The returns, each dated at both ends: deer, wild turkey, river otter, beaver

EXTIRPATION AND RESTORATION · INDIANA DNR RESTORATION HISTORIES

Four animals went out of this county in Chapman's century and came back in the next, and each return is a dated state act, told here at both ends. The deer went first at the edges of living memory: Chapman already lists "the beautiful Virginia deer" among the very rare in 1880, and the state's end-date is exact — the last reported wild deer in Indiana killed in Knox County in 1893. The return began in the Depression: between 1934 and 1942 the state released 296 deer in the southern hill country, the Hoosier National Forest ground, with 111 more in 1953–1955; the herd stood near 900 in 1943 and 5,000 by 1951, when Indiana held its first deer hunt in fifty-eight years and took some 1,600 animals. From that southern seed the herd reoccupied the state county by county — Purdue's extension record puts it near 350,000 by 1991 and later state-derived estimates near 680,000 by 2020 — until the deer Chapman mourned became the commonest large animal on this ground, a hunted, managed, crop-and-garden presence in every township including both of Granger's. The wild turkey's arc is the steepest: abundant in Chapman's early day, "almost entirely disappeared" by 1880, and extirpated from Indiana by 1900 on the standard scholarly dating (Wise, 1973, in the Wildlife Society Bulletin); the last reports stand in the southern counties — Knox in 1894, Gibson in 1897, the last stand in Posey. The return was built bird by bird from wild stock: across 1956 to 2004, on the DNR's current telling, 2,795 wild-trapped turkeys released at 185 sites statewide; the National Wild Turkey Federation's Indiana history gives the same programme at a slightly different count — more than 2,600 birds at 175 sites across 1956–1999 — and the two tellings print here together, unreconciled, as the carriers give them. The first modern spring season came in 1970; the bird now stands in all ninety-two counties, and the county's own Christmas census counted ninety-one wild turkeys in a single December — Chapman's vanished gamebird, returned to commonness.

The otter and the beaver are the water's pair, and their ends braid with the marsh article's ditches. The river otter, very rare on Chapman's page in 1880, lost its breeding populations statewide by 1942, trapped out of the drained and channelled rivers. Its return is the best-documented of the four: between 1995 and 1999 the DNR released 303 Louisiana otters at twelve sites in six watersheds — the St. Joseph among them, this ground's own river a named restoration water — and the follow-up study (Johnson, Walker and Hudson, Indiana Academy of Science, 2007) tracked the result site by site: sign at all twelve release sites, reports from sixty-five counties by 2005, and the honest cost column — fifty-nine known dead by 2005, most in traps set for other furbearers and under vehicles. The legal end-date of the recovery carries this section's second conflict: the otter is stated removed from the state endangered list in 2005 in the Department's own accounts and the press record that followed them, and in 2009 in the Natural Resources Commission's 2023 agenda record — both print, neither is picked. In 2015 the recovery completed its arc to management: a limited regulated trapping season opened across sixty-six counties under a statewide quota of 600, a two-animal bag, a mid-November to mid-March season — the protected species of 1995 become a managed furbearer, its modelled population above 8,500. The beaver's story is the oldest and the plainest: Chapman lists it gone "with or before" the buffalo, the fur trade's first casualty on this ground, and the state's record dates the extirpation to about 1840 — Hahn's Mammals of Indiana (1909) remembered it killed out early for fur and castoreum. The return came in 1935, breeding pairs from Wisconsin released into the Jasper-Pulaski and Kankakee fish and wildlife areas — the marsh country west of this county — and from those state grounds the animal re-spread until regulated trapping resumed by the 1950s and the beaver stood again in nearly all ninety-two counties. On this ground the return is written in the landscape the Farms leg already banks: the county's ditches and the creek's banks carry the beaver's dams and cuttings as ordinary furniture now, an animal extinct here for ninety-five years re-established as a neighbour whose engineering the ditch-keepers must answer. Four arcs, one shape: out by the market and the ditch between Chapman's boyhood and 1942; back by statute, truck and release-pen between 1934 and 1999; and by November 2026 all four stand on this ground not as rarities but as managed populations — the deer hunted, the turkey in the census, the otter trapped under quota, the beaver tolerated and answered for.

Sources:

1. Indiana DNR deer history (as carried in Purdue FNR-153 and the Department's record): last wild deer, Knox County, 1893; 296 released 1934–1942; 111 more 1953–1955; first hunt 1951; herd estimates 900 (1943), 5,000 (1951), ~350,000 (1991), ~680,000 (2020, state-derived).
2. Indiana DNR wild turkey page (current): 2,795 turkeys released at 185 sites, 1956–2004; first modern hunt 1970; all 92 counties. National Wild Turkey Federation, Indiana chapter history: over 2,600 birds at 175 sites, 1956–1999 — printed together, unreconciled.
3. Wise (1973), Wildlife Society Bulletin: turkey extirpation dated by 1900; Perkins (1930), Wilson Bulletin: last reports Knox 1894, Gibson 1897, Posey County last stand.
4. Johnson, Walker & Hudson (2007), Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science: otter reintroduction 1995–1999, 303 Louisiana otters, 12 sites in six watersheds including the St. Joseph; 59 known mortalities by 2005; reports from 65 counties.
5. Indiana DNR and press record: otter delisting stated 2005 (Department accounts; Indianapolis Star) against 2009 (Natural Resources Commission Agenda Item #7, August 2023) — printed whole. Trapping season 2015: 66 counties, quota 600, bag 2; modelled population over 8,500 (Indiana Woodland Steward, DNR furbearer biologist Geriann Albers).
6. Indiana DNR beaver record (2019 Trappers Report series; Hahn, The Mammals of Indiana, 1909): extirpated by 1840; reintroduced 1935 from Wisconsin into Jasper-Pulaski and Kankakee; trapping resumed by the 1950s; present in nearly all counties.