Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Matt Harrison: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, Matt Harrison, and today I have with me two very, very special and smart individuals, Dr. Mike Chamberlain and also Dr. Mike Brasher. I have two doctors. I feel totally out of place. It's like I've said before, I have a PhD. I'm poor, hungry, and determined. But that's about all I have to my name. But we are so excited to be here and have Dr. Mike Chamberlain with us in studio. Dr. Mike Brasher is also a co-host of the DU podcast. But we have some extremely, extremely exciting news that I'm probably most pumped about than I've ever been at Ducks Unlimited when I heard that this was a possibility, and then it came to fruition, and now we get to share it with you guys. But I'm not gonna be the one to say it. I'm gonna pass it over to Dr. Mike Brasher. to talk about what it is that we're introducing.

Mike Brasher: And then I'm going to toss it to Dr. Mike Chandler so he can actually tell us a little bit more about it. But yeah, this came together really quick over the past few months. Super exciting to be part of this and listeners of the podcast or anybody that's kind of associated with Ducks Unlimited will have heard about Duck DNA. over… Everybody probably knows what's going to happen now. I haven't heard about Doug DNA over the past few years, and we've had tremendous success. We had tremendous engagement, participation by thousands, literally thousands of hunters across the US. And we are proud to be partnering on the announcement and delivery of Wild Turkey DNA.

Mike Chamberlin: Yes, sir.

Mike Brasher: So this is something that So Mike and I actually overlapped at Mississippi State two and a half decades ago.

Mike Chamberlin: Yes, many years ago.

Mike Brasher: So we know one another and have known one another for a long time. I've kept up with Mike's career and what he was doing and I guess you had come into contact with Phil and got to know Dr. Phil Obradsky as a result of some genetics work that you were doing and y'all having the conversation. All I know is I got a text message from Phil one night, and he said, hey, just got off the phone with Chamberlain. He's interested in pursuing something for turkeys, similar to what we did with Duck DNA. Is this something that we'd want to be part of? I said, absolutely. We would love to be part of this. So Wild Turkey DNA, I think the logo was shown there a few minutes ago, and it was a, So the logo in itself is a collaborative effort. I will acknowledge here all the people involved in this, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited, the Wild Turkey Lab, the Low Country Game Bird Foundation, and the University of Texas, El Paso. And we have jumped in both feet all the way up to our chin right now in trying to get this implemented in time for spring turkey season. There are some states that already have open season right now. But we're gonna be, we'll talk about the kind of formal release date of this. I guess this is part of it. When people hear this, it will be live in some sense. But I have to give credit to the folks that contributed to this logo here. So on our side, Katie Tucker, who folks would have seen on an earlier episode, contributed some creative thought and design to parts of this. And then on your side,

Mike Chamberlin: Pete Mueller with the National Wild Turkey Federation. Yep.

Mike Brasher: So just first up, you know, what a fantastic logo, Matt. Whenever you saw it a minute ago, you were like, holy smokes.

Matt Harrison: Like I saw it on the screen. We were talking about it and I was like, how have I not seen this new logo? And then I peeked over and I saw Chris's screen over there and I was like. I've got to have that sticker.

Mike Brasher: We've got to get stickers first. So, all right, what is this about? We've talked about duck DNA at length on numerous episodes where we're looking at issues such as the game farm mallard genes kind of getting into wild mallard populations, hybridization of different duck species, and some of the cool things we're learning there is building a massive genomic database for mallards in North America, along with a number of other little pieces of an equation that can be answered with additional work down the road. But from a wild turkey DNA standpoint, you got some pretty interesting questions that you're wanting to look at as well.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah, for sure. This literally started Super Bowl Sunday. You know, literally. This was a phone call between Phil Labretsky and I, who's collaborating on some other genetics work that I'm doing. The conversation came up, like I said, Phil, if I gave you a sample of a bird, from a bird, could you tell me whether it's a wild bird, whether it's a hybrid of two wild birds. Could you tell me if there's domestic genetics involved?" And he said, of course I can. And I said, well, here's why I'm asking, because I kind of have two interests that I've been looking at for many years. One of them is You see a lot of instances on social media of wild turkeys, we think that are wild turkeys, that have odd plumage, such as color varieties and different odd plumage characters. And we really don't understand the origin of those birds. There's never really been an assessment of color phases in wild turkeys or the possibility that they are true and exist. We don't understand the origin of a lot of these birds that you see. And so that was my initial curiosity. And as Phil and I talked, I said my bigger curiosity is there hasn't been a range-wide assessment of genetics on wild turkeys in over 20 years. The genetics field has evolved so rapidly that I think it's past time for us to explore some of these bigger questions that are facing managers, whether it be genetic diversity or hybridization issues. And so that's kind of where the conversation started and then literally it was It was you getting that text from Phil and him texting me back and saying, I'm going, why don't you and Mike talk? And what, five weeks later, here we are.

