It’s mid-April when toms and jakes strut, puff out their feathers, fan their tails and let loose with their glorious valley-filling, heart-stopping gobble to attract hens. Hunters scout their land and dream of being out for their season, one they have ached for all winter.
That call of the wild is being heard throughout more than half the state, it’s become a part of our hunting tradition.
Now, imagine a spring of wild turkey silence. No tom or jake calling, no hens putting or yelping.
Nothing.
That was Minnesota until the winter of 1971-72 when 29 wild turkeys, which Minnesota received from Missouri for ruffed grouse, were released as an experiment on Jefferson Ridge southeast of Caledonia. No one knew what would happen, if the birds could survive Minnesota winters. If so, how far north could they make it? Wabasha County? Maybe even as far north as Goodhue County?
“We had no idea, no idea. It was all experimental releases, even releasing them in the Whitewater,” said Gary Nelson, the retired Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager who began with early live trapping to spread out the birds and continued leading more than 100 transplants of about 5,000 turkeys.
One of the first questions, however, was if Minnesota was reestablishing a native species or bringing in an outsider. “We don’t know for certain if they were native to Minnesota. We can’t prove that they were here, we can’t prove they weren’t here,” he said. “I can’t believe they weren’t, everything else is along here (the Mississippi River).” If they were here, hunting and habitat loss wiped them out, he said.
Attempts in the 1950s and 1960s to establish turkeys with non-wild birds were jokes. “They just didn’t have the wildness bred into them,” he said Tuesday. “They eventually died out.” So they tried the wild eastern subspecies Missouri birds.
Even with a few hard winters that killed some birds, those turkeys thrived. Minnesota later added a few more birds from Illinois and from Nebraska in exchange for Canada geese “back when people wanted Canada geese, unlike today,” Nelson said. Some Merriam’s turkeys released in the Whitewater area didn’t survive and were replaced by transplanted eastern subspecies, he said.
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Part of their work was learning. At first, the DNR insisted corn food plots be planted near release sites. It soon found turkeys did really well anywhere they had wild food and places to roost. In 1976-77, the first ones were trapped out of Houston County flock and moved north.
Many doubted the turkeys could withstand colder winters farther north. They did. “It was surprising they did so well,” Nelson said. And at first, managers doubted birds could survive without large blocks of habitat. “We found they were doing well in much smaller areas and a mixture of trees and ag land,” he said. In summer, poults need to graze in alfalfa and other grasslands to eat grasshoppers and other bugs for protein, he said. South-facing slopes with oaks and cedars are great places for birds to winter, he said.
Nelson said he and Bob Tangen led the effort, but much of the money came from Minnesota chapters of the National Wild Turkey Federation, Nelson said. “Without their funding efforts, their enthusiasm, we could have been years behind,” he said. Some people even volunteered to help capture and release birds, he said.
Even with more than 100 releases well up into west-central Minnesota, the birds thrived. “Not one failure that I was aware of,” Nelson said. Minnesota has tested turkeys that were live trapped for diseases and have found none, he said.
The first hunting season was the spring of 1978 when 420 precious permits were given out by lottery. The lottery expanded with more permits but hunters still had to hope and pray for one before they could hunt. It was a maddening wait, some of us went several years without one.
Birds continued to thrive, Nelson and others continued live trapping and moving birds further west and north. Then the magic year happened in 2020 — anyone who wanted a license only needed to buy one. It was a bit of turkey heaven, we could plan all winter, awaiting spring and mid-April gobbling. Last year, in spring turkey season, a record 16,660 wild turkeys were harvested, surpassing the previous high mark by 19%. This year’s season opens Wednesday.
People have asked him what’s the big deal about turkey hunting. He tells them to try it. They find “the thrill of the hunting,” he said. Once you begin “you are going to be hooked. I don’t know how many people said ‘you are right about that.’”
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It’s been an incredible more than 50 years since the birds were released on Jefferson Ridge. The birds quickly answered all the questions that were asked in the first years.
“It has all been a great success story,” Nelson said.
John Weiss has written and reported about Outdoors topics for the Post Bulletin for more than 45 years. He is the author of the book "Backroads: The Best of the Best by Post-Bulletin Columnist John Weiss.”
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