Woodlands, turkeys seem to go together

Special to the Southeast Missouri

A caravan of minivans pulled through a service gate and down a trail leading to a managed pine savanna complex. The passengers are foresters and wildlife biologists headed to a land management workshop.

I couldn't help chuckling as one of the vans pulled off the trail onto an adjoining fireline and parked. I was smiling because the memory of a spring turkey hunt came flooding back to me. The last time I was here was to take advantage of wild turkeys' fondness for the same habitat type. This time I was here to learn more about pine savanna and woodland.

One early morning a couple of springs ago, a public land gobbler roared from nearly the exact spot where that van had stopped. We had set up and hunkered against a large post oak. The turkey had spent almost three hours gobbling, drumming and strutting for a hen who was content to slowly pick her way back and forth along a short stretch of the trail. Wild turkeys and open woodland habitat just go together.

Some Southeast Missouri terrains are glades or open, rocky hillsides and ridge tops. The plants in these areas are grasses and wildflowers with some shrubs and scattered trees. These plants have special adaptations that help them survive dry times.

Prairie grasses are one such plant. They are abundant on glades. They're abundant because prescribed burning keeps trees at a low number and maintains a very rich plant community. Missouri is in a broad transition zone between the forests of the east and the grasslands of the Great Plains. Fires created a shifting boundary between grass and trees for thousands of years across that landscape. It was in this shifting time and place of open stands of trees and park-like woodland stands that turkey populations expanded and found their place in the savanna and forests of the prairie and glacial edge. To this day, turkey still favor open savanna and woodland and will use it throughout the seasons.

Early Ozark explorers, such as Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, noted the openness of the woods and the abundant grasses and wildflowers growing under the oaks. At the time of statehood, nearly a third of Missouri may have been savanna or woodland. Today some remnant high-quality savannas and woodlands persist in the state. But many more acres occur in degraded remnants which can be restored.

Woodlands and savanna are rare and unique Ozark habitats that land managers and landowners are just beginning to understand. But it is no secret wild turkeys and woodlands go together.

Dave Hasenbeck is a private land conservationist for the Missouri Department of Conservation.