wild turkeys

[chuckwood]

Last year a pair of wild turkeys showed up in my woods. I'm surrounded on all sides by developed suburban and commercial areas, so the turkeys stayed in our woods and it seems made a bunch of babies. My neighbors and I got a kick out of this and were feeding them corn and peanuts we got at Rural King. They got here via the town's "greenbelt" area close by that includes a lot of woods and fields. But now a year later we have around up to a dozen or so turkeys. With the snow that just happened they found my neighbors bird feeding station that included a lot of bird seed dumped out on a sheet of plywood on top of the snow. The small birds and squirrels fled the scene and the turkeys took over.

I'm wondering now what will happen if all these new turkeys produce more turkeys, they are certain to grow exponentially in numbers as long as no predators get them and we continue to feed them. Because of leash laws dogs are all fenced in and can't roam around killing things like they used to in the 60's. Will there be a population explosion if unlimited amounts of feed is available? I was feeding the first two birds with relatively cheap and big sacks of dried corn and peanuts. Will it be necessary to "thin" the herd a bit for thanksgiving and Christmas to keep the numbers down? I suppose I could do it with subsonic .22 rounds that make very little noise. These birds won't find much food available in the areas surrounding our woods and I've so far not seen any wild turkeys in the city greenbelt areas, but now I see them almost every day here. They've got no incentive to leave. This is a classic situation of population explosion vs. food availability. I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a management solution that's good for both turkeys and humans.

 

[TNTreeHugger]

Sounds complicated to me.
https://www.tn.gov/twra.html

 

[chuckwood]

Sounds complicated to me.
https://www.tn.gov/twra.html

Complicated only if the goobermint gets involved in my turkey issues. I've already seen what can happen with chickens. Some relatives had a small farm and somebody gave 'em 4 chickens - two hens and two roosters. There was always a big pile of cattle feed there to feed cows, and flies were everywhere in the feed lot. The chickens ate the fly maggots that were in the rotten feed that was getting spilled everywhere by the front end loader, and they also ate the cattle feed as well. They basically had an unlimited food supply. In a few years there was way over a hundred wild chickens running around all over the place until the varmints closed in and began destroying nests and eating all the eggs. Probably raccoons and foxes at work during the night. Nature always seeks a balance between predators and prey, and the chickens eventually died out to just six or so survivors. I'm thinking about what would happen if the turkeys do the same thing as the chickens did and there is a population explosion. No hunting is allowed in city limits and I'm not sure if the small predators around here can take on a big wild turkey. I've read that they can fight hard to defend themselves and can put a hurt on you if they want. I'd have to figure out a way to harvest excess turkeys without getting into problems with "officials".

 

[Chainsaw Pete]

I'd have to figure out a way to harvest excess turkeys without getting into problems with "officials".

Or neighbors