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Wednesday, February 7, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
Ourd“wild”dturkeysd
arednotdsodwild
One of those marvelous
phone calls came in the other
day about “wild turkeys”
messing up a Sisters resi-
dent’s porch — and I mean
really messing it up. There
was turkey poop at least an
inch thick all over the back
porch that fell from turkeys
spending the night in pines
towering over the home.
Turkeys eat; turkeys poop.
That’s just the way it is.
And there’s a lot of ’em
here in Sisters Country.
The big reason the tur-
keys perch over that poor
woman’s home is that her
neighbor feeds them. That’s
what turkeys do: eat, congre-
gate, and be happy.
The whole turkey thing
got started because some-
one thought they should
be “wild” so they could be
hunted, an idea that gave rise
earlier to the National Wild
Turkey Federation and their
slogan: “The Conservation
of the Wild Turkey and the
preservation of our hunting
heritage.” Whoopee!
But where did they get
the wild turkeys to hunt?
From what I can find search-
ing the literature, they are
Galliformes — birds native
to North America. But, when
I dug deeper I ran into the
domestic turkey that origi-
nated in Mexico and appar-
ently another came upon the
scene from Levant (Eastern
Mediterranean).
A word (or two) about
Galliformes: The name
describes a biological order
of heavy-bodied ground-
feeding birds that includes
turkeys, grouse, chickens,
New and Old World quail,
ptarmigan, partridge, chukar,
pheasant, and jungle fowl.
All in all, there’s about 290
species of them, one or more
of which are found in essen-
tially every part of the world
and all hunted by humans.
The turkeys wandering all
over Sisters Country pooping
on residents’ back porches
originally came from Texas,
via The Swamp/Willamette
Valley. Since 1961, more
than 10,000 of them have
been transplanted to loca-
tions all over Oregon, the
result of moving nuisance
turkeys to other parts of the
state (where they become a
new nuisance).
Turkey management is
directed by Oregon’s Wild
Turkey Management Plan
adopted by ODFW in 2004.
The overabundance of
turkeys over in The Swamp
becomes a pestiferous mess
to operators of feed-lots.
Turkey poop and cow food
do not mix. When turkeys
reach the point where there
are more of them than cows
something’s got to give, and
the turkeys are hauled off.
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Too many turkeys in a place you don’t want them.
Our wily coyotes may
have thought they’d died and
gone to heaven when they
saw those gigantic meals
walking around. But those
big gobblers have something
going for them; coyotes
don’t seem to have much of
an effect on their numbers,
even with bobcats also get-
ting a few from time to time.
The turkey populations we
have around this neck of the
woods just keep growing.
Out by Camp Polk they even
cause traffic jams.
Baby turkeys (known as
poults) are subject to preda-
tion by great horned owls,
red-tailed hawks, domes-
tic cats and dogs, and of all
things, ants. Ants are like
coyotes; they never pass up
free food, and wildlife biolo-
gists tell us ants on the prowl
for food are capable of tear-
ing a newly hatched poult
apart and hauling it back to
their nest in small chunks.
Can you imagine the cele-
bration in an ant colony when
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one comes home smelling of
turkey guts?
And as it is with mule
deer in Sisters Country,
homeowners have to put up
with those turkeys, which
is especially irksome if said
homeowner is trying to
grow a garden. The home-
owner who started this dis-
cussion watches them sail
over her home and come to
perch right over her porch —
because her neighbor feeds
them.
Not good! Just like with
mule deer, turkeys DO NOT
NEED TO BE FED. Stated
another way, if you’re going
to feed wild birds, please
limit it to song birds and
quail and let it go at that.
According to ODFW, tur-
key hunting is at its prime in
Oregon, making this a great
time to land the fowl. But
PLEASE, not in your back-
yard (that’s against the law).
Fifth generation Oregonian
with roots in Reedsport, Kerry
Tymchuk has been referred
to as “Oregon’s living history
master storyteller.”
At the helm of the Oregon
Historical Society (OHS)
as executive director since
2011, Tymchuk breathed life
back into an ailing OHS. He
doesn’t believe that history
consists of a bunch of dusty
relics behind glass. In his pre-
sentation, “Oregon History
Show and Tell,” on Tuesday,
February 20, 7 p.m., at
FivePine Conference Center,
he will pull out actual pieces
of Oregon history from his
“trunk of treasures” and bring
them to life with his entertain-
ing stories. He wants people to
be able to hold history in their
hands. (“Fireside Stories on
tap in Sisters,” page 11.)
One of the keys to
Tymchuk’s success at OHS is
his wide circle of friends and
acquaintances. He knows peo-
ple from every corner of the
state as a result of spending 12
years as Oregon chief of staff
See HISTORY on page 24
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