Posted on 02/03/2002 2:55:08 AM PST by 2Trievers
TED WALSKI, the turkey man, was unprepared for my telephone call Thursday afternoon. Ted is the man who was largely responsible for the reintroduction of wild turkeys in New Hampshire that led to a population of more than 20,000, one of the great stories of wildlife restoration. When I said, “Hey, did you teach any of your turkeys to speak French?” Ted thought it was a joke and started talking about rattlesnakes. “No, really,” I said. “Turkeys have now gone international. On my way to Coaticook, I saw three picking at a manure pile about 15 miles north of the Canadian border.” There was silence for a moment while Ted reached for a map. “You’re kidding,” he said. For those who are turkey-challenged, here is a synopsis of recent turkey history. Turkeys were part of New England’s original fauna. How far north they ranged in antiquity is not known, but their presence in southern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in Colonial times is well documented. They were near the northern limit of their historic range. Subsistence hunting by settlers wiped them out in the 1800s. In the 1970s, during an era of righting old environmental wrongs, New Hampshire Fish and Game embarked on a restoration effort. Ted Walski spearheaded the project, which started off on a strange tack. West Virginia had plenty of wild turkeys, but had lost its fisher population. New Hampshire had plenty of fishers, but had lost its turkeys. Presto! - a marriage made in heaven. New Hampshire put out a call among the state’s trapping fraternity and soon had 31 live fishers. They were traded for 31 West Virginian turkeys. That first transplant, in 1970 at Pawtuckaway State park, failed. But the second, a release of 25 New York turkeys in the Keene-Walpole area, took hold. Slowly and steadily, as each spring’s hatching season produced a small surplus, wildlife workers cannon-netted turkeys and transplanted them elsewhere. Today, there are turkeys in every county of the state and the population is nearing 22,000. But Colebrook is a stretch, around 150 miles up the Connecticut River valley from Keene. And Canada? Come on. Yet 12 years ago, John Lanier and I heard what we were sure was a turkey while we were rabbit hunting on my farm. Five years ago, one ran right across the Colebrook golf course in broad daylight. And in recent years, we’ve been seeing big flocks of turkeys everywhere, in every town in Coos County. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see turkeys in the province of Quebec, because turkeys need manure piles to survive in this harsh climate and a near-unbroken chain of farms links the two countries. Cars were stopped on the side of the road, and people were gesticulating wildly and peering through binoculars. The turkeys paid no mind and just scratched away, looking for undigested grain. A sweet success story, I thought, a righting of an old wrong, and even more sweetly, paid for with hunters’ dollars. John Harrigan’s address: Box 39, Colebrook, N.H. 03576. Email: hooligan@ncia.net.
"The federal duck stamp was created through a wetlands conservation program. President Herbert Hoover signed the Migratory Bird Conservation Act in 1929 to authorize the acquisition and preservation of wetlands as waterfowl habitat.
The law, however, did not provide a permanent source of money to buy and preserve the wetlands. On March 16, 1934, Congress passed, and President Roosevelt signed, the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act. Popularly known as the Duck Stamp Act, the bill's whole purpose was to generate revenue designated for only one use: acquiring wetlands for what is now known as the National Refuge System.
It has been proven that sales of duck stamps increase when the public has been informed of how the revenue generated through stamp sales is used."
They sure can! NH has two seasons for hunting turkeys! One in May for shotgun or archery and one from September to December for archery only.
I look forward to Mr Harrigan's column every week! I fish and hunt up in his neck of the woods. He lives in Colebrook NH which is one town away from Canada. I go to Pittsburg, the largest NH town that takes up the whole northern tip of NH bordering Canada!
One of these rainy days up there I should look him up!
That would be wonderful and you could report to us about the reporter! &;-)
... and the taste of a properly prepared wild turkey cannot be described!
Rriight!
Almost the same here in CT ... my son hit one with his car yesterday.
Not the one's up here! These turkeys are smart and can spot you a mile away!
The only one's I've seen while in the woods were from my tree stand deer hunting. I see a lot along the roads in the off season.
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