Idaho’s unofficial state bird

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Most people probably already know that the turkey is a uniquely North American bird — a fact primarily responsible for its central role in the also uniquely North American holiday of Thanksgiving. Just as well known are the complicated colonial underpinnings of our national day of thanks, but lesser known — at least to many of us — is that turkeys are also settler-colonists of a sort, at least to Idaho.

Despite their near ubiquitousness in the driveways, roads, fields and yards of rural North Idaho, there is no such thing as a “native” Idaho turkey. Prior to the 1960s, there were no turkeys in the Gem State. What’s more, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that there were enough of them in North Idaho to hunt — even then, the permits were limited in number and the season only open in Boundary County and some areas around Lewiston.

How the most-American of poultry came to be a transplant in Idaho — and a veritable newcomer to North Idaho — is a story not so much of wildlife management, but of wildlife swapping in the interest of giving the state’s hunters something more interesting to stalk. The wisdom of this policy is debatable, and it’s clear from the newspaper records that the overpopulation of turkeys was becoming a problem by the 1990s; but, all the same, they’re everywhere now, and how and why they got here is a seemingly forgotten though fascinating story.

A new voice in Idaho’s ‘wildlife chorus’    

Courtesy photo.

Digging through the archives of local newspapers — digitized by the Bonner County Historical Society and hosted online by the East Bonner County Library — reveals a trove of articles about turkeys, dating from early 1960s to the end of 1999, when the local fixation on the fowl seems to have faded.

The arrival of the birds in Idaho made for a good-sized story in the Feb. 2, 1961 edition of the Sandpoint News Bulletin under the headline: “Wild Turkey Yelps and Gobbles Added to Idaho’s Wildlife Chorus.”

Written by Jim Humbrid, of the Idaho Fish and Game Department, the piece described how four mature toms and 13 hens had been flown into the state from Colorado, then released in the Whitebird area, south of Lewiston.

The turkeys — of the wild Merriam’s species — were native to the Rocky Mountains from Mexico to Pikes Peak, in Colorado, whence they had come after a trade: mountain goats from Idaho for turkeys from Colorado.

According to Humbird, Merriam’s turkeys had a long and important history.

“Spanish conquistadores obtained from this breed the stock from which domestic turkeys were developed in Europe, and these were brought back to America by the early colonists,” he wrote.

The Fish and Game Commission began its effort to bring turkeys to Idaho about a year earlier, in 1960, with the express intention of providing sport for hunters. 

“Objectives behind the releases are to provide a source of stock planting to other suitable Idaho locations and eventually to provide turkey hunting in the state,” Humbird wrote, going on to caution that Idaho wildlife officials were prepared for the possibility that the “trial releases” “may result in complete failure.” 

However, he noted, similar flocks had been previously transplanted to Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming, where their numbers had grown large enough to allow for the establishment of hunting seasons within 10 years of their introduction.

“[The commission] needs the help of everyone likely to encounter the wild turkeys, help in protecting the big showy birds and giving them ‘every chance of taking hold in their new home,’” Humbird wrote. “Specifically, all persons concerned are urged not to feed the turkeys. They are fully capable of obtaining their own food at all seasons of the year.”

Ending on a somewhat triumphal note, Humbird quoted from then-Fish and Game Commission Director Ross Leonard that even if Idaho’s new population of turkeys failed to take hold in numbers sufficient to allow for hunting, “the venture will be worthwhile ‘if we can go out at daybreak in the spring of the year and hear the yelp of the hen and the gobble of the old harem-master himself.”

Enter ‘the exotics’

Though the first birds were rehomed in the Lewiston area, local interest followed soon after. In its very next edition, the News Bulletin reported that the Clark Fork Rod and Gun Club would hear a presentation from a University of Idaho expert on Idaho’s new turkeys, and, “It is hoped that these game birds will be distributed over several areas.”

That process would be slow going, and include multiple transplantations from other states in exchange for a number of other Idaho wildlife species. A further 11 turkeys came to the state from Colorado — again in exchange for mountain goats — in the spring of 1962 and another shipment of the birds came in December that year.

The steady introduction of Turkeys from Colorado continued through the following years, to the point that by the spring of 1965, the News Bulletin could report that, “Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Merriam’s wild turkeys now strut along the lower Salmon River, mainly the offspring of 

39 transplants brought to Idaho from Colorado in exchange for mountain goats, and some of these are being trapped and introduced into other parts of the state this winter.”