Mike Brasher: It's like within two weeks, we as a collective said, Yeah, we can do this. So from Ducks Unlimited standpoint, we are happy to share what we have learned through True Duck DNA in terms, and Ducks Unlimited will be part of this collaborative project through the administration of some of the the interface between hunters and then the science collaboration, you, NWTF and Phil. So our team is going to sort of play that role of using some of the technology, some of the application, web application that we developed for Duck DNA. We're going to modify all that to make it custom for Wild Turkey DNA. But then our people, our staff are going to be the ones kind of manning some of the I guess some of the emails, interacting the day to day and interacting with the hunters that we select to participate in this. And yeah, so we're, we're absolutely thrilled to be able to, to help with that. We've had our chiefs involved. You, you arrived here today and we met, you met a lot of our, our leadership up front and it was cool. and walking around the building with you and seeing how excited people got to talk turkey science, turkey management, turkey regulations, turkey harvest with you. I mean, we were probably walking the halls, you were talking to people for like an hour or so. Point is, I mean, this is important to Ducks Unlimited because many, many, many of our members are also obsessive turkey hunters. That guy right there being one of them. And our conservation work overlaps these birds as well in a lot of ways. Not every place, but in a lot of places, the work that we do for ducks benefits turkeys. A lot of the work the NWTF does benefits for turkeys, will benefit ducks in some ways. So there's a lot of overlap, and it was just a natural thing for us to want to partner on.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah, and from my perspective, my objectives, the things that I want to try to accomplish Doug DNA is already, there's already a model there. So for me personally, and for the Wild Turkey Lab, it was really a no brainer. It's what, you know, why reinvent or even attempt to reinvent the wheel when you've already done it well. And so, you know, our familiarity with one another and, and just the realization that the way to do this is to, is to be collaborative and, and enter into this partnership that has implications at literally a continental scale, to me it was a no-brainer.

Mike Brasher: I remember, and you have done the same thing, but two or three weeks ago I was sitting, probably about three weeks ago, I was sitting at home in my recliner because one of the very first things that needed to happen was we needed to send a proposal to NWTF and to Wild Turkey Lab to kind of figure out what it is that we're, how this would look on our end. And I remember sitting up at night until about 1130, just got to typing out this little proposal based on on all that we had learned, all that we had done and learned through DuckDNA, from where I was that night sitting down typing all this out to where we were two years ago with DuckDNA, oh, it's just miles apart.

Matt Harrison: Oh, for sure.

Mike Brasher: Because we had already answered so many of the questions and encountered and taken care of just hundreds of different decisions.

Matt Harrison: Yeah.

Mike Brasher: happy to do it.

Matt Harrison: I'm super just excited to see too because the feedback that we have gotten through DuckDNA is unbelievable. Just through social media alone like every time we post every Wednesday evening a photo of the results of a waterfowl species and the percentage the numbers are just like people comment and share and like and like it's some of our most engaging posts. So people want this. Like, people are engaging with this. So, whenever Dr. Mike pulled me in his office a little while back, he's like, Matt, this is a possibility. I was like, no way. And like, I just had some questions. So, I've got some questions for you because I'm sure some of our listeners and viewers have these same type of questions the same way as I did. So, Of course, you know, it's the first year, first time that we'll be doing this. So how will the selection process go for somebody? Because there's going to be a ton of people out there saying, well, I want this because, you know, I know that I've already got this bird on camera and if I kill it, you know, I know that I want to find out exactly what it is. So how will that selection process go of selecting a certain individual and also how many samples will be in the first year?

Mike Chamberlin: So yeah, this first year we're focusing mostly on these birds that have odd plumage, right? So you harvest a bird, it has odd looking plumage, white, black, red, something that is vastly different than how typical wild turkey looks. You will just go to wildturkeydna.com and you will register to receive

Mike Brasher: I think it'll say request a kit.

Mike Chamberlin: And now will you have to submit a photo of your turkey too? You will. So, you'll go through the registration process. You will be asked some very basic questions. You know, your name, your address, because obviously you have to be mailed the kit. It will ask you the general kind of general area that you harvested the bird in. It does not have to be specific to the site. I'm sensitive to that as a turkey hunter. You'll be asked a couple of other basic questions, was an adult or juvenile, you know, Tom or Jake type of thing. And then you'll be asked to upload several images of the bird and you'll be shown some examples of what those images need to look like. One of them is the standard, I'll call it the turkey hunter hero pose because I take pictures like that, you know, with the The bird laying there with the fan out and the wings spread. And then the second image that we are requesting is simply the bird laying on its side, which some state agencies are now requiring when you check your bird in the field. So that through this image, I can see the beard, I can see the legs, I can see the wing coloration, which you may not get in that other image. And so I'm hoping between those two, as we've vetted this amongst ourselves, and I've sent these images to dozens and dozens of turkey hunters that are close friends of mine, I think we'll capture with just two images pretty much the plumage of the bird.

Mike Brasher: I'm going to back up just a little bit here because this is one of the things that Mike and I and others have been thinking hard about is exactly how is this going to work. And so Mike described that someone shoots an interesting looking bird. They'll go to wildturkeydna.com. There will be a link that says request a kit. When they click that, That will direct them to send an email to Katie and they will provide whatever information they requested, a photo. And I think they'll just have to request a kit and submit a photo. And then you and Katie are going to kind of go back and forth to determine if that person is going to be accepted into the project. And then all that other stuff will happen. Yeah.

