New Hampshire's Turkeys

I thought this a good time to talk turkey – wild turkey, of course. Each year, as their numbers increase, it's easier to spot wild turkeys along the roadside or as shadowy shapes moving through the forest.

This true North American native was unlike anything the first settlers had ever seen in looks and behavior. Aggressive market hunting put wild turkeys on many more tables than the very first Thanksgiving. Despite being a wily, wary bird, at their communal overnight roosts they were an easy target for market gunners, a practice no longer legal.

As further challenge to their survival, forests were cleared for timber, farmland, and fuelwood. And wild turkeys lost protective forest cover along with their major forest foods. From huge flocks and a nationwide population in the millions, by the mid-1880s few remained. New Hampshire's last wild turkey was reported in 1854.

Over 100 years later, when state wildlife recovery programs began, wild turkeys received top priority as a popular "game bird." In the 1970s birds from a remnant population in New York's Allegheny Mountains were trapped and released in New Hampshire. Recovery was so successful that the state's first wild turkey season opened within the decade.

In years when acorns and beechnuts are plentiful, turkeys keep to the cover of forest. But when food is scarce or snow is deep, sightings at barnyards, roadsides, and under backyard birdfeeders.

It's hard not to smile when a herd of these character birds passes by.