Wild turkeys flourishing in Maine Biologists, foundation nurse population back to significant numbers

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DANFORTH – What stands 3 feet tall with a sturdy body covered in iridescent green-black feathers; a mottled red and blue head, topped with a knobby, hairy horn; and a long, striped beard?

The answer – a wild turkey – seems to have more in common with a small dinosaur than with its shrink-wrapped cousins in the freezer case.

Few Mainers have ever been eye-to-beady-eye with a wild turkey because historic overhunting and changes in the landscape, brought on by the rise of farming and forestry, drove turkeys out of the state by the turn of the 20th century.

But over the past 30 years an intensive effort by state wildlife biologists and the National Wild Turkey Foundation has restored the bird to more than 90 percent of its available habitat in Maine. Today, the state’s turkey population is conservatively estimated at 23,000 birds, said state wildlife biologist Brad Allen, one of the state biologists managing the turkey program from Bangor.

“They’ve lived long and prospered,” Allen said. “We’re pretty close to having turkeys everywhere we can.”

Maine imported its first turkeys – 41 birds from Vermont – and released them into York County in 1977. Another 70 birds were moved from Connecticut in the late 1980s. Today, those first immigrant turkeys have increased their population by more than 200 percent, and have established flocks as far east as Cherryfield and as far north as Greenville.

Some natural migration occurs each spring when adolescent male turkeys, known as jakes, strike out for new territories. But turkeys tend to be a fairly sedentary lot, rarely flying farther than a few miles.

So state wildlife biologists have given the gawky birds a little help. About 100 turkeys have been moved each winter, since the early 1990s, Allen said.

Last week, Vasco “Buster” Carter, a state wildlife biologist who is based in Enfield, worked with a group of students from East Grand School in Danforth, to find a new home for seven big tom turkeys.

The birds were trapped more than 130 miles away on a Knox dairy farm, where they had become a nuisance.

“Birds can build up on a farm until they become kind of a pain,” Allen said, recalling farmers in the state’s dairy belt who complained of flocks of as many as 200 turkeys roaming their land.

So during the winter, when the turkeys are hungry, biologists lay bait near these superflocks. When the birds come to feed, biologists shoot a rocket-propelled net up and over the turkeys. The birds are boxed and taken to one of the state’s scheduled reintroduction sites.

Biologists choose locations that are 10 to 15 miles away from known turkey flocks, in hopes that the birds will naturally fill in the gaps.

“We’re leapfrogging along,” Carter said.

Last Friday, Carter loaded up his pickup truck with seven indignant turkeys, rustling and gobbling inside their boxes, and a handful of high school students, then drove out to a parcel of land owned by science teacher David Apgar to release the birds.

For the past four years, East Grand students have worked to improve the turkey habitat on about 1,000 acres in preparation for the birds’ arrival, Apgar said. Over the coming months, students will monitor the birds, studying their life cycles and learning about ecology.

“These kids grew up in the woods hunting and fishing,” Apgar said. “Something like this makes a lot more sense than some abstract biology.”

“It’s something to get the kids outdoors, get them away from the video games,” agreed Brian Johnston of Staceyville, who serves as vice president of the local National Wild Turkey Federation Chapter and has worked with the students.

These teenagers, who had volunteered their time to prune long-abandoned apple orchards and plant chestnut trees, finally saw their work come to fruition last Friday.

Seven quivering cardboard boxes were lined up in Apgar’s back yard, and seven students hooted their glee as the turkeys shot out of their confinement toward the trees, the fat bodies skimming just inches above people’s heads as feathers fluttered down onto the snow.

Danforth is at the northern fringe of turkey habitat to date, but biologists believe that turkeys could survive in agricultural areas perhaps as far north as central Aroostook County.

“We’re looking at continuing north,” Carter said. “The birds are going to tell us when to stop.”

Some turkeys have been spotted in Aroostook County, but Allen is doubtful there are any large flocks. Just 2 feet of snow can be enough to keep turkeys from roaming for food, Allen said.

“I think they’re just passing time, eking out a living,” he said. “I’m not going to hold my breath for a terribly successful population up there. Winters will humble us.”

Unlike Maine’s failed effort to introduce caribou in the 1980s, and the perennially defeated proposals to reintroduce wolves, there’s no doubt that Maine’s turkey program is a success.

The state “rode the coattails” of similar efforts throughout the eastern United States that have boosted the national turkey population from fewer than 1 million to more than 8 million over the past 50 years, Allen said.

The program has been relatively inexpensive. In time and mileage, Maine’s biologists have spent $5,000 to $7,000 on the turkey project each year. The National Wild Turkey Foundation has contributed an additional $3,000 in nets, boxes, bait and other equipment. The new turkey hunting industry brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

In fact, the only problem with turkeys may be a population that will likely continue to boom long after the state’s habitat is full.

For the National Wild Turkey Foundation, a growing interest in turkey hunting is the answer. Maine allows springtime hunting in the southern third of the state, and more than 24,000 people have applied for the 9,000 permits that will be allotted in a drawing today.

“Hopefully we can hunt some of these one day,” East Grand student Jeremy Shay said after the turkey release in Danforth last week. “Hopefully it will be soon.”