Hi Mary and Ted,
I'm not aware of any winter survival studies from Vermont for Wild Turkeys,
but a radio-telemetry study in Massachusetts (Haegen et al. 1988, link
here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3801072?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
estimated that adult turkeys have a 93% survival rate across the whole
winter. Basically, predators kill very few adult turkeys with one exception
(see below). In short, no, predators have not killed 92% (11/12) of your
turkeys. Turkeys are very mobile and gregarious during the winter, and your
flock has likely moved on to a better food supply elsewhere. Perhaps the
"limper" is unable to follow, but the limper likely would have been the
first bird killed by a coyote had that been the cause. Depredation on male
turkeys is minimal (see the PA-OH-NY study below), but adult females are
most vulnerable to predators when they are incubating eggs. But even so,
predators (in that Massachusetts study) only killed about 16% of the adult
females during the nesting season. Males do not incubate but females sit
very tightly on the nest, and they can be ambushed by predators. That's
probably why female turkeys are so quick to abandon nests if you
accidentally find one in the woods.

In Pennsylvania, my former graduate lab published a lot of research on
turkeys. In a large Pennsylvania-Ohio-New York study with thousands of
birds (read more here:
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/turkeysurvivalrpt.pdf), spring
hunting is by far the largest cause of adult male mortality, and adult
survival for the rest of the year (excluding spring turkey season) is about
70-80%, while juvenile survival for the year is >80%.

However, predators do destroy *a lot* of turkey nests and eat *a lot* of
turkey poults. Wet and cold weather during the nesting season can also
cause high mortality rates of nests/young.
All the best,
Jason


On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 11:01 AM, Mary <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> We have watched "our" turkey flock diminish by one almost daily. What
> started as twelve is today down to one limping, ragged looking bird. Would
> it be coyotes?
>
> mary
>
> 1400' in bethel vt
>
>
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-- 
Jason M. Hill, PhD
Conservation Biologist
Vermont Center for Ecostudies
802.649.1431 Ext. 212
http://vtecostudies.org/about-us/staff/jason-hill/

"The universe works on a math equation that never even ever really even
ends in the end."
-Isaac Brock


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