Mike Chamberlin: And that's basically just… We're still early.

Matt Harrison: Five weeks ago, it was, can we do this?

Mike Brasher: It is a little bit different. It's very similar. We decided it's going to run very similar to what we do for the hybrid submissions for duck DNA, because that's the way that happens. For the regular aspect of duck DNA, Remember, we had like 3,500 or 4,000 people apply to get a kit, you know, for one of these kits that were sent out at the beginning of the season, yada, yada, yada. This is a little bit different because we want 75 kits or 75 vials and we want to make sure we get 75 samples.

Matt Harrison: And that was my next question is how many sample kits will go out, because we haven't talked about that yet.

Mike Chamberlin: We budgeted this year for 75. Okay. And honestly, that was, it wasn't kind of a back of the napkin calculation. It was really kind of, okay, what is a realistic number for what we might possibly be able to obtain, because We don't really, and that's part of why we're doing the research, I don't really know what the prevalence of these odd plumage birds will be. You know, you see quite a few images every year on social media, but I don't know how… how many of these birds are being harvested. So we thought 75 was realistic, and that was our target. Yeah.

Mike Brasher: Do you want to show some of these? I have some of the images.

Mike Chamberlin: Yes, absolutely.

Mike Brasher: So I'm not a turkey guy. I'm not a turkey ecologist. I only started turkey hunting three years ago. So I'm learning. I'm having to learn a whole lot of stuff. I even have some photos in here of the different subspecies. But if we can go to some of these images here. And Mike, you can… What am I looking at here?

Mike Chamberlin: Well, we don't fully know. So there's several possibilities that you have with birds that look like this. You could be looking at a wild turkey that has odd plumage. You could be looking at a heritage variety turkey, which is a number of varieties that originally were developed by crossing domestic birds with wild birds. Or you could be looking at something in between. You could be looking at birds that are living in the wild but are genetically intergressed. There's been breeding amongst wild birds and less than wild birds. So that's what we want to understand. And we also want to understand How common is this and what do the birds… So if we were to take one of the birds in this image and test it genetically, what would we find? That's what we're seeking because images like that show up every year from hunters that are… I mean, these birds are living in the wild, right?

Mike Brasher: Yeah, but now those birds that I just showed, those four, what… What heritage breeds are these?

Mike Chamberlin: Do you know? Well, the ones in the foreground are like Bourbon Reds or Bourbon Buffs, and admittedly, I don't know all the varieties of these. from talking with folks that breed these birds, there are quite a few, you know, more than a handful. And so, yeah.

Matt Harrison: One thing we talked a little bit about before the podcast episode two was, you were talking about how genetics can skip. a couple generations whenever it comes to a certain species, or sorry, not certain species, but some of the plumage and stuff like that in the turkey. And, you know, one of the things that I found so fascinating is, like, you could, you know, literally just skip a couple generations of a turkey and then those genes show back up. Yes.

Mike Chamberlin: I'm not a geneticist, which is why Phil Labretsky is involved in this. But from what I can understand from talking with people is, It's not uncommon in turkeys to have recessive traits, which a lot of these colors are recessive traits. To have those traits skip generations and then suddenly appear, because you kind of catch a certain male breeding with a certain female, and they may both have that recessive trait, and then suddenly it gets expressed in one bird or several birds. That may be, this is complete hypothesis on my part, which is why this work is going about. It's just, okay, so does that occur? And if it does, what do those birds look like? And if these traits do skip generations, then could that be a partial, at least, explanation for why You talk to people and they say, well, we haven't seen a bird that has, for instance, white plumage in 10 years. And then suddenly there was one that seemed like it popped up out of the ground. And is that a partial explanation for that? And I'm also curious, I talk to people quite frequently that often see these traits in their wild flocks. So for instance, I talked to a gentleman yesterday while I was headed to the airport to come here who said, I see birds, I see particularly hens, I see one or two every year in my general area. And this gentleman lives out in the Midwest and he said, To be frank with you, Mike, it's not… I don't pay any attention to it anymore. I see these birds quite frequently and so that has me thinking, okay, so what's the origin of those birds?

Mike Brasher: Do you think… And you may not know, I'm not sure how much you've looked into this, but so game farm mallards, we know they're released for the purpose of hunting, of shooting. Do you have any indication that people may be releasing these intentionally or are these just kind of wandering off from people's backyards? Could it be a little bit of both? Do we not know?

Mike Chamberlin: From the conversations I've had with folks that raise particularly heritage birds, is it's very likely a combination of those two. From the conversations I've had, it's not uncommon at all for wild turkeys to come into farmsteads and interact or attempt to interact with these birds. It's also not uncommon for a bird to escape and to end up down the road in a wild flock. And if that's You know, if that's the case, then that that is partially an explanation.

