Are Wild Turkeys Really Velociraptors with Feathers?

My Audubon of Kansas cap features a Greater Prairie Chicken. But there are times when it might be appropriate to be sporting a hat from the Wild Turkey Federation or Quail Unlimited. Whether I am talking to fellow farm landowners, friends from Topeka who are physicians by profession but hunters by avocation, or the barbers at the Aggieville barber shop in Manhattan, I am frequently asked to verify or respond to the now-common belief that the increase in Wild Turkeys is responsible for the widespread decline in Bobwhite Quail populations. Even the lady sales clerk at Wolf’s Camera raised the prospect.

In terms of wildlife, the theory is becoming a widespread “Nature Myth” throughout the Midwest, greater in magnitude than any “Urban Myth.”

When looking at the possibilities, there is no way to credibly blame Wild Turkeys. Although quail, pheasants, prairie chickens and cottontail rabbits have all dramatically declined in recent decades, it is not because they have been devoured by wild turkeys, or even been eaten out of house and home through competition. In the area surrounding Manhattan, the greatest competition for food is presented by the tens of thousands of crows that gather here during the fall and stay until March.

During the past four decades, most farmland and grassland wildlife species (game and nongame alike) have declined. However, Wild Turkeys have become well established throughout much of Kansas during this same period. Turkeys are obvious as they parade across open fields and meadows in search of grasshoppers in summer and wasted grain throughout the year.

Because of the coincidence, Wild Turkeys are portrayed as the culprit. Even without sickle claws, Wild Turkeys are not the feathered predatory equivalent of the Velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame. Yet, the myth has cast a veil over rural appreciation for the Wild Turkey restoration success story.

It is tragic that Wild Turkeys have become the scapegoats for the decline of Bobwhite Quail. This often repeated myth allows the real reasons for wildlife declines to be overlooked in discussions and in the decisions of landowners and others involved in conservation programs. Combined with disparaging remarks against state wildlife agencies for the role in reestablishing wild turkeys, the myth even diminishes the support of sportsmen for other programs.

I may never convince the two barbers who tag-team me on this subject. They once hunted quail in places where there are few today. But I did as well, and I can recall flushing as many as 14 large coveys in a day within a mile or two of our farmhouse. With scissors in hand, one told me not to give him “any story about habitat.” A customer told them that he killed a turkey with three quail in its gullet. Our follow-up inquiry for confirmation came to a dead end.

A turkey could eat newly hatched “popcorn sized” quail for a brief period when they are vulnerable. Aside from grasshoppers and other insects, turkeys are largely vegetarian, feeding on greens, grains, acorns, wild seeds and berries, and it would be a rare case of incidental take. By contrast, there are many predatory species in the landscape that actively seek and kill ground nesting birds on nests, eat eggs and newly hatched young. Before we attribute any significant influence to turkeys, we need to consider the presence and abundance (relative to the limited nesting, brood and escape habitat available) of raccoons, opossums, skunks, black rat snakes, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, domestic cats, badgers, woodrats, armadillos, ground squirrels, Cooper’s Hawks, Great-horned Owls, and Crows. Note that I did not mention the abundant Red-tailed Hawk because they do not have the fast flying skills to readily capture healthy, therefore alert, fast-flying quail.

More importantly than predation, consider year-round habitat quality and needs as the predominate limiting factors. Consider the impact of farm machinery and pesticides and herbicides sprayed on fields and pastures, and the influence of weather, and it is obvious that the appetite of an occasional wild turkey pales by comparison. There is no specific data to suggest, or compelling reason to believe, that Wild Turkeys have any widespread influence on Bobwhite Quail populations. Kansas quail populations have dramatically declined in many areas that have few or no Wild Turkeys.

As a year round grassland/shrub resident, Bobwhite Quail serve as a indicator of the quality of our landscape for a variety of other bird species that are annual residents, migrate here in the summer or arrive to spend the winter. When brushy/weedy fence rows, stands of protective native grass and waste areas are eliminated from most farms, and when grain fields are tilled in the fall, the landscape ceases to exist as a place where resident Bobwhite Quail and Loggerhead Shrikes, or seasonal Harris’ Sparrows and Spotted Towhees can consistently survive the winter.

By the same token, the absence of these same habitats in the summer translates into a place where quail cannot safely nest or where young broods of quail cannot find a variety of insects as a required source of nutrients and moisture. Most cultivated fields of fall grains or frequently mowed stands of alfalfa or introduced grasses do not produce broods of Bobwhite Quail, Meadowlarks, or Dickcissels. Likewise, most wheat fields are disked soon after harvest, others are burned, or sprayed with herbicides, essentially eliminating potential brood habitat.

