Meadowlark,
No experience with dyes but I liked the ideal of lead dies spread over the surface...
Have you considered using ramdomly fired noise cannons while you are not there? Somewhere in my memory I saw noise cannons being used to scare birds away from some air field or some farmer's crop. Maybe it was on TV. It should work on turkeys.
I had a friend that trained a hunting dog to stay in his field to chase the wildlife away. He never brought the dog home. From the first day he got the dog he fed the dog in the field. He set up a dog pen with a waterer, dog house, etc. Perhaps a labador retriever could be stationed at the pond and trained to chase away all water birds. For some of the guys with poacher problems, a nasty junkyard dog might work to stop the poachers. Just be sure to keep the rabies shots up to date and properly recorded. It is just one step above a man trap but should be excluded from the booby trap laws.