Matt Harrison: I can think of I was while you were saying that I was calculating in my brain. I can think of four places that I have turkey hunted that there was a. raised turkey in a pen or either roaming around in the yard. So, I mean, that's fascinating to think about, you know, if that turkey's going out in the woods an acre over, two acres over, where there's clearly a lot of turkeys, you know, are they mingling and are they… I mean, how does that work?

Mike Chamberlin: I've never even really, you know… I think it's important to… Because I've been on a hunt where an odd plumage bird was harvested.

Mike Brasher: And from talking with… Have you ever harvested one?

Mike Chamberlin: No. No, I haven't. But on this particular hunt, you know… my buddy was fired up to shoot this bird because they had been seeing this bird for seven years. Wow! And so, this bird was feral. And I think that's important to understand is, this is not like a game farm turkey. It got out and stayed out. And I'm kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit. If that's what we're seeing, at least in some of these instances, that it's a bird that's traced to one of these varieties, if that's the case, then the question is, well, how is that occurring? And if one of the possible mechanisms is these birds are just escaping or whatever, and they're mingling with turkeys, then That's consistent with what some hunters that I know and my friends' situation, because I was there, is that bird had become a wild bird. We don't know that it was a wild turkey. but it was a bird living in the wild that was living with birds that looked like wild turkeys. He just looked different.

Matt Harrison: Yeah.

Mike Chamberlin: And that's interesting to me because when I go back and look at the early text that were the foundation for who I ended up becoming as a scientist, I read these books and I looked at these sources and I was fascinated by the fact that you had turkeys that looked different than other turkeys. And which is similar, I'm a passionate duck hunter too, and I've never killed a duck that looked like a hybrid between two other birds. And I've always thought that was so interesting, incredibly interesting, that that occurs in the wild. And so as a young scientist, I read these sources and I thought to myself, this is incredibly interesting to me. facilitates a bird looking that different, right, in nature. And then as, you know, as I progressed, I've realized that we've never really dug into this. And so now, you know, with DuckDNA and my collaboration with Phil, now just seemed like the opportunity that Let's try, let's see, let's, and we've talked about this today is, this project literally is the microcosm for, we can either talk about it or we can do it. And because in a few weeks, it was like, we went from talking about it on Super Bowl Sunday to doing it on the Monday. I mean, it was literally that quick.

Matt Harrison: Yeah.

Mike Chamberlin: We got you rolling. Yeah. Go ahead, Dr. Mike.

Mike Brasher: Well, I was going to, I was going to see if we could go back to the video or to the graphic here because this is about more than just these interesting looking birds, and we'll talk about some of that, but I did want to show a few more of these heritage breeds. I did a lot of sleuthing online here over the past few days, because I have no clue what any of these things are. So we got a French turkey. Ever heard these names? French turkey. What is that? Dendon? Dandon? Um, a buff, uh, black Turkey bourbon Royal Palm. I've heard you mention that one a couple of times. Is that, is that what we were looking at earlier? You said, and then there's a bourbon red Narragansett, the white Holland, and then the bronze and are most of these. The heritage breeds, I mean, it's male and female, but are males more popular than females? What do you know about any of that?

Mike Chamberlin: That's not your… Honestly, I don't know. I'll be honest with you, Mike. Until recently, this was something that I was interested in and I saw myself at some point, I said, one of these days, one of these days, I really want to dig into this. But I'm not a heritage breeder. I don't raise these birds. I've spoken with enough people that do, that have, to be quite frank with you, have been so forthcoming and so helpful and so informative and enlightening to me when I listen, when I try to understand their interest in these birds and they're beautiful. You look at these birds and if you're the type of person that that is interested in these types of birds, they're stunning.

Mike Chamberlin: They're beautiful.

Matt Harrison: One thing I'm interested in, too, with this is, you talked just a minute ago, Dr. Mike, about how that one turkey, for instance, was seven years old, right? Now, correct me if I'm wrong, what is the average, give or take, of an Eastern age? Like, what is life expectancy for an Eastern turkey?

Mike Chamberlin: It really depends on hunting pressure and activity.

Matt Harrison: Okay.

Mike Chamberlin: In lightly pressured or populations that have very low harvest and low pressure. It's not uncommon. We've had banded birds that were recovered, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years later.

Matt Harrison: I wonder what the lot, like, of course they're not hunted, but, like, farm-raised turkeys, are they, you know, will they typically live longer? Like, are they, will they? We don't know. Don't know. That would be.

Mike Chamberlin: Once they, so, so, if, if the hypothesis is Okay, that at least some of these birds that are being harvested are traced back to heritage varieties. Do they have differential survival as wild birds once they enter into wild flocks? I don't know.

Matt Harrison: That was my thinking. It's like, if those farm rays, you know, get interchanged with the wild, does that, the genetics, will they live long? Like, it's just, it's crazy to think about all these different scenarios.

Mike Brasher: Does any state allow the harvest of hen turkeys?

Matt Harrison: Yes, yes.

Mike Brasher: That's what I'm going to be interested to see if you get any of these, you know, heritage hybrid birds in a… female.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah. And I, from talking with, with, you know, if you go back and look at the earlier text and even in my own field research, my trapping crews have caught birds that appeared based on every piece of information we had in front of us to be wild turkeys that had odd plumage, red color phase. Um, but you know, We rarely see, we rarely capture males that have the odd plumage. It seems to mostly be females.

