Research Focus

The Rio Grande wild turkey research program at Texas A&M University is focused on long-term monitoring of turkey populations and evaluating how environmental and anthropogenic factors influence Rio Grande wild turkey population dynamics in rangeland systems in Texas. Under this general research focus, we identify, with our collaborators, a suite of research topics that address questions of management concern for Rio Grande wild turkey land management activities at multiple study sites across Texas. Resulting data from our research is used to support sustainable management of wild turkeys in Texas and across the United States.

Rio Grande Wild Turkey Demography & Habitat Use

We are monitoring turkeys at multiple study sites (see map) across Texas to evaluate what factors influence Rio Grande wild turkeys survival, nesting rates, nest success, dispersal and movements, response to changes environmental conditions such as sustained drought during breeding season, how birds select of nesting habitats created using different management activities (fire, brush sculpting, roll-chopping). Additionally, we are always testing new methods for monitoring turkey populations and better assisting landowners with monitoring and managing local populations.

High Resolution GPS Research

We have developed, in conjuction with Sirtrack, a backpack GPS unit for wild turkeys which will fundamentally change the approaches and data turkey researchers and managers will use to evaluate how wild turkey's use habitats. Our turkey-GPS work is focused on how spatial configuration of the landscape drives turkey movement decisions, how turkeys respond to habitat management practices or human disturbance, as well as allowing increased resolution of movement data at reduced cost than previous telemetry-based methods. We have recently finished testing these backpack GPS units. Additionally, as pictures are worth a thousand words (and a lot easier to understand as well), here you can see a single days worth of movements of a 4 year old male, the movements of a hen when she is laying eggs but not yet sitting on a nest or even what 3 males did a couple of days before and after a hunter (red line) bothered them in the morning while they were on a roost.

Rangewide Eastern Wild Turkey Program

Currently, Michael Chamberlain, William Porter, and myself have embarked on a new project we are calling the South Eastern Wild Turkey Research Project (SEWTRP) which will focus on all things wild turkey across the southeastern portion of the species range. It is in its infancy right now, but we have started to garner support from multiple state agencies and NGO's and as things progress I will post updates here.

Research Support

We are lucky to have a suite of supporters of our research, including

• Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
• National Wild Turkey Federation
• Texas State Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation
• Temple Ranch, Freer, Texas
• MT7 Ranch, Breckenridge, Texas

Press

We have been lucky to have gotten some good press on our work lately, including

• Project outlined in Texas State Chapter NWTF Newsletter
• Project Highlighted on San Antonio KSAT
• Article in Turkey Country magazine highlighting our GPS research
• Article in Texas Wildlife Association Magazine
• Article in Texas Wildlife Association Magazine highlighting our GPS research

Contact Information

Any questions regarding our work, feel free to contact me