Ep. 4: Why Turkey Habitat Matters with Randy Milligan
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I'm joined today by my good buddy Randy Milligan. Randy goes to work every day as a CPA where he's a principal in Arkansas, but his real passion lies in farming for turkey and deer at his property in Kansas. Today we're going to discuss what he sees as an essential habitat for turkeys. This information should be just as helpful for public land turkey hunters as it is for people on private. It should be a great conversation, but first let's get to some listeners questions.

The first questions we got from our listeners is what kind of calls do you like to use? And so for me, I'll take a stab at it and then I'm going to throw it over to Randy to kind of see how our kits kind of compare and then how they differ.

So what kind of calls do I like to use? Being an elk caller that's kind of transitioned over to turkey, you really have a love for turkey. I always have two or three diaphragms. And with that said, I like to have one that's fairly heavy, a fairly raspy call. And then I like to have one that's pretty clean for light, subtle calling. I'm always going to have at least one pot call on me with a couple different strikers. And then I'm going to carry a box call. So on those windy days out here in the Pacific Northwest, we have really dense calls.

you know, vegetation and some of the areas we hunt and we really want to reach out and touch them. We'll, we'll grab that high pitched, you know, loud box call. With that said, I would say 80% of the time we're running diaphragms. Uh, but there's just certain birds where that pot call or that box calls kind of the ticket and you got to kind of stick with it. But again,

Um, that, that's kind of my setup. Keep it really simple. You know, there's a lot of different, you know, um, shake gobble calls. There's, you know, the spring loaded, you know, cluckers and stuff like that. But I, I keep it pretty, pretty, uh, you know, playing with some diaphragms, a pot call with a few strikers and a box call. What do you use Randy? Um, as far as what calls do you like to use?

You know, I'm kind of like you, but I have a pouch full of mouth calls. So I have several mouth calls. I may have five or six different mouth calls. I normally carry two, at least two pot calls.

One of them will be a slate call. One of them might be a glass or, you know, something like that with several strikers. And I too carry one box call. Now I use mine a little different where in the mornings when I'm sitting on a roost and I'm close to it, I normally always use that pot call. I can get as low as I can.

It's quiet, I don't wanna be very loud, so I'm using that pot call. Once that turkey hits the ground, I'm normally going to diaphragm because I don't have to move my hands. I feel comfortable calling that mouth with a diaphragm.

And then I keep a box call. A lot of times I'll hunt different states. If I'm in Texas or something or in Kansas, as you know, you came out and hunted with me last year. It can get very windy. So in the middle of the day, I may hit that box call where, you know, I can make it pretty loud. So, yeah, I try to, I don't really use a shake tube or anything like that. Those are my three go-to calls.

Perfect. Perfect. I, you brought up a point, um, you know, turkeys on the roost. It's, it seems to have been like my Achilles heel. If I call to a bird on the roost, my chance of killing them seems to be, you know, very, very slim. What's your success in calling birds off the roost? Um, you know, with some light, you know, tree yelping and, and some, you know, real light calling, like, do you have good luck with that? Or do the turkeys just tend to do what they want to do and go the opposite direction? Um, if you make a peep, you know,

No, I've had luck on the roost and I still, I was in Texas last year and a buddy and I doubled off the roost, called him into us. But, you know, I start, I kind of let the turkeys tell me what to do.

If I'm sitting on a roost and the gobblers are gobbling, the hens aren't making any noise, I'm not really making a lot of noise. You know, I'm going to let that gobbler know where I am sitting there. I try to get as close as the roost I can without bumping them. But, you know, I'll let that gobbler know where I am and then, you know, cut it off. Now, if the hens get real vocal, I'll normally get pretty vocal. So I just kind of let the turkeys tell me what I'm going to do.

There you go. The two questions we got are both related around calls and, and there's not a lot of other information around this one, but how important are calls? And I'm going to, I'm going to kind of add to this question. So how important are calls as far as if it was like calls versus, you know, habitat and, you know, turkey population or, you know, how important are calls to your success could have been another way to, to kind of put that out there. But what,

I'm going to let you answer this one first, Randy. How important are calls to you as far as spring turkey season goes? I would tell you if I was saying what's the most important as a turkey hunter, I'd say the woodsmanship.

you know, to get around in the woods, where to set up, to get on the ridge in front of him, things like that. What I enjoy about the calls and the reason I try to be good at it, and I can't say that I'm a great caller, but I, you know, I've killed a lot of turkeys and I practice quite a bit with a call. I want to be able to know when to call, when not to call. And when it is time to call, I want to be able to use it.

and be able to use it without, you know, sounding like somebody scratching a chalkboard. And so I have over the years of practice with a call and I want to make sure the three calls you talked about, the mouth call, a slate call, and a box call, I try to be efficient at all three of them.

As long as you're efficient at one of them, I think a lot of people will kill turkeys. I don't think it's the most important, but I think that calling and woodsmanship are the best, the two things out there that you've got to be pretty decent at.

