Duke family legacy continues mission

WEST POINT ? Selling traps and buying fur have been a mission for Bill Duke’s family since the 1930s. Their operation on Brame Avenue continues right here today. As they approach a hundred years in business, the opportunity to help wild turkey populations by managing nest predator populations has come to the forefront of the job.

There is still a commercial market for furs, a number of species of which the Duke company buys each December, January and February, when Mississippi’s trapping seasons are in their prime. For many outdoors enthusiasts though, the chance to help more wild turkey eggs hatch and more hatchling poults make it into the population is, by far, the more valuable reward.

Mississippi’s trapping season opens Nov. 1 and closes March 15. That coincides perfectly with an opportunity to aid turkey habitat through a temporary reduction of the critters that give turkeys the most trouble. Raccoons, foxes, opossums and bobcats, specifically, are a bane to the turkey-egg-hatching process.

“Experienced outdoorsmen who come new to trapping already have many of the skills necessary to do well at it,” Duke said. “Trapping requires paying attention to signs and elements of nature that make them much more fully engaged. They often find they enjoy the trapping process as much or more than other pursuits and, of course, as they’re doing it, they’re helping reduce pressure on wild turkey populations. It’s not uncommon to see the difference that makes in only a year’s time. When they get involved in trapping and also cooperate with adjacent landowners, they see even greater benefits in their part of the country.”

Studies from Iowa and many other states tracking the life cycles of turkeys have found huge percentages of turkey nests destroyed every spring, either before eggs could hatch or before newly-hatched turkeys were large enough to flee.

Dr. Grant Woods, a biologist, hunter and huge proponent for fur trapping to support turkey conservation, shares his experiences on his own farm near Branson, Missouri, a tract he likes to call “the proving grounds.”

“There are a lot of studies that show, in any given group of birds being studied, 70 percent of turkey nests are impacted by predation,” Woods said.

Despite abundant habitat that was being ever improved on his property, Woods noted a sharp decline in turkey numbers on the land under his direct control.

“We had good nesting cover,” he said. “We did prescribed burns. We cut hundreds of acres of cedars, but our turkey population was getting really low. So, we started conducting more concentrated trapping efforts.”

Over the past decade, Woods and his crew have worked to trap and remove predators every winter. This past year was their most productive yet, with 115 critters taken out on his 1,500-acre tract.

“You know what?” Woods says. “Our turkeys started coming back.”

Woods points to a decline in fur trapping’s appeal as a directly-correlating cause of the predators’ boom and the birds’ bust.

“Twenty years ago, Missouri had the best turkey population in America,” Woods said. “Everyone who loved turkey hunting wanted to come to Missouri to hunt because of the abundant opportunity that existed. Not coincidentally, at that same time, we were selling 200,000 trapping permits per year.

“Last year, the state of Missouri sold 6,000 trapping permits. The number of people trapping is much lower and the population of nest predators reflects that.”

What is needed

On average, a turkey hen will lay 10 eggs over the course of 10 days. Once that’s done, they’ll sit on the nest and incubate the eggs for 28 days. Once they’re hatched, poults usually need to be 14 days old before they can fly well enough to get off the ground and into a tree to roost overnight. That adds up to an average of 52 nights on the ground in total helplessness for every new turkey.

“We’ve found that if we can remove raccoons and opossums during that timeframe, we can really help turkey poults,” Woods said. “This concept is nothing new to duck people. Delta Waterfowl has found the same thing, removing skunks and foxes right before ducks nest in the prairie pothole region of northern Canada. They’ve found a direct correlation between how many nest predators they remove and how many duck eggs successfully hatch and, ultimately, how many new ducks eventually fly away.”

Even in scenarios where the results are only anecdotal, it’s only logical to see the direction nest predator removal helps turkey populations take. Each nest predator removed is one more that won’t be eating another single turkey egg anytime, anywhere.

Turkeys For Tomorrow, a nonprofit conservation group, is supporting scientific studies that are documenting this in a way that will supply hard data from which hunters, land managers and state wildlife officials may make informed decisions about season dates, bag limits and predator reduction programs. Their mission is to save wild turkeys through sustainable, science-based solutions. Sharing information about the difference trapping can make is one way they’re making that happen.

“We’re not trying to exterminate raccoons or any population,” Woods said. “We only want to achieve a balance of populations that let both predator and prey species thrive.”

Management trapping is simply a matter of reducing predator numbers at strategic times of the year. For turkey hunters, that means trapping as close to the nesting season as possible.

Most predators are born in the late spring or early summer, and the young-of-the-year disperse in the fall. In February, most of the predators on the landscape are mature adults, and many have established territories. The goal is to remove enough of them to create a temporary void in the areas where turkeys normally nest, long enough for a few extra nests to survive.

In Mississippi, anyone holding a hunting license may trap turkey-nest-raiding species from Nov. 1 through March 15 without limit, covering the ideal interval when a draw-down of predator species can benefit turkey numbers the most.

To learn about what’s being done to help turkey numbers recover, visit turkeysfortomorrow.org.