Written by: Chandler Strickland

Edits by: Pierce Young

Prescribed fire plays an essential role in creating and sustaining quality habitat in pine and upland hardwood systems. Wild turkeys are a species that rely on the use of regular prescribed fire to maintain their ideal habitat. A question that always arises with turkeys and the use of prescribed fire in MS is “Will burning in Spring during turkey nesting season going to negatively impact turkey populations”?

To answer this question there are many factors that come into play. 

First, it is important to decide what your management goals are for the property. Is the goal to manage primarily for wild turkeys, or combination of game and non-game species? If your goal is to sustain and enhance your turkey population then the use of prescribed fire is necessary. 

Secondly, what are the main goals in using prescribed fire and would burning during Spring help accomplish those goals. If many areas that you are wanting to burn have encroaching young tree saplings, causing less-than-ideal nesting areas for turkeys, a "growing season" burn can produce better results. If you miss burning this year, would the area be too difficult to burn next year due to the age of the vegetation. 

Thirdly, if days during the year are limited to when you can conduct a prescribed fire, taking advantage of when burning conditions arise that match when you are available to burn are important.

Here is what we know from research regarding the effect prescribed fire has on nesting.

  • Maintaining early successional habitat using prescribed fire is beneficial for both nesting and brood rearing long-term. 
  • Not all nests are laid at the same time. In a Georgia study, a small percentage of nests (<12%) were destroyed by fire in the short-term. Of these nests that were destroyed 75% of hens re-nested. Hens may also re-nest up to 3 times. 
  • Usually, if an area needs to be burned it has become less ideal, or will soon become less ideal, for hens to nest in unless the area is burned.
  • Without optimal ground cover from disturbance, such as prescribed fire, hens and nests are more susceptible to predation. 
  • Turkeys avoid nesting in areas that have not been burned in more than 3-5 years. Hens choose to nest in areas of plant communities that are 2-3 years post burn. 

Even with all this knowledge there are still ways to decrease the risk of damaging nests with prescribed fire. 

  • Seasonality - Prescribed burning during any time of the year will help wild turkeys. Timing your fire in the dormant season, early-Spring, late-Summer, or Fall can help reduce the risk of damaging nests. Although, the benefits of using fire during the growing season to promote forb growth and inhibit undesirable woody growth should not be overlooked. This can have much better benefits long-term on turkey populations.
  • Frequency - Burning every 1-3 years will keep ample amounts of nesting habitat on the property and enhance the usage of a property for the purpose of nesting. It is ideal to burn different adjacent areas in different years, to ensure that there remains areas of the property unburned each year for nesting.
  • Patch size - Burning small blocks (50 acres or less) at a time can decrease the risk of damaging nests as opposed to burning larger areas such as 500+ acres at a time. Also, if possible, checkerboarding burn blocks across the property with different frequencies will increase the diversity of plant communities and decrease the risk of damaging nests due to preference of forage conditions for nesting hens.  

In conclusion, science shows little to no population level impacts on wild turkey nesting using prescribed fire. In fact, it shows the opposite. The benefits of early successional vegetation promoted by frequent fire outweighs the minimal potential risk of damaging wild turkey nests long-term. Landowners and land managers should continue to take advantage prescribed fire as a great management tool to enhance your property for wild turkeys. Burning during a less ideal time of the year is better than not burning at all. 

For more information on wildlife management visit our webpage at 

mdwfp.com/wildlife-management-info