Idaho Fish and Game is trying to figure out how many wild turkeys are roaming the state and hoping for the public’s help to survey the bird population.
Introduced in the 1960s, turkeys are not native to Idaho. They’ve since become a popular game bird. In the last three years, about 19 000 hunters have gotten turkey permits.
Fish and Game’s Upland Game and Migratory Game Bird Program coordinator Jeff Knetter said turkeys are pretty abundant in the panhandle and Clearwater regions but it’s difficult to know exactly how many of them there are.
The birds are pretty abundant in the panhandle and Clearwater regions but it’s difficult to know exactly how many are roaming the state.
That’s where the Turkey Tracker comes in.
“We use these surveys as an index to productivity so we can get general trends or trajectory of the population,” Knetter said.
“Are they stable? Are they decreasing in certain parts of the state? So we don't have a methodology. And truthfully, no state really has a methodology for pinpointing the actual number of birds.”
Fish and Game wants anyone who sees a turkey to simply report it on the agency’s website or on its app.
“You just enter the county you're in, as well as the number of birds you observed. And you submit it and lickety split [it] shows up in our, in our database here.
Knetter hopes they will receive at least as many turkey sightings as last year, about 1,400, the majority of which were reported in the summer.
“We're most interested in those observations collected in July and August, because that helps us get a better sense of what's going on with wild turkey productivity, reproduction, number of poults per hen, that sort of thing,” Knetter added.
Knetter attributes wild turkey’s popularity to the fact that hunters can easily find them on public lands, especially in the springtime when the flamboyantly colored males look for mates.
“The hunter is actually pretending to be a hen, in most cases trying to call that tom in their direction,” Knetter said. “And I think that can be a very exciting experience for people hearing that gobble.”
More information on the Turkey tracker can be found here.
