The Up North community of Fairview is known as the Wild Turkey Capital of Michigan, but it no longer has the most birds in the state
Though it lacks birds, Fairview has plenty of pride in its designation, with a turkey featured prominently in its Harvest Fest
A trade with Canada — Michigan turkeys for Canadian moose — contributed to the decline of the turkey population in Fairview
About an hour southeast of Gaylord, you’ll find the Wild Turkey Capital of Michigan.
Fairview, an unincorporated community in Oscoda County’s Comins Township, has a free mini golf spot known as the Turkey Shoot Putt Putt, a harvest festival during which a turkey tries to predict how harsh winter will be, and kelly green road signs letting passersby know of its designation.
But the small area doesn’t actually have the most wild turkeys in the state.
So why is it the “capital”?
It all started with a Detroit businessman and some heavy lobbying in the Legislature.
By the early 1900s, unregulated hunting and loss of forestland had taken a toll on wild turkeys, which had pretty much disappeared from Michigan. But, by the 1950s, the state was bringing them in from elsewhere.
Birds were first taken to Allegan County in southwest Michigan, but some were later banded and transferred farther north in the Lower Peninsula.
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Meanwhile, in the 1960s, a businessman from Detroit started growing the wild turkey population in the greater Fairview area.
Stanley Pilarski, a wildlife enthusiast, brought some turkeys from Pennsylvania to a ranch he owned in Alcona County, about 10 minutes from Fairview. His flock grew and in 1964 he released 320 birds into the wild so turkeys could roam the area.
Then, in the mid-1970s, locals said wild turkeys banded as part of the state’s transfer program started wandering into Fairview. With birds coming in from those two sources — Pilarski’s flock and the state’s imports — the wild turkey population in Fairview skyrocketed.
In 1987, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said the Fairview area had more turkeys than anywhere else in the state.
At the time, the local chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation used to give out free corn to residents to help the birds have a food source in the winter. Fairview resident Farley Dew, now a facilities manager at Comins Township, said he used to feed the corn to turkeys in his yard.
“We had just about 100 birds coming in daily,” Dew recalled. “It was quite something.”
Getting its due
In the mid-1980s, Fairview residents, led by a county museum curator named Ida Pierson, started a campaign to get the community designated as the Wild Turkey Capital of Michigan.
A clipping from a 1988 article in Wilderness Chronicle. (Courtesy of Steiner Museum)
Part of the motivation was that Atlanta, a town about 30 minutes to Fairview’s north, had recently been designated the elk capital of the state. Officials in Fairview also thought the designation would promote tourism, boost the local economy and help put the area on the map.
In a letter of support for the campaign, a district tourism agent at Michigan State University’s Extension wrote, “Many visitors to our state have no distinct mental image of northeast Michigan.”
In 1987, the Legislature passed a resolution, Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 262, to designate Fairview the Wild Turkey Capital of Michigan.
Poised for the boon was the owner of The Wild Turkey, a bar that served pickled turkey gizzards. Barbara Thomas told the Associated Press that year, “Maybe now, people will want to come up here to find out what the town is all about.”
Turkey down
As the years marched on, the turkey population in Fairview receded. Dew, who used to feed hundreds of turkeys in his yard a week, said that, by the 90s, it was more like 20.
A roadside sign in Fairview, about an hour from Gaylord. Despite the designation as the wild turkey capital of Michigan, the community doesn’t have the most turkeys in the state. (Justin A. Hinkley/Bridge Michigan)
Harsh winters, declining habitat and predators such as coyotes and possums have been listed as reasons the turkey population might have gone down in Fairview.
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But peak numbers also may have dipped a little as a result of something called Mooselift, an international operation in the mid-1980s in which roughly 100 Michigan turkeys — at least some from Fairview — were traded with Canada in exchange for Canadian moose going to the Upper Peninsula.
In the spring of 2011, the turkey population in Fairview was so low that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources trapped a couple dozen turkeys in Hastings and brought them three-and-a-half hours northeast to Fairview and the surrounding area.
Fairview had gone from supplying turkeys to another country to needing a boost itself.
Turkey predictions
These days, hunter survey data suggests that the turkey population is largest not in Fairview but in the southern third of Michigan, where winters are milder.
But that doesn’t stop Fairview residents from celebrating their claim to fame.
At the Comins Township Harvest Fest in Fairview, a turkey’s food choice is said to predict the type of winter we’ll have. (Courtesy of Comins Township)
Lately, the bird has taken center stage at an annual festival.
“Last year, we actually had a turkey here at the Harvest Fest predict when winter would be here,” Comins Township Supervisor Lori Lewis told Bridge Michigan with a chuckle.
At the event, a turkey was given a choice between eating corn and wheat. It picked wheat, which meant the bird predicted a harsh winter, which Lewis said ended up being correct. Last winter “actually went into March, and we had a nasty ice storm,” the supervisor said.
The turkey at this year’s festival picked corn, predicting an earlier but milder winter.
For Fairview, the designation of being the Wild Turkey Capital of Michigan is a reminder of the community’s past.
“We take pride in that and we have kept the name because of that,” said Lewis.
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