West side birds are a bit of a pain - Most people when talking turkey are talking kettle falls and merriams. That is not to say there are not Easterns in the west, quite the contrary, but there is no one (not WDFW or WANWTF) that has anything close to a possible count - unlike the birds in the east.

The birds of the west that are seen or heard of are the ones on private land mainly... but when you consider the vast area the timberland owns, and most hunters only hunt a mile or two from where they are able to park, there are a lot of birds that go un-noticed, let alone counted.

At the state NWTF banquet they talked about this problem - because people are seeing birds, but no one is counting them, and there are a bunch that are deep in the timbers - no one has put forth the effort to try and count em.

They asked people to keep track of when they spot Easterns, count em' get what ever information you can, and submit it somewhere - but reality is there is no where to submit that kind of info (aside from snail mail and/or email) and definately no place to view status like that... There is a guy down in the Rose Valley area (if I recall correctly - and I don' t remember his name) but he has been keeping a log of all the birds he comes across...

This is what I can do to help - I' ll set up a place to post information on turkey sightings, broke down by subspecies... So while you are out scouting, hunting, or just driving, keep track of how many and what sex and what ever else kind of information you can come up with -

If you fear giving up your " hot spot" or what ever with that kind of information, I can put a password on it, and make it manditory that you post information there or be removed from that specific posting area - or something like that... that way, we will have a growing idea of the how manys and wheres that we could pass along to WDFW and WA NWTF.... the forum is located HERE - Let me know what kind of rules you think should apply and what not if ya' all are interested. [email protected]