Turkey Poult Survival II – Dusting by Grant Woods
How many turkey poults hatched where you hunt? It can be tough to monitor poult survival. An easy technique is to place a trail camera near a dusting area.
Turkeys often dust daily especially during the summer. They dust to remove external parasites and loose feathers. Turkeys molt or replace their feathers in a relatively slow process. They can fly throughout the molting process. Because they don’t lose all their feathers at once, the loose ones they shed often get stuck amongst the remaining feathers. Dusting helps remove the loose feathers from their body.
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Knowing that turkeys need to dust almost daily and that dusting areas are relatively easy to find makes these sites an ideal place to monitor turkey populations. Even though young poults may not be molting they will dust to remove external parasites and/or simply to follow the hen.
This knowledge makes it easy to monitor turkey populations by using a trail camera near turkey dusting areas. If you are curious about the number of poults where you hunt, simply use some trail cameras to monitor turkey dusting areas. It won’t take long to learn a lot about the local turkey population!
Growing Deer and Turkeys together,
Grant
