of information it indicates that a conifer tree in canopy and a big stand of conifers has a more favorable Microclimate during cold weather their birds are able to maintain their body heat a little bit easier in these areas and they would be out in a hardwood canopy where there's no protection from the wind and Heat loss, but as I said The birds in southeastern Minnesota are doing quite well without this conifer cover And I think is simply a matter of preference given a choice They'll go to the conifers, but I at this time would have to say I don't think it's a necessity It's just something that they're using because it's available to them it's during this time in the late winter that gobblers in particular must feed heavily in preparation for the mating season as The days get longer and the weather begins to warm up courting and the mating season begin The gobbling we heard earlier signals the start of this Turkey seemed to be fair weather birds if a day isn't clear and still they probably won't gobble as The mating season gets underway in earnest the large gobbler groups usually break up into smaller mating groups Generally the dominant males in the group will mate with several hens In the mating groups the gobblers display by spreading their tail feathers puffing up their body feathers strutting and going through a complex series of acts which both attract hens and establishes which males are dominant The strutting displaying gobbler is among the most exciting sights in nature This is what a gobbler looks like normally a sleek bird with feathers lying close to his body You can see the beard sticking out from below his neck But this puffed up strutting bird with tail feathers fanned out is a displaying gobbler By the way, if that shape looks familiar to you It could be because drawings of birds like this or what many of us colored in the third grade around Thanksgiving time It may be more picturesque But it's not what a wild turkey gobbler looks like in November this display occurs only during the spring mating season with the close of the mating season the hens begin to nest It is during this time that the hunting season on gobblers takes place because of the success of the conservation Commission's efforts at Reintroducing turkeys into the state there are several areas in Iowa with a wild turkey season Our hunting seasons right now are all in southern, Iowa. We have six hunting zones, and we think we've had very excellent hunting seasons we have Restricted of course our hunting to the zones that have been had turkey populations in for quite a while But about one out of five turkey hunters in Iowa kills a turkey and that is twice the three times higher than most states are able to do and We see that most of our release sites particularly Northeast, Iowa, and the Loess Hills Seem to be coming along quite well, and I would be not at all surprised if we have much larger areas open to hunting within two to five years I Would say that in the short run in the next five to ten years our turkey program is gonna blossom, and we're going to develop Turkey populations all over the state and most of these simply have to rely on private land We own so little forest land that we can protect and maintain and manage that we must rely on the private landowner But I would be less than Honest if I said that in the long run Twenty to twenty-five years from now the turkey program will probably be in in praat in jeopardy We're losing forest land at alarming rates in the state perhaps two percent or more a year we only have about a million and a half acres of timber left out of what was at one time 7 million acres and We're continuing to lose that as as More forest land and very marginal crop lands should not be farmed Anyway, as it's cleared and planted the crops or pasture Or as people move out of our smaller towns And and our larger towns in the smaller cities rather into these wooded areas along stream bottoms that make very nice home sites But by doing so they are removing a very limited Removing some a substantial amounts of wildlife habitat, and in many areas particularly in central, Iowa here There's a little of that left that it's really having a critical effect So if this these two trends continue, and I see no reason why they don't won't continue I would have to say that in the long run We will our turkey program will fall back, and we'll we'll end up with turkeys probably only in Less extensive areas and we will maybe ten years from now Unless there's some way to raise the money to get that Land into public ownership to protect it that seems to be the only feasible way to maintain timber in this state is to Is to further state to buy the land and put it in public ownership? And and leave it for parks or wildlife areas or whatever and without some kind of A program of this nature, I think that not just turkeys but all forests wildlife in this state are Certainly going to see hard times in the future just as I have in the past ten years We are committed to restoring the wild turkey because it was a native bird we story into this state regardless of whether or not we can actually hunt them in all these areas we were very interested in and Bringing turkeys back in areas that may be too small to allow a hunting season But yet the people who live in those areas could get some enjoyment by going out and listening to gobbling in the morning Seeing birds along a field edge and just allowing people who are really not interested in hunting these birds The privilege of seeing a native wildlife species that I'm sure 15 years ago nobody ever thought would ever be seen again in this state Yeah