Wild Turkey in Arizona

WILD TURKEY IN

THE WILD turkey is one of the interesting game birds in Arizona, a strange and beautiful bird. I learned to know them this past fall in the vicinity of White Horse Lake near Williams where my husband studied them for several months in preparation for a series of etchings and paintings he is making of them. We found them to be wary, alert and hard to approach. This was especially true of the gobblers.

The wild turkey is native to North America and is our largest upland game bird. They once ranged in great numbers in the forested areas from the eastern seaboard west into Colorado and south into Mexico. In many sections they are now extinct except in regions where large forested areas still remain and where they are given needed protection. Several steps have been taken to assure the future of these grand birds in Arizona.

In 1936 the Arizona Game and Fish Commission made a ruling against the use of the shotgun in hunting them, allowing the use of rifle only, and that form of protection alone is meaning a great deal in returning the turkey to the forested areas in the state.

Overgrazing, which destroys so much of the natural cover and foods of wildlife, hurting the turkey, is being corrected by the U. S. Forest Service.

The Federal Aid Division of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission is trapping turkeys in areas where they are well populated and are moving them into the mountainous regions of the southern part of the state which they once inhabited but where in recent years they have become extinct. Also numerous game refuges have been established to benefit the turkeys as well as other wildlife in the state.

For those sportsmen who would like to try their skill at stalking this king of upland game birds, there is an open season of one month each fall with a bag limit of two birds.

The turkeys range in much of the forested regions of the state at altitudes of about 4,000 to 9,000 feet. They seek the higher altitudes during the summer months, the snows forcing them into the juniper-pinon belt which is usually found at 4,000 to 5,000 feet. If heavy snows do not come, they may remain at the higher altitudes.

Their food consists of green foods, berries, acorns, pine seeds, grasshoppers and other insects.

Along about March 15, the gobblers begin strutting, their head color changes and their wattles become very red. At this season a heavy pad of fat develops over the breast of the gobbler which serves to help sustain him for he is much too busy dis-playing himself before his hens to have sufficient time for feeding. The wild turkey is polygamous.

ARIZONA

Nesting is made by the hen and is a hollowed out depression concealed under logs, the tops of fallen trees or brush piles. It is lined with grass and leaves and from 8 to 15 cream colored, spotted eggs are laid. These are very carefully covered with leaves and grass when the hen leaves to feed so as to protect them from the sharp eyes of the crow and other marauders. Among the latter is the rock squirrel who is a proficient robber of game birds' nests.

The young turkeys hatch after four weeks of incubation. A wet season is very hard on them as they are tender and delicate and perish quite easily from exposure to wet and cold.

During the summer and fall gobblers are in bands by themselves while the hens and young range together. As soon as the young are able to fly they all roost in trees wherever night overtakes them. Unless suddenly frightened, they seldom fly except to roost, but they are fast on foot.

When mature, turkeys average from twelve to twenty pounds while some old gobblers weigh twenty-five to thirty pounds.

Because of their size, they were a main source of food supply to the Indians and later to the colonists. Among the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, however, they were considered sacred and were seldom eaten. These Indians assigned rooms to them and kept them in numbers, not for food, but so they might have their feathers to use in ceremonial offerings to Indian deities.

We decided that the best method in studying these birds would be to build blinds, where we could conceal ourselves, at springs where they were in the habit of coming to drink. Five blinds were made in as many locations but all did not prove successful as places for observation.

One of the blinds was seven miles from camp. A spring whose cold, crystal-clear water trickled down a gentle slope to disappear into the earth again, provided a favorite drinking place for the turkeys. The surrounding vicinity, too, was attractive to the birds. There were numerous oak trees, the acorns of which are a favorite food in season and a large clearing or flat was inhabited by countless grasshoppers which also provided a good source of food for the turkeys during the late summer. Tall, stately pines furnished excellent roosting places.