The paper wrote that, “The introduction of exotic wildlife species where feasible habitat can be found and damaging competition with other species will not follow is part of the [Fish and Game] department’s five-point program for the future.”

By the mid-1960s, it became clear that Fish and Game — and by extension the local papers — were hot to trot for turkeys. Article after article through the end of the decade meticulously followed the growing population and range of the birds throughout the state, with one dispatch in 1965 stating, “Noble Game Birds Thrive: Wild Turkeys Promise Thrill For Idaho Hunters in Near Future.”

Quoting from the Lewiston Tribune, the News Bulletin wrote, “To the traveler attuned to the manners and moods of the wild creatures, the first glimpse of a wild turkey is an experience to be prized for a lifetime. The tourist may be driving through the high, clean ponderosa forests toward the north rim of the Grand Canyon, when he first sees a proud, graceful tom stalking through a bright cluster of aspen. Or he may be hiking up a mountain trail in Colorado when he first glimpses three wild turkeys at a bend in the path. Wherever the encounter occurs, it imprints upon the memory of a grateful human a picture which can be recalled in all its splendor when the winds of the winter blow or the turmoil of daily problems beat upon frayed nerves.”

That poetic language held out “another bright now hope … to the dreams of the watchful sportsman in Idaho,” the News Bulletin wrote.

Despite flowery reports and high-flown promises, even by 1966 there were only scattered reports of the turkeys coming north from their original transplant areas — one lengthy article in July 1966 hinted that perhaps a few of the birds had been seen in the St. Maries area. Otherwise, the population remained south of Lewiston.

Given the slow progress of the turkey introduction program in Idaho, it was telling in the spring of 1967 that the News Bulletin carried a large piece claiming that the importation of wildlife species into non-native habitats was “now [a] scientific effort.”

Citing evidence from other species of game birds such as Chinese pheasants, Hungarian partridges and chukars, the paper wrote that introduction of these “exotics” had provided highly successful hunting opportunities in other parts of the country.

According to the News Bulletin, California bighorn sheep, opossum shrimp, Japanese green pheasants and, of course, turkeys were all being actively relocated to Idaho. 

However, in the Nov. 23, 1967 edition of the paper, Jack McNeel, of the Idaho Fish and Game Department, contributed an article to the News Bulletin on “a modern Thanksgiving,” opening his piece with the statement: “The year 1967 will be remembered for many things of worldwide interest, but for many Idaho sportsmen it will also be remembered as the first year that turkeys have been hunted in Idaho. For the first time in the history of the state, a few hunters will be sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner graced by a wild turkey killed along Idaho’s Salmon River.”

Almost 1,500 Idahoans applied for 150 tags costing $5 each. Of those, only 135 were collected and, ultimately, only 15 hunters were known to have taken a bird during the inaugural two-week season.

Not a great showing, though McNeel wrote, “Perhaps panhandle area hunters will have the opportunity to bag a wild turkey before many more seasons. Fifteen hunters this year have already had a dream come true with a story to tell their grandchildren of how they killed a turkey for Thanksgiving in Idaho’s first-ever turkey hunt in 1967.”   

Slow growth in gobblers 

At the close of the 1960s, turkeys still hadn’t made their way into the upper panhandle, with one piece in the Daily Bee reporting in late October 1969 that while some birds had been introduced around St. Maries, “the winters apparently are too snowy and the springs too wet for this species of upland game bird to take hold.”

Regardless, a few months later in the spring of 1970, McNeel wrote  in his “Wildlife Window” column that about 52 wild turkeys were known to have gathered around St. Maries, but “have become quite tame since there has been no hunting allowed on this flock.” Rather than institute North Idaho’s first turkey hunt, a handful of those birds were trapped and taken south to the Boise area. 

Asked why they weren’t either allowed to stay or otherwise distributed to other parts of the panhandle, McNeel wrote, “As the better areas get filled, they will be moved into some of the areas that look less likely, and perhaps other areas in North Idaho will fall into this category.”

Our neck of the woods apparently wasn’t turkey territory for a good reason. Still, “It’s an interesting program … and one that I think most conservationists and hunters are interested in,” McNeel concluded.

