Help Needed for Wild Turkey & Northern Bobwhite Survey

By Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, 05/31/20 4:59 PM

 

LITTLE ROCK – The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says the Annual Wild Turkey and Northern Bobwhite Quail Population Survey opens to observations on Monday, June 1st. If you’re concerned with the status of these game bird populations, help managers have the best information they can by reporting all wild turkey and quail, not just females with young, you see as you’re out and about this summer and throughout the year.

New this year:

1) The Survey will be left open year round.

2) Observers will be asked to record an estimate of their time in the field. This will be used to inform models attempting to estimate density and distribution of these important game bird populations in Arkansas.

3) Observers can now indicate if they heard quail calling and how many they heard. This may help managers identify new areas that may otherwise go unreported if quail aren’t physically seen.

4) They are testing the addition of trail camera observations for wild turkey to see if this data can be used in addition to the standard incidental visual observations. Observers are asked to limit these observations to a single image from a series of photos that appears to be the same group of turkeys. Observers will need to use their best judgement to only submit photos that appear to be independent from others. Meaning, if your trail camera has a 5 second delay between photos and captures 100 photos of a group of turkeys feeding over a short time period, don’t submit every photo that has a turkey in it. Pick the photo that you can see the most turkeys and submit it with your observation. If there are hours between photos, it is probably safe to say they are independent observations.