Letter To The Editor
Seven years ago, we used to have a great population of Turkeys in our area. In the last 5-6 years, we will go from flocks of 80-100 in January to 5-10 by the time Turkey season starts in the spring. I was approached by a biologist 4 weeks ago. She had asked if we could stop filling our feeders. She wanted to capture and tag our turkeys so she could do research on the declining numbers. We obliged her offer, assuming that this would benefit the declining turkey population in our area. I was asked this from some local neighbors if we had a “biologist” come and speak with us about our turkeys. I advised them of our conversation with her and was informed about the “trap and transfer“ of turkeys from one state to another. From the knowledge I have gained, I feel like the biologist was very misleading when she never mentioned anything about taking the turkeys off of our land, all she had to say was that she was going to track and release our turkeys. I feel like my hard work and effort has been stolen by somebody who misled me into thinking I was doing a benefit for our turkey population. I think if local farmers and land owners knew of the trapping transfer to other states, they would not allow the biologist on their land to“tag and track“ the turkeys. These turkeys are being stolen from Greenwood County and now our population is in a severe decline. If they were only taking 25% of the turkeys, this wouldn’t be any issue. They are taking almost all of them from our area.
I feel like people need to know about this, and it is up to the landowners to be aware of their full intentions before allowing someone to come onto their land.
Colby Rinehart [email protected]
