Every spring the gobbles come back to the same ponderosa benches. The white-tipped mountain turkey is a creature of the high country, and it knows where it belongs.
By Elk Glade Editorial3 min read
Come April, the gobbling starts back up in the same pines it left in the fall.
The Merriam's is a mountain bird — the white-tipped, high-country subspecies of wild turkey, tied to the ponderosa pine and the grassy benches of the West in a way the lowland turkeys aren't. It roosts in the big pines, struts the open parks, and works the mast and seeds of that mixed mountain forest. On the south slope of Pikes Peak, it's been doing this longer than any of us have been watching.
What a flock needs is specific: tall trees to roost in safe from the ground, mast-producing forest to feed in, grassy openings where the poults can hunt the insects that grow them fast, and water. Take any one away and the turkeys thin out. Keep the patchwork intact — which a working ranch with managed grazing tends to do — and the same benches hold birds spring after spring. We wrote out what the bird needs in the turkey habitat reference and what makes a Merriam's a Merriam's in the subspecies guide.
We hunt them in the spring, on the private-land early opener, when the toms are loud and the strut is on. The full tactical side — roosting a bird, the morning setup, the calling — is in the turkey hunting guide.
The elk leave and come back with the seasons. The Merriam's mostly just stays, up in the pines where it belongs. There's something steadying in that.