Yep. Yep, for sure. You know, I love to make the calls most important, but just like you, you know, woodsmanship, you know, understanding of what that turkey wants to do throughout the day from the time they, you know, come out of the roost to feed, you know, you know,

following his flock to you know that that tom breaking off later in the season you know all that stuff is is is quite a bit more important and uh you know like chris and dirks bird last year you know i would have loved to say we called those things all the way across the field but we spotted them um worked the terrain you know work the the vegetation got set up and you know let those turkeys do their own thing you know ultimately led to us bagging those turkeys so you know i

I love to call turkeys in the spring, but just like you, I think there's a lot of other stuff that may be more important to being successful. All right, well, now that we got those two user questions out of the way, let's jump into kind of the reason, the main reason we brought you on. And don't let Randy fool you out there. He's a great turkey caller, knows what to do, makes the right noises. He can call for me any day. But, you know,

it's more of what do the turkeys need? You know, there's areas we've all seen it lately, you know, your own home state, well, not your home state, the state you hunt in the majority of the time, Kansas, seems like the population's way down. You know, Missouri's trying to figure out right now why their turkey population's, you know, way down. And so, you know, one of the questions that needs to be answered is what do turkeys need? What do turkeys need to thrive? What do turkeys need just to get by and live?

you know, what's required, what's preferred, what do they prefer? There's a lot of different answers, but that's kind of what we're going to tackle with you today. Randy is a guy that sets out and just being able to spend, you know, five, four or five days at your property and just kind of see everything that's been built for the, you know, the deer and the turkeys out there. You know,

be a great guest just to go over, you know, some of these questions we have and then get your opinion since you've got to, you know, monitor the property and kind of see what they do like and where they do prefer to go and how you've been able to keep, you know, your numbers on your own property so high compared to, you know, the surrounding properties.

Jason, there's so turkey populations and you're correct. You know, I read in WTF and all these states and numbers are down and a lot of areas. And even in my area in southeast Kansas, we used to have a two bird limit and now we're down to one bird limit. And

You know, there's so much that goes along with that, you know, raising a turkey, as I call it. And you've been on my place. I try to make it better every year. I try to do something different. And if it's planting, you know, gobbler sawtooth trees, which I have several planted chestnut trees. I mean, turkeys love acorns. But, you know, one of the things you notice when you're out there, you know, I've got 30, 40 acres of food plots and 50 percent of them are in clover.

Turkey's bug. And I've got a lot of other acreage and you know, that's not clover in fields that I will mow strips in where a turkey can walk down a strip with her poults and bug. But if danger is close, she can run right into the tall grass.

I do a lot of things like that. One of the things I did, I started years, a few years ago is I do a lot of hinge cutting. You hear people talk about hinge cutting. I try to do timber management where a lot of people don't do that. You know, a lot of people go out and do food plots

They put feeders out there. But timber management is very important. You know, give them that nest area where a turkey can go into that treetop and nest and hopefully, you know, go unseen. And the other thing I think, you know, I hear people talk about, you know, is it farm chemicals? What's killing these turkeys? Why there's not as many? And I'll still go back and people disagree, but I think predator control is important.

the main thing, you know, I grew up coon hunting and man, you could sell a coon pelt for $20. And kids like me were going out coon hunting, selling, you know, coon pelts. And now they're not buying coons and the pelts and they're just everywhere. I mean, I can put out a hundred cameras and there'll be 20 coons on almost every camera if I've got food out.

Yeah, I think last year when we were there, you know, we've seen your one camera that we were watching for turkeys had coons that kept showing up. And I think we we bumped some raccoons off of one of the feeders. And yeah, it seems like that's a big issue back there for sure. It is. And I think predator control is something that I know, you know, from a duck standpoint, I know a ducks and lemon is really working on predator control and no NWTF is.

But I think that that's probably the number one reason you see a lot of decline. And but, you know, from the food habitat perspective,

You know, I try to provide them a lot of acorns, which in southeast Kansas, I happen to have been fortunate and bought some farms that had a lot of oak trees on it, white oak and red oak. I try to do half of my food plots in clover. Again, I try to mow strips so they can hide, they can bug. Because, you know, you go up there in the summertime in June and July, and as long as you've got the grass mowers, grasshoppers everywhere.

It's fun to watch those little poets just get out and start chasing them around. And so, you know, I just try to provide them all the food and cover and I can provide them. Yeah, gotcha. And I'm going to do my best Bob Ross to kind of verbally describe your property, Randy, and some of the stuff you mentioned earlier.

You know, you don't see big, large tracks of anything on your property. Like to me, being a guy from out, you know, on the Pacific coast where, you know, we've got industrial timberlands, we're growing, you know, 40 to 50 year old Douglas fir and hemlock forest. You kind of get the same thing over and over until you're down in the river bottoms. But when you go to your place in Kansas, what I loved about it is it doesn't seem to be, you know, a hundred acres of clover. You know, your clover and your cut corn and

And, you know, where you kind of mix clover in with like a planted, you know, alfalfa or hay field. Everything was broken up in a way where those turkeys felt comfortable. You know, you might have a...