True enough, turkey populations were finally starting to grow elsewhere in Idaho, with about 3,000 statewide in the spring of 1970. By that winter, wildlife hunters contemplated a hunt in St. Maries for the fall of 1971. That didn’t happen. Nor did it happen in 1972. By the spring of 1973, McNeel’s admitted in his column, “This flock has never expanded the way we had hoped it would.”

“When we made the initial release in the St. Maries vicinity, it was thought that we would be hunting them within three or four years,” he wrote. “Six years have now elapsed since the release and we still haven’t had any hunts in that area.” 

While articles continued to be printed in the local papers extolling the nobility and craftiness of the Merriam’s turkey, it wasn’t until November 1974 that the Bee could report, “Wild Turkeys Are Coming.”

“Seems there are some wild turkeys on the loose around here,” Bee writer Dave Finkelnburg reported. “There aren’t many, and they may not survive the winter, but it appears that wild turkeys are going to become a permanent part of the wildlife of Bonner county before too long.”

Finkelnburg went on to write that turkeys had been released in the Coeur d’Alene River drainage and even some had “wandered” west from Washington into the Priest Lake area, but “disappeared.” Meanwhile, other birds had similarly trekked east from Montana into the Clark Fork River area.

“If the wild turkeys are successfully introduced into this area, they will be a striking sight for people lucky enough to see them,” Finkelnburg wrote, adding later, “Then perhaps some lucky hunter will be able to sit down to a Thanksgiving feast with a real wild turkey.”

Again, this proved to be wishful thinking. Riggins remained the nearest place from Bonner County to hunt turkeys in the spring of 1975. Finally, in the spring of 1976, a handful of turkeys were planted near Bonners Ferry, and three sites in Bonner County were being considered for releases: Granite Creek, Hope and Laclede. Meanwhile, that fall, the Bee reported that the number of wild turkeys nationwide had grown from about 100,000 birds in 1952 to 1.2 million.

Regardless of that population growth elsewhere, it was with a note of disappointment that McNeel wrote in December ’76 that, “Turkey Prospects Look Bleak.”

“The history of the turkey in Idaho is less than 20 years old and the history of the turkey in the northern portion of Idaho is even newer than that,” he wrote, later adding, “I had big hopes that population would multiply and we would be hunting turkeys in northern Idaho by the early 1970s. Unfortunately, that hope has since faded and although there are a few birds around, the population is not very high.” 

Boom times in the turkey trade

Courtesy photo.

Turkey seasons came and went through the end of the 1970s, and it became clear that at least some of the birds had made Bonner County home. Real estate advertisements in the late-’70s occasionally listed seeing wild turkeys as a selling point for rural properties, but still no local hunters were heading out into the brush to bag their Thanksgiving entree. 

By the fall of 1979, an estimated 2,500 turkeys could be found throughout Idaho, and even then the state was trading its own wildlife for additional supplies of gobblers. 

Idaho struck a deal to swap 40 pine martens to South Dakota for 120 Merriam’s wild turkeys in 1980, but delivery of the animals took more than a year to complete. As many as 250 turkeys were brought to Idaho from five states in 1982, including both Merriam’s and Rio Grande birds from South Dakota, Kansas, California, Texas and Oklahoma — all transplanted in central and southeastern Idaho.

Other trades that year included kokanee eggs to New Mexico and even grizzly bear skins for turkeys. The turkey trade again boomed in mid-February 1983 with news that 150 Rio Grandes and 50 Merriam’s would be coming to Idaho by the end of the month from Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas, though the only transplant location in North Idaho would be near Harrison in Kootenai County.

“With luck, the turkeys will prosper as well as the now-flourishing flock of turkeys that was planted several years ago in Boundary County,” the Bee reported.

Those birds had proliferated to such a degree that they numbered about 300 in Boundary County, and had even started “plaguing farmers,” resulting in a plan to trap some of them and move them elsewhere.

“Quite honestly, we didn’t think they would do as well as they did,” the paper quoted McNeel, who served in the Coeur d’Alene office of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Underpinning the growth of Idaho’s turkey population was “a sort of chain reaction of wildlife trades with other states.” 

The “game plan,” so to speak, was for Kansas to give turkeys in exchange for sharp-tailed grouse from North Dakota, which would in turn receive chukars from Idaho. But first, Idaho would need to get the chukars from Nevada in a swap for Columbian sharp-tailed grouse. Meanwhile, New Mexico would again receive kokanee eggs from Idaho and Oklahoma would get Gem State antelope.

