Wild turkeys are a common sight across North America, and understanding their dietary habits is crucial for both hunters and wildlife enthusiasts. These adaptable birds are true omnivores, consuming a vast array of foods that vary depending on the season, habitat, and regional availability.
What Wild Turkeys Eat: An Overview
Wild turkeys are opportunistic foragers, meaning they'll eat almost anything they can find. Their diet includes grasses, invertebrates, forbs, seeds, tubers, nuts, and fruits, as well as the occasional small mammal, reptile, or amphibian. While plants constitute the bulk of their annual diet, invertebrates, especially insects and grubs, are vital sources of protein.
Regional Variations in Diet
The five subspecies of wild turkeys in North America exhibit some regional dietary differences due to the availability of specific food sources.
Eastern Wild Turkeys
Eastern wild turkeys inhabit every state east of the Mississippi River. They key in on hard mast such as acorns and beechnuts, along with seeds from native grasses and the flowers of herbaceous plants. In the Midwest, they are especially fond of waste grains and other agricultural food sources, including soybeans, corn, and wheat.
Osceola Wild Turkeys
Found exclusively in Florida, Osceola turkeys thrive in swamps and open pastures. Those in the swamp tend to eat more frogs, salamanders, and other small amphibians, while dryland birds focus more on grubs and acorns.
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Rio Grande Wild Turkeys
Rio Grande turkeys are native to the semi-arid southern Great Plains states. They depend heavily on oaks, pecans, and other mast trees, along with insects and a variety of grasses. Hydration is also crucial for Rios in arid states, which they obtain from surface water and succulent plants.
Merriam's Wild Turkeys
In Western landscapes, a Merriam's diet and environment are both dominated by ponderosa and other pine species. Pine seeds are a staple on a Western bird’s dinner plate. Mature pine trees offer great roosting cover, produce edible hard mast, and often facilitate a good environment for turkeys to bug.
Gould's Wild Turkeys
The rarest of the five subspecies, Gould's turkeys are found in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico. Their diet is similar to Rio Grande turkeys, including various grasses and cactus, with the occasional lizard.
Seasonal Shifts in Diet
Aside from regional availability, the time of year also dictates what wild turkeys eat. This is because some foods are more plentiful at certain times, and turkeys change their habits along with the seasons.
Winter
Hard mast provides a high-energy, high-protein food source to get the birds through the colder months. In agricultural areas, waste grain or unharvested crops take on added importance, as do food plot crops on managed lands. When acorns are plentiful in the fall and winter months, turkeys can often be found in and around hardwoods.
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Spring
As turkeys emerge from winter, they shift to clearings and open areas, which provide fresh shoots, grasses, and other green forage. Tender grass shoots and buds are springtime favorites, and Merriam’s turkeys often feed exclusively on grasshoppers at certain times of the year. Female turkeys need a safe place to hide and sit on their eggs for a month. Turkeys are drawn to fresh green vegetation and showy wildflowers in the springtime.
Summer
Summer is a plentiful time for hungry turkeys. A wide variety of edible plants are available, from blackberries to fresh buds and flower bulbs. Insect populations also peak during this season and play an even more important role in a turkey’s diet. Poults, in particular, need a steady diet of bugs for healthy growth during their first few months of life. A typical poult’s diet will consist of 75 percent insects or more during their first summer.
Fall
With the greens dried up and weed seeds diminishing, turkeys turn their attention to what is readily available. They also sense that winter’s coming, and it’s time to fatten up. For turkeys, as for deer as well, the best natural source of fat and carbohydrates is hard mast. Late summer is a time of bounty. As grasses, sedges and forbs cease growing, they go to seed. Meanwhile, soft mast can be found ripening on the vine and the stem. By late summer, the juvenile birds’ diet is nearly reversed, with plant matter often making up 75-80 percent.
The Importance of Insects
Invertebrates, especially insects, are a critical food source for wild turkeys. They provide essential protein, particularly for hens producing eggs and poults during their first few months of life. Turkeys forage for insects by scratching and pecking at the ground.
Food Plots and Habitat Management
While wild turkeys eat a diverse diet, hunters and land managers can supplement their food sources through food plots and habitat management.
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Food Plots
Food plots can play a valuable role in supplementing what wild turkeys eat, especially when pickings are slim during the fall and winter months. Turkeys and deer like to eat a lot of the same things, including oats, clover, soybeans, and corn. Native wildflowers and bunch grasses are also good additions for turkey-specific food plots, providing cover for the birds. Chufa, an exotic variety of the native nutsedge, is another popular crop planted specifically for wild turkeys.
Habitat Management
Maintaining a diversity of habitats is crucial for supporting wild turkey populations. This includes providing grit sources, shelter, and roost trees, along with a variety of food sources. Planting native oaks, beechnuts, pecans, hickory nuts, crabapples, and hackberries can provide turkeys with the natural foods they've consumed for thousands of years. Leaving some of autumn's fallen leaves instead of throwing them all away provides habitat for the small animals that are a key part of a turkey's diet.
The Role of Water
Hydration is also extremely important to wild turkeys, especially in arid states. While they get most of this from surface water, turkeys also hydrate by eating succulent plants, which contain more water than other plants.
Things to avoid
Feeding wild turkeys in residential areas, intentionally or unintentionally, is discouraged because it causes them to lose their natural fear of people and can cause them to act aggressively. Supplemental feeding concentrates turkeys into small areas where they are more susceptible to predators and transmission of parasites and diseases.