The State Wants To Count The Wild Turkeys, And Hunters Can Help

Once upon a time, Ben Franklin actually thought that the Wild Turkeys should be our national bird. Could you imagine a world without the Bald Eagle as our Mascot-In-Chief? And, if you ask the average person what they think about wild turkeys, you are bound to get a pretty wide variety of answers.

I know some people see them as almost like wild yard pets, while others see them as a pretty significant nuisance. After all, they can be kind of aggressive, and anything that travels in groups being aggressive is worth having a second thought about.

But that said, the Maine Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is looking to take as accurate a census of Maine's turkey population as possible. They're going to set a variety of kinds of traps around for turkeys that range from capturing a single bird, to trapping several with a rocket propelled net! No Joke! They're basically employing a Batman-style mechanism for catching them.

From that point, they will band the birds, and release them back into the wild. What they're hoping hunters will follow through on, is that every time they harvest one of these banded birds, that they will return the tags to the state so the information can be tracked. They hope to use the information to establish breeding and territory patterns as well.

So if you're a turkey hunter, here's your chance to help out! Good luck hunters!