By Staff
Isn't it great to live in a country where the folks running around in camouflage and carrying guns are not, revolutionaries, death squads or terrorists but just turkey hunters? Turkey season started this week and judging by all the gobbling and yelping I've been hearing lately it should be another excellent season.
With wild turkeys now under nearly every bush it's hard to imagine what a rough and rocky road the turkey has strutted here in Michigan. Experts guesstimate the Michigan turkey population in pre-settlement days at roughly 94,000. Don't even ask, I haven't a clue where they came up with that. However, during the 1800s logging and unregulated hunting literally drove them to extinction here in Michigan. The last known bird to be taken was in 1897 in Van Buren County. By 1900 they were declared totally extirpated from the state.
For the next half century the turkey remained gone and forgotten. What little thought of reintroduction arose was quelled by the accepted theory that turkeys required large, continuous blocks of hardwood forest to survive and there was precious little of that left in the state. Then in 1954 the DNR decided to see if they could establish a token flock in the Allegan State Game Area to attract tourists. There were no expectations of re-establishing a statewide population, it was just a play thing. They bought 50 semi-wild turkeys and 400 eggs from a game farm in Pennsylvania for the project. To everyone's surprise, over the next several years they did moderately well.
Encouraged by this, DNR biologists in the Baldwin area took it upon themselves to get more stock from the same source to put in their area. These, too, held their own but it remained an individual venture as the DNR still did not consider turkey reintroduction a worthy program. Individual biologists and conservation organizations relocated some of the Baldwin birds to the Mio area in the Northeastern Lower Peninusla. As that relocation proved successful some of the Mio birds were moved to the Upper Peninsula and neighboring Ontario. Soon thereafter, some of the U.P. birds were brought back down to other areas of the upper Lower Peninsula.
Though these populations were maintaining themselves it was far from a great success story. Many of these flocks needed constant coddling. Local residents and clubs, including the National Wild Turkey Federation and the newly formed Michigan Turkey Hunters Association, provided critical winter feeding and otherwise nursed them along. Another major problem was poaching. Many locals figured the turkeys were going to die anyway so why not hasten the process and invite them to dinner. But on the overall the turkeys showed promise.
There were some valuable lessons learned during this process. It was discovered turkeys do not need the vast expanses of forest as previously thought. Land with just
10% – 15% of forest canopy is sufficient. It was also found that turkey's don't do well in areas of deep snow. Any place with an annual snow fall over sixty inches probably won't sustain turkeys.
In 1982, with a decent smattering of birds now scattered around the northern portions of the state, the DNR couldn't pass up the financial opportunity and opened limited hunting seasons at Allegan, Baldwin, Mio and Menominee County in the U.P. Since they were pillaging the rewards they also decided they'd better finally join the game and officially launched their turkey management program the following year.
There were many learning processes and at first things progressed slowly. Then, somewhere around 1990 turkey populations literally exploded throughout most of the state. I'm not sure anyone knows exactly why this occurred but it was likely a combination of things. The DNR getting better at raising and relocating them, a long string of mild winters, landowners making their land more turkey friendly and reduced poaching are all considered contributing factors. Perhaps most of all, maybe the turkeys just decided it was now time to make their comeback.
Whatever the reasons, from pre-settlement numbers of approximately 100,000 down to zero and now back to 140,000 there's no doubt the wild turkey has come full circle and then some. Carpe diem.
Larry Lyons writes a weekly outdoor column for Leader Publications. He can be reached at larrylyons@beanstalk.net