Gobbleshegone
With everyone’s favourite fall feast swaggering, east kootenay’s wild turkey gangs are alberta bound.
Meleagris gallopavo. Miscreants. Ne’er-do-wells. — Kimberley, Radium, Invermere, and Edgewater have all chipped in to ship ‘em out. Jesse Heinrichs Photo
The collective noun for a group of turkeys, or at least the most widely accepted one, is a rafter. There are others too, such as a gobble or a raffle — but the town turkeys of Kimberley are more often aptly referred to as a gang or posse.
Although the latter two both express the right sentiment, it is perhaps the collective noun for another ground dweller, the emu, which is the most appropriate descriptor of all: a mob. Residents of Kimberley’s Chapman Camp and Lower Blarchmont neighbourhoods — where groups of several dozen turkeys are often seen wandering confidently — will understand.
Don’t be surprised this year, however, if the town feels a little less…fowl.
The number of turkeys in Kimberley grew to the point that, in 2022, the city collaborated with the Alberta Conservation Association (ACA) on a multi-year plan to trap and translocate a portion of the local population to Southern Alberta.
Kimberley isn’t the only town in the Columbia Valley to participate in this translocation process: Radium, Invermere, and Edgewater have also chipped in their fair share of feathery friends.
“The primary purpose is to establish a sustainable wild turkey population in Southwestern Alberta,” says Doug Manzer, the senior scientist and wildlife program manager with the ACA.
The type of trap used is called a Walk-in Box Trap, and it functions using a one-way door. The box trap is five feet tall, six feet long, and eight feet wide. The trap is pre-baited for a period of time beforehand to allow the birds to acclimatize to it and recognize it as a food source.
The turkeys are then trapped in cohorts of ten or twenty, and then separated into individual boxes before being transported to their new homes. They are typically released at a ranching operation that has agreed to host the birds in an effort to give them the best survival odds possible.
“Wild turkeys on the Alberta side, and honestly in a lot of places, are quite reliant over the winter months on some sort of food resource which is partly related to humans,” says Manzer. He explains that the turkeys often hang out where cattle are fed, scavenging on spent grain and other byproducts of the feed.
“You move them, but then they need to reproduce,” says Manzer, “so we’re trying to get to the point where we’re getting natural recruitment out of the birds.”
In total, the ACA has managed to trap 183 turkeys from Southeastern B.C. for the translocation effort.
The ACA has evidence of last year’s transplants nesting successfully, and with the previous winter being as mild as it was, they are feeling hopeful for another good nesting season.
Manzer couldn’t say with any degree of reliance specifically why the turkeys have struggled in Southwestern Alberta, but he speculates that harsher winters are a contributing factor.
“Turkeys are susceptible to harsh winter conditions,” he explains. “A prolonged cold snap can really wreak havoc on a population.” The goal for the ACA is to get the region’s population to a level where it is sustainable even through a harsh winter.
“We want enough birds to survive that they can jumpstart the population again on their own,” he says.
With any luck, the hens of the Columbia Valley are hardy enough to do just that. Here’s to their poults — the poultry pioneers of the eastern slopes.
~ Jesse Heinrichs
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Summer + Fall 2024 edition: