Turkeys relocated to rebuild Northern Michigan flocks

By Nick Vanderwall
Capital News Service
LANSING — The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has moved 31 turkeys from Barry County north to repopulate the flock in Lake County. “We’ve seen a decline in the gobblers in northern Michigan for a number of years, so when I heard about the nuisance birds in southern Michigan, the wheels started to turn in my head,” said Jim Maturen, a member of the Michigan Wild Turkey Hunters Association based in Chase. Turkeys become a nuisance when they move into a city as they have been known to do. In Barry County, the birds were scratching and eating silage and leaving their own bit of feces behind. Maturen and several other association members approached state officials in the fall of 2011 about trapping nuisance birds from southern Michigan to release in northern Michigan.