I definitely want to increase the turkey population at our place.

Our turkeys seem to prefer the areas of open ground adjacent to short grass adjacent to heavy cover. There are times in the spring when they are all on the bare ground eating some bug that hatched early. A few weeks later, they are then in the short grass eating whatever hatched next. (I need to do a lot of clearing in my overgrown shelter belt trees because the turkeys roost on my neighbors property.)

I did deep disk a few areas of grass three years ago in the fall. The turkeys loved the bare dark earth in the spring since it warmed up first and became their earliest hunting ground.

However, this hurt my warm season grasses. That area now shows more cool season grasses and weeds. I am NOT a smart enough land manager to know if this will turn out to be a long-term benefit to our turkeys (and quail and pheasants) or not.