When Minnesota's wild turkey season opens Wednesday, hunters will celebrate one of the biggest wildlife success stories ever. Turkeys, a native species once exterminated here, were reintroduced in the southeast tip of the state almost 40 years ago. Since then, with the help of wildlife officials, gobblers have spread to two-thirds of the state and thrive farther north than anyone thought possible.
Those 29 birds released in Houston County in the early 1970s have become a population estimated at about 70,000.
"It really has been remarkable," said Bill Penning of the Department of Natural Resources. "Nobody in their wildest dreams in 1975, when we were releasing turkeys, thought we'd have the turkey population we have now."
For decades the DNR, with critical financial help from the National Wild Turkey Federation, trapped turkeys in their southeastern stronghold and transplanted birds ever farther away, testing the northern limits of the turkey range. The birds took hold in the southwest and north-central regions and now thrive as far north as Duluth, Park Rapids and Detroit Lakes.
"They are much more adaptable than we gave them credit for when we first started doing this," Penning said. "Our 1980 turkey plan said you need a minimum of 1,000 acres of hardwood forests to have a viable population of turkeys. We now know that's not true. All you need is a woodlot and a bunch of corn."
The DNR suspended its trap and transplant program in 2009, so barring a change, Minnesota's turkeys will determine how far north they will go and how high their population will reach.
"We think we've put birds into all of the suitable remaining habitat," Penning said. "So if turkeys want to move farther north, that's up to them."
Early efforts failed
They already are thriving far north of their pre-settlement range, officials believe.
"The birds can survive and thrive hundreds of miles north of where they existed in pre-settlement times," said Tom Glines, regional field supervisor of the National Wild Turkey Federation. "It's an evolving world."
The past two winters, the Turkey Federation has trapped some turkeys in Wisconsin and transplanted them into areas of Minnesota that needed additional birds, Glines said.
The group encouraged the DNR to continue trapping and transplanting birds after officials thought most of the likely turkey habitat had been filled. The Turkey Federation, with about 20,000 Minnesota members, spent about $500,000 on the program.
The money has paid dividends. About 55,000 hunters will pursue turkeys this season. In the first modern season in 1978, hunters bagged 94 birds. Last year, 31 years later, they shot more than 12,000.
The problem, Penning said, is that wildlife officials didn't know much about the wild turkey when states began trying to restore the bird in Minnesota. Officials released pen-raised birds back in the 1920s and tried again in the 1950s, but those efforts failed.
The state then tried introducing Merriam's turkeys, a subspecies, in the 1960s, and those, too, failed. Finally they tried releasing Eastern wild turkeys trapped in Missouri and elsewhere, and the recovery began. In the past 15 years, the birds have been mostly trapped in Minnesota and transplanted elsewhere in the state to jump-start the population.
'Lines of death' kept moving
"One of the things we learned is that in terms of winter survival, they can withstand extremely cold temperatures, 20 and 30 below zero, as long as they have access to food," Penning said. "We used to think they would literally freeze to death."
Officials thought the "line of death" was an area with 90 days of snow on the ground over 12 inches deep. Said Penning: "We kept drawing these lines of death, saying turkeys can never survive north of this, and they'd go north of it. And we'd draw another."
But if they can find food, they can survive tough winters. Turkeys are found in Kittson County in far northwestern Minnesota and even across the border in Manitoba, Glines said.
Don't expect to see turkeys in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness or along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Penning and Glines believe the birds are probably at their northern limit.
"I'm not confident they will do well in the boreal regions of the state; there's not much there in terms of food for them in the winter," Penning said. Glines agrees northeastern Minnesota likely won't be receptive to turkeys.
The DNR will conduct another turkey population assessment this fall by surveying deer hunters. That will help determine whether any more turkey trapping and transplanting needs to be done.
But both Penning and Glines say they believe turkey hunting opportunities likely will continue to grow as the turkey population increases in what was once considered inhospitable turkey country.
For Glines and other turkey hunting addicts, the allure of the wild turkey is stronger than ever.
"It's the gobble, not the gobbler," Glines explained. "It's the fact that they call back to you. I can't wait to get out there."
Doug Smith • doug.smith@startribune.com