Mike Brasher: Really?

Mike Chamberlin: But again, my work, we disproportionately focus on females when we're trapping because we're studying reproduction and that type thing. But yeah. There are a lot of states that allow hen harvest, even in the spring. And so I don't know what we're going to find. Maybe we're going to end up having some samples submitted that are from females. I don't know.

Matt Harrison: I'm excited too, just to see. I feel like there's going to be a lot of upset turkey hunters too, because I know people, man, I killed this red phase. I killed this red phase turkey. And really and truly, With the research that we've had in years past, you haven't been able to figure out exactly what it is. So people, if they kill a gobbler and it's got a little bit of a red tint to it, they automatically assume, I killed a red face. I had a buddy that did that, and he tried to find out. He sent pictures to people. and stuff, but it had traits of, you know, a reddish tint to them. And you see that actually quite commonly in wild turkeys. Yeah, I've seen that.

Mike Chamberlin: I've killed multiple birds that had particularly their secondaries on their wings. They'll get a reddish hue to them, and that's beautiful. What is that? I don't know. What about leucism?

Mike Brasher: Because we have, one of the things we're seeing in duck DNA is we'll get birds that'll come in, the plumage looks similar, it's not, they're not albino, mostly blonde mallards. You've heard about blonde mallards. What we have seen is that And we're still building the data set, but a percentage of those are 100% wild. We've had 100% wild black duck, 100% wild mallard. Both were hens that were leucistic. And then we had one, it was a blonde mallard, but it was… I think 90% game farm, maybe 10% even domestic or something like that, you know. But the two purely wild leucistic birds were like, that's really cool. Do you have any idea if that exists in wild turkeys?

Mike Chamberlin: Well, if you read earlier text, then yes, it's considered to occur in wild turkeys, but it's considered to be extremely rare. I honestly don't know. And again, back to why we're doing this. And I think what we're… My suspicion is what we're going to find is we're going to see everything from their… Some of these birds are 100% wild turkeys and they have odd plumage. We're going to perhaps see that some of these birds at some point in a generation, either now or long ago, have hybridized with something else. And these traits are just persistent in the population, and they're popping up through time. And we may see things we're not even expecting. To your point, Matt, about upset turkey hunters, I will tell you unequivocally, that is not the goal of this. For sure.

Matt Harrison: And I meant that more jokingly. For sure.

Mike Chamberlin: And I've already… Still an interesting bird. A hundred percent. And so I'll recount the stories of two people that have already provided us with samples. Wow. And both of those people told me without question that they are super interested in understanding what they harvested.

Matt Harrison: Yeah. And I think that's… And they were clearly

Mike Chamberlin: proud of the harvest they made. They appreciated the bird for how stunning it was. They both had institutional knowledge about the birds. They had seen the bird before. The bird was living in the wild with other normal-looking turkeys around it. And they were able to be successful. And they were jacked up about it. And they should have been. And so, I that's a sample size of two right and equals two but the fact that both of the interactions I had were very positive. They were very inquisitive they were interested they were appreciative to the point of. You know, Doc, just tell us what we need to do to help you out. We are so, you know, this is so interesting to us. Um, that to me speaks volumes. Yeah. And I'm sure some, some folks will get upset. Well, that's, that's not the point is to, to expand our knowledge base and to, and to give us a piece of information that has been needed for quite some time. Yeah.

Mike Brasher: And there are probably people listening to this saying, show us the birds. I want to see the two birds that you're talking about. I just say, be patient. Be patient. By the time this airs, we'll know whether the tissue has arrived at the lab.

Matt Harrison: Yes, that's correct. So this is more kind of the nuts and bolts of things. How will the sampling take place? Good question. Like, will it be the same way Duck DNA is, or can you explain a little bit about, because some people listening to this podcast episode, this may be the first ever podcast episode they've listened to, and they're like, what's Duck DNA? Or how are you going to go about getting some of the, you know, the tangibles that you need to get the results? So can one of y'all speak on that?

Mike Brasher: Yeah, well, if you haven't heard of duck DNA, go to www.duckdna.com and check that out for the tissue collection. All right, so let's say for this year, because what wild turkey DNA looks like next year and how we um, how we, uh, distribute, how we select participants and distribute samples next year, we're still working on, right? We still, Mike and I were even brainstorming on this as we came in, as we were driving to work this morning. And I was like, that's something we actually might be able to use for DuckDNA next year. So it's, there's- Yeah, it's synergistic.

Matt Harrison: It's pretty cool.