100 foot to 100 yard wide strip, but then they've got hardwoods right next to it. And then like where I killed my turkey and you left a standing cut cornfield, which it wasn't very big. It was only what, three or four acres. And then it was surrounded by a hedgerow and hardwoods. And then you go to the corner of it and then you enter into like a two acre clover field. And it was just kind of cool to see how, you know, where people outlandish.

Out West, if there's ag, it's like forever. Where you're looking, it seems like with your food plots and the way that you're harvesting some of the crops, that it really is, it's not...

It's not just wide open. It's strategically placed. The birds and the deer have a ton of security, which kind of is going to get into our next question, Randy, is like, what's the most important? Is it the food? Is it the roost? Is it the security and nesting? You know, what is that? And moments before I killed my bird on your place last year, we were walking down one of your old farm roads and we kind of spotted a hen up ahead, maybe a couple hundred yards.

And we were kind of watching her and not wanting to really spook birds in case something else was with her. And we walked up there, gave her enough time and she just kind of disappeared. And I don't know whether you designed this into your property or not, but that you had kind of a pile of logs there that were kind of leftovers. And we had all kind of

we thought that that hen was nesting inside that pile of logs. So whether you design that or not, like your, your property is so broken up and so unique that it's, it's opportunities like that, where that hen picked that pile of logs, the nest, like what is the most important there, Randy? Is it, is it food? Is it roost? Or is there, is there not one that's most important? Is it in your opinion, like they're all equals? I think it's a combination. You know, I try to provide them all of that. And, and,

Even, you know, the food, the cover. Turkey's got to have cover. I mean, you think about a turkey, everything out there is trying to hunt it. I mean, coons and possums are eating their nest. Skunks are eating their nest. You've got hawks and birds, you know, killing them when they're small, killing them when they're big. I mean, hoot owls are trying to kill them. They have got to have somewhere to nest.

And so I try to make that when I do hinge cutting, do a lot around the edges of my food plots, just like that pile. You know, that was just some logs there, an old tree that I piled up where a hen can run away. She's out there with her pokes and they're out there in that little clover field around those trees. And, you know, a hawk is flying over. She can run them right into that tree log. And so...

so I tried, I think it's a combination of all. It's hard to just pick one. You know, I, I believe you can have all the cover you can, but if you don't have any food for them, you know, it's, it's just as detrimental for them. So I think it's a little bit of combination of all of them. For sure. For sure. And Randy, can you explain hinge cutting for all of our listeners that might not know what that is? You know,

You know, hinge cutting is, I go out in a piece of ground and I try not to really do, you know, 20 or 30 acres of it. I'll do a few acres here and there. I go out and you see a lot of old trees that are about as big as my leg or, you know, just not huge trees, but there may be hickory nut trees or they may be some tree that's not producing. Basically, I always say if it's not producing an acre, I'm going to hinge cut it. I'm going to cut it about belt high.

instead of cutting it all the way through when it starts to tip over, I just push it on over. So it's still, it's, it's actually still growing for a few years. Uh, and it's laying on the ground and a lot of deer turkeys can nest in it. And for several years, even though that tree is laying down, uh,

you know, bent over, as I say, it's still growing its leaves every year and turkeys can get in there. Deer love to eat on it. Deer love to always say like a cedar tree. I don't hinge cut cedars. I only do, you know, the, what I call the ugly tree, but, uh,

uh, they like to get in there and put their back up against it. You know, they can, uh, I killed this year. We're talking about turkeys, but I killed 175 inch buck this year. And I'd hinge cut a piece of property last year of about five acres. And he walked right out of it, right to me, you know, and that thrilled me to know he was bedded up in that, that, you know, thicket. Gotcha. Yeah. And I remember we walked down off of that one really heavy Oak Ridge and we walked down across and I, I don't, I don't want to,

I misquote you, but I think you said like every...

oak tree that was bigger than a certain like 18 inches breast height you were taking them down because they were no longer producing in that bottom is that do I remember that correct that you were you were taking down some of those medium sized oaks throughout that that bottom well the larger ones I had a timber guy come in and again I try to do all the timber management I can if they're really 25 inches and again some people will say they got to be a little bigger if they're 25 inches or bigger I

I let him cut them. And I use a guy that is, he's a hunter, he's a timber guy, he understands them, he'll come and mark them. And when he marks them, he and I'll walk through there and make sure I agree with the ones he marks. But he's cutting the really big trees

And, you know, it's always amazing how much better my hunting's got over the several years as I'm doing timber management. When I cut that big tree out of there, there's three or four smaller trees that are around it that all of a sudden really starts producing good acorns.

that 10, 12, 15 inch tree starts producing. So, like I said earlier, timber management is something I think a lot of people miss out on that I think really has improved my wildlife.

