Rain and Turkey

Last week saw a hen with some poults, couldn't see how many, just little heads be-bopping through the grass. Now we have been flooded as much as N Texas has been, hoping hens are able to keep their brood/eggs in tack, we don't have an abundance of turkey around here as it is.

Have you seen poults or destroyed nest yet?

I hunt the Grasslands in Wise Co. and I haven't seen any poults or nest either for that matter. I have seen a lot of turkey around the area so it should be a good hatch if the rain doesn't wash them out. I saw the rain total for Decatur for the weekend and they got over 7", I was there on Saturday and it rained like a son of a gun. Hopefully things will work out for the birds and we will have a better population for next year.

If the poults survive, they will have plenty to eat, bugs are thick with all this rain, as is the cover. I live in the SW part of the county and numbers are very low here.

Usually the spring rains are a good thing and a huge benefit to turkeys by helping with green up and the increase of insects, but too much rain can be harmful. Hens usually don't nest in flood rains, so there's not much concern about nests getting washed out as they are usually in the uplands. However, according to Jason Hardin and Kyle Hand there is a theory that too much rain during the nesting season increases odor of hens on the nests which increases the chances for predation. Over 50% of the tracked hens at Gus Engling either nested or attempted to nest this season and there are a good number of those that were unsuccessful. Hopefully a lot of them will try again when and IF the rains start to slow down a bit.