Wild turkeys troubling East Iowans

CEDAR RAPIDS - The worlds of wild turkeys and people are colliding.

About 1 p.m. Wednesday, a wild turkey flew through the windshield of a semi-trailer truck headed northbound on Interstate 380 at Urbana. The uninjured trucker pulled over, the stunned, injured bird was lifted from the truck's back seat and eventually was put down.

The interstate episode put an exclamation point on recent encounters in the Cedar Rapids area between people and turkeys that prompted Rich Patterson, director of the Indian Creek Nature Center, to say, “They're acting goofy all over town.” People have been phoning him for days, he said.

“I've just taken another call from a homeowner wondering what to do about very aggressive turkeys in her driveway,” Patterson said.

Joe Wilkinson, information specialist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, on Wednesday recounted how DNR staff members spent some time in the last couple of weeks trying to capture a wild turkey near busy Collins Road and C Avenue NE in Cedar Rapids after residents called with concerns. At one point, it appeared that three turkeys might have been in the vicinity, Wilkinson said.

Radio personality Bob Bruce of WMT's Bob “Bruce Radio Experience” said the turkey in question spent three weeks outside his studio, tying up traffic on Collins Road and C Avenue NE “far too often for my taste,” he said. Eventually, the turkey got run over, he said.

Meanwhile, David Kasper, of 334 Crescent St. SE, wrote to City Hall asking city officials to rescue “my friends, the wild turkeys,” wandering around Collins Road.

Todd Gosselink, DNR wild turkey research biologist in Chariton, said the number of wild turkeys in urban areas has increased, in part, because they can't be hunted there. He said wild turkeys also may be attracted to homeowners' bird feeders, and he added that some residents may be feeding them. Feeding wild turkeys can make the birds more comfortable around people, and “that can be a real problem,” Gosselink said.

Wilkinson said the mating season for wild turkeys starts later in April and can extend into June while the principal turkey hunting period for turkey males or toms runs from April 7 through May 20.

The toms already are getting ready for breeding season, said Wilkinson, and they can be seen puffing themselves up, strutting and dragging their wings on the ground. Turkey hens won't be ready for them for some weeks yet, Wilkinson added.

The upcoming spring hunting season kills a number of toms - 9,500 in 2011, according to DNR figures - but the surviving toms can breed with as many turkey hens as they can attract, Wilkinson noted.

The Nature Center's Patterson said he suspects turkeys in April are like deer during deer-mating season in November.

“The way I explain it to some people,” said Patterson, “is, ‘Imagine that all of the entire year's sexual energy of a healthy 20-year-old human was concentrated into one month. That's where deer are in November and turkeys in April.'”

Turkeys in Iowa:

Most of the wild turkeys had vanished from Iowa by the 1960s until trapped wild turkeys from Missouri were brought into Iowa to help repopulate Iowa's turkey population beginning in 1965.

• The state now has between 120,000 and 140,000 wild turkeys with the largest numbers in northeast Iowa, southern Iowa and the Loess Hills area of Western Iowa.

• Males weigh 17 to 30 pounds, females, 8 to 12 pounds

• Males are 42 to 48 inches in length; females, 32 to 38 inches

• Maximum ground speed is 25 mph; top flight speed is 55 mph