Day Two Highlights from the 13th National Wild Turkey Symposium

Chris Moorman, Ph.D., professor at North Carolina State University, opened the morning with findings from Nieves et al. examining where female turkeys choose to roost on private lands across three North Carolina ecoregions. Though roost-site selection is an essential behavior, giving turkeys safety from predators and protection from weather, it remains surprisingly understudied in the East. 

The research suggested that females selected roosts closer to roads and openings during the leaf-on season but not during leaf-off. Across both seasons, hens consistently chose roosts closer to water than expected by chance. Importantly, these patterns were consistent across all three regions, suggesting that land managers do not need region-specific roost prescriptions on comparable landscapes. 

Moorman recommended that Southeastern landowners intersperse forested roosting cover with early successional openings that supply seasonal foraging and brood habitat. The study’s overarching message suggests roosting choices vary seasonally, but not regionally, and management can reflect that consistency. 

Following Moorman’s presentation, David Moscicki, Ph.D., explored how vegetation structure affects nest-site selection and nest success in Eastern wild turkeys across North Carolina. Although turkeys have long been understood to favor woody or dense understory cover for nesting, the relationship between those choices and actual success has been less certain. 

Moscicki’s work asserts that nest sites had more woody understory, herbaceous cover and visual obstruction than random locations. Yet the story became more complex when looking at survival: every 1% increase in bare ground decreased nest survival by 2.3%, increased shrubland within the incubation range improved survival, and more edge within the incubation range offered a small benefit. Female behavior also mattered, with each additional daily recess movement raised the risk of nest failure by nearly 13%. 

These findings underscore that both vegetation and behavior influence nest success, and that practices such as thinning, prescribed fire and promoting shrubland and herbaceous cover remain essential for providing quality nesting habitat. 

Similarly, Nick Bakner, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at the University of Delaware, pushed the nesting discussion further with his research Measuring Congruence Between Available and Selected Vegetation at Wild Turkey Nest Sites, aimed at understanding whether females are actually limited by vegetation conditions when choosing nest sites. 

His results were surprising: the vegetation features selected at nest locations were generally already available across the landscapes turkeys traversed. Classic nest-site attributes such as visual obstruction, understory density and vegetation height were not as limiting as commonly assumed, and they had little measurable influence on nest success. 

The implication, Bakner argued, is that nesting success drivers may lie less in vegetation structure and more in female behavior, predator dynamics or other unmeasured factors. He encouraged future research to move beyond traditional vegetation sampling and dig deeper into behavioral ecology. 

This section of presentations concluded with Adam Butler of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks presenting a 30-year meta-analysis of turkey habitat selection across seven Mississippi study sites. 

Turkey habitat management has long emphasized hardwoods, forest cover and heterogeneity, but few studies have examined whether habitat preferences change across landscapes or through time. Butler suggested that turkeys exhibited a functional response to forest cover, selecting forest most strongly where it was least available. Preference for hardwood forest, however, varied regionally. 

In the next section of presentations, Moorman returned to present Boone et al.’s findings on how temperature, precipitation and shifting spring green-up affect brood survival across the Southeast. 

Contrary to longstanding assumptions paired with several past regional studies, results from this study found that weather variables did not predict daily brood survival across 257 monitored broods from 2014 to 2022 in the Southeast.  

Next, Chad Argabright presented new work on breeding-site fidelity across multiple generations of female turkeys in Louisiana. By examining space use during the pre-laying period, the study found that female cohorts captured near one another were highly likely to share space, while cohorts captured farther apart rarely overlapped. Across multiple years, these patterns were strikingly stable. 

The findings suggest that turkey flocks use well-defined breeding landscapes consistently over time. 

And finally, Kelly O’Neil, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida Game Lab, closed the afternoon with an examination of hen survival in relation to declines in wild turkey populations. By compiling and comparing empirical survival estimates across decades, researchers found a clear downward trend in female survival over time regardless of region or study type. 

Potential contributors include habitat fragmentation, vegetation structure changes, disease dynamics, predator pressure and broader ecological changes such as insect declines. 

The presentation underscored a central need for the field: more robust estimates of adult female survival and cause-specific mortality, along with targeted studies evaluating how management can improve hen survival across landscapes. 

For a deeper look at the research shared from day two of the 13th National Wild Turkey Symposium and what’s to come throughout the week, explore the full list of published works.   

The day concluded with an engaging poster session featuring 23 posters, allowing students and professional researchers from across the country to give mini presentations on their research in a more conversational format. Topics ranged widely from genetics and new technology to poult survival and predation, illustrating the depth of talent and innovative thinking entering the field. 

About the National Wild Turkey Federation    

Since 1973, the National Wild Turkey Federation has invested over half a billion dollars into wildlife conservation and has positively impacted over 24 million acres of critical wildlife habitat. The NWTF has also invested over $10 million into wild turkey research to guide the management of the wild turkey population and to ensure sustainable populations into perpetuity. The organization continues to deliver its mission by working across boundaries on a landscape scale through its Four Shared Values: clean and abundant water, healthy forests and wildlife habitat, resilient communities and robust recreational opportunities. With the help of its dedicated members, partners and staff, the NWTF continues its work to provide Healthy Habitats and Healthy Harvests for future generations.