Thanksgiving Turkeys May Be Harder To Get In Future

Tables across the country may look very different at Thanksgivings in the future if hunting practices don’t change, research has warned.

According to a new paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science, unless turkey hunters change their behaviors, the seasonal bird may become increasingly difficult to harvest in coming years, all thanks to evolution.

This is because a large number of male turkeys were found in the study to be risk-takers, which may lead to them getting killed in great numbers.

However, the remaining turkeys may learn over the generations from their adrenaline-junkie kin, in turn becoming much more difficult for hunters to harvest.

“Hunters should be willing to adapt because the turkeys are also adapting as well. If we continue to harvest individuals that are close to risky areas associated with hunters, turkeys will adjust their behavior and could become harder to detect and harder to harvest,” study co-author Nickolas Gulotta, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, said in a statement.

In the paper, the researchers described how they studied the behavior of 109 wild turkeys across Georgia, observing their risk-taking in response to the presence of hunters and their natural predators.