Palouse Outdoors: A wild turkey conservation success story

Spring is a magical time. We've survived another winter. The daffodils are up, fruit trees are boasting a vibrant palette of snow white to fuchsia, and asparagus is popping like mad. Spring's splendor is bookended by birdsong. The American robin song is a quintessential tune at dawn, but it's far from the only warbling that brings a smile to folk's faces.

Those taking to the forest are hoping to hear the voice of North America's largest game bird, the "thunder chicken," "boss tom," "Mr. Waddles," or plain old wild turkey. The guttural gobble of a wild turkey rings through the timber and over farmland hills and can be felt in one's chest when sounding off nearby. Pursuing wild turkeys during the spring mating season excites nearly as many hunters as the fall big game seasons. They're the second most popular game animal, edged out only by the white-tailed deer.

Turkeys are commonplace in many areas and thrive in rural communities like Dayton and Waitsburg. While popular with the hunters, your mail carrier may have a different opinion of these often-aggressive 20-pound descendants of dinosaurs with sharp beaks and spurs. Don't be fooled by the goofy snood dangling from the tom's face. He can be quite rude if caught in the wrong mood.

The Rio Grande wild turkey is the bird in our neck of the woods, but they didn't originate here. They thrive here because their southwestern US roots make them right at home in the semi-arid Palouse climate. Wild turkeys across the continent have a varied past, and their current commonplace existence is owed to a conservation legacy that began with the (first) Great Depression.

According to the National Wild Turkey Federation, approximately 10 million wild turkeys roamed North America at European settlement and presented a fine food source. Unlike most "game" animals today, turkeys were hunted year-round without regulation for subsistence and the market.

Settlers cleared timber for agriculture and community development as the eastern colonies grew, and they moved across America. The cumulative impact of hunting and habitat loss decimated and isolated wild turkey populations.

"Connecticut had lost its wild turkeys by 1813. Vermont held out until 1842, and other states followed. By 1920, the wild turkey was lost from 18 of the original 39 states and Ontario, Canada, in its supposed ancestral range," the National Wild Turkey Federation reports.

North American wild turkey populations plummeted below an estimated 250,000 by the 1930s, but proposed legislation and the Great Depression would serve the wild turkey well.

In 1900, the first iteration of the Lacey Act regulated market hunting by prohibiting trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that were illegally harvested, possessed, transported, or sold. In concert with early wildlife management regulations, this Act reduced the overall hunting impact on turkey populations.

The Great Depression fell upon America in 1929. Over the following decade, Americans vacated their homesteads and small farms as 14 million sought work in cities and factories. With fields left fallow, natural succession converted former cropland to grasslands and shrublands. This natural landscape change resulted in the rebirth of wild turkey habitat.

Another keystone piece of legislation – the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 – established a conservation fund via excise tax placed on the sale of sporting goods and ammunition. These funds were used as seed money to develop large-scale conservation efforts. State fish and game agencies began trap-and-transport programs to reestablish turkeys throughout their native range. "By 1952, bird numbers nationwide had grown to 320,000," wrote Gary Garth in USA Today.

By 1973, the national wild turkey population reached approximately 1.3 million birds. At that time, the National Wild Turkey Federation was founded with the mission of "wild turkey conservation and the preservation of North America's hunting heritage."

These and other conservation efforts have resulted in the recovery of wild turkeys, with over 5 million estimated across 49 US States and five subspecies in 2022. The Eastern subspecies is the most populous, comprising approximately 81 percent of the wild turkey population, followed by the Rio Grande at 13 percent, the Merriam's at 4 percent, the Osceola at 2 percent, and the Gould's at less than 1 percent. This incredible recovery since 1973 is no simple coincidence with the founding of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

If you have not hunted wild turkeys, now is the time to join the ranks in one of America's oldest hunting traditions. The Washington season is open until May 15th. Get after them to see why these birds are a special part of our landscape and routinely haunt a hunter's dreams.