Eastern wild turkeys are native to our region, but up until the late 1960s, there were almost none in Vermont. That’s when the state government and biologists began a concerted effort to bring them back.
"They adapted as a forest dwelling bird, which many people don't think of, because we see them in fields," said Josh Morse, public information officer with Vermont Fish & Wildlife. "When European settlers arrived here, they cleared the landscape for farming. By around 1850, the loss of forests and unregulated hunting basically wiped the turkeys out."
In the early 20th century, private groups occasionally tried to restore the turkey population by releasing farm-raised turkeys into the wild, but they did not survive.
Eventually, the state stepped in. They brokered an agreement with New York to send over a biologist named Bill Drake to trap wild turkeys — a difficult challenge — and bring them to Vermont.
Their efforts worked – Vermont is now home to about 45,000 wild turkeys. This spring's turkey season marks the 51st year of modern turkey hunting in Vermont.
Morse credits Vermont's landscape for part of the success. "They love forest with kind of mixed in farm fields — even suburban areas. So, Vermont is really an exceptional place for turkeys to live," he said. "If you give them good habitat, they produce a ton of chicks, and they will spread. And that's exactly what happened."
Vermont Fish & Wildlife teamed up with Vermont Folklife to record stories from wildlife biologists who helped restore the wild turkey population in the 1960s and 1970s. They also recorded stories from hunters — old timers and new learners alike — about the joys and mishaps of hunting wild turkey.
"Our work at Vermont Folklife is grounded in the field of ethnography, which is a method for understanding human experience," said Mary Wesley, director of education and media at Vermont Folklife. "It's a lot about meeting people where they are understanding the world through their eyes."
To do that, she and her colleagues brought their recording equipment into the woods on a spring turkey hunt, which Wesley called, "the highlight of this project for me."
Once they had collected a number of stories, Fish & Wildlife and Vermont Folklife staged listening parties to share their recordings and gather more. The stories are now preserved in Vermont Folklife's sound archive and multimedia collection.
Broadcast live on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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