WildTurkey_PredatorControl_Hardin_Jason_OakwoodTX_18March2024_Reel4198.mp3

Jason Hardin [00:00:00] I think the first thing we have to think about when we think about mitigating predation, is we've got to provide what they need as far as usable space at a large scale across a large landscape.

Jason Hardin [00:00:11] For those landowners, and there are not a lot of them out there who are doing everything right for wild turkeys (you know, a lot of priorities on the landscape), but for those people that are doing everything right for wild turkeys, and they want to do a little more, predator control might be something that would work for them.

Jason Hardin [00:00:27] But for those landowners who have that yaupon forest understory who want to go out and trap hundreds of raccoons, it's not one or two, or five or ten, hundreds of raccoons would need to be removed to have an impact, and it needs to be intensive.

Jason Hardin [00:00:43] For those individuals who want to impact coyotes and bobcats: there was an artificial nest study done in East Texas and American crows, in that study, were the top nest predator. Almost 50% of the nests lost were to the American crow. Laws are hazy on if you can even take that.

Jason Hardin [00:01:01] We know that great horned owls are big predators on wild turkeys, while they are roosting in trees - just go up and grab them, rip their head off. Nasty little things, you know? And, it's illegal to do anything to birds of prey. So owls, hawks, eagles, vultures: you can do nothing.

Jason Hardin [00:01:18] So, no matter how intensive you want to be, if you were to take predator control as an approach (and I'm all for anybody taking whatever approach they want to do to try to improve wild turkeys), there's going to be something that you can never do. You can never take some cohorts of those predators out of the population, so they'll always be there.

Jason Hardin [00:01:38] And even if you do, just like fire, just like all these other practices, it will be an annual event and a lot of people lose motivation. You almost have to have a full-time employee out there doing that, at a certain scale, to have an impact where you're going to increase nest success or poult survival.

Jason Hardin [00:01:55] But again, I'm not opposed to people doing predator control. I think under the right circumstances it can have an impact.

Jason Hardin [00:02:01] But I don't think a lot of people recognize that shooting that coyote out of their deer stand probably did not make an impact.

Jason Hardin [00:02:09] And a lot of our predator problems are stuff that we created ourselves. You look at deer feeders on the landscape. Raccoons: anybody that puts a camera on a deer feeder will realize that we are supplementing raccoon populations. Raccoons thrive on deer corn. There's been some diet studies on raccoons, and in almost every diet study for raccoons in modern history, corn is one of the major components in their diet.

Jason Hardin [00:02:37] You know, we need to look in the mirror every now and then, and recognize that maybe we're the problem.