The Deer and the Turkey: Gone, and Brought Back Past This Ground

1880 to the modern record

The two animals Mishawaka's residents now meet on the Riverwalk and in the park woods are both restorations, and the restoration record is a state record in which this ground's part is written by spread, not by release. The going is Chapman's: the Virginia deer stands in his 1880 chapter among the departed and the rare. The state's own project history gives the deer's Indiana ending its date — the last known wild deer in the state killed near Red Cloud, in Knox County, in 1893, the Kankakee region and Knox County the species' last two stands — and then the return its numbers: between 1934 and 1942 the Indiana Division of Fish and Game released 296 white-tailed deer, bought chiefly from Wisconsin, with 111 more in 1953–55; by 1951 the herd stood at an estimated 5,000 and Indiana held its first modern deer season. No release site on Mishawaka ground appears in the program record reached; the northern counties were rebuilt by a second current the cooperative state–federal wildlife record states directly — deer immigrating from Michigan helped rebuild the herd in northern Indiana counties, walking down the same river corridors. The turkey's arc is the same shape a generation later: Chapman already writes it in the past tense of habit in 1880 ("in an early day they were in abundance"), the state record completes the extirpation by about 1900, and between 1956 and 2004 the Indiana DNR released 2,795 wild turkeys at sites across the state, rebuilding a huntable statewide population from zero. The full prints — the deer project's tables, the turkey's modern county standing at Potato Creek — stand in South Bend's file. What stands on this ground is the outcome both programs arrived at: deer as the ordinary large mammal of the city's river bottoms and parks, documented in the present-tense entries below, and turkeys in the county's woods again — a fauna reassembled by the state around a city that contributed no release and needed none.

Principal sources

1. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), Chapter II, p. 340.
2. John M. Allen, "White-tailed Deer," Indiana deer project history (Project W-2-R), Indiana Division of Fish and Game — the 1893 ending; 296 liberations 1934–1942, tabulated to 1955; and the Indiana DNR's wild turkey restoration accounts — extirpation by about 1900; 2,795 released 1956–2004.
3. Wildlife Conflicts Information Hotline (USDA–APHIS Wildlife Services, Indiana DNR, Purdue Extension), "Deer — Wildlife Conflicts" — Michigan immigration rebuilding the northern counties.