South Dakota still owed Idaho for its earlier pine marten trade, and Texas would receive ring-necked pheasants from south-central Idaho.

Just in time for Thanksgiving 1983, McNeel published an article that Fish and Game was now “getting complaints about geese and wild turkeys,” ostensibly for flocking in farmers’ fields and eating all the seed. Undaunted, the transplants continued and, in early 1984, the local paper announced, “All of a sudden, turkey hunting is a big sport for Idaho outdoorsmen.” 

Yet, the problem of the turkeys becoming too domesticated mounted, with many of them displaying tendencies toward becoming “barnyard fowl” when accustomed either to conscious feeding by residents or the ready availability of feed near human habitations.

Finally, spring and fall turkey hunts were allowed in Boundary County in 1984, which resulted in 20 birds taken from among 41 tag-holders.

Seasons continued in Boundary County, and more and more turkeys came into Idaho from other states during the following years, including a trade of river otters from Idaho for Nebraska turkeys in 1986. 

By February 1987, more than 500 Merriam’s and Rio Grande turkeys had been brought to Idaho in the 1980s alone, and they were known to be (finally) traveling into Bonner County.

In the first years of the 1990s, the North Idaho turkey population reached an apparent tipping point, entering a period of rapid expansion. In 1994, the local press reported that the population of turkeys in Boundary County had “sometimes caused problems” and even resulted in a surplus for stocking other areas in the state.

Thirty-five years after the first turkeys came to Idaho, Bonner County received about 50 birds relocated from Kootenai County, which were planted in Laclede. The plan in 1996 was to move a total of 200 others into the panhandle, including from British Columbia, Canada, where Idaho birds had spread and were being returned to their home with some annoyance — though, of course, Idaho had never really been their “home.”

“When it comes down to it all, all wild turkeys are either themselves transplants or they are the offspring of transplants,” the Bee reported in late-February 1996, going on to write that more than 1,200 turkeys had been moved into the panhandle alone since 1982 and about 7,000 hunters statewide had taken more than 1,500 of the birds just in 1995.

That should have been a big victory for the original 1960s plan to establish a new game species for hunters, but by Thanksgiving time 1998, the paper carried a story about policy changes necessitated by the birds’ rapidly expanding numbers.

“Have you noticed that turkeys have been running rampant in the area lately?” Daily Bee Staff Writer Mary Berryhill asked in the lede to her Nov. 26, 1998 story, quoting from an IDFG expert that the population had experienced “a great increase” in the previous two years and new regulations would be put in place to allow hunters to take up to three turkeys in a year to “relieve the problem” of overpopulation.

The IDFG official suggested that “the turkey situation is a tough one,” as, “Hunters like to hunt turkeys and enjoy having them around, while others who don’t hunt like to observe them.”

Echoing the current status of the turkey population in the area, Berryhill concluded, “Whatever the case may be, if you don’t find turkey on your platter for Thanksgiving dinner, you’ll probably be able to see plenty in the fields right outside your window.”

Turkeys conquer Idaho

While turkeys had grown from an “exotic” novelty in the early 1960s to a “problem” by the late 1990s, the state was still importing them from other places as late as 1999. That same year, the state again altered the hunting regulations, allowing for two turkeys to be taken per hunter in the spring and the timing of the fall hunt changed to “address some problems landowners have encountered with birds congregating just prior to winter,” according to a February 1999 article in the Bee.

On the eve of the 21st century, Idaho Fish and Game Conservation Educator Phil Cooper looked back in the Nov. 18, 1999 edition of the paper on almost 40 years of turkeys in Idaho, writing that the IDFG “got serious about the turkey transplant program in the early 1980s.”

According to Cooper, 439 hunters had taken to the field in 1985, bagging 73 birds statewide. In 1999, that number was more like 13,000 hunters taking about 5,000 turkeys.

“As you can see, turkey hunting has grown quickly in popularity,” he wrote.

About a month later — just weeks from the turn of the century — the Associated Press reported that Idaho had moved into “second place among Western states in the number of turkeys taken by hunters.”

Though non-native and increasingly a nuisance to some, by the year 2000 the turkey had conquered Idaho — a transplant that owed its presence to direct government intervention, giving it no small claim to being the unofficial state bird of Idaho, for better or worse.