434 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY urally good turkey range, since they offer a solution to the protection problem on private land. Such areas are relatively new in Missouri, and have not yet been fully tested, but the prospect on at least two of the four areas now set up is favorable. Where a fair remnant of native tur- keys was already present, response to protection and management has been noticeable in two or three years. Cooperative management areas should be relatively large (at least 10,000 acres), since the danger of disturbance requires room for the turkeys to adjust their range within the protected zone. Liberations of game-farm turkeys. Since 1925, approximately 13,000 turkeys raised on game farms have been liberated in Missouri, mostly on refuges or other protected areas. Some idea of the effect of these liberations may be ob- tained from Table 2, in which all known releases on refuges are listed in two columns. The first column shows releases from 1925 to 1937 of birds of rather questionable quality, mostly raised on the state parks; the second shows liber- ations from 1938 to 1941 of a much superior strain from a private game farm in Reynolds County. For a record of early attempts at tur- key restocking in Missouri, reference is made to papers by Leopold (7), Bennitt and Nagel (1), and Blakey (2). The 13 refuge areas that have been stocked re- ceived all told 6,468 artificially raised turkeys. These refuges with their environs now support in the aggregate only 923 turkeys, and there were some wild birds on nearly all these areas at the outset. Heavy initial stocking neither assures nor precludes the success of a refuge; but man- gement of wild remnants with little or no stock- ing has proven very successful on 3 refuges where it has been tried. There are so many influences involved in the success or failure of individual turkey refuges that it is extremely difficult to evaluate the effect of any single fac- tor like restocking. However, current uncom- pleted studies indicate that the native wild strain, where it is established, is apparently more pro- ductive under Missouri Ozark conditions than any of the hybrid game-farm strains. The present distribution of turkeys in the watershed of the Eleven Points River seems to illustrate the superior productivity of the native stock. Two large Forest Service refuges, Eleven Points and Wilderness, are located in the rough breaks of this river 10 miles apart in northeast- ern Oregon County. In soil, topography, and vegetation, these areas are much alike and their management plans are practically identical in that both offer grazing control, fire control, and protection. Both had remnants of native turkeys at the time of establishment. They differ only in that the Eleven Points Refuge has in recent years received repeated liberations of game-farm turkeys, whereas on the Wilderness Refuge the TABLE 2.—TURKEY POPULATIONS ON STATE AND FEDERAL REFUGES IN RELATION TO PAST LIBERATIONS | Refuge | County | Acres | Year established | No. of turkeys—released 1925-37 | 1938-41 | 1942¹ inv. | Birds per twp. |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Drury (4) | Taney | 4,600 | 1939 | None | None | 191 | 57.3 | Hercules (3) | Taney | 5,500 | 1936 | 74 | 82 | 185 | 55.5 | Indian Trail (2) | Dent | 13,250 | 1924 | 972 | 80 | 159 | 47.7 | Caney Mtn. (4) | Ozark | 5,500 | 1940 | None | None | 140 | 42.0 | Wilderness (3) | Oregon | 12,800 | 1938 | 45 | None | 134 | 40.2 | Carmen Spring (3) | Howell | 5,000 | 1936 | 147 | 80 | 105 | 31.5 | Deer Run (2) | Reynolds | 8,380 | 1924 | 1316 | None | 101 | 30.3 | Blue Spring (3) | Ozark | 5,920 | 1936 | 100 | 119 | 72 | 21.6 | Big Spring (1) | Carter | 4,582 | 1924 | 856 | 35 | 41 | 12.3 | Eleven Points (3) | Oregon | 15,100 | 1935 | 50 | 75 | 40 | 12.0 | Spring Creek (3) | Phelps | 7,900 | 1940 | None | 167 | 37 | 11.1 | Stoner (4) | Texas | 12,250 | 1941 | None | 45 | 26 | 7.7 | Low Gap (3) | Reynolds | 9,500 | 1935 | 120 | 25 | 16 | 5.2 | Sam Baker (1) | Wayne | 5,150 | 1927 | 904 | None | 7 | 2.1 | Meramec (1) | Franklin | 7,172 | 1926 | 1176 | None | None | None (1) State park (3) U.S. Forest Service refuge (2) State forest (4) State refuge ¹The 1942 inventory figures show the number of birds on standard-sized census areas of 120 square miles, within which each refuge or management area is centered.