Prized spring prey gang up on winter landlords

Wild turkeys – one of the region’s great wildlife introduction successes – are flocking, scratching, pecking, pooping and otherwise wearing out their welcome with some lowland landowners in the Inland Northwest.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers and National Wild Turkey Federation staffers were offering aid last week to several landowners, including one Kettle Falls livestock producer who’s had up to 170 wintering turkeys at a time invading his oat-hay stacks.

On the other hand, State wildlife officers last week were filing charges against an area landowner for illegally killing turkeys that had become a nuisance.

“We’re concerned to hear that some people just killing turkeys out of frustration,” said David Danilson, National Wild Turkey Federation representative in Rosalia. “We heard of one guy who drove into a flock on the road into his place to kill as many as he could.”

“Some ranchers have legitimate problems,” said Mike Whorton, WDFW regional enforcement chief in Spokane, “but, unfortunately, most of the problems are caused by other people who have been purposely feeding turkeys, and nine of 10 times, those properties are closed to hunting.

“Once turkeys start piling into a place, they can eat a ton of food and leave a big mess, and it’s difficult to get rid of them until March.”

“Our officers tried have tried shooting a few of the turkeys, and that doesn’t do any good,” said Steve Zender, WDFW wildlife biologist in Chewelah. “You can shoot over their heads and that doesn’t do anything either after a while. They just fly 20 feet away from dogs and then come back again. Dogs eventually lose interest in chasing them away.”

While turkeys spread out with little impact onto ranches, commercial forests and public lands most of the year, winter snow concentrates the flocks into valleys and largely onto private land.

“You can’t drive near Mount Spokane or north on Highway 395 without seeing bunches of turkeys during winter,” Whorton said, noting that turkeys are a relatively new problem on the block.

Wild turkeys are not native to this region. Efforts to bring them into the state in the early 1900s were not successful. Enough turkeys finally took hold from 1960s’ introductions to open a one-and-a-half-day northeastern Washington turkey hunting season in the fall of 1965.

The state teamed with the growing National Wild Turkey Federation in the mid-1980s to import birds from other states and trap-and-relocate birds from growing flocks in an aggressive introduction program that has been wildly successful.

“We have turkeys just about everywhere we can sustain them in Washington,” said Mick Cope, WDFW upland game bird manager in Olympia.

In response, the number of turkey hunters in Washington has increased from 689 in 1984 to more than 16,600 in 2006.

“It’s unbelievable, actually, how turkey hunting up here has become so huge it’s bigger than the deer season,” said Ray Clark of Clark’s All Sport in Colville before the 2004 season.

Last year, hunters were allowed to kill up to four wild turkeys a year in Eastern Washington during the spring gobbler hunting season, which has been increased to six weeks, followed by autumn either-sex general and permit-only seasons.

Idaho’s Fish and Game Commission, responding to landowner complaints from last winter, authorized a 2007 turkey reduction plan that sounded like a well-publicized pizza promotion: Three extra tags, 5 bucks, 5 bucks, 5 bucks.

For an extended Sept. 15-Dec. 15 fall season, Idaho residents could buy up to three “special unit” turkey tags in addition to the two tags available for any Idaho turkey season. Each special tag cost $5. A hunter could shoot all of those birds in a single day.

“We have a lot of turkeys, too many turkeys,” Jim Hayden, Idaho Fish and Game Department regional wildlife manager in Coeur d’Alene said in late March. “They’re in the woods, in the fields and even in the neighborhoods.”

That’s not news to landowners such as rancher Dan Noble of Kettle Falls.

“Two years ago, we had about 150 turkeys coming into our oat hay stacks,” he said, noting that Don Weatherman, state wildlife agent, requested winter kill permits to remove some birds and help scatter the rest.

“He came out and we killed about 40 birds, which went to the food bank,” Noble said. “But the next year, we had even more turkeys — about 170.”

This year, Noble altered the way he feeds his livestock. “I didn’t want to deal with it, so I sold most of my hay this fall. But the turkeys are still coming in around my barn in different groups of 30 to 50.”

John Thiebes, the NWTF Northwest regional biologist based in Oregon, was in the Chewelah and Kettle Falls areas earlier this week to make arrangements for a mesh netting material to help Noble and another landowner near Addy protect their hay from turkeys.

The mesh discourages turkeys from getting into barns or on top of stacks where they scratch and loosen bales and defecate in the hay.

He said protecting hay for three or four ranchers would require mesh costing about $2,000. That’s a big chunk out of the $3,000 the federation budgets for each Western state to help landowners with winter damage caused by turkeys.

“We have other funds we can tap as needed,” he said, noting that the federation is required to work through state fish and wildlife agencies.

“If we can keep the birds off the stacks, most ranchers don’t have problems with turkeys being around the hay on the ground.”

Winter is the bottleneck for most wild animals, Thiebes said. “They can thrive all year, but winter makes it or breaks it for them,” he said. “Turkeys in particular are opportunistic eaters. They’ll go almost anyplace, including into your garage, to get food.”

The NWTF tries to discourage feeding turkeys while encouraging rural landowners to plant habitat that hangs on branches or stays above the snow to provide food during winter, Thiebes said.

“Crab apples, rose hips, hawthornes and some hybrid oak species can be good,” he said.

Until a few years ago, turkey federation volunteers helped state biologists trap a total of about 600 turkeys from various large troublesome concentrations and relocate the birds in areas where landowners wanted them.

“That program has pretty much run its course,” Cope said. Through funding cuts, the agency has few staffers certified to use the explosive charges for the trapping nets. But more important, he said, “We’ve pretty much put turkeys everywhere they’re wanted or sustainable.”

Once exception is in Whatcom County.

“We have hunters over there who are really upset that people are illegally killing turkeys over here when they would love to have them,” Danilson said.

However, WDFW officials aren’t jumping at the suggestion.

“We’re evaluating the potential for introducing turkeys to Whatcom County, and the decision may be out in the next week or so,” Cope said. “The local biologist is looking into habitat suitability what sub-species would work best, and potential impacts, including nuisance and damage issues that might occur if we introduce turkeys there.”