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Iowa Turkey Recovery is a Landmark Conservation Achievement

"Their eyesight is keen. Their vision extraordinary. If they could smell, you'd never kill one." Richard Bishop, Iowa Wildlife Biologist, Feb., 1979

Credit: (Iowa DNR)
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Iowa DNR
Source: http://www.iowadnr.gov/
Published: May. 05, 2009

"Their eyesight is keen. Their vision extraordinary. If they could smell, you'd never kill one." Richard Bishop, Iowa Wildlife Biologist, Feb., 1979

When it comes to pursuing the wild turkey, a truer statement was never spoken. Those words, which rapidly became the catch phrase of turkey hunters statewide, were first uttered by Bishop as he addressed a packed audience of turkey hunter wanna bes during an Iowa Conservation Commission sponsored turkey hunting seminar held at the Mason City Public Library. Hunting buddy Steve Schutte and I were among those wild turkey wanna bes.

Although turkey hunting was a time honored tradition in America's Deep South, the sport was brand new to Iowa. At that time, most of us had never even seen, let alone hunted, the eastern wild turkey. But recently transplanted populations were expanding, and Schutte and I planned on taking full advantage of the growing opportunity to pursue this legendary gamebird.

Our first hunt took place later that spring against the rugged backdrop of extreme Northeastern Iowa. Although neither of us successfully [or even came close] to bagging a bird, we did both manage to see and hear a couple of wild gobblers. That single experience was all it took. We had both become immediately and hopelessly gut hooked on turkeys and turkey hunting. We've returned to Northeast Iowa every single year since.

This year, we celebrated our 30th consecutive turkey opener with a trip to Thoma's Dairy Bar. Located on the main drag of Garnavillo, Thoma's is one of those diners where the term "home cooking" actually means just that. We stop there several times each season, partly for the extraordinary food and partly to gather intelligence on where local farmers, mail carriers, and milk truck drivers are seeing birds.

Digging into the noon special, Schutte and I began to compare notes. Steve had enjoyed a classic hunt that morning and had bagged a mature gobbler by ten o'clock. In spite of plenty of activity in my neck of the woods, the only thing that I'd had in so far were some lonesome hens.

Eventually, our conversation turned back to the early years of Iowa turkey hunting and on how far the sport has come. For the benefit of younger hunters, I think some of those changes are worth relating.

During the late 1970s, there were only two places to hunt wild turkeys ----- Stephen's State Forest [in the south] and the Mississippi River blufflands of the extreme northeast. The hunting season was divided into just two segments which ran for a combined total of 16 days. Hunting was only allowed until noon. The use of decoys was illegal and manufactures offered little else in the way of specialized hunting equipment. Back then, a hunter could only take one bird per season. The state issued around 300 licenses annually, and hunters bagged less than 100 toms each spring.

Here's an example of how scarce wild turkeys actually were back then. If someone found a set of tracks where a gobbler had crossed the muddy surface of some remote logging road, other hunters would hike to that spot just for an opportunity to view the imprints. Whenever one of us came across a cast off turkey feather, the specimen was collected and taken back to camp so everyone could have a chance to see it. I realize that younger turkey hunters may find these stories hard to believe, but that's the way it was. It was not unusual for otherwise experienced hunters to spend several seasons in the turkey woods before finally getting a shot at a tom. Anyone who saw a gobbler at a distance of less than 200 yards was considered fortunate. Many hunters never really expected to bag a genuine Timber Ghost for themselves --- ever, but the idea that it somehow could happen was enough to keep most folks coming back for more.

Today, Iowa's spring turkey hunting opportunities include a special youth season in addition to a four part split season that runs for more than a month with hunting allowed statewide. Around 40,000 licenses are issued annually, and hunters bag 10,000 to 12,000 gobblers each spring. Additional fall hunting seasons are now allowed across many parts of the state. Hunters capitalizing on all options can harvest up to four birds annually, and hunting runs from sunrise to sunset.

About the only discouraging word this rosy scenario is that, as turkey hunting has grown more and more popular, access to private hunting grounds has become more restricted. As aging landowners leave the farm, more and more private access is lost --- often as a result of competing hunters buying chunks of timber for personal recreation.

The flip side is that, while private lands hunting opportunities have decreased, the amount of publicly owed timber has soared. Those public acquisitions of Iowa forest lands are the direct result of hunter sponsored conservation efforts, including DNR programs where live trapped, Iowa turkeys were sold to other states [$500 per bird] engaged in budding restoration programs of their own.

The restoration of the eastern wild turkey to Iowa woodlands remains a hallmark conservation achievement. If anyone had predicted just how successful and recreationally important this wildlife recovery project would one day become, not one of us who attended that 1979 turkey hunting seminar would have dared believe it. But with patience, hard work, and hunter dollars, it happened anyway.

 



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