Where Turkeys Live

EDITOR'S NOTE: For more than 43 years, Dr. Dan Speake has researched wildlife. He has studied turkeys for almost four decades, beginning his love affair with the wild turkey in 1966. Retired as the leader of the Cooperative Research Unit at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, he now teaches at Auburn University. A very knowledgeable researcher and turkey hunter, Speake tells us about some of his findings that have increased everyone's knowledge of wild turkeys and helped to expand the population of the wild turkey.

Through our research, we learned that turkeys were much more adaptable than most researchers and hunters ever thought. Inadequate data led them to believe that turkeys had to have total wilderness areas for survival. This assumption was probably derived from the fact that turkeys were almost wiped out during the 1920s and early 1930s in the Great Depression and that the only places the birds survived then were in wilderness areas. However, our research proved that turkeys didn't need or even prefer large tracts of wilderness. This type of region just happened to be the only places they had survived.

With the enactment of strict game laws, the lessening of subsistence hunting and more rural families moving into towns, many small farms today provide habitat for wild turkeys. We've seen turkeys begin to spread out all over the country and adapt to a wide variety of habitats. For instance, now we know that turkeys can live in a pine forest with only 20-percent hardwoods. As long as the pines are fairly open and the land managers practice controlled burning of the pines, the turkeys can survive and thrive because of all the new food that grows up on the forest floor between the pine trees.

One of the big surprises our research turned up was that when people stopped heavily hunting the turkeys for food, the gobblers often moved into urban areas. Twenty or 30 years ago, people would have laughed if you'd told them wild turkeys would move into city limits. But all of us today have seen turkeys on the outskirts of large urban regions.

To learn more about hunting turkeys, go back to Night Hawk's home page, and click on books. You'll find information there on three turkey-hunting books written by John E. Phillips that contain interviews with some of the nation's top turkey hunters. Then call (800) 627-4295 to receive a brochure or to order a book.

TOMORROW: What Hunting Pressure Does to Turkeys