Kansas Turkey Adventures

[Sainte_Terrer]

Really great thread! I drove through Topeka today and there were 5 birds in an inner city park---one tom was full-blown strutting! I didn't get to do a whole lot of KS turkey hunting this year but did see good numbers of birds. Public land in my area was pounded by hunter pressure and I went on vacation during the first week of season (poor scheduling on my part). In the end, I spent more time looking for morels then fighting the public land crowds. Yet, I'm still looking forwards to the fall. Much less pressure and generally a pleasant time to be in the woods in October.

P.S. I definitely have seen ticks on turkeys. I took one last year in Oklahoma that was covered with them.

Here's my "trophy" from this year!

 

[kansasdad]

Summertime in the suburban flock........almost no hens to be seen. Here's hoping that where some pastures that were cut didn't hold too many nests.



Other pastures haven't been cut, and now "my" birds get to share with a few new ponies

 

[kansasdad]

Poults!!!! I first saw the hen on the road, and then looking closer, there was a small bird hopping around her, about the size of a quail. Somehow this hen has laid, hatched, and guided her offspring through major flooding rains, predators, and swathers and looks to have 5 or six babies running around.



Following mama to safety. The field of view actually holds 4 poults, but really only the one on the right is easily visible. Mother nature and her camouflage!!

 

[kansasdad]

The suburban turkeys that help me shake some of the "city" off of me have definitely split up into distinct groups based on gender and poult/no poult status.

The boys are hanging together, and working the horse pastures for dinner.





The hens without poults were working a different horse pasture.

 

[kansasdad]

Driving home last night I found two hens and their growing poults working a soon to be under construction house lot, very habituated to human presence in the form of passing cars, or staring next door neighbors and their barking dog.



The poults were never very far from mom, and it was fun to be close enough to hear the peeps/kee kee's from the young ones, and the quite clucks and yelps of the moms keeping a watchful eye.




Every poult was acting like a human three year old, running around, bumping into their buddies, trying to beat the next kid to a grasshopper, making it impossible to know for sure if there were 12 or even 16 young of the year toddling along.




After spending a few minutes in the blistering direct sun, they retired to the relatively cooler shade and continued dinnertime.

 

[kansasdad]

What are you looking at???

 

[kansasdad]

In KDPWT Commission news, a tightening of the number of turkeys allowed per hunter will go to vote in October's meeting. Currently most of Kansas allows a spring turkey hunter to take two bearded birds, and a fall hunter one either sex bird (one zone still allowing two). Poor spring hatches and a decrease in spring success rates are said to be driving changes. 2011 spring success rate for at least one turkey is reported to be 61%. 2016 spring success rate was listed at 47%.

The new proposal considered would call for one spring bird, one in the fall, or the more likely scenario allowing two spring birds and closing the fall season(s). Increasing allowed take would be triggered by increasing success rates over two consecutive seasons.

 

[kansasdad]

The boys area hanging out together, and in the process of molting off old feathers in time for the next set to come in.




I found myself a souvenir in the pecan grove.

 

[noharleyyet]

....time to make a quill pen Mark.

 

[kansasdad]

RE the tail feather:

I have a strutting tom decoy that comes with a silk tail. It also has a plastic tail-feather holding device, giving me the option to use real turkey feathers if I see fit. When I went to place Katie's jake fan into the holder, I realized that I didn't know which feather went where, as up to that point, handling dozens of fans, I hadn't really observed that each feather on the fan has a slightly different shape.The calamus (the hollow shaft that is used for the ink pen of yesteryear) is more visible from the rear. My found feather pictured on the laptop is from the far right side of the fan, as the spine (rachis) of every fan feather is off-centered to the outside of the feather. Center feathers are just ever so off-centered, and the furthest out feathers (those that area almost parallel when fanned out) are like my souvenir, with hardly any barb (what is thought of as the "feather" of a feather) on the outside of the spine.

 

[kansasdad]

On several recent trips through the the turkey haven I have come across hens with their poults. Two moms and their offspring were seen trying to leave the roadside ditch and get to the relative safety of the horse pasture. The hens were up and over with just a quick flap of their wings, while the young birds were trying to force their way through the welded wire sheep fencing, battling the wire and the thick weeds/grasses. Panicky keekee whistles and moms answering with encouraging "come over here" clucks saw everyone past the barrier, and into the thick weedy pasture. The progress of the hens is easy to follow as half of their bodies are above the vegetation. Following the poults pathway is a lot tougher as when they put the head down and scurry, all I can see is the trail of quivering greenstuff parting to allow them to pass, and then spring back into original position.

