Firebirds: Why Wild Turkeys Need Fire on the Landscape

Talk to your buddies or the turkey experts at your local gas station, and you might believe that other hunters, excessive bag limits, or natural predators are to blame. While natural predation plays a significant role in turkey reproduction and success rates, habitat loss poses an even more sinister threat to the wild turkey. Urbanization and current timber harvest practices (commercial pine operations) have decimated prime turkey habitat, but so have the absence of proper wildlife and habitat management.

According to Dr. Mike Chamberlain, the National Turkey Federation Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia, the absence of fire (controlled burns) on the landscape is one of the greatest contributing factors to this widespread habitat loss. Dr. Chamberlain has committed his life to researching the wild turkey, and he’s produced perhaps the most prominent body of scholarship related to fire and wild turkey habitat. He also runs the Wild Turkey Lab, a free and incredible resource for turkey hunters who are interested in preserving this wild bird.

I recently spoke with Dr. Chamberlain on how turkey hunters and private landowners can implement fire on their properties to create better turkey habitat—and in turn, better turkey hunting. Here are a few things to know about using fire to promote better turkey habitat.

Why Turkeys Need Fire

First, it’s important to understand what turkey habitat looks like and why fire plays an integral role in preserving it. If you’ve hunted turkeys at all, you know they don’t like thick, nasty vegetation. They also don’t thrive in old-growth monocultures with closed canopies, not to say that you wouldn’t occasionally find them there.

Turkeys require a diverse habitat for roosting sites, nesting, feeding, and avoiding predators. Fire fosters good turkey habitat by creating disturbances on the landscape and early successional vegetation that turkeys need for eating and breeding.

“One of the biggest issues I see is the lack of habitat disturbance,” Dr. Chamberlain said. “The lack of fire on the landscape leads to a decrease in early successional vegetation, which turkeys thrive in.”

These early successional habitats consist of areas with native grasses, flowering plants, and a diversity of habitats that provide turkeys with roosting and nesting sites, cover, and food. It’s no wonder that overgrown fields or pine stands with a thick understory aren’t conducive to turkeys. Without fire, these habitats offer little to promote turkey reproduction or success rates. Fire, however, offers a “reset for the plant and insect community” that turkeys prefer, he said. Burning small portions of a property reduces an area’s fuel load by removing the dead vegetation and generating new growth. Not only will turkeys feed on some of these natural forbs that spring up after a burn, but they’ll also eat the insects they attract.

Start Small

Controlled burns can be a hot topic. As someone who grew up with a forester for a dad, I became acquainted with the drip torch well before I earned a driver’s license. Still, I realize that not everyone burned pastures with their old man on any given night, and it might seem intimidating. Regardless of your experience level, you’ll be pleased to know that starting small is the best approach to controlled burns, according to Dr. Chamberlain.

“A lot of landowners are nervous with fires, which is understandable,” he said. “I would encourage landowners to just be willing to start with small fires. Through time, you’ll be more confident to use fire to benefit your property. If you have any interest in burning, contact your state forestry commission, and they can help you develop a forestry management plan, which will include some of those controlled burns.”

Dr. Chamberlain also pointed out that a lot of hunters are hesitant to burn for fear of destroying nesting sites. He said that hunters shouldn’t worry about burning nests as long as they burn before April 1. He insisted that even if you happen to lose one nest, creating more turkey habitat through the use of fire will provide more benefit to turkeys in the long run.

Immediate Impact

While it might take a few years to see a boom in the local turkey flock, there are immediate differences hunters and landowners can observe from a single burn. Within a few weeks, you’ll notice the effects when green sprouts pop up everywhere. By the time the leaf-out hits, you should see a ton of early successional vegetation that turkeys and deer should frequent.

In fact, Dr. Chamberlain said that landowners should “expect an immediate benefit to turkeys and other species. We’ve seen through our research that turkeys will be attracted to those stands several years after, too.” So, even after the initial burn, you should expect to see turkeys for multiple seasons. Let’s be honest: more turkeys is a good thing.

Other Benefits of Fire

While a lot of landowners might be intimidated to use fire, others are skeptical of its benefits. For instance, a common misconception a lot of hunters believe is that burning thick understory removes habitat that’s conducive to deer. However, Dr. Chamberlain stressed that fire actually “stimulates high-value browse that deer need,” which he said is backed by research. He encourages landowners who are also deer hunters to burn sections of their property because it benefits the deer as well.

If you’re a landowner who regularly mows your property with a tractor, fire can do that job in less time and with less money, depending on the acreage. You can also help reduce the fuel load on a landscape, which reduces the risk of wildfires, he said.

What’s at Stake?

For landowners who live in pine-dominated forests, “you’ll end up with plant communities that are not beneficial to turkeys in the absence of fire, and eventually, you won’t see turkeys on that property,” Dr. Chamberlain stressed.

Removing fire from the landscape might not decimate the turkeys from your property overnight, but it’s an inevitable outcome given the right conditions. In some ways, that’s a small sample of what’s happened throughout a lot of turkey habitat, which might explain a lot of these population declines. It’s tempting to separate predation, habitat loss, opportunity loss, and hunting pressure as individual problems plaguing the wild turkey. However, you could argue that predation, opportunity loss, and hunting pressure all stem from habitat loss.

The early successional growth that turkeys depend on for food, breeding, and nesting also gives them a sight advantage over predators. Places that don’t foster turkey habitat aren’t going to hold turkeys, which reduces opportunities for hunters and funnels hunting pressure to rich turkey habitats. It’s plausible to see how habitat loss presents a cascade effect for wild turkeys. This is why it’s imperative for landowners to consider using controlled burns on their properties.

The same goes for privately leased ground. Some timber companies have started implementing fire, though the majority of them either don’t or they use herbicides to create pine deserts. If you lease ground, reach out to the timber companies to see if they’ll consider controlled burns. Or, if you hunt private property that belongs to someone else, ask the landowner if they’ve considered having someone burn their property.

Last Shot

Sure, there are plenty of public lands across the states, but even those have fallen under attack recently. The majority of land falls under private ownership, so it’s up to landowners to create the habitat necessary to support wild turkeys.

A lot of state and federally owned lands adhere to strict regulations when it comes to controlled burns. As long as you abide by local regulations, private landowners face fewer hurdles to using fire as a wildlife and habitat management tool. Sure, it’ll take work, but I can’t think of better work worth doing.