I thought some here might enjoy this. I am just going to copy and paste the title, credits and the first paragraph and leave a link under that. Edit: well scratch that, I will post the title and leave the link below, nothing came up right and I had to fix the title and did not wand to fix everything else. (it is a PDF and that may be why) Oh I will share how I came to it below then the other information. It came from the group Hunter Education in New York State which is full of hunting safety instructors and other people in the business along with so called normal people like you and I
This is what the guy that runs it (Joe Viva) shared.
Over the weekend, while out and about I ran into an old neighbor. She asked me about a young turkey she saw in her driveway. The turkey just kept going around in circles. It dropped for a few minutes. Got back up and continued circling around and around.
I reached out to my DEC contact and here is his response.
I thought we all could learn from this occurrence.
Hi Joe.
Circling turkey might be from several causes, including trauma. One possibility is raccoon roundworm larvae in the turkey's brain; we see this occasionally in woodchucks, porcupines, gray squirrels, grouse, and turkeys. Most raccoons are infected with Baylisascaris procyonis (raccoon roundworm) at some point in their lives and are shedding eggs in their feces, when these eggs are ingested by a woodchuck or turkey the larvae can migrate through their tissues and end up in the brain where they can cause neurologic signs, the most common we see being circling. We do not have any pathogenic strains of avian influenza currently circulating in NY and there is no bird version of CWD that we know about.
As far as the turkey population around your place....I do not know; I do know that the success of turkey eggs/broods is largely weather-dependent, habitat-dependent, and predators can certainly take their toll as well. There is some concern that turkey numbers have been on a downward trend but we have yet to isolate one particular reason (it is likely a combination of several factors). Here is a recent study of survival and gobbler harvest rates in NY, PA and OH:
https://www.dec.ny.gov/d.../wildlife_pdf/turkeysurvivalrpt.pdf-Kevin
ANNUAL SURVIVAL AND SPRING HARVEST RATES OF MALE WILD TURKEYS IN NEW YORK, OHIO AND PENNSYLVANIA
https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/turkeysurvivalrpt.pdf
