An Unexpected Bonus

Two days before Thanksgiving, I heard distinctive turkey talk in my back yard. Tiptoeing, I crept with camera in hand to the deck so I could watch and photograph 20 Rio Grande poults, jakes, and adults. This flock wandered into town from a not-too-distant creek to inspect lawns and flowerbeds as their   keen eyesight located insects slowed by chilly morning temps. As I enjoyed this unexpected surprise, I realized that it’s only been in my lifetime that Kansans get to enjoy such a scene. From the early 1900s until Kansas Fish and Game reintroduced this once native species in the 60s, turkeys were extirpated from our landscape.

This conservation experiment took time to get off the ground. Early transplants got off to such a slow start that even in the late 70s, biologists were still trapping Texas and Oklahoma gobblers to rehome in Kansas. My husband helped release some these captured birds in western Kansas. I recall the thrill of spotting a flock foraging along a creek or river because seeing them was so unexpected.

In the beginning hunting seasons lasted only days and few drew licenses. Over decades, units and seasons expanded until almost all Kansans can now turkey hunt during spring and fall. In some units, hunters can buy more than one permit to harvest what some consider the best meat they can put on the table. Bird numbers are strong enough that modern nimrods can opt to stalk with bows, shotguns, or muzzleloaders.

While not every farmer appreciates this creature, many, like our former neighbor, are glad to see turkeys roaming wild again. That gentleman saved garden and table scraps to toss into the barnyard to attract them. The little girl who lived down the road used this flock as models for her 4-H photography projects and earned at least one first place ribbon for her pictures of nesting turkeys.

Supporting this game animal doesn’t benefit only our diets. Across America, wildlife departments have reintroduced these birds so that their populations have grown from 1.3 million to well over 7 million nationally. This has led to more than a $10 billion economic impact nationwide, with Kansas receiving an ample share of funds.

If you have a hankering to provide freshly harvested turkey for Christmas dinner, it’s not too late to buy a license and join the second half of the fall hunt. Camoup and pursue your bird in units 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 from December 12 through January 31, 2017.

Maybe wild turkey feasts aren’t your thing. You can still enjoy a country drive to watch flocks forage along creeks and edges of fields. If you’re out at dusk, you might see these ungainly birds fly to roost in an old cottonwood tree. Seeing something built like a feathered basketball with a long neck and wings take to the air offers its own entertainment.

Thank goodness our state Fish and Game Department joined the national movement to restore turkeys to our state. Kansans can enjoy hunting, photographing, or simply watching them parade through the countryside or town.

A Turkey Thanksgiving

It’s the time of year when turkey producers dream in dollar signs. In a few months, their products will be bagged, tagged, and on sale in the frozen food department of area grocery stores. Cooks in charge of Thanksgiving dinner will be saving tasty recipes picturing birds roasted to golden perfection and surrounded by a platter of colorful accompaniments. Diners who prefer wild turkey to farm-raised stock are eyeballing native flocks to see where they feed daily and roost at dusk. While humans plan their upcoming feasts, camouflage –toned Rios and Easterns are living in the minute, enjoying a banner grasshopper crop.

This spring’s ample rains nurtured fields, yards, and ditches full of cultivated plants and weeds, favorite hopper foods. Hungry, leaping insect hordes explain why roads, fields, and yards in our area appear animated. If you ramble around your yard or a nearby field, you’ll rustle up at least a hundred prickly-legged characters who spring shoulder high from the ground and dangle from the fibers of your shirt or cling to your hair. It’s enough to make a finicky person gyrate like a 70s disco dancer.

Recently, we visited friends in the country who share their property with a number of hens, gobblers, jakes, and poults. It’s a thrill to drive up their road and spy ungainly birds wandering over pastures and into the farmyard. If it isn’t mating season, it’s eating season and these walking drumsticks have big appetites. You can count on watching them scratch and peck at any seed or insect in their vicinity. This year, grasshoppers reproduced like crazy, so plenty exist to fatten feathered foragers.

Since my friend and I enjoy gardening, I hoped to check out her little oasis. She quickly apologized, explaining how hoppers had decimated both her vegetables and flowers. I understood exactly what she meant since I had stems in my own flowerbed sporting well-gnawed leaves that looked like poorly woven fish nets. As we stood outside lamenting the sad fates of our spring dreams, part of her turkey flock wandered near, heads bobbling up and down as they gobbled grasshoppers.

In an area with so many delicacies to choose from, those poor birds struggled to decide which bug to eat first. Once they swallowed their prey, they intently moved on to the next crunchy critter. In a matter of minutes, they wiped out more than my friend and I might have squashed in a day of smacking and stomping. We quietly cheered on this squad of hens and mostly-grown poults. In the distance, gobblers worked the edges of a field, leaping into the air like a hovering  basketball rebounder to snag an escaping hopper.

Perhaps some of the turkeys I watched this summer will end up as the main course of a Thanksgiving dinner. Whoever enjoys that banquet should know that turkey scored a feast that lasted for months. In fact, area gobblers heading to roost struggle to attain lift off with their stomachs full of once-leaping protein snacks.