Mike Brasher: Five weeks to go. So for this year, Request a kit from wildturkeydna.com. If you, after providing that photo, you can, don't go to that and select it until you harvest one of these unique looking birds. And upload, send or email the photo to Katie. And then if you're selected, we'll get you the kit. And we're still experimenting with the way to collect the tissue. For duck DNA, what we do is we request people cut a quarter inch of the tongue, of the duck's tongue, drop it in the vial that has a buffer DNA, RNA buffer solution in it, and then you can freeze it until it's ready to be mailed, and then it's gonna be mailed to UTEP. Postage is gonna be included, so they can just drop it in U.S. mail, and it gets to Phil in his lab a few days later. We are, right now, hoping that the tongue from a turkey will also work. We haven't tested that yet. We're waiting on Phil to do the DNA extraction from a piece of tissue taken from the tongue. A turkey's tongue is different than a duck's. This was funny because I don't even know if it even crossed your mind because I was sitting back and I was like stepping through all the different little parts of this and I said, What the heck does a turkey tongue look like? So I, you know, go to the Google machine and it wasn't very helpful. And I told Mike, I said, is it somebody found, I forget exactly where, oh, I said, we need a photo of a turkey tongue. And so you had some folks down in Florida that harvested a turkey and they cut some of it out and took a photo front and back and said, hmm, that looks like pretty, that looks different than a duck tongue. Really? Yeah, it looks like there's some real hard cartilaginous stuff at the very tip of the tongue. And so I was like, I don't know how easy that's going to be able to cut through. And so I told Mike, I said, we need videos. We need a video of somebody cutting through this tongue. Because you don't want to put instructions out there if you haven't tried them. And so sure enough, these things were not as easy to cut through as a duck.

Mike Chamberlin: You would not believe the conversations that I've had with people over the past week. About cutting a turkey tongue? About, I'll bet you there's been more. There have been more text messages out of my phone with the word tongue in it than ever in my entire life, you know, because we just didn't know. I don't typically play around with a turkey's tongue when I shoot a bird. I will be honest, I have had a number of kids that I've guided through duck hunts that I have, particularly northern shovelers, I would show the tongue because it's so cool and so specialized with their bill. But anyway, yeah, so I started sending… I haven't started hunting yet, so… Because I've been working my tail off on this. But I had friends in Florida, and so I started texting, you know, outfitter buddies and folks that are down there hunting. I'm like, hey, man. Need a tongue. Can you… Yeah. I wish I had one of them photos. Can you cut the tongue out? And I started getting input back saying, Mike, This thing is like, it's different. And so what we've kind of concluded with is, instead of cutting that, a turkey's tongue, the tip of the tongue is very gristly. Right behind that little bit of gristle, there's a lot of tissue right there. So we've kind of settled on, you know, with duck DNA, the hunter's asked to clip about a quarter inch of the tongue. For wild turkey DNA, we're going to, if you flip the tongue over and look at the underside, you'll see a little bit of white tissue on the tip. If you cut right behind that white It's about three-eighths of an inch. So, just a little bit more. And that seems to have plenty of tissue associated with it.

Matt Harrison: So, has it been discussed what other ways of collecting tissue would be if not the tongue?

Mike Chamberlin: We have. We're trying to do the same thing. Duck DNA, by using the tongue, you're avoiding complicating a mouth or anything like that. And at least for both of those species, I don't know anybody that consumes the tongue. or otherwise even messes with it.

Matt Harrison: And it's the easiest to access, really.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah, and a lot of taxidermists that are mounting turkeys are not, they're not using the head. So, they're discarding, some are, some are discarding the head. So, the tongue in many ways is just a, you know, it's a… It's not used after. No. Yeah, after. No. So, yeah, it's been interesting the last week or so of getting videos sent, of extracting tongues, and it's been fun.

Matt Harrison: What will we know through the testing? Like, what are some things that you will for sure, once you get the results back, you'll be able to look at and say, okay, we do know this, we do know that, we do know that.

Mike Chamberlin: So, from this initial year, what we're really seeking is, at a minimum, Is this bird a wild turkey? Is it 90% wild and 10% something else? What is it? And regardless of what the answer is, what did the bird look like? What is the plumage character relative to the genetic profile?

Matt Harrison: And just the more of those you get, it'll be way more easy to identify whenever you do, even just like if you get, let's say the 75 in and you test those 75 and year after year, you get five turkeys that look the same that you know for a fact, like it's this and this, then you'll be able to say, hey, more than likely, we know that that turkey's

