- I am spreading what amounts to chicken scratch.
- NARRATOR: Bret Collier is trying to tempt some turkey....
- We'll have birds out here probably tomorrow.
- NARRATOR: ...he's setting out breakfast and setting up a trap,
all to learn more about the birds.
- BRET: We bait up an area and we set up a trail camera.
We set up a big net, and wait and see if the birds
are coming to the bait.
[winch gears clicking]
- NARRATOR: Fortunately, Bret has some help.
- BRET: One, two, three...
- There's a lot of different organizations
that are all pitching in.
Texas A&M, you have Parks and Wildlife, ranch personnel.
- You could not find a better place to have a
collaborative relationship between a university,
a state agency, and a private landowner than right here
where we are in Duval County.
I'm in, all those...
- NARRATOR: This high-tech turkey work is taking place
on the Temple Ranch, two hours south of San Antonio.
Being open to research is just one way the ranch works to
enhance turkey habitat.
- The last few years we've had some pretty rough droughts
here in South Texas and we've lost I'd say up
to 50 to 70% of our hackberries, which is the main roost tree
here in this part of South Texas for turkeys.
So what we're trying to do, we're putting up some artificial
roosts in place of the hackberries that have died
due to drought and they're really getting some good use
out of them.
[tractor passing]
- NARRATOR: More traditional improvements, like brush
management and the use of prescribed fire,
have also helped wildlife here.
But fully understanding what Rio Grande turkey need
requires being aware of their every move.
For Bret and crew, that means some very early workdays,
in this high-rise office of sorts.
- BRET: We get up about 4:45 in the morning, make sure that
everything's working, and then we wait on the birds to come in.
Wow.
That's a good number of hens.
Twenty-five or 30 in sight right now, and there's a
flock of about 15 males.
Look at that.
Our primary focus is to look at the habitat use of Rio Grande
wild turkeys in South Texas.
[turkey gobbles]
- JUSTIN: There's a lot that goes into it but it only
takes just a couple of seconds to happen.
[turkey gobbles]
- BRET: Are the deer gone? I can't see...
When the net goes off our primary goal is always
the safety of the bird.
[net releases]
Drop! Drop! Drop! Drop!
- JUSTIN: It's pretty exciting when that net drops.
- BRET: Any birds on the edge -- back corner!
It is very fast and furious.
Roll 'em up underneath if you need to!
- ROBERT: We try and do it as fast as we can,
and reduce stress on the birds.
- BRET: What took you guys so long?
- ROBERT: It's quite a rodeo sometimes.
[banjo music]
- BRET: Good work, everyone.
We're going to leg band about 10 of them, maybe 12,
and then transmitter the rest.
[box closes]
[rummaging for pliers]
- KYLE MELTON: Putting leg bands on them, putting radio collars
on them, or backpacks in this case.
- BRET: Go ahead and grab one more...
We put a backpack transmitter on them that uh we can use to
follow the birds around.
And currently we've developed some that are using
GPS technology.
- KYLE: Frequency number 151-340.
- BRET: You can use that information to identify habitat.
[transmitter beeping]
- NARRATOR: Traditional tracking technology only allows locating
an animal when a biologist is available to go look for it.
- KYLE: The transmitter emits a beep.
We can receive that beep.
We can hone in on an individual and figure out where it's at
and triangulate and determine what kind of habitat types
they're located in.
Just down the road here.
- NARRATOR: But this requires manpower and does risk
disturbing the birds.
- KYLE: He's on the move.
We're pushing him.
- NARRATOR: Newer GPS technology allows much more location data
to be collected unobtrusively.
- It's not us going out once or twice a day
and saying well there's the bird at 10:00 in the morning
and there's the bird at 4:00 in the afternoon.
We can tell where they're going on their timeframe.
- BRET: We can map daily movements, seasonal movements,
we can identify the core areas the birds like to spend their
time in, um we can really do a lot of neat stuff, and to be
honest we're really probably just scratching the surface
with some of the things we could do with this type
of information.
- Now with this project we're learning where they like
to nest, where they like to roost, where they like
to raise broods.
[turkey flapping]
It's just really helping us out to where we need to work on
certain spots on the ranch.
- BRET: Let her loose.
- NARRATOR: The research is ongoing, but the findings are
already shedding new light on what turkey need to succeed.
- ROBERT: We're happy with how it's going.
[turkey flapping]
- JASON: We're getting better at answering the question
'What do these landowners need to do to really provide
quality habitat?'
I think whenever we're done here in a couple of years
we'll have something really valuable for the people of
South Texas and hopefully Texas in general.