Gotcha. Perfect. Perfect. So now that we kind of have talked a little bit, you know, that food roost, you know, security nesting, you know, everything that you're providing on your property is there. Um, as far as food, um, let's, let's just put you in a scenario. Like we're going to let go a band of wild turkeys and they can go veer off a little bit to the left and go get in a clover field, or they can go straight ahead and get into like a chufa field. Um, they can go to the right and get like an alfalfa field. Um,

In your opinion, like what is the best food source? I know you've already touched on clover a little bit and, you know, the bugging and then, you know, using the clover for food. But is, have you found that, you know, turkeys prefer certain foods at certain times of the year or is it really just hit and miss for the area and they can be found in all of them?

- Well, I think it depends on where they are, where they're located. I grew up hunting Missouri as a college kid and chased them all over public ground and Mark Twain and they had a lot of acre and flats, white oak and red oak flats. And you take my farm, we killed that bird of Chris and Dirk's, they doubled on a clover field. We come over to the hill, I could see them way down there with binoculars and I told you, these birds are coming to this clover.

And what was cool about that video where those hens were just out there with those gobblers just bugging everywhere. The hens were bugging and the gobblers were just strutting with them. But there's a lot of times, like you killed yours 10 o'clock in the morning. And when he first gobbled, he was in the clover field.

So he had been out there bugging 10 o'clock in the morning. And when he heard us call and Chris Parrish, I think was calling at the time. And, you know, most turkeys are probably going to come to Chris when he's calling, but, uh, being a world champion, uh, you know, he'd come across that cornfield and, and right to you. But, uh, yeah, I think it depends on where the location is. You know, if a turkey is in a wooded area or, or, uh,

grown up cattle fields because they love to bug, you know, and cattle and chase grasshoppers. And they may not even have any clover. So it all depends where that turkey is located. And I've hunted several states where I hunt Texas. I mean, you can't find a clover within 20 miles where I'm hunting. So I'm hunting cattle pastures with grasshoppers, you know, so it's just difference of where you're hunting.

Yep. Yep. Well, we hunt here in Northeast Washington, you know, very, very little ag, you know, just along kind of the county roads. And then you kind of shoot up into the mountains where it's, you know, ponderosa pine and just kind of your native grasses and stuff. And, you know, trying to figure out where those birds want to be in that stuff is sometimes difficult because it looks, you know, the same for, you know, miles and miles and miles.

But you eventually figure out, you know, draws and ridge tops and some of that stuff, you know, where they prefer to be, even though there's a vast...

um you know never-ending supply of of native grasses and and uh you know pine trees and whatnot so yeah yeah same thing you got to just kind of adapt to the area um even though i do kind of always like being close to somewhat you know some part of ag um seems to be and make those turkeys a little more predictable but um you know you just got to kind of adapt to to those um so

One thing I want to touch on, you know, the intent of this podcast is to hopefully help, you know, the listeners be more successful is how do you use the habitat to hunt the turkeys? As far as we've went over, like everything that the turkey wants for food and security and roost trees and, you know, how they can set up their own daily routine, you know, based on the habitat. But how do you use that to give you an advantage, Randy, as you kind of put the day's plan together or, you know, that hunt plan together? Yeah.

You know, in the mornings, Jason, I'm going to go, you know, where I hunt normally, even when I hunt Missouri or I hunt Kansas, I hunt Texas.

I know where a lot of the turkey's gonna roost. I'm gonna try to find them on the roost and go there and get as close as I can in that morning. And most of the time, they're in the woods a lot of times on a creek bottom and they're gonna come down to in those woods somewhere. In the middle of the day, a lot of times I'm gonna go to a specific clover field or a cornfield.

No, the day you killed your bird, we were headed really to the clover field and, and the corn field, you know, still had, uh, had corn in it, you know, standing corn and things. So we set up there cause it'd been raining. If you remember that day and, and, uh,

I like to hunt till about noon, truthfully. The older I get, I try not to hunt in the afternoons. I try not to hunt roost sites in the afternoon. I want to give them a break, and that's kind of when we go crappie fishing, but in the afternoons. But yeah, I will try to hunt off the roost in the mornings.

And once, you know, if the turkey's in the first, second week in April in Kansas, they'll stay in the woods for a while. So I enjoy getting into timber and hunting them. But in the middle of the day, I'll go to the food plots. I'll go to that clover field because I think those hens are coming to buck. Gotcha. And, you know, so I kind of know I've hunted there over 20 years. I kind of know where to go up there, where they're going to be.

