Hoosier hunters, and a few sportsmen from other states, have enjoyed wild turkey hunts in Hoosierland for some 30 springs. Interestingly, the state's public forested lands have been given little credit for providing good to excellent hunting. Yet, the public forested lands of the state have played an important role in the restoration of the state's largest --and most elusive bird -- since the early 1960s when a cooperative effort of wildlife management agencies of Indiana and Missouri launched this program.

Back then, a few turkeys from other states were released at the Naval Ammunition Depot at Crane (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center); but in the early 1960s, the Indiana Division of Fish and Game (now Fish and Wildlife) worked out a plan to trade three Hoosier ruffed grouse for each wild turkey its Missouri counterpart would send.

Under the direction of Woodrow W. Fleming, Indiana's first non-political director of our wildlife agency, some 60 Show Me State turkeys were released in the Morgan Ridge area of the Hoosier National Forest (Perry County) and the Harrison-Crawford State Forest, a distance of some 30 miles between release sites.

As Fleming explained it at the time, the rationale of his agency was to establish two flocks of wild turkeys, with the hope that they would grow in numbers and eventually meet at some point between the original release sites.

That wild turkeys would prosper in Indiana should have surprised no one. After all, this bird had lived in the forested eastern part of the United States (including Hoosierland) before the land was settled. Indeed, it is said to have served Native Americans as an important food source long before the white man's encroachment with axes and plows.

The released wild turkeys did prosper. So well did they prosper that in the fall of 1969, the wildlife agency adopted a discretionary order to establish Indiana's first wild turkey hunting season of modern times.

That first season in the spring of 1970 offered only 100 hunting permits (allotted by public drawing), 50 each for the two hunting ranges. One was in Harrison State Forest and the other was the Perry County area of the Hoosier National.

Four gobblers were taken in that first four-day season, and this meager total bag hardly hinted at what was in store for Hoosier hunters who sought this magnificent bird. The number of hunters was increased to 300 for the spring 1971 season. When the spring season of 1972 rolled around, the repatriated wild turkey was reproducing and spreading so well that hunting was opened to anyone who cared to hunt.

Nine counties were open to hunting in the 1971 spring season for 298 permit holders, and 224 hunters bagged 11 birds. Things didn't change a lot in 1972 when the same nine counties were open for five days to 585 permit holders, 422 of them hunted, taking 12 birds.