Researchers have used images provided by hundreds of camera traps set up by citizen-scientists across the state to get a better handle on when wild turkeys are breeding in North Carolina. And that, they hope, could be helpful for the officials who set the dates each year for turkey hunting season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chase Carey, a senior from Concord, N.C., teamed up with Roland Kays, a research associate professor in the College of Natural Resources who has worked extensively with camera traps to document wildlife behavior. Carey\u2019s task was to sort through thousands of images of wild turkeys captured by 527 different cameras over several years\u2009\u2014\u2009a job that took him about seven months to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat this data allows them to do, hopefully, is to see how the population is doing.\u201d
\u2014 Chase Carey<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt was tiring at some points, but I learned a lot about turkeys,\u201d says Carey, a fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology major. \u201cI\u2019m a lot more interested in them now than I was before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carey was looking for images that showed breeding behavior, such as toms fanning out their tail feathers (known as strutting) and brood rearing. What he found was that there was some variation in the timing of breeding from year to year\u2009\u2014\u2009information that could be useful in setting the dates for hunting season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opening the hunting season before the turkeys breed, for example, could lead to declines in the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe goal is to have a sustainable population, but that may look different from year-to-year,\u201d Carey says. \u201cWhat this data allows them to do, hopefully, is to see how the population is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n
Researchers have used images provided by hundreds of camera traps set up by citizen-scientists across the state to get a better handle on when wild turkeys are breeding in North Carolina. And that, they hope, could be helpful for the officials who set the dates each year for turkey hunting season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chase Carey, a senior from Concord, N.C., teamed up with Roland Kays, a research associate professor in the College of Natural Resources who has worked extensively with camera traps to document wildlife behavior. Carey\u2019s task was to sort through thousands of images of wild turkeys captured by 527 different cameras over several years\u2009\u2014\u2009a job that took him about seven months to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat this data allows them to do, hopefully, is to see how the population is doing.\u201d
\u2014 Chase Carey<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt was tiring at some points, but I learned a lot about turkeys,\u201d says Carey, a fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology major. \u201cI\u2019m a lot more interested in them now than I was before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carey was looking for images that showed breeding behavior, such as toms fanning out their tail feathers (known as strutting) and brood rearing. What he found was that there was some variation in the timing of breeding from year to year\u2009\u2014\u2009information that could be useful in setting the dates for hunting season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opening the hunting season before the turkeys breed, for example, could lead to declines in the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe goal is to have a sustainable population, but that may look different from year-to-year,\u201d Carey says. \u201cWhat this data allows them to do, hopefully, is to see how the population is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Researchers use camera traps to document the breeding seasons of wild turkeys in North Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":3766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Researchers use camera traps to document the breeding seasons of wild turkeys in North Carolina.\",\"caption\":\"\",\"displayCategoryID\":5}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[164,192,230,255,275,1008,1190,1192],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-4823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newswire","category-stories","tag-breeding-behavior","tag-camera-traps","tag-chase-carey","tag-citizen-scientists","tag-college-of-natural-resources","tag-roland-kays","tag-turkey-hunting-season","tag-turkeys"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":54,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5092,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4823\/revisions\/5092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4823"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=4823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}