DWR relocates wild turkeys to keep populations in check, prevent problems in small towns

MENDON, Cache County — Wild turkeys, which have seen a population boom in Utah in the past 20 years, have overrun a couple of small towns in Cache County and similar areas. Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources is working hard to capture and move the birds to more suitable locations that won’t conflict quite so much with human populations.

Jason Robinson, the upland game coordinator for Utah DWR, said that wild turkey populations in Utah are actually a great success story. In the early 1900s, the birds had nearly gone extinct. The DWR has worked long and hard to restore their populations.

“In the last 10 or 15 years in the state of Utah, our turkey population has grown, which is great,” Robinson said.

Unfortunately, along with a growing bird population, Robinson pointed out, “we are also dealing with a growing human population.” In a few places, turkeys are coming into conflict with humans.

Wild turkeys have been overrunning Mendon over the past several winters, leading the Division of Wildlife Resources to allow for five times the usual number of turkey hunting permits in northern Utah in an attempt to reduce those numbers. The DWR has also been attempting to relocate the turkeys to more suitable habitats in eastern Utah. In the winter of 2017, the Utah DWR trapped and relocated 548 wild turkeys from Cache Valley.

“One of the most successful methods for recovering turkey populations is to trap them and move them to new areas with a suitable habitat,” Robinson said. He explained that the DWR has three main means of trapping the birds:

1. Lock-in traps: These are essentially one-way funnels. “Birds go into these traps and they can’t get back out,” Robinson explained. “We use food as the bait to get them to come in.”
2. Hanging nets: They hang nets above food designed to lure the turkeys in. When they come into range to eat the food, the nets are dropped down, inhibiting their ability to get away.
3. Rocket nets: On rare occasions, the DWR will utilize food to lure turkeys in and then use a rocket net to launch a net over the birds, capturing them. “Once they are captured, we look at each individual bird and determine whether it’s male or female and the age of the bird,” Robinson said. “We also put metal leg bands on all the male turkeys.” The birds are placed in special transportation boxes designed to calm them down. They then load the turkeys into a truck and transfer them to a release site. A public process determines what these sites are, which is then approved by the state’s wildlife board, according to Robinson. Once they get to the release sites, the boxes are lined up and opened close together so that all the birds can fly out together, regroup, and then find a place to settle.

Though wild turkeys have become a wide-scale problem in Mendon and a few other towns, the DWR hopes residents will continue to treat turkeys well. Robinson added that only a few hundred turkeys have been problematic, out of tens of thousands of the wild birds roaming the state.

“We are still actively trying to grow turkey populations in the state of Utah,” he said. “We will just try and keep them out of conflict with people.”

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