ORIGINAL: R.S.B.

Turkey trapping for this years has reached an end, at least it has in Elk County. We ended on a relatively high and successful note though.

After a couple of weeks of baiting the birds at this sight, and while trapping other locations, we had between 30-40 birds hitting the bait with close to twenty of them were gobblers when they were all there at once. Friday was the day we selected to catch birds in that flock and to band the gobblers. We weren’t moving any birds and only banding gobblers for research designed to help determine gobbler mortality, primarily for hunter harvests.

We set the net box and blind up on the day before. See the corn out in front of the net and rocket box?

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Fridaymorning a college student Jake Stanisch, who is an active member of the NWTF, and I climbed into the blind shortly after 6:00 am, hooked the detonator to the rockets and settled in to wait for the birds. At 6:15 there were gobbles and hen talk from the trees all over the hill directly above us. The tree talk and gobbling when on for a little over a half hour then we heard birds flying down. But, nothing was coming into the bait. About 7:00 WCO Doty McDowell and the college student’s dad, who were positioned a short ways away in the vehicle called to let us know they could see a lot of birds going up the hollow instead of coming our way. At about 8:30 they took a drive up the road and found the birds feeding a quarter mile away so we called it quits for the morning and made plans to set up again at 3:00 pm to see if they hit the bait before going to roost.

At 3:00 pm the Student’s dad, Steve Stanisch, and I climbed into the blind and once again hooked up the detonator while Doty waited with the vehicles up the road a ways. About 4:45 another NWTF member showed up and waited with Doty. At about 5:15 Doty called, on the radio, to let me know that a large flock of birds was coming our way. Within just a few minutes I could see birds coming toward the bait. It only took about five minutes to have six gobblers and about another twenty two or so hens and possibly some mixed in jakes in front of the net and rocket box. I waited until all six of those that I knew were gobbler were directly in front of the net and touched the charges off. The net went out just fine but soon was being carried down the hill further then expected. I could see a lot of birds going up the hill but also a lot of birds under the net.

We quickly got to the entangled birds and started covering them with blankets to help settle them down until we could start evaluating the birds and releasing the hens. A quick count revealed that we had 14 birds under the net.

Doty and NWTF member Tim Geitner were there in short order with the bands and paper work for recording the data. Soon the land owner and one of the neighbors, who had been doing some of the baiting and monitoring of times for us, showed up and we got to work. First we had to sort out the hens and release them. It turned out that 11 of the 14 we captured were hens so it was just a matter of untangling them from the net and setting them free.

Once we had the hens out of the net we started banding the gobblers. Each one got one leg band, it beard and spur measured and about three breast feathers plucked( the feathers are used for DNA). All data was recorded, a few pictures taken and the gobblers released.

Steve and Tim working a bird out of the tangled netting for processing.

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Steve and the neighboring land owner, Tony Straneva, pose for a picture with a long beard with a new leg band.

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During the clean up we also discovered that the rocket rail on the up hill side had come loose and slid down to the center position when it was fired, which would be the reason the net didn’t spread evenly and the reason we didn’t have even more of the birds under the net. Perhaps that was a good thing though since we already had more birds under the net then we normally get. If the net had worked perfectly we might have had the rest of the gobblers in that flock under the net though, and that would have nice, but it also might have pushed us too close to dark working through the processing stage. I guess, all in all, it worked out to about a perfect end to the trapping season. The only thing that would have been better would be if the college student had been there see the net launched and then to get his hands on a bird under the net.

R.S. Bodenhorn