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Wild Turkeys—True Natives of America
Researched and Written by Janine Weins
(Posted 2/28/06)

The turkeys enjoy lunch on the side of the driveway.

The turkeys reflect on the view.

While I was enjoying lunch this week, a pair of turkeys lunched on the edge of my lawn. When I stepped to the window to enjoy the view, the turkeys hopped on a snow bank so they could also enjoy the view.

Wild turkeys are North America's largest upland game birds. Tom Turkeys, the adult males, can weigh 25 pounds and stand 4 feet tall. Their beard, which is a tuft of feathers that hangs from their chest, seems like a design failure. Small children often giggle when they see a wild turkey. Their naked heads can change from a flat grey to shades of white, pink and blue. To attract females, the Toms fan the beautiful feathers in their tails and strut around shaking their fanned plumage while making gobbling sounds. Although wild turkeys spend a lot of time with their feet on the ground, they often fly at speeds of more than 50 mph.

The wild turkey was wildly popular with early settlers. It was the first bird John James Audubon painted for The Birds of North America. Ben Franklin thought the wild turkey, which can only be found in North America, would be a better national symbol than the bald eagle. In January 1784, Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter in which he said, "The Turkey is in Comparison [to the Eagle] a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... besides, though a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

By 1930, the wild turkey population, which had been in the millions in Franklin's time, was estimated to be 30,000. According to the National Geographic Society, "By the 1930s, the only places where wild turkeys remained were pockets of habitat inaccessible to people, such as the mountainous landscape of Pennsylvania's Poconos and the swamps of Alabama." In the mid decades of the 20th century, various efforts were made to restore the wild turkey population. In the 1950's, Vermont tried to introduce wild turkeys raised on game farms. This effort failed when the birds failed to survive. In the early 1970s, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department released birds in Pawlet and Hubbardton that had been trapped by the New York State Conservation Department. The trapped birds survived and by 1973 it was estimated that Vermont had 600 wild turkeys.

In 1973, the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), a nonprofit conservation and educational organization, was founded. With the help of the NWTF, the national turkey population has grown from 1.3 million in 1973 to an estimated 7 million in 2006.