Wild turkeys — Utah flocks, once sparse, now flourish

Let's talk turkey. Or, better yet, turkeys. Yes, those big birds with the red necks and dark feathers that are now becoming a more common sight in Utah.

Research shows that wild turkeys may have been, hundreds of years back, a native species. Turkey bones, feather blankets and early American rock art showing turkeylike images have been found in areas of Utah.

But, for some reason, they vanished. When pioneers arrived in the area, there were no wild turkeys to be found.

Today, said Dean Mitchell, upland game coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, "We have around 18,000 to 20,000 birds. The wild turkey is one of the true success stories here in Utah."

It wasn't until 1925 that wildlife managers tried, unsuccessfully, to reintroduce turkeys. A number of turkeys of the Eastern species were brought in and released but never survived.

In the 1950s, a second group of turkeys was brought into Utah, this time the Merriam's species trapped in Colorado. They survived, but numbers grew slowly. It wasn't until the 1980s, however, that the turkey population really started to re-establish itself. That was when the first flock of a third species, the Rio Grande, was brought to Utah from Texas.

There are now in Utah two of the five known species of turkeys in North America — Rio Grande and Merriam's, the most numerous being the Rio Grandes. The remaining three species are the Eastern, Gould's and Osceola or Florida.

There is little difference between the two birds found in Utah, explained Mitchell, other than preferred habitat.

About the only visible distinguishing mark between the two is the tips of the Merriam's tail feathers are white, where the tips of the Rio Grande's tail are tan or cream-colored.

Merriam's choose to live in more mountainous terrain with ponderosa pine along with aspens, grassy meadows and oak brush. Rio Grande turkeys prefer to live at lower elevations, in cottonwood river bottoms and riparian areas with oak brush and green, leafy plants.

In a few places the two species have come together to create a hybridized turkey called the Merrios, which tends to live in midelevation habitat.

The latest estimates put the number of Merriam's in Utah at between 3,000 and 3,500, and the number of Rio Grande turkeys in Utah at more than 16,000.

The success of Utah's program was noted by the National Wild Turkey Federation in 1999 for having moved more turkeys, 1,700 from both in-state and out-of-state, to more new locations than any of the other lower 48 states.