Is predator control an answer for turkey populations?
History shows "control" is not a word to use in reference to predators
In early winter 1985 I’d been a resident of Alaska for only a few weeks and I was stuffed in the back of a Piper Cub with a caution from the pilot that our trip may be short because a forecast for heavy snow might cut visibility.
We idled down his driveway, took off with the skis of the plane passing what felt to me like too few feet over the top of his workshop and I was off to Healy Lake to meet the late Paul Kirsteatter, a legendary wolf trapper.
From the beginning of my reporting career I was fascinated by wolves and wolf trapping. As a reporter I was immersed in the state’s widely controversial wolf-control issues. Later, in newspaper management, I wrote opinion pieces about the progress of the state’s ongoing “lethal and nonleathal” predator control programs and the recovery of the Fortymile Caribou herd from 14,000 in 1985 to more than 30,000 in 2008 (around 80,000 in 2020).
Not long into my job here in Oklahoma, in 2008, I visited a ranch intensively managed for bobwhite quail and pheasants. Wildlife Consultant Greg Koch managed to grow 110 coveys on 650 acres numbers through his Alternative Quail Restoration System of habitat improvement and by developing his patented predator-proof fencing.
The experiences come to mind this week with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation reaching out for opinions on changes to the statewide turkey hunting seasons due to the dip in the state’s turkey population.
The first words on a lot of hunters’ lips are “predator control.”
It’s only natural. We all know trapping and raccoon hunting traditions are ghosts of what used to be. We see eight-dozen raccoons attacking our deer feeders on the trail cam and we naturally figure there are just way too many predators out there. And, likely, there is some truth to that.
It is a tangled web indeed. We can manipulate predator populations but the idea of predator “control” should be stricken from the hunting community vernacular.
But the perspective I’ve gained writing about predator control tells me that in order to have any kind of real impact it takes a ridiculous amount of time and money, and that the biology is much more complicated than most can appreciate.
When I arrived in Oklahoma in 2008 Southeast Oklahoma had just come off a “golden age” of turkey hunting. In 2012 the Southeast went to a limited hunting season and now it appears that might extend statewide. Missouri is in a similar situation. The population in Arkansas is half what it once was, Kansas, and most southeastern states also report declines.
Predator numbers have not changed drastically one way or the other the past 12 years. Hawks and owls were already coming back to historic highs, feral hogs were already invading everywhere, and trapping had already declined markedly.
I compare the situation with turkeys in Oklahoma with moose and caribou in Alaska. Millions of dollars were spent targeting four very large and visible Alaska species, caribou, moose, wolves and bears. You’d think it was pretty simple but the methods and results still are researched and debated.
Predation threats to a turkey’s nest include, skunks, opossums, raccoons, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, feral cats and dogs and a wide variety of snakes. This is a tangled web. It’s no simple numbers game.
Raccoons, opossums and skunks all are opportunistic omnivores. They love to eat a nest of eggs or young birds. They also eat snakes, which also love to eat a nest of eggs. If you kill the raccoon that would have ruined a turkey nest but in so doing save the snake that ruins it anyway, have you gained anything?
Coyotes and bobcats will occasionally kill poults and adult turkeys, but they also kill foxes, raccoons, possums and even the occasional snake.
It is a tangled web indeed. We can manipulate predator populations but the idea of predator “control” should be stricken from the hunting community vernacular.
Is it good for hunters, trappers and land managers to keep tabs on furbearer populations and participate in legal hunting and trapping? You bet!
Will it hurt for more landowners to target trapping of raccoons and other nest raiders late in the trapping season? No, but the jury is out on how much it will actually help.
If you have a section of land that used to hold turkeys it’s not a bad idea to hunt and trap furbearers, but if you really want to help the turkeys you should make that goal known to folks at the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program and your local Natural Resources Conservation Service office.
Both agencies offer consultations through private lands biologists to help landowners reach habitat management goals. In some cases funding might even be available.
A land manager might find they will get farther, faster by providing good roosting areas and providing as much good nesting and rearing habitat as possible for turkeys while removing as little ideal breeding and sheltering habitat for predators as possible.
It’s impossible to control the weather, questionable whether you can control predators, but habitat can be altered, improved, and controlled.
Habitat is what we can influence
Even that affected by weather.