NWTF members are critical to driving the mission of the NWTF. Their support of the organization makes the mission happen, and for NWTF members Tanna and Drew Meals, they were able to see the ongoing efforts to conserve the bird we cherish through a once-in-a-lifetime turkey hunt.
For NWTF member Tanna Meals, the 2025 spring turkey season will be cemented in her memory forever, as she — along with the help of her husband, Drew, and their 1-year-old son, River — harvested a banded wild turkey. The banded bird was part of an ongoing wild turkey research project conducted by Oklahoma State University and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
“This past weekend my husband and I were fortunate enough to get out and do a little grocery shopping and ended up bringing home the goods,” Tanna said.
Tanna and Drew roosted the bird Friday evening with an assist from River, who they have taught how to owl hoot. River decided to let out a little “holler” Friday evening instead while the family was roosting turkeys, to which a lonely tom fired back with some gobbles.
The trio pinned the area of the bird’s roost site, and all that was left to do was set up in the morning, wait for fly-down, and go toe-to-toe with the king of spring. But unbeknownst to Tanna and Drew, this would be the bird of a lifetime.
While the time between fly-down and pulling the trigger felt like an eternity to Tanna, it was a textbook hunt, calling the bird off the limb and having the gobbler in her hands before 7 a.m. The bird weighed 20 pounds, had 1¼-inch spurs and an 11-inch beard.
“At the exact same moment my husband and I said ‘he’s banded,’ in disbelief,” Tanna recalled. “We are blessed to be able to do what we love. Thank the good Lord for a great day in the woods.”
The banded bird is part of a five-year wild turkey research project — currently in its final year — that is seeking to better understand the wild turkey decline in Oklahoma on a deeper level, particularly from a brood survival standpoint. While the project is primarily focused on gathering data on hens and poults, an inevitable male wild turkey will get captured during the cannon-netting process while targeting hens, ultimately making the gobbler Tanna harvested even more of a rarity.
The bird Tanna harvested was captured and banded in March 2023 as a jake when the research team was targeting hens.
“The jake was captured as ‘by-catch’ while we targeted hens for our ongoing population dynamics study,” said Colter Chitwood, Ph.D., assistant professor of natural resource ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. “We just completed the final season of winter capture, and the field crew is now busy monitoring our last spring/summer of nests and broods. NWTF is a financial supporter of this project, having funded some additional transmitters and disease testing and serum panels (groups of blood tests) from our captured birds.”
NWTF members are critical to driving the mission of the NWTF. Their support of the organization makes the mission happen, and for NWTF members Tanna and Drew, they were able to see the ongoing efforts to conserve the bird we cherish through a once-in-a-lifetime turkey hunt.
“We take pride in being able to take part in the conservation of wild turkeys,” Tanna said. “We hope that the efforts put forward are shown for years to come. The conservation of wild turkeys is essential for the upcoming generation of turkey hunters. We hope that our son gets the opportunity to experience and enjoy turkey hunting as much as we do.”
In addition to funding from the NWTF’s national science and planning team through its RFP program, the Oklahoma NWTF State Chapter has contributed funds to the OSU research project.
Right now, there is more wild turkey research happening across the country than at any point in history, with the NWTF and its chapters helping fund 32 unique projects.
Learn more about how the NWTF is the foremost wild turkey research organization.