Mike Chamberlin: X, Y, and Z. It will at least help us be able to predict out, okay, that bird looks like what we tested that was a true wild turkey versus something else. But moving forward, What we are seeking when we expand next spring in 26 is simply, there are so many questions of management value that we're looking at. Genetic diversity in wild turkey populations Are we seeing hybridization between subspecies? And what does that look like? And what do those birds look like? And where do they occur? Are we seeing issues where, like we talked about off the air before we started, are we seeing issues where during restoration turkeys came to a particular state or region from, say, five or six different sources? And now suddenly, have any of those sources disappeared from the population? In other words, have those lineages of birds, are they gone from the extant population? And if so, the birds that are persisting, Where did they come from? What's their lineage? Because the way I think about it and the way from talking with Phil about it is, if we can identify within our current populations, particularly populations that are doing quite well, if we can figure out genetically where those birds came from and if there's any commonality amongst populations as to where these birds came from and that they're persistent, then from a management standpoint, that's a valuable piece of information because those lines are hence more fit than others. And, you know, turkey populations, I think anybody listening to this that's a turkey enthusiast, particularly if you live in the south of the Midwest, you are fully aware of the ongoing population declines that have occurred in many areas. And This work will potentially provide a partial answer as to, are genetics involved with any of these declines? Not, it's not, it's the cause. Mike, are you saying it's the cause? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, could it be a piece, a component? One of the factors. To try to understand, because I'll be honest with you guys, that, you know, people like me that see these declines and are constantly asked about these declines, I'm trying to turn every stone. I can't quit what I do for a job until I turn every stone. And this is a stone that has not been turned, ever. And so, turning this stone with this initial year and then expanding to a range-wide assessment using the powerful techniques that we have now, that is a big stone to turn because it had, in my eyes, it has tangible direct management implications. And we just need the information and I think we're probably going to learn some things that we're not even contemplating right now. And if we do, that's great. That's how science evolves. And, you know, I've had some people ask me, well, okay, so, you know, what do you do from here? And I answer, I say, well, that's science. Science is an iterative process, right? So, we're literally just dipping our toe. Had that conversation just this morning. Yeah, we're dipping our toe in the first pool. And the information that we get back from us is going to allow us to refine the questions we're asking, to refine our approach, to craft our thinking and the hypotheses and the predictions that we make. And that's how science should work. I mean, so we're literally at the very beginning of that process, where Duck DNA was several years ago. And I hope that people are going to embrace it the same.

Mike Brasher: This was pretty crazy. So on the left, obviously, that's the top side. On the right, that is the underside. Wow. And I think, I don't remember which one this was, but one of these, someone sent me just the one on the left. And I was like, I want to see the underside of it. And the top side looks completely different from the potential ease of cutting through it than does the underside, right? So that underside looks like some keratin-based structure or something like that. So by the time this comes out, we will have guidance. And we'll have- Can we see that again? And we'll have guidance. videos that we'll put out and guidance on all these types of things.

Mike Chamberlin: So that picture on the left, if you look at the bottom, you know, the tip of the tongue, it looks, and it is, it's very rough. As you can imagine, you know, you've got a bird, a large bird, that eats literally Everything.

Matt Harrison: I mean, everything.

Mike Chamberlin: And they can consume all kinds of prey. But on the right, what you're seeing is that underside. It appears from our initial kind of digging around and that right there at the back of that silver, that silver where that silver transitions to white. If you were thinking, and we'll know this for sure here within a day, if you cut right there, that's the sweet spot. And you get plenty of tissue, and it's red, so it's got plenty of DNA in it.

Mike Brasher: Might not be as easy as cutting through a duck tongue. It will not be. So snips or clippers or whatever may be advantageous, but it's going to be possible. We know that. It's just a matter of where in this tongue, or are we going to have to go to get the flesh?

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah, and some of my folks that have been removing the tips, they've done it. It's not difficult with a sharp knife. It does appear to be easier with a pair of scissors. It's very simple with a pair of scissors. There's a clip, and it's over in a second. A knife, you know, you just have to put a little pressure on it, but it clips through fine.

Mike Brasher: And I have no idea, like, how far out to the side can you pull a turkey's tongue? Like, with a duck tongue, it's pretty easy. It's pretty long and pull it out to the side.

Mike Chamberlin: You can easily pull it out to the side and put it on a hard surface right beside the bird's head.

Matt Harrison: Good thing a beak of a turkey ain't… So, who knew?

Mike Chamberlin: I mean… This is nuts. You know, six weeks ago, I didn't know… I thought I knew a lot about turkeys, and I do, but I did not know about turkey tongues. And I've learned a lot in the past few weeks.

Matt Harrison: I've harvested a lot of turkeys and seen a lot of turkeys harvested, and I've never even really thought about turkey tongues. You don't even think about it, really.

Mike Chamberlin: One time when I was young, I shot a bird, and I sat down and just went through him entirely. Like, I was by myself, I was in college, and I literally spent the entire morning just picking this bird apart because it was fascinating to me. And that's the one time I've really monkeyed around with a tongue, but I was 20 years old. You know, and I'm not telling you how old I am now, but I am a lot older than that now. So that's how long it's been since I really sat down and monkeyed around with their tongues.

Matt Harrison: I just, I'm literally just sitting here so excited just to, you know, finally, like I said, Dr. Mike mentioned it to me and when he did, I was just like, I hope this happens.

Mike Brasher: I had to say, we don't know if it's going to happen just yet, so don't get too excited just yet, but we're there now.

Matt Harrison: Even the possibility, you know what I mean? Like you said, we've never flipped this stone. Nobody's ever flipped this stone when it comes to turkey genetics from this side of things.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah, I mean, the last broad assessment was done and, you know, it was published in 2002. And there's, of course, been turkey genetics works since then. But the last really big, broad, you know, range-wide type assessment was back in 2002. Um, my, my wife, God bless her. She, um, she, she complains that I'm a workaholic, right? And I am, but I'm so passionate about this, about what I do and this bird. And, and she, she's been telling me the last couple of weeks, she's like, you're starting to concern me. Like you are really like, you're clearly excited about this.

