Everybody in Town Has a Turkey Story--and Here’s Another One

This town is a turkey haven.

Several hundred wild turkeys have the run of the place, stopping traffic when they waddle across streets, getting in the way of golfers on fairways and greens at the local country club.

Even on Thanksgiving Day, the birds have no fear of ending up on a holiday dinner table. They are protected.

“Often a golfer’s swing is interrupted with the gobble, gobble, gobble of 50 to 100 wild turkeys in a flock,” said Don Person, the Lake Wildwood Country Club pro.

Everybody in town has turkey stories.

Judy Cole, a receptionist, recently stopped her car for a bunch of turkeys walking nonchalantly across the street.

“I thought they were all out of the way and I started up when I heard a thump, thump, thump under the car. I stopped, got out and behind my car was this turkey stretched out on its back,” Cole recalled.

She lifted the turkey and gently placed it in the back seat and headed for the local vet’s office. “I felt terrible. That turkey was out cold. Next thing I know, the turkey is perched on the head rest of my car seat. I returned it to its flock and it went merrily on its way.”

Retired Redwood City detective Roger Binkley and his wife, Trudy, like many residents of this Northern California town of 4,500, feed the turkeys bread and other goodies in their back yard.

“Trudy and I go outside twice a day with a couple of loaves of bread and shout: ‘Gobble, gobble, gobble’ and a whole flock of birds come running for lunch and dinner,” Binkley said.

Many of the wild turkeys perch on the roof of the Binkley house all day. The big birds roost and sleep in tree tops all over town.

A recent front page of the Lake Wildwood Independent carried a photo of three turkeys strutting through town with tail feathers held high.

Under the picture was this caption: “Some of Wildwood’s proud residents prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday.”

Wild turkeys are not native to California. For the last 20 years the California Fish and Game Department has placed more than 8,000 of the game birds throughout much of the state for hunters, said Larry McKibben, the department’s wildlife habitat supervisor in Oroville. There are two hunting seasons for turkeys, March 25 through April 30 and Nov. 12 through Dec. 11.

Ancestors of the wild turkeys in Lake Wildwood were originally placed in nearby foothills, but they migrated here and found sanctuary.

“There are at least 100,000 wild turkeys in the state today, perhaps considerably more. They are a prolific bird with the average brood of a dozen to 18,” said Fish and Game Department wildlife biologist Sonke Mastrup. “Hunters took 10,000 wild turkeys in California last year and are expected to bag about the same number this year.”

Unwelcome in Yosemite

Dick Riegelhuth, chief of resource management in Yosemite, knows about the population explosion of the wild turkeys. He contacted the Fish and Game Department to complain about the gobblers migrating into the national park.

“We want you to come up here, trap the wild turkeys and release them far enough away that they will never return to the park,” Riegelhuth told the department. He explained:

“Fish and Game is mandated to provide hunting to hunters who carry licenses. We’re mandated to protect the national park and all the resources within the park. Wild turkeys are exotics and don’t belong here.”

Riegelhuth said turkeys are competing with native animals in Yosemite for food and fattening up predators that feast on them, upsetting the natural balance.

Indians provided the Pilgrims with wild turkeys in 1621 for the first Thanksgiving Day feast. The turkeys were held in high esteem by Indians.

The wild bird is smaller and leaner than the fattened-up domesticated bird. Wild turkeys feed on plants, seeds, insects and acorns.

“There isn’t better tasting wild game in the world. Wild turkey is absolutely succulent, with a nutty flavor, not gamy and not as dry as the domesticated bird,” said Gene Smith, 55, editor of Turkey Call magazine, published by the National Wild Turkey Federation in in Edgefield, S.C.

More than 51,000 turkey hunters belong to the nation’s 273 chapters of the turkey federation. Wild turkeys are native to 39 states and are found in every state except Alaska.

Wild turkeys are short-distance fliers, flying no more than half a mile at a time. They fly vertically 40 to 60 feet with no problem despite their weight and have been clocked at 55 m.p.h.

To biologist Mastrup the wild turkey “is unlike anything else: unique in flavor, delicious, much more flavorful than domesticated turkey. Feasting on wild turkey Thanksgiving Day is to enjoy the bird the Pilgrims ate.”

In the wild, he said, the turkey is an extremely alert bird with incredible vision and hearing. It takes a hunter a great deal of practice and skill to bag a wild turkey.

It would be a cinch to take a turkey in Lake Wildwood, but the people of the small town are very protective of their gobblers.

Many townspeople here are so attached to turkeys that they feast on goose or duck on Thanksgiving. They just don’t have the heart to eat a turkey, even the store-bought variety.

“The turkeys in Lake Wildwood are spoiled rotten,” said Ed Burr, a local security guard.