Turkey Numbers Declining, What’s the Issue?

The population decline of wild turkeys within Tennessee has been recently visible due to hunting and reproduction issues.

TWRA’s Wild Turkey Program Coordinator Roger Shields said the main cause of the decline seems to be a lack of reproduction among the species.

“That’s what drives turkey populations by large, is their ability to successfully reproduce,” Shields said. “When they do well the populations grow, and when they don’t do well the populations will shrink and that’s a normal cycle.”

Shields said the turkey population has been on a downward trend for a long time. He said turkey hunting is second only to deer hunting in terms of popularity.

“We bring in a fair number of people from other states that want to come to Tennessee because we still do have pretty healthy numbers of wild turkeys,” Shields said. “So people from out of state come here and it is a boost to the economy.”

Shields said the TWRA wants to see that all populations are doing well. He said people should certainly care about this issue. Shields said their main goal is to help conserve and watch over the state’s local resources.

“I think for everybody that’s a wildlife, nature enthusiast, just knowing that turkeys are doing well on a landscape is something that means a lot to them, as well as all other forms of wildlife,” Shields said.

Shields said there were some changes made to their turkey hunting regulations at their April and May commission meetings. He said the changes were made in order to help steady the decline.

“The commissioners did make some changes to our hunting regulations in response to a lot of the concerns from hunters and land-owners about what they are seeing on a landscape,” Shields said. “Our agency, we’re going to continue to look at data and try to understand what’s going on and how the existing regulation changes may be impacting the turkey population.”

Shields said anything that land owners can due in order to improve the nesting success of wild turkeys would be helpful to the TWRA’s efforts.

“Delaying the mowing or delaying putting cattle out on an area may help,” Shields said. “A lot of folks like to bush-hog their property if they can delay bush-hogging until later in July that would help a lot of nests not get destroyed.”

Shields said there are many ways people can help form better habitats for the turkeys to reproduce.