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“Live Animals”

Thirteen boxes with green and white stickers announcing this was organic, living cargo arrived at the headquarters of Cooper Lake Wildlife Management Area in Northeast Texas.

This is how turkeys are flown across the nation for Texas “super stockings”. The birds are generally healthy and seem to travel fine in these NWTF-provided boxes. (Photo by Chester Moore)

The decal had an icon of a dog, a turtle and even fish but airline officials probably never considered wild turkeys as a shipment item, yet that’s exactly what flew from Maine in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport last Wednesday.

They were sent to the Cooper WMA headquarters for a veterinary inspection to check for any visual signs of disease after undergoing blood tests, all in anticipation of being released into East Texas.

“Restocking began back in the 1930s and went through several iterations of releasing Rios and pen reared birds. Block stocking using exclusively wild trapped birds began in 1979, but didn’t really get legs until the mid-1980s with the National Wild Turkey Federation’s (NWTF) Target 2000 program. Block stocking ended in 2003, but with mixed results,” said Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) Turkey Program Leader Jason Hardin.

TWPD Biologist Trevor Tanner (who picked the birds up at the airport) looks on as Dr. “Hank” Hayes from the Texas Animal Health Commission inspects one of the Maine birds. (Photo by Chester Moore)

“TPWD started the Super Stocking effort in 2014 and we have released close to 1,000 birds since,” he added.T

PWD under the leadership of Hardin have created “super stockings” of turkeys with a minimum of 80 birds stocked in a location with a male/female ratio that allows for optimal population expansion.

“We released 13 birds on Saturday. Including the birds released last week we released a total of 94 birds in Franklin County along White Oak Creek since winter of 2020,” Hardin said.

This completes that stockings and leaves the area with a gigantic boost of turkeys that are helping reclaim the Eastern subspecies range in East Texas.

This program is a cooperative effort with TPWD, other states like Maine, Missouri and South Carolina who provide birds,, private landowners as well as the National Wild Turkey Federation who provide the boxes and import costs.

“NWTF holds an agreement with Delta Cargo. The Texas State Chapter of NWTF reimburses NWTF National office for the fees associated with shipping birds by air,” said NWTF biologist Annie Farrell.

All of the turkeys were given a dose of electrolytes to tide them over until the release. (Photo by Chester Moore)

“The Texas State Chapter also assists with funding for disease testing and also provides transport boxes to whichever states are trapping for Texas, free of cost.”

It’s an inspiring program that is bringing East Texas a little closer to what it was like many decades ago when Eastern turkeys were a common part of the ecosystem.

There’s still lots of work to do but the trajectory of Eastern turkey recovery in Texas is upward. And for those of us who love to pursuit these great birds, that’s a very good thing.

Chester Moore