WildTurkey_BermudaandBahiagrass_Hardin_Jason_OakwoodTX_18March2024_Reel4198.mp3

Jason Hardin [00:00:00] You think about the transition of our landscapes, our open fields, from what traditionally would have been these native, warm-season bunch grasses, even cool-season natives. We went from bunch grasses, where you'd have clumps on the landscape, interspersed with bare ground and forbs, wildflowers, weeds, whatever you want to call them.

Jason Hardin [00:00:23] And we've transitioned that over to these carpet-forming grasses. We look at East Texas, you can think of, Bermuda grass, Bahiagrass are two big ones. You go further north, you get into these cool-season exotic grasses like fescue that are just basically become really thick.

Jason Hardin [00:00:45] These poults hatch out of an egg. They're two inches tall. They can't fly for two weeks. And they have to follow their mother across the landscape. So, if a poult wants to get access to insects, it has to be able to move across the landscape. It has to have its feet on bare ground.

Jason Hardin [00:01:00] Some of my family would point out a hay meadow. And they're like, "Look how beautiful - the green grass."

Jason Hardin [00:01:06] That's something that we see as being another barrier, but at a smaller scale. Adult birds, no problem. They can use that day and night - no issue.

Jason Hardin [00:01:16] But, the only way you get adult birds is for them to go from that two-inch baby to get to two weeks of age where they can fly, and eventually be recruited to the population. And that's the hurdle, is getting that little two-inch baby to find enough insects on the landscape where it can grow up to be big enough to actually use those landscapes.

Jason Hardin [00:01:35] So, whenever I drive across the landscape in East Texas, or anywhere in Texas, I see lots of exotic grasses, carpet-forming grasses. Not as much native, warm-season grasses or forbs.

Jason Hardin [00:01:48] Where you see our most robust populations, like in South Texas and the Rolling Plains and Edwards Plateau, you just envision these wildflowers, these scenic areas - that's brood habitat.

Jason Hardin [00:02:00] But you go into my country here in the Post Oaks Savannas ... we're cutting Bermuda grass. If we're not cutting Bermuda grass, it's as thick as it can be: fertilized, beautiful monoculture. No weeds in it. That's what everybody, a lot of people, I'll say, want that to look like.

Jason Hardin [00:02:16] Turkey poult cannot move through a fertilized monoculture Bermuda grass field. It is unusable habitat. It's basically a wall for them.

Jason Hardin [00:02:25] On the other end of the spectrum, we're cutting hay in the middle of the nesting season. So, turkeys begin to nest, on average, the majority of your hens are sitting on a nest incubating eggs on April 21st. And they're going to be on there for the next four weeks.

Jason Hardin [00:02:38] In the next four weeks, almost everybody gets their first cutting of hay. And close to 12% of our nests are lost every year to mowing alone, so mowing and cutting hay. If we imagine that we'd think 30% nest success is a great year, and we just took 12% off the top ourselves. So that's an issue.

Jason Hardin [00:02:56] Once it's cut, it's about an inch tall, and a poult's two inches tall, and everything running across there is going to see that poult.

Jason Hardin [00:03:03] So again, you went from too thick to now it's too short. And it's not providing brood habitat.

Jason Hardin [00:03:09] Bahiagrass, the same thing. If we graze it significantly, it's going to be short. It's going to fall over on itself. It's going to mat-forming, versus that interspersion of bare ground.

Jason Hardin [00:03:21] Tiny little poult needs to get his feet on the ground. Can't fly for two weeks.

Jason Hardin [00:03:25] So, yeah, the exotic grasses are a significant issue. We think about what traditionally would have been on the landscape. Even an overgrazed pasture, we would have had lots of croton, lots of sunflowers, or goatweed, I guess I should say (I was raised in Leon County), broom sedge.

Jason Hardin [00:03:42] You know, there's some grass snobs out there (a lot of them are my friends), who don't think a lot of broomsedge, but it's a native, warm-season bunch grass that creates screening cover. It provides nesting cover for quail and turkey and screening cover for poults, and usually has weeds mixed in there with it. And I'm using "weeds" broadly. It could be wildflowers, it could be croton, whatever. Partridge pea.

Jason Hardin [00:04:05] These are all great things, but they're not things that you see doing well, for the most part, in areas dominated by Bahiagrass, Bermuda grass.

Jason Hardin [00:04:14] And it's not a small problem.

Jason Hardin [00:04:16] If you look at the amount of acreage that has been converted from native, warm-season grasses and wildflowers, forbs, whatever you want to call it, to Bermuda grass, Bahiagrass, it is mind-blowing, just the millions and millions and millions of acres that have been transitioned into that.

Speaker [00:04:35] And every bit of that has reduced carrying capacity for wild turkeys and reduced usable space for wild turkeys.

Jason Hardin [00:04:43] It is a constant problem and it is so hard to fix.