doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Turkeys in Grouse habitat?

Whatever. It certainly would beat what you have for data, no doubt about that.

From personal and professional experience, measuring this sort of thing is not easy, and intuition truly sucks for picking the winning hypotheses.

Geo...thank you.

You may have a bunch of it, but you don�t tend to produce much data when you make judgements about forum participants.

I have read that trail cameras set up to observe grouse nests have photographed turkeys eating the grouse eggs.

Interesting topic. There is this thing on the interweb called "google" that can help. Of course, since these are from fish and game departments you may not believe them.

Bruce

https://ag.tennessee.edu/fwf/Documents/C...populations.pdf

http://www.myminnesotawoods.umn.edu/2018/04/wild-turkey-and-ruffed-grouse-the-mistaken-blame-game/

https://www.wpr.org/wild-turkeys-arent-actually-hurting-ruffed-grouse-populations%2C-expert-says

Remember when there were photos all over the web of whitetails eating quail? That was the answer then.

The downfall of grouse is coincidence with the growth of timber wolves and their spread out of the Arrowhead Country. I'm sure they are to blame.

Huh, that's strange. It wasn't that long ago that you claimed the most significant milestone that took place in the recovery of the bald eagle was the passing of the lead shot ban for waterfowl. However when presented with information showing that the ban was statistically insignificant to the bald eagle's recovery you chose not to believe the data presented from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

I guess we all perform armchair acrobatics, don't we?

Sorry, Flintfan, I have read the data on that one.

Brent, Notice I stated may and could in my questions. I have likely read most studies on the decline of ruffed grouse that have been out in the last ten years or so. I too like real data. The reduction in logging seems to be the most identified reason, OK, I'll buy into that as it is easy to understand and makes perfect sense. The chainsaw is the grouse's friend! I read the above linked article, the UofM one. Nothing there that would indicate a conclusion one way or the other. A lot of info on habitat and diet. That is easy enough to take in and mostly agree with. So why is it a consistent observation that a rising turkey population in ruffed grouse habitat results in a reducing or reduced ruffed grouse population? It would seem that if it's west nile virus the turkeys would be much more susceptible due to their social interactions. For the record I do not think that turkeys intentionally go after grouse, In fact I don't think they "prey" upon anything. I do think that they are opportunists that will eat about anything that they find.

It would not surprise me in the least to one day read that a discovery and been made that, due to a chain of related events or reactions, the decline in quail was directly related to the explosion in the whitetail population. It happened at exactly the same time here.

SRH