 

[kansasdad]

Driving along I saw a hen in the road ahead. Down in the ditch there were a handful of fast growing young turkeys, some of them already approaching the construction barrier.




Hopping/flopping/flapping they went over the 2 foot cloth barrier to congregate on the other side. With lots of kee-kees and juevenile yelps, and the mother hens mildly calling, there was quite a turkey chorus. The young ones were all gathering into a whirling ball of movement, when both mothers started calling quite loudly.




Back across the street I looked up and saw three stragglers sprinting to catch up. Kee-keeing to let their mom know that they were coming, forward they ran. On of the stragglers mistimed his wing flap to fail miserably at clearing the construction barrier and had a pretty good wipeout. I swear I could hear the other young turkeys laughing at their sibling/cousin fail. If only I had been rolling video........ we would have had a good chance of winning America's Turkey's Funniest Home video grand prize.

 

[kansasdad]

Same song, third verse tonight as driving through the suburban neighborhood I met the two hens and their broods as they were headed down to the watershed pond. The bearded hen seems to have slightly larger poults than the non-bearded hen.




Silly poults taking the opportunity to sit on the construction fabric fence as they were crossing over. More than half of these young turkeys did this same thing.

 

[kansasdad]

October 1st marks the start of the fall turkey season in Kansas. The Wichita Eagle Outdoors editor quoted biologists counts for upland game (pheasants and quail) this summer are equal to or higher than last years nice numbers for those birds, but the outlook is not as good for turkeys. Across Kansas they show a 25 % decline in turkey numbers, with pockets of even worse off population declines.

Fortunately for me, on "my" hayfield and surrounding riverine habitat, it seems that the adult population of wild turkeys is doing well, but there have been no hen/poult sightings from my trail cameras.

 

[noharleyyet]

Maybe you should consider some silt fence decoys Mark. ; )

 

[kansasdad]

Adding a second trail camera to the crest of the hayfield, I am seeing regular turkey movement and loafing in the shaded field edge. We caught these guys out live just after the trail camera made them HuntTalk stars. (Date/Time has now been corrected on the camera)



Bedding areas in the tall grass that I had attributed to the deer may actually be turkeys snoozing in the tall grass off the field.




Whitetail are also showing up on the camera. Young ones........




And not so young ones........

 

[kansasdad]

A solid pattern has developed with my hayfield turkeys. On hot days the boys show up around 11ish and hang out in the shade until 2 or 3 o'clock. With the opening day of the fall season in Kansas, on October 1st, I am considering showing up with a chair and a book around 10ish, snuggling in and waiting for the thickest bearded turkey I have ever seen show up to offer him a ride home in my '97 Avalon.








Some of these birds seem to have forgotten the rule of turkey feather molting sequence. Some of them appear to have simultameously lost all of their fan feathers, instead of staggering the loss/gain cycle.








I know that I will not be the only predator out and about. Coyote howling has decreased in the evenings in the area, but they still show up on the trail camera regularly. This one doesn't seem like its in the peak of condition.








Back in the suburban horse pastures the separate groups of turkeys are keeping their distances from each other. All the boys are hanging out together, I usually find them in the pecan grove. This years pecan crop will be the biggest I have seen since I started watching my suburban flocks.








The hens without poults also keep to themselves. Late afternoon they might be in the same large horse pasture as the boys, but they are always separated by 100's of yards.









The two hens with the largest brood of poults don't seem to be bothered at all by the construction going on on the new townhouses.

 

[Southwind]

Are those pecans on private? I am a certified pecan nut.

 

[kansasdad]

These are on private land in the Jackson Heights neighborhood in east Wichita (127/Central). Over the last several years, there have been several where there would have been almost no nut production at all.

When you look at the distribution maps of pecans, these trees shouldn't be here. Until I found this grove (40-50 trees maybe) the northernmost grove of pecans I knew about is the small commercial operations near Oxford, and then more further south and east into the corner of Kansas/Oklahoma.

 

[Southwind]

I know, I have never seen any around here. Always SE of here.

and by the way "Sharing is Caring!!!"