Pennsylvania Game News - August 2020 - 39

two of the hens
and destroyed their
nests," Kalbfus
noted in 1914 annual
report.
After turkey
season reopened
in 1915, Kalbfus
reported a turkey
harvest of 3,500 to
4,000 birds, "... this
number being two
or more times the
number killed in any
two years in this state
for many years."
Kalbfus estimated a turkey kill of 4,000
in 1916, but he was unhappy with the
way hunters were harvesting birds. He
said the majority were taken "by methods
that are not sportsmanlike and should be
interfered with by legislation."
Kalbfus wanted a shorter and later
season; a prohibition on using dogs to
hunt turkeys; and no turkey hunting before
sunrise.
"These are only little things, but they
mean life and death to the turkeys," Kalbfus noted in his 1916 annual report.
The Game Commission in 1916 started
buying turkeys - 81 wild turkeys; 151
bronze turkeys (half-wild blood) - to
strengthen populations. It also contracted
to buy 1,000 wild turkeys from Virginia
and 25 from Maryland. The purchases
suggested that, for as much as a closed
season was perceived to help turkeys, the
Game Commission was committed to
doing more.
In 1917, a strategy Kalbfus advanced
for a later and shorter turkey season was
accepted and enacted by the Legislature.
It changed the Oct. 15 to Nov. 30 turkey
season to Nov. 15 to 30, cutting four
weeks off turkey season and delaying it
AUGUST 2020	

four weeks. It also banned turkey hunting
from sunset to sunrise, reduced the season
harvest from two turkeys to one and outlawed turkey calls. Calls wouldn't be legal
again for another 20 years.
It was a big win for wild turkeys that
Kalbfus reasoned would provide "more
mature and heavier" birds to hunters.
But even with an understanding of
trap-and transfer, and recognition of the
gains attained from later and shorter fall
seasons, the agency remained committed
to buying more turkeys.
"We have purchased and are now
having delivered to our officers 600
wild turkeys at a value of $9 each to be
released early next spring as the weather
will permit, preferably in sections ...
now inhabited by turkeys, but we are also
planning to release some ... in sections
where turkeys were formerly found but
from which they have been either driven
or exterminated in recent years, the question of food supply being the most serious
consideration," Kalbfus reported in 1917.
By 1930, the Game Commission
was so committed to releasing turkeys it
opened the Juniata Wild Turkey Farm near
Honey Grove.
It would be at least another 50 years
before Pennsylvania truly had a statewide
population of wild turkeys.

WORKING TO THE END
At 67, Kalbfus was looking to retire
from the Game Commission and he
tendered his resignation at the July 10,
1919 meeting of the Board of Game
Commissioners. But the board didn't
act on it, seemingly hoping he might
stay. And maybe he agreed to, the record
doesn't tell.
Exactly one month later, Kalbfus
would be killed when an eastbound Penn39
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