The Pennsylvania Game Commission is asking for the public’s help finding turkeys to trap for ongoing and new turkey monitoring projects.
People can report the location of turkey flocks they see between now and March 15. Information is being collected online at https://pgcdatacollection.pa.gov/TurkeyBroodSurvey.
Visitors to that webpage will be asked to provide information, including the date of the sighting, the location and the type of land — public, private or unknown — where birds are seen.
Game Commission crews will assess sites for the potential to trap turkeys. Turkeys will not be moved. They will be leg banded and released on site.
In four Wildlife Management Units, some turkeys will be outfitted with GPS transmitters, then released to be monitored over time.
Trapping turkeys during winter is part of the Game Commission’s ongoing population monitoring as well as the launch of a large-scale hen study.
The Game Commission will put leg bands on male turkeys statewide. Hunters who harvest one of those turkeys, or people who find one dead, are asked to report the band number by calling the toll-free number or emailing the address on the band.
“That gives us information on annual survival rates and annual spring harvest rates for our population model,” said Mary Jo Casalena, the Game Commission’s turkey biologist.
The studies are being done in partnership with Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wildlife Futures Program.
More than 3,800 people, on average, submit Wild Turkey Sighting Survey reports each summer.
“The public has been so helpful in years past,” Casalena said. “So we figured we’d expand on that and ask for help locating winter flocks statewide.”
