After trying to dial in the movements of wild turkeys with the precision of a CIA spy satellite during the spring hunting season, many gamekeepers lose track of turkeys during the summer. It turns out that they remain in the business of survival, and since the landscape is alive during the growing season with a bit more abundance, their home ranges can shrink somewhat. Hardwood components attract turkeys in the summer—everything likes a bit of shade in summer, and open habitats including those found in bottomland areas are favored by turkeys.
Most Southeastern states are experiencing changes to turkey hunting season dates and bag limits as wild turkey populations continue to fluctuate. This landscape scale issue is being studied in various states, and some of these studies track the whereabouts of turkeys, mainly to capture knowledge about breeding success and poult survival rates. What turkeys do on a daily basis in summer is just one part of what these studies can reveal.
Charles Ruth is the Big Game Coordinator with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. “Home ranges for wild turkeys can vary in four different ways,” said Ruth. “Clearly these birds have variable home ranges depending on the season, and the summer season is likely their smallest range. Other factors affecting home ranges are individual characteristics, differences regarding sexes, and even habitat type can define range.”
“Turkeys will always seek areas that offer transitions between differing habitat types, where a little bit of everything suits them perfectly,” said Ruth. “For example, you might have 5,000 acres of upland pine, and while that habitat will attract turkeys, they need other habitat types as well, so they won’t stay exclusively in the pines. One of our GPS-tracking studies at the Webb Center Wildlife Management Area showed some birds using 1,000 acres for a home range, while others used only hundreds of acres. We believe this variation is tied to resource availability.”
“Resource abundance is the factor that allows for smaller home ranges during summer, and conversely is also the same reason for larger home ranges during the winter,” said Ruth. “In spring, males break up and expand home ranges in hopes of mating, but by summer they will be back together in social groups. The contraction in the home range for hens in spring is in correlation to nesting and brood rearing. But eventually they will also go back to being all together, except for hens that raise a brood, this return may be delayed a bit.”
Jeff Dennis
Wild turkey researcher Mike Chamberlain, Ph.D. at the University of Georgia was appointed in 2024 to chair the National Wild Turkey Federation distinguished professor position at UGA. Turkey enthusiasts can find interesting facts during his Turkey Tuesday segments on social media or by visiting the Wild Turkey Lab website. “There are three types of turkeys during the summer,” said Chamberlain. “Toms who do the breeding, hens that lost their brood or did not breed, and hens that had a successful hatch and raised poults.”
“Any toms that survive hunting season will gather back together in small groups and just hunker down,” said Chamberlain. “They will cover only about half the territory they covered in spring. Studies have shown they have strong site fidelity for summer and will go to the same places as in past years. In early summer there is an abundance of insects for them to eat, succulent plants for them to pick at, and seeds for them to sample. And all this time they are trying not to overheat.”
“Hens that did not breed or who had a successful hatch and then lost their brood act very similar in that they go back into small groups and hunker down,” said Chamberlain. “They are keenly targeting hardwoods in summer and are likely to identify water sources within them. Some of these hens may continue to try and nest into June or July, especially after nest failure, but these late broods are typically not successful. The habitat has changed by then from one of abundance, to a drier climate and is tougher on poult survival.”
Tes Jolly
“Hens that had a successful hatch and whose poults survived through to adulthood will mostly go into brood flocks in summer,” said Chamberlain. “A successful strategy in nature is seeking safety in numbers and these brood flocks increase the number of watchful hens guarding a mixed flock of poults. A brood flock is likely to use openings with good line of sight like ag fields, pastures, food plots or even a right of way. These places also provide an abundance of insects because poults depend on them exclusively at first.”
“The range of a brood flock will gradually increase as they look for more habitat that is suitable to them,” said Chamberlain. “For example, after about three weeks, the diet of poults transitions into eating a greater diversity of nutrition including plants and seeds.” What can gamekeepers do to help? “To help these brood flocks, managers can provide well maintained food plots adjacent to hardwoods with access to water. Leftover deer food plots work well too.”
“It’s always quite rewarding anytime you get to view one of the brood flocks,” said Chamberlain. “It holds the promise of future turkey hunting to be sure, but it also signals that something is working well in your ecosystem. And if you’re not ever seeing brood flocks, then keep tweaking your management practices.” A telltale sign of a brood flock is when you see different size poults, indicating they are from separate nests, all together in one bunch.
“There’s only so much you can learn about a turkey by putting a transmitter on it and looking at the data,” said Chamberlain. “Getting out there and being in the environment lets you see things with your own eyes. I want to bring wild turkey research to the real world instead of keeping it in academic circles, because the most important people to reach are the stakeholders. When landowners realize they could better manage their property through prescribed burning or harvesting timber, so turkeys aren’t inhibited by overgrowth, it helps put science into practice. Helping wild turkeys have the habitat they need during summer is an important step in the season cycle that eventually leads back to the magic of spring.”
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