Turkey Bait! (= wholesale destruction!)

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73Chall
Posts: 46
Joined: May 18th, 2017, 7:44 pm
Location: Hickory, NC
Grass Type: Tall Fescue
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Turkey Bait! (= wholesale destruction!)

Post by 73Chall » October 15th, 2017, 11:12 am

Another post to hopefully save anyone with wild turkeys around from mounting expense and aggravation . . .

Sheeeeeeesh! I accept and even relish the fact that this "yardening" pastime (hobby?) is all about learning, Learning and then more LEARNING (large amounts of humility help)!

So, I chalked it up to "Lesson learned" when, January 2017 I passed roadside mountains of the blackest, richest near loam you can imagine, whipped off the road and told the retiring farmer, "Bring me some!"

The lesson was, "Beware what you top-dress with!" It was only after my yard was ravaged by turkeys that I discovered the composted leaves the old farmer was selling were rife with wireworms! (Turns out the old fella was supplementing his family's income by trucking and delivering decomposed mulch from a nearby municipality which had gone unsold for a couple years and in turn composted past the point of mulch to, well, fine "looking" compost, almost soil.)

We are in the foothills to the Smokies and the destruction these turkeys can do has to be seen to be believed (pictures simply do not tell 1/2 the story!) ... for awhile, suspicions were we had feral hogs in the area.

Okay, okay, TWO applications (Spring and Summer) of TWO different types beneficial nematodes specifically targeting ALL forms of grubs and non-earthworms later and 100% guaranteed the sod samples tested are confirmed: yard is ZERO grubs!

So, I finish a relatively massive container-xeriscaping project in August and I wind up with 7 or 8 bags of commercially packaged cow manure left over. I had been working this stuff a wheelbarrow at a time into a specific container mix for a week and so I was intimately positive there were no grubs in the manure.

I opted not to throw the 7 or 8 bags back into the pickup bed and with receipt return the bags, instead, mixing the bags with peat and top-dressing some hell spots, here and there, on a particularly-always challenging slope of fescue and bluegrass.

HUGE MISTAKE!

I'd forgotten all I'd known from turkey hunting friends who cagily let other hunters stream past them to the woods while they stake out livestock areas (with owners' permission, of course).

Turns out turkeys cannot resist the smell of manure and are driven to "turn it over" whether they smell or find anything to actually eat under it or not.

I wish the pictures could show how badly they are tearing the slope up -- to the point very serious erosion within 50 yards of a freshwater river is now a very, very serious concern -- time and time again.

It's such a problem that reflective flags didn't faze 'em and even bird netting stretched across an area at least 10 square yards is not stopping them!

It's gonna put a hole in our budget this month but, the cost of a dozen attempts at reseeding now warrant actually going out and buying a couple hundred feet of 2-foot tall 1" poultry fencing and stakes to try and fence off the area before it gets to cold to even get seed started on the slope (which is crazy because, as one neighbor put it, "Lawd, that is the finest soil I have seen, in a lonnnng time!"

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ken-n-nancy
Posts: 2571
Joined: July 17th, 2014, 3:58 pm
Location: Bedford, NH
Grass Type: Front: KBG (Bewitched+Prosperity); Side: Bewitched KBG; Back: Fine Fescue Blend + Prosperity
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Experienced

Re: Turkey Bait! (= wholesale destruction!)

Post by ken-n-nancy » October 17th, 2017, 12:11 pm

Ouch! Hadn't known that about turkeys! Learn something new every day...

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