Wild Turkeys Will Soar to New Home
Seeing and hearing a wild turkey in the woods is a thrilling experience. With nearly 7 million wild turkeys in North America today, they’re certainly a familiar sight.

 
Credit: NWTF
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The National Wild Turkey Federation invites the public to experience a Thanksgiving wild turkey release Nov. 14, near Tampa, Fla., and Nov. 16, near Salt Lake City, Utah.

School groups and outdoor enthusiasts will see wild turkeys fly to suitable habitat as part of two symbolic, educational wild turkey releases celebrating the comeback of the wild turkey.

While wild turkeys are abundant today, that wasn’t the case in the early 1900s.

“The wild turkey was at the brink of extinction with only about 30,000 birds across the whole country,” said Dr. James Earl Kennamer, NWTF senior vice president of conservation programs. “Thanks to the work and support of hunters, wildlife agencies and members of the NWTF, the wild turkey has been restored to healthy populations in every state but Alaska.”

The reintroduction of this gamebird was accomplished by capturing birds and moving them to an area with suitable habitat but no wild turkeys. For many reasons, trapping and transplanting wild turkeys was difficult at first. When restoration efforts first began in the 1920s and ‘30s, wildlife agency biologists knew very little about wild turkeys or the best way to capture them. Wildlife management professionals in the 1940s thought they had found a way around this problem by releasing birds that were raised in a pen. However, releasing pen-raised birds proved to be disastrous because populations almost always failed. And that mistake set back restoration almost two decades.

 Trap and Transfer Efforts
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 1940s and 1950s-Unsuccessful restoration efforts with pen-raised wild turkeys
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 Early 1940s-The capture of Eastern and Florida turkeys by using walk-in traps was time consuming and expensive.
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 Mid 1940s-Several trap designs were developed and found successful (roll-front, open front, drop-front, slide-front and drop net). These trapping methods were used in the early attempts to capture Eastern turkeys in South Carolina.
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 1948-Cannon projected net trap was developed (inventors primarily intended it to be for waterfowl, but believed that it offered a practical and economical means for trapping large numbers of any species of birds tending to flock together)
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 Early 1950s-Cannon nets were first used to trap turkeys in South Carolina and Missouri (Later modifications in cannons, nets, and charges improved the method’s overall effectiveness for capturing turkeys.)
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 1968-The first rocket-net trap was used. Rocket nets are faster than the cannon nets, and therefore are able to catch a higher proportion of birds.
Source: The Wild Turkey-Biology and Management
  

“Even today, in spite of overwhelming evidence against this practice, we still see turkey eggs, poults and adult birds advertised with claims they are suitable for stocking,” Kennamer said. “These birds never develop survival skills, regardless of their genetic wildness, and quickly fall prey to predators.”

By the 1950s, biologists discovered a new, effective way to trap turkeys. The cannon net, which was originally used to capture waterfowl, was modified to propel nets over a flock of wild turkeys. This invention put restoration on the fast track, and efforts were further accelerated by the formation of the National Wild Turkey Federation in 1973.

Since the late 1980s, wildlife agencies, the NWTF and its more than 500,000 volunteers have helped transfer more than 188,000 wild turkeys to restore turkey populations across the country.

Don’t miss your chance to see wild turkey restoration up close and personal.

For more information about the wild turkey releases or the NWTF, contact Brian Dowler or Amy Forrest at (800) THE-NWTF or visit the Web site at www.nwtf.org.

 

 

A Tale of Two Turkeys

As a Thanksgiving tradition for many U.S. presidents, each year President Bush has been in office, he has pardoned a domestic turkey during the Thanksgiving holiday, and then invites children to pet the bird. What about releasing a wild turkey, a bird that is considered one of America’s greatest conservation success stories?

Physical Traits
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 Domestic turkeys can’t fly or run very fast. They would make easy pickings for any predator found in the wild. Their neck skin, or wattles, is heavier. Snoods, the finger-like appendage that hangs over the bill, are longer and their breasts much larger and broader. The domestic bird also possesses a temperament suited to confinement.
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 Wild turkeys are sleek, alert and built for speed and survival. Their senses are sharpened through generations of living in a harsh, unforgiving environment. A wild turkey that loses its caution will likely be eaten by predators. This constant state of caution has made the wild turkey one of the toughest game animals in the world to hunt or photograph.
   
Turkey Talk
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 Domestic turkeys (male) Tend to be vocal and will respond with a squeaky gobble to almost any noise.
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 Wild turkeys (male) do not gobble as often as domestic turkeys. They’ve learned that too much talking can call in things other than turkeys, like predators and hunters. Skill and lots of practice are required for a hunter to call in an elusive wild turkey gobbler.
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 Domestic and wild turkeys (female) use similar calls, including the yelp, cutt, purr and kee-kee.
  Click here for the sounds of a wild turkey.
   
Environment
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 Domestic turkeys are found in pens with other domestic turkeys. They eat corn and other poultry mixes.
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 Wild turkeys are found throughout wooded areas across North America. They like acorns, seeds, small insects and wild berries.
To learn more about each of the five subspecies of the wild turkey or to view the range map where you can find wild turkeys, click here.