What kind of turkeys are in michigan

See stories by Stateside Staff. Related Content. As bat populations decline, conservationists urge urbanites to welcome new nocturnal neighbors. Bats have a PR problem. That makes it hard to get…. Fifth-grade teacher spreads pollen and a love of bees in Detroit. Get out of doors to experience for yourself the wild turkey, once proposed to Congress for consideration as the National Bird. As we near the Thanksgiving holiday, many Michigan residents may be getting ready to make a trip to pick up their holiday turkey.

This is a time when many begin thinking about which dishes they will prepare as part of their annual Thanksgiving tradition. Getting to know this large bird will undoubtedly reveal some of its majestic qualities that Ben Franklin fell in love with, and why he was in favor of making the wild turkey the national symbol of the United States instead of the bald eagle.

Whether you have interest in observing it in nature during the remainder of the autumn color season or participating in the fall wild turkey hunting season , which runs from mid-September to mid-November, learning its backstory helps build appreciation for this one-of-a-kind bird. The wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo is a ground-dwelling game species native to North America.

It is one of the most widely distributed game bird species in Michigan. Wild turkeys can be found in most of the eastern United States including portions of Ontario, pockets of the western United States, and parts of northern Mexico. Its preferred habitat is open fields and woods. For example, linear openings such as power line rights-of-way, should be at least 60 feet wide.

The optimum shape of an opening is long and rectangular with an irregular boundary that follows the land contours, provided you do not create erosion problems. If possible, maintain or enhance existing openings before creating new ones. Too many openings within a small area will fragment your forest and detrimentally impact a variety of wildlife species.

Within a acre forest, maintain three to five acres of openings. Several small openings are usually better than a single large one. However, if your area is severely fragmented, do not create more openings. What to plant in an opening depends on your goals and turkey needs. Do you want to provide an additional source of food or establish permanent brood habitat or both?

Are you planning to offer supplementary food during the summer clover or winter corn? Do you want low-maintenance plants that will be available over several years, or do you want to replant the opening each year with a grain crop?

No matter how we manage our property for wildlife, our decisions will always have impacts. For example, if we manage mature woodlands for turkeys we will discourage brushland species such as grouse and catbirds.

Creating openings may produce habitat for turkeys and deer, but may increase cowbird or raccoon predation. Habitat that is managed for wild turkeys also tends to benefit deer, squirrels, black-capped chickadees, and woodpeckers.

You should also be aware that creating or enhancing habitats may invite unwanted guests. For example, if you plant trees and shrubs, in the hopes of attracting wild turkeys and songbirds, you most likely will also entice deer, rabbits, and mice that can become a nuisance by eating the new plantings and even killing them.

Free-roaming dogs and cats may also be attracted to any habitat that suddenly has an abundance of wildlife. In summary, eastern wild turkey populations have returned to Michigan and prospered since their reintroduction. If your property contains a mix of forest and agricultural lands, you may be able to manage for turkeys.

However, be aware of the negative impacts that this management may have on other wildlife. The Weeks-McLean Act of allowed the federal government to set hunting seasons. In , a Migratory Bird Treaty was signed between the U. Though wild turkeys do not migrate, they still benefited from the protections set forth by the treaty and from habitat work completed on behalf of migratory species.

In the early s, conservationists set out to re-establish wild turkeys, but their efforts met with limited success. The earliest documented attempt by the Department of Natural Resources to re-establish turkeys in Michigan was in and again in In those two years, 65 hand-reared wild turkeys were released at the Sanford Game Refuge.

More unsuccessful releases were made through the late s in southern Michigan. In , a national coalition of conservationists — virtually all of them hunters, backed by the sporting arms and ammunition industries — persuaded Congress to direct the receipts from an excise tax on those items into a special fund to be distributed to the state for wildlife restoration.

Had it not been for this key legislation, the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act also known as the Pittman-Robertson Act of , wild turkeys and a variety of other wildlife would have been reduced to nothing more than part of local lore and national legend. With this type of nationwide support, there was increased interest in wild turkey restoration.