Yeah. And one thing that I liked on your place is that we kind of hung around that same area and we did a lot of calling, you know, Chris did a lot of calling early in that morning and, and things weren't working. We got close a couple of times and those hens kind of did the same routine, um,

Chris and Dirk were able to kill their birds, they kind of pulled those toms right past us. They didn't really care. But one thing, as I get older, I'm convinced in talking with some turkey experts like Mike Chamberlain, is those toms, later in that season, they know that you were around that area. And once their hens go to lay, they may come back looking for you. And so...

like you said, you know, calling in that area and then staying there, you know, throughout the late morning could definitely be to the hunter's benefit, you know, not to leave the area, go find new birds, but kind of continue that play that you played on the morning and get them to come back and see if you're still around. Yeah, totally agree. I mean, you know, I like to, a lot of times even, you know, if I know the birds are really hand up, you know, we'll go eat breakfast, right?

We'd gone about an hour, hour and a half, and give them time to do their thing. Get them bred, and hopefully the hens leave them. You know, and later this season, it's a little easier to do. You go back to the same, exact same spot. The turkeys were gobbling. I couldn't tell you how many times. I had a buddy a couple years ago. We were down in Kansas. About the same spot Dierks and Chris had killed their birds. We were down the ridge a little ways.

And we had five longbeards with about 15 hens hung up in the woods. And they gobbled probably till 8.30, never moved. Jason, we went back to the house, ate breakfast, got back about 11 o'clock. I called, they were in the same spot. You know, it's amazing. Turkeys don't move a lot. They can be in the same spot for hours and you think they're gone forever.

And two hours later, they're still on the same ridge. Yep. You know, so the key is you just got to stay after them. You know, you got to get after them. And one of them is going to make a mistake. Yeah, that day I think we started, we touched everywhere those turkeys were. And when we came back, I believe we showed up at what, 2 o'clock? Those turkeys were right back in the same spot. They had never left there. They just walked a circle around us all day. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was, that was pretty cool. And so on that day, I want to ask you specifically about that situation, Randy, and whether we know the answer or not, we'll take our best stab at it. You know, so we should, you know, later in, well, I guess it was, what was it? May 7th and 8th, we were there.

a little bit later in, you know, in the season. And those, those hens were still with the birds out till one and two o'clock. Do you feel that those hens had already went to nest and then came back or were they just not being bred yet? Like what was the reason those hens were hanging on to those toms so long that day? You know, well,

One, we have a lot of hens down there. So, you know, that morning they may have bred several of them and several of them went to roost and several of them may have not been bred yet. So, you know, if you remember when we were down there, you could hear hens all in the woods.

Yeah. And those two turkeys, you know, they we had four or five hens just, you know, walk right by us bugging. And so I would think probably several of the hens they had bred had gone to nest. I mean, May the 7th in Kansas. I mean, a lot of hens are sitting on nests.

And, but there's so many hens in there. I would imagine they were still with them. And, you know, early, Jason, I've seen, I've seen turkeys up there with several hens set under a couple of trees out in an open field. They'll be there for hours and never move. Gotcha. So I think, you know, depending on what the time of the year is, those gobblers aren't leaving those hens very often.

Gotcha. Now you go back up there, May 28th or 29th, you know, those, those hands would have definitely left those gobblers and gone sit on a net more than likely. O'Reilly auto parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you. The other day I went into an O'Reilly auto parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there. You know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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My favorite time here in Washington to hunt, you know, you'd always get all amped up for opening day, April 15th. You wanted to be in the woods and then you realized, one, everybody else is just as excited for opening day. So the woods are just a mess with people everywhere. Number two, you would find a gobbler and he wouldn't leave those hens for nothing. And so we kind of just developed that plan. Like we found out the best time for us to hunt was early May here.

just because the crowds, but then almost, you know, we always pick that first weekend in May, which was typically, you know,

somewhere between, you know, first to the seventh, whatever that is. And, and almost always by, I would say 10 or 11 o'clock, we would almost have, you know, hen free gobblers. They would, they would go off to lay and then we would have him all to ourself. You know, there were a few times, I don't know if that's because we're, you know, but it would, it would seem to be opposite, like further North. We're a little bit later than you guys, but, um, yeah, I was just a little surprised to, to see those two hens kind of, you know, or three hens kind of leading the show there in the, in the mid afternoon.

Yeah, the nose gobblers were not going to leave them either. I mean, it was pretty watching them strut all the way. You know, they came the length of that big road there all the way down in that clover field. And we set up on the south end of it and they came strutted all the way down to it. I know you have it on video and it's pretty cool to watch.

yeah it was a really cool you know just to watch them come through that clover and just kind of you know spitting and drumming and just puffed up the whole way was was pretty cool to watch and then chris and dirk made great shots and doubled up there and uh yeah a great hunt so we touched on it a little bit um i'm gonna dive a little bit deeper into predators because i know you know talking with you before the show um we feel that that may be the biggest issue currently um you know

that's given just these wild turkeys a fit right now. You know, everything from the coons, the possums, the everything that we have here. You know, what's the solution? Is it just the landowners or the hunters themselves? You know, the same reason we hunt coyotes out here because they wreak havoc on, you know, the young fawns and calves. I mean, are we just going to have to

to take it into our own hands. Is that the solution is to just take care of these predators, regardless of, you know, the pelts being worth anything or, you know, a possum is never going to be worth a dang thing. Um, like what's a solution to taking care of this Randy? Is it, is it people just, you know, doing it because it's the right thing to do for the wild Turkey? Um, or is there anything else we can do to, to, to help fend off these predators?

