Thunder at Dawn

Thunder cuts through the darkness as the day’s first sunrays manifest on the horizon. The boss tom gobbles and struts on the limb, showing his gallantry to hens on branches around him. In a few minutes, he’ll soar to the ground and do his best to win the day.

It is an incredible experience to witness, but to do that, you need turkeys to roost on, or at least near, your hunting property. Here’s what you need to know.

Turkeys roost in locations where they can satisfy basic needs, including being in walking distances of food and water. But safety is their primary concern while roosting.

“With Easterns, turkeys will use the same roost sites, but usually not several nights in a row,” said Dr. Bret Collier, an LSU associate professor and research wildlife biologist who focuses on wild turkeys. “They kind of move around on the landscape. Predominately, in southern pine forests, birds are looking for areas with open understory for flying down. They might roost in an area that has 10-year-old loblolly pines, or a 50-year-old longleaf. But they need a place to fly up and down.”

Things are different with other turkey subspecies, though, especially those residing in areas with limited roost trees.
“Western birds, such as Rios, tend to roost closer to water because that’s where the roost trees are located,” Collier said. “Riparian corridors are important for good roosting habitat. But Gould’s almost always roost on north-facing slopes. The north-facing slopes tend to have the right vegetation structure.”

Safety aside, it’s also about convenience and other requirements. Because of this, turkeys don’t like heavy limb and leaf cover. Young and thick trees aren’t good roost trees.

Turkeys tend to prefer certain species, such as oaks and pines. Tree composition is even more important. Turkeys need straight, sturdy, horizontal limbs.

Turkeys need open spaces to fly up and back down. Heavy cover on the forest floor prevents this.
Terrain: In areas with hills, turkeys prefer to roost on high ground, often the tops of ridges or about three-quarters up the hillside.

Tornadoes, straight-line winds and, even, lightning can drop roost trees. Roostkilling events aside, weather can push turkeys to temporarily relocate to roosts offering better protection, such as hollows, ravines or heavy, top-level canopies.

Hunters and predators can also impact where turkeys roost. Heavy pressure may provoke turkeys to roost elsewhere.

Turkeys are flock-focused creatures. They like to be close to one another.
A prescribed fire regimen and the removal of woody vegetation in the understory are components of creating roost areas.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix for pulling turkeys onto your property. It’s a slow process. That said, there are things you can do.

“Turkeys are generalists,” Collier said. “They can use a lot of different habitats. But they will avoid young pine forests. These don’t have enough of a horizontal branch structure birds need for roosting.”

Offering the right types of roost trees in optimal locations can encourage more turkeys to use the area.

“Fire and the removal of understory, woody vegetation help,” Collier said. “It isn’t so much hearing. It isn’t smelling. It’s turkeys looking around. Take a sweetgum thicket, for example. It’s a fence line to them. They don’t want to go in there because they can’t see anything.”

In essence, while thick woods are great for deer, turkeys have little interest from a roosting standpoint. They still need good nesting cover, but that isn’t what they need come time to roost. Having some open timber with optimal roost trees helps check the necessary boxes. Offer these and you’re more likely to hear thunder at dawn.