Matt Harrison: I think you got a feather out there.

Mike Chamberlin: And she's like, you know, you're, You're really getting a bit out on the limb here, if you will.

Mike Brasher: Tanya's going to be tired of Wild Turkey DNA pretty soon.

Mike Chamberlin: She is already sick to death of it. She's like, I'm so tired of hearing tongues and kits and vials. But it's fun.

Mike Brasher: We got a couple of other things here, Matt. I wanted to let people know that we have already a Wild Turkey DNA Instagram account and Facebook account. And already we haven't made a single post and 441 followers. And this is actually dated a few days. So we are, again, following on the success and lessons learned from DuckDNA. That was a game changer for the engagement with us once we were able to start sharing some results. It'll be a few weeks. It'll probably be a couple of months before we have results from any of these early samples to share. But there will be messages going out through Wild Turkey DNA, the Instagram account. That's one of the easy ways, best ways for our team to communicate with participants and those that are interested in participating. I'll also show the… I believe this graphic is final. We may change a few things there on that tongue, illustrating how and where to… to cut the tongue tissue, but, uh, this was put together, modeled after what we did with DuckDNA. We changed a few things around the positioning of various bits of information, uh, sort of in response to what we have learned. And so, yeah, there's going to be an app. That app is not live. Uh, this, and it's not like a, um, it's not a standalone app. It's a web app, the same as what we do with, with DuckDNA. And that. that URL will be for the people that have been selected to participate. That's where they will go to enter all the additional data associated with the turkey that has been harvested and from which they're collecting the tissue. So, but yeah, same process from that standpoint as DuckDNA and just super excited to participate in this. I'm really excited about to hear about the engagement that you get from your hunters, because for us with Duck DNA and our participants, it's off the charts. And in terms of the support, the excitement they have for it, you know as well as I do, Mike, that Everybody, well not everybody, it's not uncommon for people want to take jabs at Ducks Unlimited or any other conservation organization. The ones that's out there doing the work are the ones that make themselves available for criticism and all that type stuff. But this has been so encouraging and just exciting is the best word to see that uniformly positive engagement from the people that care about this resource so much to get engaged, share their time, wanting to be part of this and contribute to new information.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah, I completely agree. And, you know, I'm a fanatical turkey hunter, and turkey hunters are just different people. They just are. They are different. And I have never been around a group of people that are more passionate about what they do.

Matt Harrison: Yeah.

Mike Chamberlin: And so the opportunity to collaborate on this type of project that engages and relies on turkey hunters to provide the information that is going to advance the science of this bird, to me, one, it hasn't been done. And two, it really offers the turkey hunting community a way to put their thumbprint on the science, if you will. And to me, that's incredibly impactful.

Matt Harrison: Without them, we wouldn't be able to do it.

Mike Chamberlin: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, without the cooperation of turkey hunters, this doesn't go anywhere. And again, the conversations I've had have all been incredibly positive. And it's exciting to enter into something like this. There's a lot of, obviously, there's trepidation. The fact that you've already walked the path with DuckDNA makes my walking of the path much simpler. But there's still a lot. We haven't figured out, and there's a lot we're going to learn as we go through this, and that's pretty exciting.

Mike Brasher: There will be a need for folks to be patient. These things, these samples, the results don't get turned around overnight. It's eight to ten weeks. We're going to try to speed up some of these initial samples. Um, the other thing that I will point out is that Ducks Unlimited is, is an active partner in this. And so it, especially for this first year, you might go to, if you're selected to be a participant or something of that nature, you might go somewhere associated with this and see a Ducks Unlimited logo, or it might look like a Ducks Unlimited website. I mean, that's, that's because we're, we are a, and it. uh, an eager partner in this and we're trying, we'll try to get some of that stuff a little bit more customized for Turkey interest going forward. So just kind of know that if you land on a Ducks Unlimited page, when you're trying to do some of this, that's okay. You're not lost. But we are super excited to be partnering with NWTF and you and, and, and everyone that's, that's involved in this.

Mike Chamberlin: Yeah. And part of that just stems from the fact that, you know, we decided, you Are we going to talk about this? Are we going to do it? And so we, we, we did it.

Matt Harrison: Put your money where your mouth is.

Mike Chamberlin: There's a little bit of, uh, yeah, there, this will become cleaner looking through time. Uh, but yeah, if you're, if you're going through the process of, of interacting with, with folks through the app or through the website and you see something that says, you know, Ducks Unlimited or DU is like, you're not lost. You're in the right spot. It's just, we were. and still are trying to make this process as smooth as possible and as efficient as possible.

Matt Harrison: Well, both Dr. Mikes, I can't thank you enough for taking time to hop on the podcast and explain. And I'm excited that I'm sure that this will lead to another podcast on the road and we'll get to come back and talk about some of the cool birds that have been submitted. So, I'm just super excited about what's ahead for this opportunity. But thank you both so much for… Hopping on the D podcast. Also want to thank Rachel and Chris Isaac, our ducks limited podcast producer. And also thank you so much for tuning into the ducks limited podcast.