The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Wildlife Division is encouraging state residents to report wild turkey sightings for its ongoing research project.
DEEP’s team of staff biologists is starting a research project this year to investigate live-trapping, harvest rate, and disease prevalence in wild turkeys. In addition, residents are encouraged to chronicle their findings on a survey where they are asked to state their sighting location, involvement with DEEP, and the type of turkey they see. Photos of gobblers/toms (adult males), jakes (first-year males) and hens (females) are viewable on the DEEP Wildlife Division website for reference.
William Cassidy, the program leader of the Wild Turkey and Small Game Division. explained the importance of the public sighting forms, which can be found on the Wildlife Division website.
“Some of this data hasn’t been looked at in, you know, close to 30 years,” said Cassidy. “The project was started after there was a call to reduce the spring turkey bag limit, the limit for the number of turkeys one can hunt on public and private land in the springtime. “
Residents were reporting fewer and fewer wild turkeys on the landscape, which was contradictory to their data, according to Cassidy
“There’s a vacuum of information and in order to make good-faith decisions, you know, scientifically informed regulation, we need more data,” said Cassidy.
He said they adopted the protocols so they could compare and contrast wild turkey population data throughout the whole region. The key is the residents who report what they see. The ability of DEEP scientists to go into the field themselves is limited due to small staff size.
“Without the public’s assistance, we just don’t necessarily have enough sites to get our job done,” said Cassidy. “You think, ‘oh, I’m going to work with animals or I’m gonna work outside’ and at the end of the day it’s people. We’re making decisions based on data that we collect from people. These decisions very much influence the animals on the landscape, but they also influence the people who interact with the animals.”
Along with wild turkey sightings, DEEP’s website is host to a variety of studies and
research projects involving wildlife in the area, ranging from bobcats to black bears.
People can submit a wild turkey sighting or any other DEEP wildlife sighting form on the website.
