Thursday, February 7, 2008

Counterfeit Turkeys Are Being Passed Around




Several years ago in New Mexico a test flock of Rio Grande sub-species turkeys was released near the Rio Grande at a wild life refuge. The flock did really well the first three years or so and then the numbers plummeted. I don't know if those few stragglers made it through, but I don't think that there were any more plans to release any more. I was talking about this with a friend of mine and he told me that his buddy had seen lots of turkey sign and tracks by the Rio Grande in Albuquerque. Thinking that there may be some opportunity to hunt turkeys closer to town I looked into the possibility that the old Rio Grande flock might have made a come back. I went down to the river and after very little poking around found some tracks and sign. Still somewhat sceptical I looked in my New Mexico animal tracks book to see what might be going on. What I found was that a Sandhill Crane and a Wild Turkey have very similar tracks and scat. To make matters worse the "J" shaped tukey sign looks just like crane sign. Here are some pictures that I found on the internet. I couldn't find any pictures of crane scat.



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