This spring, New Brunswick marks the fifth year of its ever-expanding turkey hunt. Here’s how it happened

Three decades ago, very few people were talking about turkey hunting in New Brunswick—there were simply no wild turkeys to hunt. While there are records suggesting the birds may have inhabited the province at some point, there’s certainly no overwhelming evidence a large, huntable population ever existed. And according to records dating back to before the Second World War, there’s no indication there was ever a government-approved hunt, either.

What a difference 30 years can make. This spring, New Brunswick marks the fifth year of its ever-expanding turkey hunt, with both the province and the Canadian Wild Turkey Federation (CWTF) continuing to explore ways to improve and grow the program even further.

Compared to parts of the U.S. where turkey hunting is as important as deer or waterfowl season, New Brunswick has historically had harsher winters. As a result, wildlife biologists and other experts weren’t even sure the birds could survive the province’s snow and cold. The turkeys themselves weren’t aware of those misgivings, however. Although sightings were rare up to and during the 1990s, the birds began showing up in ever-growing numbers in the early 2000s.

But where did they come from? In the U.S., turkeys are captured in one location and transplanted in another to quickly establish populations that already know how to survive in the wild. That sounds quick and efficient, but it’s not what happened in New Brunswick.

NATURAL MIGRATION

“We didn’t bring turkeys to New Brunswick,” says CWTF president Mike Holland, a former provincial cabinet minister who played a key role in launching New Brunswick’s turkey hunt. “We never endeavoured to do a trap-and-transfer program.” Instead, he says, the birds gradually moved all on their own into New Brunswick from neighbouring Maine to the south, and the population grew from there.

Not that other ideas haven’t been tried to establish a huntable turkey population—allegedly, at least. Holland points to the Minto-Chipman area east of Fredericton, for example, where large numbers of turkeys several years ago led people to believe some sort of release program was underway. Bolstering that belief was the fact the area is far from the land border with Maine, where most turkeys were typically spotted at the time.

When tags were first issued in 2021, however, the success rate in the Minto-Chipman area was low, suggesting the birds people had seen were actually domesticated stock, and hadn’t survived over the long-term. The way Holland sees it, that proves the CWTF’s strategy of focusing only on the spread of wild birds is best.

In the south of the province, in fact, wild turkey numbers keep growing through ongoing natural migration patterns from Maine, where the birds were first introduced from Vermont in the late 1970s. Maine also began an in-state trap-and-transfer program in the 1980s, but of course that scheme didn’t include New Brunswick. The birds themselves make the trek into the province, following pipeline corridors and other pathways through the woods.

While it might seem unlikely turkeys would roam so far, Holland says tracking collars indicate they can travel 70 to 100 kilometres during the winter. And although Maine is separated from New Brunswick by the St. Croix River in the south and the Saint John River in the north, there’s no real impediment along the land border in between. Not surprisingly, then, that’s where wild turkeys from Maine first started appearing—particularly in western Charlotte County, where the winters have been mild in recent years, and there’s plenty of woodland for the birds to hide in.

“Where they’re thriving, it’s very favourable habitat,” says Holland, noting the easy winters have resulted in healthy spring clutches with lots of poults. And when an area has plenty of food, he notes, the rapid increase in the population is the natural result. Now, wild turkeys are taking over new ground all the time, radiating out from their original base in the south of the province.

 

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EXPANDING POPULATION

Trap-and-transfer programs might have increased the spread of wild turkeys even faster in New Brunswick, but there were objections to that plan from the outset, especially from the agricultural sector. Notably, farmers already dealing with invading wild turkeys along the Maine border were not happy with the damage to their crops, says Holland. That led to farmers in the rest of the province resisting introductions in their own regions. So, while the U.S. may focus on relocation programs for the quick spread of birds, Holland and others realized that wouldn’t work in New Brunswick, at least not right away.

Instead, they focused on a carefully managed hunt of the existing population, something farmers could hardly complain about since they viewed the birds as pests. Even that common-sense solution took some effort, though, starting with a debate over whether turkeys were even native to New Brunswick. But as Holland pointed out, white-tailed deer are not native, yet the province issues tags for them year. So, after years of hard work, the province finally had its first wild turkey hunt in May 2021 (the inaugural hunt planned for 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions).

By that time, Holland was the province’s minister of natural resources and energy development, having won a seat in the 2018 provincial election. He’d previously served as a provincial staffer, but now he was in the driver’s seat. His time in office was marked with several positive policy updates for hunters and anglers, but the biggest change was the introduction of the turkey hunt, which forced the province to start properly regulating and managing the population. Having finished what he originally started as a co-founder of the CWTF, Holland stepped down from government prior to the 2024 provincial election, and was named president of the CWTF this past winter.

That first hunt in 2021 saw 400 tags issued for a 10-day season in five of New Brunswick’s 27 Wildlife Management Zones (WMZs). At the time, the CWTF estimated there were 2,000 wild turkeys in the province. Now, there’s an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 birds, with 680 tags available in seven WMZs for this May’s 12-day season. The hunt is also now open to hunters as young as 12, and some outfitter licences have been earmarked for out-of-province hunters.

That’s decent growth in just four years, considering there’s been no trap-and-transfer program to move the birds into new areas of the province. The CWTF hopes that comes next, says Holland, noting the federation is now identifying regions with habitat suitable for the release of wild birds, where there would be no conflict with landowners. If that happens, he says he’s extremely hopeful New Brunswick’s turkey hunting season will be able to expand even further beyond the current limited draw.

“That’s the base we’re working from,” says Holland, who’s hunted wild turkeys all over the U.S. He’s particularly optimistic given the province already has excellent numbers of turkeys in the WMZs where hunting is legal. “I feel like we could easily be in an over-the-counter situation.”

NOVA SCOTIA’S PROSPECTS

Now that New Brunswick’s wild turkey hunt is firmly in place, what about neighbouring Nova Scotia? For starters, it’s unlikely to see birds arriving naturally from other jurisdictions. That’s because the province is surrounded by ocean, with only the narrow Isthmus of Chignecto connecting it by land to New Brunswick and the rest of North America. And that land bridge itself is criss-crossed with busy highways, farmland and ditches—not favourable ground for wild turkeys to migrate across, even if they do make it that far.

So, with no birds finding their way into the province from elsewhere, Canada’s Ocean Playground will have to take a different approach. Enter the CWTF, which would like to institute a trap-and-transfer program, importing and releasing wild turkeys from elsewhere. However, that plan stands to face the same objections that arose in New Brunswick, especially from farmers worried about crop depredation.

But looking at Nova Scotia’s geography, CWTF president Mike Holland thinks his organization can work around those concerns, especially if a successful trap-and-transfer program in New Brunswick can set a precedent for moving forward. Then the CWTF can work to find areas with ideal turkey habitat, and little chance of adversely affecting farmland.

Holland points to the south-central area of the province, below Kejimkujik National Park, as one potentially suitable area to transplant wild turkeys, along with Cape Breton Island and several other regions. Says Holland: “When you see the sustainable populations of white-tailed deer and upland birds, there’s lots of spots here.”

To learn more about wild turkey hunting in New Brunswick, go to www.outdoorcanada.ca/nbturkeys.