I am heavily involved with trap & transfer activties; yes, even way out here. Check with your state's game mgt plan for turkeys, if they have one.Contact your district's game biologist and local NWTF reps and seeif you can get a release on public land where you have access. Ifthere's enough requests, it mayget things going. That being said, I'm with you on being frustrated about releases on private land with limited access.

12 yrs ago, the first release on Oahu was muffed several reasons. About half, (20-24) were released on private shooting reserve.The managerspromised not to hunt the birds, but after a year the stories started emerging that for a little extra jack, they were allowing shooters to add a turkey to their limit of pheasants. Amazing huh? Well, soon the "supply" of turkeysran out. The NWTF guys on the Big Island wouldn't help the state trap or transfer any more birds for release on private land where there's hunting, and w/o their help the trapping & releases on Oahu stopped for 11 years. That's still the general rule, but private land w/o hunting is another matter.

We now have a small population from 3 releases onto public hunting areas. Every year since 2003 we've had observedreproduction, not just eggs, but poults. It's an encouraing beginning. Also, everyyear we havea few turkeys shot by the "I didn't know we weren't allowed to shoot them" guys.I heard one guy say that 3 hours after I heard him in the parking area comment "Wow, they have turkeys here!" After looking at the sign annoucing thatshooting turkeysin the area was illegal. Smooth move huh?

Our next releases, hopefully soon, will be on land controlled by the Army. There's no hunting, but they'll be protected and we can trap & move them much easier to hunting area without arranging for an air freight flight to move the birds. A huge hassle.