Well, you know, I think there's two parts of that. You know, in a way, there's private landowners, and I think a lot of private landowners can do more trapping. And I

I know in Kansas and the area I'm in up there this weekend, they're having a cow competition. Whoever kills the most cows and brings them in wins a prize because cows are rough on turkeys too. And I've never seen anything kill a turkey as fast as a bobcat can. And I think you got the private landowner that I think just has to be more aggressive in their trapping.

But on public ground, I think that the game and fish, you know, commissions of these states have to back up and look at some programs they have and what can they do to really urge people to do more trapping, more coon hunting, more things like that. And, you know, Arkansas has a bad problem with hogs. And I know our game and fish is really spending a lot of time and effort trying to figure out how are we going to control those.

But it's the same thing when it comes to coons and coyotes and bobcats and everything. I mean, those predators are tough on turkeys. So, I mean, as a private landowner that grew up hunting public ground, which I still enjoy doing, I think it's going to take two sides. I mean, the private landowner and the Game and Fish Commission to get serious about this predator control.

all right randy now that we've kind of hit on you know the private habitat and what turkeys prefer if you can create kind of the ideal situation which you have there on your place um you know growing up you've hunted a lot of public kind of where the majority of us out west get to do our turkey hunting

What would you say is the most important, you know, we can still use habitat to our advantage on the public ground. Like, what do you look for when you're, you know, either e-scouting or boots on the ground? Like, are you looking for some of the same stuff like a feed area versus where are they going to come out of the roost versus, you know, where they want to spend their day, you know, scratching and bugging? Like, explain to me a little bit about your public land approach, but still using habitat to help you out.

You know, that's a good question. I still hunt some public ground. I grew up, like I said earlier, in college hunting Mark Twain National Forest up in Missouri, which I still think is some great hunting. You can find a lot of birds on some of that public ground. And I think there's so many people I've been blessed. And as you said earlier, I joke with people that I only work

to pay for my hunting hobby, you know, but I've been blessed there. So I do have my own, own property, but you know, growing up hunting public ground, there's a lot of people that still hunt public ground. And, and I, I elk hunt on public ground a lot of times. And, and I use, you know, you can go out there and get the Onyx hunt map and a lot of these maps,

And so when I'm going on public ground, I'm using these maps to figure out where these ridges are, you know, where the creeks lie within that area I'm hunting in. And so...

Mark Twain, I'll use them. I'll brag on Missouri. I'm not from Missouri. I'm from Arkansas, but I've hunted up there for years. And I think their game and fish did a really good job with their public grounds on their Mark Twain National Forest. And I know in Arkansas, we have a lot of public ground and in a lot of states. And I think that's so important

that public ground is provided to residents of that state to come and hunt. And so I used to, I lived pretty close to the Missouri line in Arkansas when I grew up, so we could get up there in about an hour. And back then in those days, we didn't have the on X maps. I mean, we had paper maps and we'd lay it down and figure out, okay, I'm going over here on this ridge and you go over on that ridge.

And I think that's the key because a lot of those public grounds, you're hunting acorn flats. And once you get in there and you find where them turkeys are, they're going to be in there most of the time if you're hunting a ridge like that. But, you know, a lot of the game and fish in the States, and I think that's always been good in Missouri and Arkansas and Kansas, there's a lot of control burning.

And that control burning, it's amazing how fast turkeys come in there after woods are burned or grasses are burned. And so I know in Kansas, we do a lot of control burning. We burn a lot of our properties up there. And I think that really does help with a lot of the turkey population. But yeah, when I'm hunting public ground, I'm normally using a map trying to figure out, okay, where...

Where do I need to go in here? And probably nothing better, Jason, than calling a buddy or someone that hunted that area and say, hey, I'm up here for a few days. You know, send me to the right spot. Yep, yep. I've always told people hunters get along with hunters. There's not a lot of jealousy there. You know, I want you to kill a turkey as bad as I want to kill a turkey. A lot of times I want my grandson, I want my grandson to kill a turkey more than I want to kill a turkey.

Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I think you guys out in the Midwest might be a better guys than us out West. Cause I think it's the opposite. Like people out here want to, you know, they want to, they, they want to do everything themselves. Don't want to share. It doesn't seem as much, but I know that's, that's good on you that, you know, everybody's trying to help each other back there. And, uh, um,

that's pretty cool because, you know, that's what I love about turkey hunting as well is just, you know, being able to go out with some good buddies, you know, hang out. It seems to be a little bit more relaxed than big game hunting, but it's still hunting and it's still a great chess match with a, you know, a worthy opponent. You know, those dang wild turkeys, they get a bad rap on, you know, being a dumb bird or why can't you guys kill one? They're standing all over the, you know, the edge of the road or the fence line. And I'm like...

