The Turkey Whisperer with Dr. Mike Chamberlain — WildFed Podcast #159

If you haven’t been already, we're thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Mike Chamberlain. Somehow, over our years of making this show, we weren't aware of this man or his incredible work on turkeys. Now we feel like we've been stumbling around in the dark. Ok, that’s probably an overstatement, since we’ve had some great mentors, and we’ve had several excellent and very informed turkey hunters and biologists on the show over the years. But Mike seems to possess a meta-knowledge of these birds, seamlessly combining the science of their biology and ecology with the experience of a seasoned hunter.  

As a relatively new hunter himself, one who grew up with little of the ecological knowledge needed to be successful in the pursuit, Daniel has relied heavily on his adult learning skills, and that's included finding mentors that can accelerate his learning curve. He started out in his mid-30s, which means he didn’t get those crucial couple of decades of watching, listening, learning, and making mistakes. At his age, being successful early on was pretty important if he was going to stick with it and feed himself off the landscape.

Without that early life on-ramp to guide him through the typical hunter's journey, he's had to rely on friends, books, videos, podcasts, and of course, many mistakes in the field as his main educational inputs. It’s also meant getting occasionally waylaid by the “hunter science”. You know — those often repeated but ill-informed tropes that stick around in hunting camps, subtly leading us astray and speaking to the disconnect that often exists between the work of field biologists and the hunters that pursue the quarry. If he had known about Mike’s work several years ago he would have relied heavily on it to inform his knowledge of the species and his hunting strategies.

Our goal with making the WildFed Podcast has been to curate voices from the world of hunting, fishing, foraging and wild foods cooking, in order to make the road a little easier and the education more concise for those who — like Daniel — are embarking on this journey later in life or in a non-traditional way. So, in that sense, Mike represents just the kind of guest we're looking for. Someone who can rapidly accelerate what you understand about a specific species to make up for the lack of ecological, place-based knowledge many of us suffer from as a result of being raised in a nature-divorced culture.

We need Mike Chamberlains for every species — folks that can guide our learning, distilling the scientific knowledge into simple to absorb, useful lessons that help to deepen our connection to our wildlife neighbors.

So if you love wild turkeys, and particularly if you love — or hope to love — hunting them, here is an authoritative voice on the topic. Just talking to him has us very excited about next spring!

View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/159