First Hunt: The Stories Begin

Parents mark children’s lives by firsts: first tooth, first word, first step, and first day of school.  As youngsters mature, firsts come further apart.   However, for a youngster who hunts, the list of firsts continue.  If my husband and his friends’ experiences are any indication, not only continue but  are infinite.  Hunters live for their stories, which always include a first. Perhaps this is a hunter’s way to cling to childhood’s elusive magic.

Last weekend my daughter joined a select group.  She got her first turkey.

 Hunting requires certain before, during, and after rituals.  For  dedicated outdoors enthusiasts, it is not bagged game that is the goal.  It is the  preparation.  Kelli and her dad spent months discussing their upcoming hunt: where to hunt, what to shoot, how long a shot to take,  and how one makes sure to shoot a tom.

 As opening day drew closer, she kept asking, “When?”  Finally, it was time. 

To build Kelli’s confidence, the two practiced shooting targets.  Considering she hadn’t used a shotgun much, Kelli showed promise.  But, there’s a big difference between a standing target and a moving tom.  Not a problem for Kelli. 

The night before the safari, she laid out camouflage and hunting boots.  She would be ready when the alarm sounded, even though she never shows such enthusiasm on school mornings.  Copying her dad, she set out her coffee cup. 

Those two were so efficient in their leave-taking I barely noticed them rising at 4:30 a.m.  This signaled new dedication from my daughter.  She never gets up early for any other reason.  This alone made a campfire story.

I figured she would hunt and return with tales of turkeys she saw and missed or couldn’t shoot.  After all, she’d heard plenty of these from her dad. 

By nine a.m., my crew returned jubilantly from the woods, lugging a big turkey! Underestimating the situation, I asked the adults, “Who bagged the gobbler?” Imagine Kelli’s joy as she proclaimed, “I did!  I got him in one shot.”

I wanted to hear the whole story, but I, too, had to follow the ritual.  Pictures first.  Kelli alone with her turkey, tail fanned out.  Kelli with turkey draped over shoulder.  Kelli with calling partners, Dad and Wes, on each side. At last, a photo of our aged dog creeping out to sniff Kelli’s trophy.  I can date the years of our marriage by photos of past hunts.  Now my daughter’s beaming smile added to those memories.

The photo op completed, Kelli could tell her story. The telling is so important.  It isn’t the shot--it is the preparation.  Arriving on site before the birds fly off their roost, listening to morning come to life, watching and waiting for gobblers to come to the decoy. 

Kelli provided Easter dinner, and she accomplished more than putting meat on the table.  If she had come home empty-handed, her hunt would have been successful.  She joined an elite group initiated into rituals of hunting preparation and storytelling.  In this group, she can count on many more firsts.  

Turkey Lonely Hearts Club

 Typically, when you see wild turkeys, you see them in a flock.  If they are out on a morning breakfast of grasshoppers and other early rising insects, several dine together.  At night, they usually gather in  large groups to roost in a big tree that allows each its own branch.  However, they roost close enough to one another for the  turkey equivalent of The Walton’s “Goodnight, John-boy” evening song.

For the past few weeks, we’ve had a lone hen roaming our property.  I am trying to solve the mystery of why she is on her own.  Is this a turkey choice?  Has she done something awful like Hester Prynne and been shunned by the flock? Does she have turkey body odor so no turkeys   hang  with her?

Ironically, my chickens don’t mind her presence.  I see her blue head bobbing up and down as she wanders in and out of their evening feeding routine, occasionally gobbling one of their grasshoppers.  Despite having to share their supply of bristly-legged insects, the hens and rooster include her in their pasture gleanings.

While this hen is far from the flock in our yard, she is brave about approaching the house.  Several times, she’s alarmed our little terrier by peeping into our living room window.  She’ll come right up to the plate glass and stare into the room.

 This is a wild turkey, so I am sure there is a more reasonable answer than an avian peeper, like maybe sampling insects lurking in the Russian sage growing in front of the window.  However, she looks like she’s checking out the activity inside the house.  Buster’s vicious, high-pitched bark does nothing to alarm her—at least when he’s inside the house.

I pointed her out to my husband and began explaining my creative and unlikely reasons for being in our yard.  As a wildlife professional, he looked at me and my meanderings like I was  from another planet or like I had been wandering in the extreme heat like this lonely turkey hen.  After a moment or two of serious thought, he dismissed my ramblings with, “Maybe she’s on a nest, a late nest granted, but still a nest, and she’s taking a break to eat.”

Whoa, that’s a thought I hadn’t considered.  We might be hosting a bunch of turkeys in the not too distant future.  You can bet I am on the lookout now whenever I see that hen turkey.  Perhaps, instead of being the lonely-hearted, rejected hen, she’s a harried mom trying to find a bit of time to herself to find a bite to eat. 

I still have the mystery of the lonely turkey hen to solve, but my husband has certainly pointed out that I hadn’t considered all the logical possibilities.  Even if I never figure out why this lonesome hen joins us on a regular basis, I am certain she knows what she is doing.