[playful western music]
- NARRATOR: It's springtime in East Texas
and love is in the air.
This is mating season for the eastern wild turkey.
And turkey lover Terrance Jackson is trying
to call in a gobbler.
[turkey gobbles]
- TERRANCE: Just hearing that sound come at you through
the timber and it's amplified.
[laughter]
They came in quiet and we didn't even know they was over there.
But it just gets the adrenaline going and the heart pumping
and there's just nothing like it.
If it was the season, he'd have been gone.
He'd have been toast.
I've always loved the woods.
And I love East Texas.
I would live out here if I could.
I was raised in East Texas in Henderson County,
a little town called Malakoff, and when I was a youngster,
I was always going and running through the woods.
I guess I just got interested in turkeys when I was a kid
and I was watching
And he did a special on wild turkeys.
[turkey gobbles]
And I was like, those are beautiful birds.
[turkey gobbles]
I started hunting Easterns a long time ago.
[calling turkeys]
My first place that I went on a turkey hunt was public land
and I went there and shot at my first turkey that I called in
and I missed him.
I guess it's been a vendetta ever since I've been after them.
Every year, I'm turkey hunting in the spring.
[turkey call]
I love it when I'm out here and everything's quiet
and just the nature's speaking.
[turkey call]
I go in listening.
On a turkey hunt, that's what it's about.
It's about listening to what's going on around you
and being aware.
Two jakes coming in.
[blue jay calls]
[crow caws]
Yeah, I don't want to come out here and shoot a jake.
Every bird I've taken out here has been a
two or three-year-old bird.
I just like to give them a shot.
I come here every year, so if they make it through
this season, they'll be nice long beards next year.
We'll we know they in here.
See if we can get an old bird talking.
[piano music]
- NARRATOR: The story of the wild turkey in Texas has been
one of feast and famine.
When European settlers started coming to East Texas,
turkeys were thriving.
One early settler wrote the droves of wild turkeys are so
numerous they disturb the traveler with their clucking.
[gunshot]
But those settlers quickly changed the landscape.
[chopping and sawing]
- Around 1925, a hunter could harvest up to
25 turkeys a year.
By the 1940s, there were less than 100 eastern wild turkeys
throughout East Texas.
Over-harvest as well as habitat decline really led to the
demise of the population.
[rocket net blast]
- NARRATOR: In the 1970s, the Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department started a program bringing wild trapped turkeys
from other states to Texas.
- All right girl, see you in Texas.
[flapping]
- NARRATOR: And the program looked promising.
Over the next 20 years, more than 7,000 eastern wild turkeys
were stocked in East Texas.
- Now we're using a super stocking strategy where we
release 80 turkeys onto one area of good habitat
in hopes that the population will grow from there.
[flapping]
- NARRATOR: Thanks to the success of these stockings,
a spring hunting season has reopened in parts of East Texas.
- TERRANCE: Yeah, they traveled through here on the regular.
I see yesterday's tracks and two sets from today.
A couple of birds moving through here.
When I'm on these turkey hunts, basically I love to get away
from the busyness of Houston and work and the crowdedness.
The sound of the birds, the quiet in the morning
and walking through the woods.
It's something that pulls at you.
I can't tell if that's a hog.
Where a hog come through and try to root something or...
yeah, that's hog rooting.
Feral hogs can be detrimental to turkey nests.
Typically, I'm prayerful every time I'm out here
and I've gotten good response.
While we were sitting out and the sun was beaming,
I said a little prayer.
"I'd be much obliged if we got a little cloud cover
and got a little relief,"
and we got more than what we bargained for.
[heavy rainfall]
The rain started coming down pretty hard, so I used my vest
to block as much as I could.
While it was coming down
and I was sitting under that vest drenched,
I was like well, what more can I say.
I don't guess there's much else I can say.
Is this it?
Is it over?
[rain falling]
- NARRATOR: Not quite over.
[hog snorts]
Once the rain let up, something crept up.
[hog snorts]
Snorting...
feral hogs.
- TERRANCE: They're out here rooting up stuff.
That's a danger to them nesting hens out here.
At least pop one, maybe that will run them up out of here.
[gunshot]
[western music]
This will make for some good eating right here.
This has been a long week.
All of the ripping and running and walking miles
through the woods and up hills and downhill and it's just
been a challenge this year.
Even though it was tempting to take those jakes that first day.
With it being Easterns and we not having a lot of them
out here, I just didn't have it in me to pull the trigger.
I hope to get out there and hunt them as two-year-olds next year
and give them a chance to help repopulate the area.
- KYLE: The turkey was here before we were,
and I think it's important that we preserve this area
so that turkeys can thrive here and hopefully
the turkey population will expand into other
linked habitats that are nearby.
- TERRANCE: You win some, you lose some.
We'll give it another shot next year.
When that season opens, I'll be out there
hunting those Easterns.
[turkeys gobble]
See if we can make it happen.
- ANNOUNCER: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Wildlife Restoration Program.