How will they survive?

 Wild animals don't need
 your help to live. If
 they did, they wouldn't
 have survived before
 people were on the scene.

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What bird has a beard on its chest, can change the color of its head, grinds up acorns with a powerful muscle, and can fly up to 60 miles an hour? Need more hints? It also has a snood, a dewlap and caruncles? That doesn't help? O.K. - it was extirpated from most of New England in the early 1800s because of over-hunting and its habitat was cut down. Now it is a common resident. Still can't get it? It gobbles.

Wild Turkey

All of the above is true about wild turkeys. Many of us take these fascinating birds for granted because we see the tame variety on our tables at Thanksgiving or between slices of bread for lunch. But there are important differences between the bird we buy at the store and the wild one in the woods. The wild turkey's place in history stretches from Native Americans to Benjamin Franklin to the return of our forests, to wildlife biologists, and modern hunting. This is their story.

The History of "A Bird of Courage"

Turkeys are native to North America. Archaeologists have found turkey calls made by Native Americans that are 8,500 years old, so we know people have been hunting turkeys for a long time.

Early explorers in America brought turkeys back to Europe. In fact domesticated turkeys were in Italy, France, and England by the 1500s. So when the Pilgrims landed in the New World and had their Thanksgiving feast, they already knew about turkeys.

If we think someone is foolish or silly we call them a turkey. But the wild turkey is a wary and difficult bird to hunt. Benjamin Franklin knew this, and suggested it as our national bird. The bald eagle beat out the turkey, and Franklin was disappointed:

I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country! For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. A lot of wild turkeys were eaten. At the same time, good turkey habitat was being cleared for farms, roads, towns, and cities. The turkey was in trouble. In New Hampshire, the last turkey was seen in 1854 in the town of Weare; turkeys had been extirpated from the state. In Maine turkeys were extirpated in the early 1800s. The millions of birds in this country were, by some estimates, reduced to only 30,000 by the early 1900s. Extinction, as happened to the passenger pigeon and heath hen, was closing in.

The Come Back Turkey

Wild Turkeys in Winter

Without habitat you can't live. Without laws to protect you, you have a hard time avoiding becoming a turkey dinner. Luckily for the turkey, as the United States grew, people started to move west where farming was more productive. The forests that the pioneers had first cut to build their homes and create farmland began to grow back. Unfortunately turkeys can't read or write, so we couldn't tell them that their habitat had re-grown. What to do? How about bringing wild turkeys to a new habitat? For the tricky turkey, that's a hard task. Fortunately, our wildlife biologists are smarter than birds.

Cannons to the Rescue

Originally, wildlife biologists tried raising wild turkeys on a farm, and releasing them into a new habitat. It didn't work because the farm-raised turkeys didn't know how to survive in the wild. Catching adult wild turkeys and relocating them to new habitat became the best way to restore their population.

How are you going to catch a lot of wary wild turkeys? Try shooting a net out of a cannon over a flock of them! Thousands of turkeys have been caught and relocated using drop nets and immobilizing drugs. The beginning for New Hampshire was in 1975. Twenty-five turkeys were captured on the New York/Pennsylvania border and brought to the state. Today there are as many as 25,000 turkeys, with some in every county. In Maine, 41 wild turkeys 'borrowed' from Vermont were released in 1977 and 1978 and with the aid of other releases and management; they now number in the thousands and can be found in 11 counties statewide. This 'trap and transfer' technique has been so effective that there are now over 4 million birds in the United States.

Keeping Them Common

It takes more than relocation to bring back extirpated wildlife. We also need hunting laws and land use practices that are based on knowledge of an animal's habitat and reproduction. For example, the male turkey is polygamous - he mates with lots of females. So wildlife laws usually say it's O.K. to hunt males in the spring, because it doesn't take many of them to make a lot of baby turkeys. We also know that turkey chicks and poults need lots of protein to grow up. They get it from insects that grow in meadows, or grain left in farm fields. So wildlife biologists encourage landowners to maintain fields, or farmers to leave corn in their fields. Turkeys also like apples, so it's good to maintain wild apples, or grow crabapples.

Are Turkeys Out of the Woods?

For now, the forests and meadows that turkeys require are O.K. But habitat is changing again, as more people live in the forests of our states. Cities are growing, along with highways and malls. Biologists will need to constantly monitor turkey habitat, population, and habits, to ensure they never become extirpated again.