In just 40 years, Vermont and New Hamsphire have gone from extirpated Wild Turkey States to a rewilded environment that has roughly 40,000 birds "gobbling" in each State......Truly a success story in putting the bird that Ben Franklin initially proposed as our National Bird(instead of the Bald Eagle) back into the woods.......Reforestation, grain left in farmers fields after harvest and mider winters has been the recipe for TURKEY SUCCESS in New England

Why Did the Turkey Cross the Road?

by Thomas K. Slayton

 We've all seen them, picking their way thoughtfully across a cornfield or lurking quietly in an abandoned pasture. Wild turkeys seem to be everywhere now. In one field near my home in central Vermont, a flock of nearly 30 turkeys seems to congregate just about every afternoon.

Wild turkey sightings, once a rarity, have become so commonplace in the last couple of years that we hardly look up as we pass a flock gleaning a field, moving slowly across it like a dark flotilla of land-ships. Estimates suggest there are now more than 35,000 of them living in Vermont and 40,000 in New Hampshire.
Why are there suddenly so many wild turkeys? They seem to be a force of nature itself. And to a certain extent they are. But the amazing resurgence of wild turkeys in the last 40 years is testimony both to the changing landscape of northern New England and to successful game management.Though native to New England, wild turkeys were extirpated region-wide by the 1840s through a combination of over-hunting and the clearing of our forests. By mid-century, Vermont was roughly three-fourths deforested, and New Hampshire was almost completely deforested outside of the White Mountains. Farmers looking for more pasture for their huge flocks of sheep had cut down as many trees as they could, to open land, any land, for pasture. Much of the landscape was stripped bare, right to the hilltops.Wild turkeys make use of a wide variety of habitats, ranging from forests to fields, but they rely primarily on forested habitat for everything from nighttime roosting to reproduction. Consequently, when the early farmers cut down the forests, they unknowingly removed a critical element of wild turkey habitat.
Over the course of a century and more, with the agricultural boom long over, the forests returned to most of New England's hillsides and mountains. But the turkey did not.With proper turkey habitat restored, however, people began to think about returning the big birds to the forest. The first attempt to reintroduce them in Vermont was made in the 1950s by a consortium of private fish & game clubs. It failed, probably because the restorers, well-meaning, but ill-informed, simply released game-farm turkeys that were ill-prepared for life in the wild.Then, in the winter of 1969 – '70, the Vermont Department of Fish & Game worked with the New York State Conservation Department to trap 17 turkeys. Those birds were released in Pawlet, Vermont. The following winter, 14 birds were trapped in New York and released in Hubbardton, Vermont. Both towns are in the heart of the turkey's former range.
The birds not only survived, they thrived, and soon a breeding population was established. By 1973, those 31 initial turkeys had successfully reproduced, and the Vermont population was estimated at some 600 birds. A turkey-hunting season, established in the spring of 1973, marked the first time turkeys had been hunted in New England in more than a century.
Across the river in New Hampshire, restoration efforts took hold in 1975, when Fish and Game released 25 wild birds. As turkey numbers expanded in both states, the game biologists began to relocate turkeys to other parts of the state and region. In Vermont, turkeys were relocated to Grand Isle County in the 1990s in the far northwestern corner of the state."We really underestimated how well they would do," said John Hall, spokesman for the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. "It's really one of the most successful game-restoration stories we have had."In the past three or four years, turkey numbers seem to have climbed steeply. Large flocks of the birds are now being seen regularly throughout both states.Wildlife expert Bryan Pfeiffer suggests that the surge in turkey numbers is probably due to several factors – the return of forests to northern New England, milder winters, tightly regulated hunting pressure, and grain available in farm fields."The main reason for the current surge in numbers may have something to do with milder winters," Pfeiffer said. "It's probably a combination of all those factors."