Gone, Then Brought Back: Deer, Turkey, Otter, Beaver

Four extirpation-and-return arcs, dated at both ends — DNR restoration record

Lead: Chapman gives this article its first halves. In 1880 the Virginia deer is “beautiful” and already among the animals that “have become very rare”; the otter stands in the same rare-list; the beaver is in the gone-list; and the wild turkey “has almost entirely disappeared.” The second halves are the Indiana DNR's twentieth-century restoration record. All four arcs below are state arcs at published strength; the county share is stated where a source states it, and not inflated where none does.

Deer. The state end of the fall is exact: the last reported wild deer in Indiana was killed in Knox County in 1893, and the state was deer-free for four decades. Restoration began in 1934, when the Division of Fish and Game released 296 deer obtained from Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina through 1942 — mostly on southern hill-country public land — with 111 more released 1953–1955; deer immigrating from Michigan rebuilt the northern counties, which is the mechanism that covers St. Joseph County in the published account, no Olive Township release site being named in it. The herd was estimated at 5,000 by 1950–51, Indiana held its first modern deer season in 1951, and DNR's current biology page records steady increase since reintroduction, antlerless-harvest management from the 1990s, and roughly 115,000 deer taken annually in recent years. The preserve record closes the local loop at published strength: St. Joseph County Parks' Spicer Lake material lists deer among the preserve's resident animals today.

Wild turkey. Extirpated from Indiana by the early 1900s (the scholarly restoration account dates it “by 1900”), the turkey's return began in 1956 — famously with five birds obtained through the Navy's Crane depot in Martin County — followed by Missouri trades in 1964–65 and decades of trap-and-transfer. DNR's turkey page gives the program total: 2,795 wild-trapped turkeys released at 185 sites between 1956 and 2004, turkeys “now found in all 92 counties,” and a first modern hunt in 1970. County-level presence on this ground is documented in the bird record rather than the release record: eBird's Spicer Lake hotspot lists Wild Turkey, and the South Bend Christmas Bird Count reported 91 turkeys in the 119th count (see the count article below).

River otter. The cleanest dates of the four: breeding populations gone by 1942 — protected too late, in 1921 — and restored by release of 303 Louisiana otters at 12 sites in northern and southern Indiana between 1995 and 1999, beginning with 25 at Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge in early 1995. The species was removed from Indiana's endangered list in 2005; DNR's later summaries put the modern population above 8,500, with otters documented in most Indiana counties and a regulated trapping season reopened in 2015. No release site in St. Joseph County is named in the DNR accounts reached; the Tippecanoe River basin — the feasibility study's promising northern basin — is the neighboring system, and this township's otter share is therefore printed as range recovery, not a local release.

Beaver. The fur trade's first casualty in Chapman's own ordering — gone “with or before” the buffalo — and the earliest dated local evidence in the state literature is stark: the Indianapolis trapper George W. Pitts, quoted in the Indiana Magazine of History's “Wild Animals of Indiana,” put central-Indiana beaver extinct by 1830, when a pelt brought $6–$10; statewide summaries put the final trapping-out by the late 1880s–early 1890s. Reintroduction began in 1935 with Michigan and Wisconsin animals released on the Jasper-Pulaski and Kankakee state game preserves — the Kankakee preserve release is this section's closest documented return point, on the same river system that drains Terre Coupee — with live-trapped spread thereafter, beaver in 43 counties by 1986 and throughout the state since. The “engineer today” line is printed at that strength: a statewide, self-spreading recovery whose nearest named 1935 ground is the Kankakee itself; no beaver colony on Terre Coupee's creeks is documented in the sources reached, and none is claimed.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), p. 340 (deer and otter rare; beaver gone) and birds chapter (turkey “almost entirely disappeared”).
2. Indiana DNR, White-tailed Deer Biology (in.gov); Purdue Extension FNR-153 and Indiana Woodland Steward deer history — last deer 1893; 296 released 1934–1942, plus 1953–55 releases; first season 1951.
3. Indiana DNR, Wild Turkey (in.gov) — extirpated early 1900s; 2,795 released at 185 sites, 1956–2004; all 92 counties; Wise (1973), “Restoration of the Wild Turkey in Indiana,” Wildlife Society Bulletin — extirpated by 1900, restoration from 1956; Indiana Connection (2022), Crane depot 1956 account.
4. Indiana DNR otter record via Division of Fish & Wildlife summaries and Purdue FNR — extirpated by 1942; 303 released 1995–1999 at 12 sites; delisted 2005; trapping reopened 2015.
5. “Wild Animals of Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History (Pitts account, beaver extinct by 1830 in central Indiana); Indiana Connection (2023), “Be a beaver believer” — reintroductions from 1935 at Jasper-Pulaski and Kankakee preserves; 43 counties by 1986.