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Totally random observation

Daver

Daver

PMA Member
Last night, while blood trailing a deer through the timber after dark, I ran across two dead turkey carcasses...or what was left of them. This is not the first time I have seen this either. I totally agree that the tough springs(rain) and winters have hurt the population over the past several years...BUT, something is also killing adult turks.

I suspect bobcats, but I don't know that for sure, but whatever it is I wish it would stop.
 
Notice if their heads were gone or not? Great Horned owls will kill them and eat their heads. My aunt and uncle used to have tame turkeys and the owls would get them pretty often.
 
AIRASSAULT said:
Notice if their heads were gone or not? Great Horned owls will kill them and eat their heads. My aunt and uncle used to have tame turkeys and the owls would get them pretty often.
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There was little left other than wing feathers, tail feathers and such. In the dark I did not look around for other parts, so there may have been other clues present that I did not see. I have previously found them just like what I saw last night with the skeleton and/or the feet a few feet away, etc, too.

I don't know about great horned owls, but we have plenty of barred owls in the area.
 
I would try to put a camera over some bait. If its a cat maybe you will get a pic of it.

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Could be bobcats, coyotes, or birds of prey. I have seen a few times when turkey hunting where coyotes come sneaking into the dekes thinking they are gonna get a free meal.
 
bigbuckhunter88 said:
Could be bobcats, coyotes, or birds of prey. I have seen a few times when turkey hunting where coyotes come sneaking into the dekes thinking they are gonna get a free meal.
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I agree, it could be any of those predators, or even something else entirely. But I have been out and about in the turkey woods for almost 35 years now and it was never until about 4 or 5 years ago that I began to see dead adult birds. So finding dead adults is still a fairly new phenomenon for me.

I have watched and hunted farms with coyotes for nearly all of those years and have never seen a coyote get one, although I am sure they do sometimes. We have set put cams on gut piles before and had everything come in including: coyotes, fox, bobcats, other deer, coons, possums, dogs, cats, eagles, hawks, crows, vultures, etc. So we have little of everything.:grin:

Our turkey population is just a fraction of what it was 5 or 6 years ago. We have really put a hurt on the miscellaneous varmint(coons, skunks, possums, feral cats) population in the last 13 months or so, in an effort to help nesting success. But I would like to find out what is killing the adult birds too.
 
I found 4 or 5 dead ones on public ground in southern iowa shotgun hunting. All I found was wing bones / tail feathers etc. Never did find the actual carcasses.
 
More then likely a bobcat they are God's perfect predator. I would let some trappers in your ground I always ask coon hunters to come to my place every year to thin the coons down because they are hard on turkey nests
 
Here is my .02, for what it's worth.

I live in NE Iowa and have found maybe 2 dead turkeys ever while shed hunting or spending time in the woods. Last year while shed hunting in Southern Iowa and Northern Mizzou, we found over 20 dead turkeys in 4 days. The difference between here and there is Bobcats and thats it. We have a ton of yotes, hawks, eagles, etc, but there are few if any bobcats up here. IMO they are death on turkeys and I would suspect them as the culprit. I was blown away by how many dead turkeys we found. Maybe Bonker needs to start a kitty catching business across the state :rolleyes:
 
Turkeys

I've had turkeys roost 20 yards from me in the stand on my land. I would agree that they seem vulnerable while roosting to birds of prey. That being said, I rarely find dead turkeys. I would lean toward bobcats as we do not have many cats in our area, so ?? Good question?
 
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