These turkeys might be the dumbest bird until you put a shotgun in your hand, and then they become like the smartest bird. You know, they instantly change at the point where you're trying to kill one. Well, I've got some friends in Arkansas that go up to Kansas, not far from me, to hunt on public ground. And Jason, they kill birds every year. I mean, these are good hunters, you know, give them credit, but they're hunting public ground. They don't have private ground. And so there's a lot of...

I love reading magazines when it talks about a state just, you know, bought and put 4,000 acres of public ground in, you know, for hunters. I mean, that's exciting. And I hope the states keep doing that because so many people have to hunt there. And again, when I grew up hunting, that's all we had to hunt. We couldn't, we didn't own private land, you know.

Yeah. And that's, that's a good segue into my next question. Out West, you know, we're hunting the majority of public ground. You know, if you're lucky enough, you might be able to, to get, you know, onto a piece of property for maybe a youth season. Or if you know a family friend, you might have a little piece of private you can get on. But the majority of the time we're,

we're running and gunning on, um, you know, public ground, big, vast chunks of property with turkeys that aren't, you know, they're, they're three, four miles in on a road, which is, is great. But one question I've always had, and I, I haven't really figured it out yet, but you know, on, on big wide open country, uh,

You know, the turkeys need to go grab water if the area isn't holding small pockets of water. Our turkeys here seem to travel a long ways to go get, you know, to a puddle or to a small creek and get their daily water. Like, what have you found? Have you had a chance to hunt out in more of that open country, you know, drier country where these birds are having to go, you know, a fairly long distance from roost to food to water? And how does that kind of affect your hunt as these turkeys aren't just sitting in one spot?

like they were on your property. They're moving a mile a day or a mile and a half on their routine. I've hunted out midway or further out like you're talking about up in northern Nebraska, Iowa, and different places where you're hunting that Merriam turkey. And I assume you're hunting a Merriam turkey where you are. Yep. Yeah, we have Merriams up in the northeast corner. Where

I'm hunting Easterns here, but when I go out there to hunt Merriams, I will say I walk a lot more out there than I do in Kansas or Arkansas or Missouri. I do a lot of walking and a lot of calling and walking. And those birds travel a lot more than the Eastern turkey does.

And, but, you know, it's the same way when I go out there and I'm hunting, I'm looking at a map trying to figure out where the creeks are, where the water is, you know, where would they be? Is there a corn field? Is there a farmer that's got a clover field or alfalfa field? I'm using that map to find those turkeys. And, but you're right, you know, you got to, I hunt Rios in Texas, South Texas, every year I hunt Rios.

And they're a lot like a Miriam. I mean, I could cover 10, 11 miles a day. You know, my buddy and I wear watches, tell us how far we've gone. We may walk 11 miles in one day chasing rios.

So you just got to be ready to move depending on what type of bird, you know, you're hunting. So you've had the same experience where you're hunting those Merriams or Rios that we have in the Northeast corner. It, you, you, you lace your boots up a little tighter that morning. Then, you know, the, the Easterns that I grew up with right here around my home, you know, they, they didn't leave via, they had their one little feed spot. They get their water right next to them and they might not leave that quarter mile circle, you know, for a month.

They're just, those Easterns here are locked down pretty tight. I learned a hard lesson when I was, the first time I was fortunate to go up in northern Nebraska to hunt Merriams. And I, you know, I grew up hunting Eastern turkeys, so I wasn't used to doing all that walking. I learned pretty quick, you better pack some water when you're out hunting Merriam turkeys. Yep, yep. And a lot of people,

A lot more than you think you're going to need because you may be five miles from the truck before you realize it. Yep. Yep. Well, we kind of covered all the questions I had on habitat, but I have a couple, another question for you and I'll see what answer you give me here. But Randy, if you could give, you know, one or two pieces of advice to struggling turkey hunters or maybe people that aren't finding success out there,

to make them more successful, what would it be? Just kind of, you know, anything from, you know, calling to setups to scouting, you know, any of that, like give, give us kind of your best one or two tips to make you successful. Well, if I was going to give two tips, one of them would be scouting. I mean, you got to scout the area you're in, you know, and if you're hunting public ground, you know, you're going to be facing competition. There's going to be other hunters there. So you got to get out and scout.

And the other tip I think is very important, you know, you take us. You know, we got to know each other and friends and Chris Parrish and a lot of people like that. There's so many chat rooms on there that talks about turkeys, where to go. You know, you can get on them all day long. And there's so many. Hunters get along with hunters.

And they're willing to share. And maybe not up north where you are, but most of the time down in the Midwest and places, you know, they're willing to share. And I've had a buddy here in Arkansas that has killed a bird in every state that has a turkey.

And he and I have visited about how did you do that? And so much of it was just getting on a site and saying, hey, I'm coming to Nevada. You know, where would I go? I'm trying to kill a bird in every state. And he was helped so much by people, you know, just other hunters and said, hey, man, you know, come here. I think you can get on this public ground and go to this certain area and there should be a turkey in there. So, yeah.

