Nacogdoches, Texas = Good Friends

We made it to East Texas a couple of weeks ago and have been spending some time visiting with our friends Kari and Ryan. I met Kari when I first moved to Louisiana in 1999. We were interns together at Southeast Louisiana Refuges for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I don’t think it was possible for interns to have as much fun as Kari and I did. We spent our days laughing and dancing at the clubs on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. She left Louisiana for awhile but came back and was living with dave and I just before we left for Alaska in 2002. It’s great to be back together.

Welcome to Texas … Too bad they ruined the sign with the info about Bush!

Kari’s boyfriend Ryan is getting his masters studying wild turkeys in East Texas. He is trying to get an accurate population count on these elusive birds. Many people thought he wouldn’t be able to capture turkeys in this portion of the country but he proved them wrong and put radio tags on 10 birds last year. Capturing wild turkeys is tricky work and he needed some help with all the baiting, netting, and listening for birds so he was able to hire dave and I as biological technicians for two months to help him. So far the elusive turkeys have not shown themselves to us but we are excited about the job and the project. We are officially staff at Stephen F. Austin University which means we get a fancy parking permit and a staff photo ID. However, we are not allowed to operate a University vehicle because we don’t have a Texas driver’s license. The upshot is that we are being reimbursed for mileage we put on the van.

The study site is located on the Angelina National Forest. The Forest surrounds the Sam Rayburn Reservoir. This watershed flows into the Sabine River which makes up much of the border between Louisiana and Texas.

The area surrounding the reservoir is beautiful and has lots of recreational sites.

So far our work has consisted of locating possible trapping sites and baiting the sites to lure in the turkeys. Cracked corn is used as bait. We have also been getting GPS coordinates and remarking the gobble count routes. A gobble count is performed by driving to specified spots and listening for a gobbler (male turkey) to gobble.

Dave Baiting With Cracked Corn (that is Ryan in the background)

Jody Taking GPS Coordinates of Points on Gobble Count Route

Dave Painting Gobble Count Points (so they can be seen in the low light of early morning when the survey is being done)