Excerpt: BLACK HILLS TURKEYS

Snow continued to blanket our small portable blind. It didn’t seem like Turkey weather; the cold, the snow, and the dark skies that prolonged the roost.

We waited beneath a small stand of ponderosa pines, eyeing the tall treetops above us on the ridge. We could not see the birds, but we could hear them.

Cautious and subdued yelps interrupted by a ringing gobble. This sound permeated the still air of the canyon, perhaps pausing a nearby Coyote and also our relaxed sips of coffee.

We waited.

On the edge of South Dakota farm country, where the flat sage horizons begin to roll and fill with scrub oak and pine, a unique subspecies of turkey has scratched a home where they didn’t exist before modern humans. In 1935, the state of New Mexico traded Wyoming for their Sage Grouse, leaving 15 turkeys in the Cottonwood drainage. They soon expanded their range with the help of a dwindling predator population. The same wolves and mountain lions that once hunted these grounds were run off as ranch barbwire overtook the prairie. Now, throughout these very private lands lay creek bottoms and pine hammocks that cut between cattle fields and offer fine habitat for ground nesting birds like the ones we are after; Merriam’s Turkeys.

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