WILD TURKEY

Regrettably, if you google up “Wild Turkey” you will be disappointed to discover that the first entry is for the bourbon.  The wild turkey tasty treat I was looking for was Meleagris gallopavo.  I apparently am not the only person who likes wild turkey.  They were poached out in much of their historical range by the 1920s. 

Conservation biology was a new science and there was a steep learning curve.  Initially the conservation agencies tried to release farm-raised birds, but they didn’t make it.  Plus, those that did manage to “make it” (wink wink) produce poults that just weren’t as cagy as the real wild turkeys.  The next best option was to try and locate remnant populations and protect them with the hope that they would become abundant enough to reintroduce into other spots.    

One of the remaining populations in Missouri through the 1940s was at Caney Mountain, a rough set of isolated Ozark hills identified by Starker Leopold (yep, the son of Aldo Leopold who wrote the first conservation biology text book AND “Sand County Almanac”) as the perfect spot for turkeys.  The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) purchased the 5,530-acre site and began protecting the 10-12 turkeys left on it.  From that meager beginning, the wild turkey began to recover.  MDC was able to purchase and protect more land and the turkeys made it.  The efforts were so successful that turkeys were reintroduced throughout the Ozarks through a conservation trading system between states.  So, if you see a wild turkey this fall, thank the folks that had the foresight to protect them 80 years ago.

Want to see and hear a wild turkey?  The visit the Cornell Lab or Ornithology at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Wild_Turkey/lifehistory