Yeah, a lot of people aren't fortunate to have their own public ground where you walk out there. And believe me, it didn't come easy for me. I was fortunate and worked hard. And if I didn't happen to have a farm in Kansas, I'd still be hunting public ground today in Arkansas. Wouldn't bother me a bit, you know, because I'm going to hunt every day.

uh, and, uh, but I think those are the two things. I mean, get out and know other people. Yep. Yep. And we, you know, I, I'm going to add on to the scouting. Uh, I grew up, what I, I feel is maybe the hardest Turkey in the world to kill were these Easterns that they planted here in Western Washington. Um,

very, very low numbers. And that was 99% of the battle. Like you couldn't kill one if you didn't find it. So we would spend literally, you know, the entire month of March out locating every morning on the weekends, just trying to have a bird, maybe two, if you got really lucky to hunt, but, and without that scouting, you would have just been, you know, dead in the water come season. So, you know, figuring out where that bird or birds like to roost, you know, kind of where his, uh,

Um, you know, few spots are, he would move a little bit, but kind of his core area. And then just kind of pounding that when season came was really your best, uh, you know, bet, because if you didn't, like I said, locate that bird prior to season, um, you were scouting the entire season and not really hunting.

Yeah, and you make a good point on the scouting part because, you know, even where I hunt, where there's a lot of turkeys, it's amazing. I think of a couple times in the last few years where we'll get up there a couple of days before season starts and go out there one morning and it'll be pretty bluebird day and cold in early April. And in one area, Jason, you know, one morning we might hear 20 to 25 turkeys gobble, it sounds like.

And the very next morning, go out there and you don't hear a sound. And, you know, I swear those turkeys are living in caves. I mean, you know, how in the world can you hear 20 sitting right here? And tomorrow I didn't hear one. You know, so I try to scout several places because I can tell you I'm one of those running gunners. If I get out there and a bird doesn't gobble early in the morning, I'm jumping in a truck going to another spot.

I'm trying to find that turkey, you know? Yeah. There's a bird out there somewhere gobbling his head off somewhere. So, uh, yeah, we did the same thing here in Eastern Washington. We'd have a few little pieces of private. We could hunt, but we would save it, you know, for a day or a slow day, like, Oh, public's on fire. We don't need to mess with our private birds. And we did a lot of, um, you know, night roosting where we would drive around on the roads as it got dark, you know, let our predator calls out, um, you know, do a bunch of, you know, peacocks, whatever, and locate. And,

These ding Merriams, they move so much on their own. You knew they weren't really getting bumped, but they would be, you know, a ridge or two over and you couldn't hear them or they just decided to roost in a different spot that night. So for us kind of piggybacking on scouting, um,

We did a lot of night locating after our night hunt and then just went and made sure we had two or three, you know, fresh birds to start on in the morning and then, you know, climbed in close and sat up under that tree. And that just ensured that we always have something to go on in the morning. Right. You're going to have some live birds, you know, somewhere around you versus, you know, start in the morning running and gunning, you know, at least three.

at least get you a little bit ahead. Yeah, we do. We do a lot of scouting, even on land we're familiar with. Part of it is we just want to be outside. I mean, we enjoy, you know, this is what we live for, you know, and so we're going to be out there scouting no matter what.

Yep. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time from your busy day. It's about tax time, so I'm sure you're just getting about overwhelmed with everything coming in. So really appreciate you taking time out of your day, Randy, and talking turkey and turkey habitat with us. And I can't wait for a couple more months for me to get to, you know,

join up with you there in Kansas and see if we can't do it again. Well, I'm looking forward to it too. And I know in April there, you guys will be down there and we'll have a good time. So I'll make sure we save a few for you guys. All right. Perfect. I appreciate it, Randy. I don't know if I can get my boy. He's,

He's got this weird phobia of ticks. I don't know if I can get him out there for the Kansas opener. I might try to get him through that here in Washington and see if he can get through it. Then we'll maybe plan for Kansas in the future on a youth opener. I told you. I sent you a whole box of spray. Make sure you put it on his clothes, not on his skin, on his clothes. He won't have any problem with this.

You need to bring your son out to youth season. It'd be a lot of fun. I mean, if we, you know, even get him in a blind or something on a clover field to just watch strutters come across there, he would have a good time. Yeah. I'd love for you to bring him out. Nobody understands, like, the severity of this, like, tick phobia he has, though. So I just, I figured, like, him freaking out in Washington's a lot less...

of an issue than him freaking out in Kansas. And, uh, well, that's what we could do. Like I said, put him in a Polaris. We'll drive him right to the blind. He can crawl in and get right back into Polaris. Perfect. Perfect. Well, yup. Um, all right. Well, thanks a lot, Randy. Take care. And, uh, we'll see you in a couple months. All right. Sounds good.

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