🦃 Peak season for the beak

Turkey time

WI: Land of the Green Bay Packers, cheese, and - wild turkeys?

This time of year, we all start getting a little birdy. And not like your college roommate who came back from study abroad with that rare pigeon disease - we're talking Thanksgiving birdy. AKA - the turkey. Tomorrow, we as a country will consume 46 million of these critters.

And while we know it goes great with Mom's famous stuffing, few think about this big bird beyond the food coma that it puts us in every November.

Wisconsin's claim to feathered fame

Ya may not know it, but wild turkeys are about as plentiful in Wisconsin as 'you betchas', waves from strangers, and brats at a tailgate. In fact, we're hailed as #2 in the nation for where this feathered friend spends the Thanksgiving holiday each fall.

If ya add up all the Toms (males), Jakes (adolescent males), and Hens (females), the wild turkey 'flock' numbers around 350,000 in WI.

Conservation success (once again)

Cripes, 350,000! That's great news for the some 130,000 turkey hunters out there who harvest nearly ~10,000 turkeys in WI each year (split between a fall and spring season).

But it wasn't always this way. In a classic story of the pre-conservation movement, we depleted this great natural resource through agriculture, over hunting, and lumbering, down to the last turkey, which was killed in Darlington, WI in 1881.

Figuring that Mom's stuffing was pretty useless unless we had something to stuff it into, we attempted (in vain) to rebuild the Wisconsin flock. Like the Chicago Bears, it failed repeatedly.

That is, until we traded some grouse for a batch of turkeys from Missouri in 1976. Low and behold - them buggers got to gettin' to know each other, and soon we boasted one of the strongest flocks in the country.

Heck, we even have two different towns in the state claiming to be 'Turkey Capitols': "The Turkey Capitol of WI" in Baron, and "The Turkey Hunting Capitol" in Boscobel.

Facts to gobble up

So by now ya gotta be wondering - what in the hey is so great about these birds that occasionally attack mailmen?

Besides providing us something tasty on Thanksgiving, Turkeys are a carefully measured and conserved part of the food web.

Though they're not able to fly very far (less than 100 yards), turkeys roost in trees each night to keep away from the bobcats, foxes, coyotes, and owls that sometimes eat them.

Despite a sparse diet of bugs, nuts, fruits, and seeds, turkeys can grow to upwards of 20 lbs (though the largest turkey ever shot in Wisconsin was 34.5 pounds - holy shnikes!).

If you take a gander of these beasts in the spring, you may see the males puffed up, tail feathers erect as they strut in hopes of attracting a female.

Looking to fill your freezer with a gobbler? The folks at the DNR have some nifty info on management and hunting to get you started.

Get out 'der!