No. I’m not saying that turkeys are gone. There are places that they will do fine for decades to come.
However the large scale change of the landscape and population expansion will not allow the turkeys to be like they once were. I saw a stat a while back not gonna say it is dead on but the stat was that 6000 acres per day are lost to expansion. I’ve hunted in 40+ states and it is almost everywhere that they are expanding and converting habitat into apartments, gas stations, etc,etc.
Couple this with the fact that MOST landowners are only worried about the $$$$ and don’t give a rats butt about turkey/wildlife habitat. I see it almost everywhere I go but especially in the south large blocks of hardwoods being converted into short rotation pines. Turkeys can survive in an area where it is mostly pines but not in the numbers they do when they have a good balance of habitat. Also on habitat you see more and more farmers clearing ditch banks, cutting the few acres of woods around a field, etc, etc to expand there tillable ground. I understand it but again more and more habitat lost.
We are repeating history from the 1800’s when we removed the suitable habitat for many soecies.