When I was a farm boy in Washington County, virtually every 160 acre farm had a hay meadow of native prairie, a pasture, hedgerows, woody draws, fence rows or odd areas with thickets of shrubs, native grasses, forbs, and annual seed producing weeds. All of these diverse habitats were interconnected. Many species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians that were common in the farm landscape are now rare or absent from many farms.

Most of the native prairie hay meadows and farm pastures of value for draft horses and for resident dairy and beef cow herds have been plowed. Most of the brushy draws, woodlands, plum thickets, and hedgerows on the farms have been bulldozed, eradicated with herbicides, leveled, plowed or planted to bromegrass. Township, county and state road departments—with additional help of rural electric districts—eliminated prairie, shrub and forest plant communities along most rural roads and replaced it with brome or fescue.

When these diverse habitats are dramatically diminished and fragmented, the adverse impact of other limiting factors on quail populations, especially weather, farming practices, and predation, become more pronounced. Extended cold, heavy snow or ice results in death from exposure, starvation and predation. Heavy rains and chilly weather during the nesting season and when chicks are young, and extreme summer heat and drought take an additional toll. The impact of all forms of mortality, even hunting, can be more adverse in a setting with fragmented habitat and small isolated populations. Quail depend upon others in a covey structure for winter survival, and research indicates that an optimum covey size for survival is ten to twelve birds. Small isolated coveys are more likely to perish. As a result, and in the absence of nearby source populations, local populations are slow to rebound from events like the floods of 1993 and 1995.

Our Washington County farm is managed for wildlife. Although most of it has been restored to a rich variety of native grasses and forbs, and ten acres are devoted to wildlife food plots adjacent to an expanse of shrubs and woody cover, quail find it difficult to survive on a 160 acre island. The surrounding landscape is increasingly becoming a sea of intensively cultivated cropland. Predators and prey alike are crowded into that same “island” of habitat. A severe winter virtually extirpated the quail population and the past two spring have been absent of the distinctive “Bob White” call. This occurred before the arrival of Wild Turkeys on this part of Camp Creek, an addition to our fauna in just the past few months.

One could never hope to estimate the number of nests and broods of quail and other ground nesting birds that are destroyed by 30-foot-wide disks in wheat stubble, by other equipment during haying operations and normal farming operations. More significantly, conventional agriculture practices have resulted in large field sizes and elimination of idle areas. They are designed to produce crops without any weeds or wild grasses. Most of the annual expenditures of $20 billion plus in annual farm payment subsidies are designed to reward maximum commodity production and maximize the acreage under cultivation—not conservation of biodiversity found in remnants of prairie or woody draws.

The war on weeds and brush within fields and fence rows has been won. However, species like quail that depend upon these wild plants have lost. Many of the annual plants provide cover, an array of insects vital to chicks, and highly nutritious seeds throughout the year. The seeds of sunflowers and ragweed are among the best, but most landowners eliminate them from croplands, uncultivated areas and pastures.

Fence rows and waterways planted to bromegrass are relatively sterile and provide only low quality brood or winter cover. Conversion of diverse habitats to bromegrass and fescue has been a plague on the landcape throughout the range of the Northern Bobwhite Quail. These introduced grasses are only slightly better than Astroturf! Waterways planted with these grasses may even become death traps for birds that locate nests there only to have those nests inundated by runoff, destroyed by early hay cutting or machinery traffic.

Adult Wild Turkeys can thrive without all of the complexities of the habitat that quail and similar birds require. Without fear from raptors, turkeys can safely range widely across mowed meadows or large tilled fields looking for wasted grain and insects. Grown birds roost in large trees on limbs that are out of reach of most mammalian predators. They adapt to nesting in a variety of habitats, woodlands, and grasslands.

Every time I go to our Riley County farm I celebrate the success of Wild Turkeys in this area. Our stately sycamore trees serve as winter roosts and have held as many as 185 during peak winter concentration. We also always host resident Carolina Wrens, wintering Spotted Towhees and a couple coveys of quail in the same area.

Several friends who ranch along the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska proclaimed the value of Wild Turkeys for grasshopper control twenty-five years ago, and I was delighted when these native birds became established on our farm property near Manhattan a decade later. I now have friends from Nebraska and Minnesota who visit each spring to hunt these showy birds.

However, because of the coincidental decline of quail, and theories amplified in barber shops and cafes, the image of Wild Turkeys threatens to eclipse a number of constructive conservation issues and it even discounts the need for habitat preservation. Whether the subject is Bobolinks or Bobwhites, the overarching influence is habitat—and the combination of factors that influence recruitment, survival and mortality within that habitat.

As an organization of wildlife enthusiasts, non-hunters and hunters alike, urban residents and farm/ranch landowners, our goal is to bring folks with various interests together to enhance wildlife conservation. Audubon of Kansas, Quail Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Foundation all subscribe to the same key point that Bobwhite Quail require quality habitat.