An ongoing Mississippi State University study is tracking wild turkey populations across the state and making efforts to understand the turkey’s relationship to the landscape.
The ongoing study is a collaboration between the MSU College of Forest Resources and biologists from the Mississippi Department of Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks. For the study, biologists are trapping turkeys across the state and fitting them with GPS trackers. The trackers show the turkey’s movements and the types of habitat the birds choose and how long they stay. The data collected will help determine management implications.
“For wildlife population management, you can do two or three things,” said MSU professor of wildlife ecology and management Guiming Wang. “Number one is managing the habitat. You manage your habitat to grow more turkeys or deer. Second, you use hunting as a tool to sustain the wildlife population.”
Wang said prior to the study, researchers had a rough idea of the type of terrain turkeys preferred, but the study was giving them a clearer picture.
“Before, we could not track wild turkeys to this extent,” Wang said. “We will know better what they need, for example, what kind of special configurations of different land cover, land use. Second, most likely where we’re going see turkeys in a day.”
The trackers at the various sites are turned on periodically to show where the birds fitted with the trackers are. Wang said prior to the GPS trackers, researchers took their population numbers from an average of birds harvested by turkey hunters.
“I don’t think we’re going to see completely surprising things,” Wang said. “However, with this new GPS tracking, it’s going to be exciting. Not necessarily surprising, but maybe exciting. What we do is we have GPS, just like any GPS on your car for tracking the vehicle.”
Wang said the turkeys were tracked in two schedules, one every 30 minutes and one every 15 minutes. To date, approximately 65 birds in four of the state’s five turkey management regions have been fitted with the GPS trackers.
“This will give us some detailed information, how long they are going to stay in one land cover type, how many land covers they are going to use in a day, how long they are going to move, how big of an area a turkey will need,” Wang said.
Wang also said the turkey population had declined since the 1990s after recovering from near zero since the 1900s.
“Understanding how turkeys respond to different landscapes and how they differentiate their patterns are important in land management,” Wang said. “These factors help us know if we need one management strategy for the entire state or adaptive management plans for different regions.”
Turkey hunting season officially opens March 15.