North Dakota Game and Fish Impresses

During spring Turkey season I happened across a few unlucky turkeys that fell victim to their slots in the food chain. As I was looking at the carcasses one of the birds was sporting some extra accessories: a North Dakota Game and Fish band! I was pretty excited since, through all my adventures, I have never taken a banded bird.

Through email I was able to get in touch with Stan Kohn, the Upland Game Management Supervisor for the NDGF. He responded to me with the following information on the bird that I found:

"Turkey with band number 6582 was part of a flock of 34 birds that were trapped from private land south of Center, Oliver County, on 12 Dec. 2010.  A landowner was having some depredation problems with turkeys and we decided to remove some birds from his property.  This bird was sexed/aged as a juvenile male and banded with band number 6582.  All thirty four birds, including this juv. male, were transported to the Little Heart Bottoms on 12 Dec. and released.  We have had one other bird from this group reported as dead, probably from predation.  We have had several observations of banded birds from this group still on the Little Heart Bottoms so it doesn’t look like the birds have traveled too far from their release site.

Thanks much for reporting the band.  It helps us track the status of this group of birds."

So I wanted to take a minute today to say thanks to Stan and the NDGF. I may not have gotten my bird this year but I still took home a trophy!