Under the Texas Sky · Texas Parks and Wildlife Department

Talking Turkey

·31 min·2 clips

Texas now has 500,000 Rio Grande turkeys after conservation efforts brought them back from near extinction.

This episode of Under the Texas Sky focuses on the conservation, hunting, and culinary preparation of wild turkeys in Texas. Host Cecilia Nasti is joined by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department experts Jason Hardin and Steve Hall, along with hunter and cookbook author Susan Ebert. Jason Hardin details the successful restoration of the Rio Grande subspecies, whose population rebounded from a low of 100,000 birds in 1920 to an estimated 500,000-600,000 today. He contrasts this with the struggling Eastern subspecies, which has only about 10,000 birds in isolated pockets of East Texas. Hardin explains the agency's current five-year statewide turkey banding study, which places bands on over 1,000 birds annually to monitor a harvest rate currently around 3%. He describes past failed restoration attempts using pen-raised birds and outlines a newer "super-stocking" strategy informed by research from Dr. Raul Lopez, releasing 70-80 birds into carefully evaluated habitat. A key insight is that Rio Grande turkeys have hybridized with the small Merriam subspecies population in the Davis Mountains, creating a "Merio" hybrid bird. The episode reveals that successful Eastern turkey restoration now focuses on creating large, continuous "focal landscapes" rather than isolated populations. Steve Hall explains the "magical two weeks" during spring when gobblers are most receptive to calling, a period that varies across Texas. Susan Ebert advises hunters to target two-to-three-year-old birds for the best table fare and describes the "breast sponge," a fat storage organ on a gobbler that acts as a built-in basting blanket during cooking. The tone is educational and conversational, blending biological data, historical context, and practical advice with personal anecdotes. The style is narrative, weaving together conservation science, hunting tactics, and culinary techniques into a cohesive story about the species. Listeners interested in wildlife management, hunting strategies, or cooking wild game would find this episode thoroughly engaging. Those with no interest in hunting or Texas-specific ecology might find the subject matter too niche.

As heard by us

A Texas turkey story that pairs conservation history with practical spring hunting knowledge.

Talking Turkey treats the wild turkey as both a comeback story and a field lesson. Under the Texas Sky traces the bird's decline in Texas, then follows the work of bringing it back and learning how to call it in the field.

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Why you'd press play

For listeners who want wild-turkey ecology and spring-hunt know-how in one Texas story.

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