On today’s episode, we take a deep dive into wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo). It’s coming on turkey season throughout Canada and the United States, and we thought this would be a great time to answer your turkey questions. To do that, we brought in Fred Bird, a wild turkey junkie and aficionado. Fred answers the questions you submitted to us on everything from wild turkey biology and ecology to hunting techniques. He also literally tells you why turkeys cross roads. In the conservation segment, we keep the wild turkey focus going and I give an overview of three recent scientific studies on wild turkey habitat use, including the effects of prescribed burns, and the potential impacts of climate change on the northward expansion of wild turkey populations.

In this episode, we discuss:

• National Wild Turkey Federation: https://www.nwtf.org/
• Canadian Wild Turkey Federation: https://cwtf.ca/
• NWTF Podcast – Turkey Call All Access: https://turkeycallnwtf.libsyn.com/
• Article: “Wild turkeys need a mosaic of fire”: https://wildlife.org/wild-turkeys-need-a-mosaic-of-fire/
• Paper: “Pyrodiversity matters: Wild turkey habitat selection in a fire managed landscape”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112721003157
• Paper: “Extreme climate events limit northern range expansion of wild turkeys”: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-021-05055-x
• Paper: “Gobbling across landscapes: Eastern wild turkey distribution and occupancy–habitat associations”: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.8419