North Dakota Outdoors: Learning more about North Dakota turkeys

Do you think much about wild turkeys in North Dakota? If you're like me, when you see a turkey you call them out: "tom, jake, hen ... how many are there? Are they on private land? Where did they come from and where are they headed?"

Game and Fish biologists wonder some of the same things, and with a five-year study and the cooperation of University of North Dakota, Department personnel put transmitters on 100 turkeys last winter, with the goal of fitting 115 birds with the same devices this winter.

Rodney Gross, Game and Fish Department upland game management biologist, said this winter will mark the end of trapping turkeys for this specific research project.

Last year was the first year and Gross said they've already gained some insight into a species that's been studied very little over the years in North Dakota.

"While everything we know at this point is anecdotal, we're learning some really good stuff about our turkeys," Gross said. "We've been moving these turkeys since the 1990s from depredation sites on private lands to wildlife management areas and we don't know where they're going specifically, are they moving off to other areas? We also want to know more about survival, and we're finding so far that survival has been a little better than what I expected. Having to deal with the tough elements of last winter and being moved to new locations ... it was encouraging to see that they survived as well as they did."

Gross added that the nesting success by those birds relocated to wildlife management areas was low, but that was expected, especially among juvenile hens that typically have a 5% chance of hatching young.

"We figured that's how it would go because we were taking turkeys and putting them in places they weren't familiar with," he said. "When you do that, their pecking order gets out of whack. They will eventually reestablish that order and it will be interesting to see in year or two if these hens will nest after everything is reestablished."

Much of the weight of the study falls on Cailey Isaacson, University of North Dakota Ph.D. student, who has been monitoring movements and the whereabouts of the turkeys for months.

Some of the same questions you've wondered about, the study is also looking at: "The first one focuses on the movement ecology of these turkeys. So, when we're translocating them and releasing them to these WMAs, what are they doing? Are they staying put? Are they just moving off to the next nearest farmstead? What are they gravitating towards or what would be potentially keeping them there?" she said. "The second theme would be their reproduction. When we're translocating these females, what is the reproduction of these birds here in North Dakota? Are they nesting and at what rates? Then we also have the survival component. So, what is the annual survival of these birds here in North Dakota?"

Gross said some of the birds have already shown the ability to move 15 miles or more to find what they're looking for.

The results of the five-year study will hopefully aid in the Department's effort to manage a population that's been pursued by hunters in spring and fall for years.

North Dakota's 2024 spring turkey season opens April 13 and continues through May 19, with 8,137 wild turkey licenses,725 more than last year.