A family member had a permit this year for turkey hunting, and gave me the feathers from his kill. I was looking online for information on how to sterilize them to be used for crafting, and instead found all kinds of stuff about feathers being illegal to possess. Do I need a permit to do anything with these feathers that he lawfully acquired (or does his permit for hunting turkeys not allow him access to the feathers?)? Is it true that it would be illegal for me to do anything with the blue jay feather I found in my back yard too? It seems rather odd for it to be illegal to use something that a living being has narutally discarded, but maybe there is some logic to this that I just haven't considered.
Thanks for the info - I had no idea that I might be breaking the law, and want to make sure that I am not.
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if it was leglly hunted ok. cannot sell wild bird parts tho.
Turkey parts (feathers, head, spurs, beard etc.) are legal to sell. But Bluejay feathers aren't or basically any songbird parts aren't, in fact you can't even possess them..
Song birds and birds of prey cannot be hunted and thier parts are usualy illegal to possess. At least in Idaho you cannot kill any song bird except the starling which is considered a pest and can be killed at any time of the year. If they let you possess them it would be hard to be tell that the song bird feathers that people have were picked off of the ground and did not come from an illegaly shot bird. I do not know where you live and what you're laws are there though.
bird cannot be killed with the exception of the permitted water fowl and such. It is not a state decision it is a federal level law. Here in Texas we have Grackels and the make a huge mess but they are illegal to kill.
Thank you John. I knew that Migratory Birds are illegal to kill with only certin exceptions through out the entire country. I just didn't know if a state could have exceptions for certin species.