Wild turkeys, wary by nature, will have to be doubly alert soon because hunters, in addition to their natural predators, will be looking for them.
“Turkeys are wily and very alert,” said Doug Purcell, district wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife in Pagosa Springs. “They have eyes on the sides of their head so they have peripheral vision that can cover 270 degrees.”
Wild turkeys like meadows for the grasshoppers and bugs hiding out there, but they don’t venture too far into the open for fear of predators, Purcell said.
Coyotes, wildcats, mountain lions, owls and eagles will make short work of a wild turkey, he said. So turkeys hang out on the fringe of a wooded area in order to duck back if danger threatens.
A forest is a good home for the turkey because in addition to safety, wooded areas in Southwest Colorado provide acorns, berries and insects that the turkey likes, Purcell said,
Turkeys favor wooded areas with plentiful ponderosa pine and cottonwoods, he said. The open canopy of those species allows easy access in contrast to a closed-canopy spruce.
The trees become the nighttime roost for turkeys to stay out of trouble, he said. They have poor nighttime vision.
The reintroduction of turkeys into Southwest Colorado started with domesticated species about 60 years ago, but it didn’t work out because they lacked the survival instinct, Purcell said.
Following the lead of fish biologists who brought back the Colorado River cutthroat trout by breeding in hatcheries – native stock taken from isolated, self-contained lakes – turkey biologists transplanted free-ranging wild turkeys to a wildlife preserve west of Pagosa Springs to build a viable population.
Wild turkeys are plentiful in Southwest Colorado today.
“They’re good eating, but, of course, that’s subjective,” Purcell said. “Drumsticks are tasty but they tend to be long, muscular and a little tough because the turkey walk a lot.”
Brian Magee, a wildlife biologist with Parks and Wildlife and a turkey hunter for 20 years, termed cooked wild turkey “delicious” whether baked or deep-fried.
The Butterball from the market was raised primarily on all corn, but wild turkeys eat a variety of nourishing food, Magee said.
“You can pluck them or skin them.” Magee said. “Skinning is easier than plucking, but the meat stays moister when they’re plucked.”
Colorado has two subspecies of wild turkey – the Merriam’s, also known as the mountain turkey, on the Western Slope and the Rio Grande on the Front Range, Purcell said. A few Rio Grande turkeys live close to the Utah border.
The native turkeys probably were semi-domesticated by the ancestral Puebloans, who used their feathers in garments, Purcell said.
Wild turkeys breed in the spring, with the female laying a clutch of eight to 12 eggs that will hatch in May, Purcell said. The success rate is 30 to 40 percent, he said.
“The turkeys hide the nest on the ground and are elusive about entering and leaving the nest so as not to call attention of predators to their young, called polts,” he said.
Colorado has spring and fall seasons to hunt turkeys, he said. This year, the former runs from April 12 to May 25 and the latter from Sept. 1 to Oct. 5. A weekend around Thanksgiving gives hunters younger than 18 who didn’t fill their tag another chance.
The limit is one turkey in each of the seasons. Hunters can take only tom turkeys in the spring with shotgun or bow and arrow. Either turkey is fair game in the fall, and hunters may use rifles and handguns.
The tom is identifiable by a patch of feathers, called a beard, on its breast.
Electronic turkey calls are illegal in Colorado. Controversy swirls around the issue, with purists maintaining that hunters with an electronic caller can, instead of stalking the prey, sit and press a button to attract turkeys.
Banning electronic calls is seen as a way to level the playing field, Purcell said.
daler@durangoherald.com
