The narrow, snow-blown driveway leading down the hill to retired, 72-year-old Jim Bolduc’s secluded East Colrain home will on a clear day display faraway Mt. Monadnock towering high over the eastern horizon. Once inside the two-story, open-frame log cabin — large, hand-hewn joists crossing the ceilings — it’s no secret that you’ve entered the home of a hunter, outdoorsman and nature lover. But there’s more to it than that. He’s now a New England National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) Hall of Famer.
In the southwest corner of Bolduc’ living room, there’s a nice, mounted, 7-point whitetail buck, head stretching forward, ears alert, antlers thick with a wide, trophy spread.
“That buck came from Hampden,” said Bolduc. “The neighborhood dogs used to chase him past me in my bowstand at the same time every morning. My (late) father didn’t shoot many deer, so I set him up for that deer during shotgun season. I told him it would be coming through at about 7:05 a.m. Sure enough, I heard his shots at just after 7. The proof’s right there looking at us.”
Elsewhere on the walls, floors, tables, hearth and fireplace are paintings, prints, decoys, turkey beards, wood carvings of a bobwhite quail and Canada goose, and much, much more. They’re all dead giveaways that the man who resides there has spent his life in the woods, and is married to a woman, Lesley, onboard with her husband’s passions.
“Yeah, actually, she’s found a lot of that stuff, especially the decoys and wood-carvings, at tag sales and shops,” Bolduc said. “The bobwhite quail came from the Cape, and there’s even a book about it. She knows what she’s looking for and has developed a good eye over the years.”
Bolduc was one of 10 inaugural Hall of Fame inductees, representing all six New England states, recently recognized by NWTF at Bass Pro Shops in Hoookset, N.H. This new New England Hall of Fame was the brainchild of two Massachusetts NWTF chapter presidents: Keith Fritz of central Mass. and Kevin Antonovitch of Cape Cod. Also inducted with Bolduc from Massachusetts was iconic, retired MassWildlife biologist and longtime state Wild Turkey Project Leader Jim Cardoza, both of whom were saluted for being Bay State pioneers associated with our storybook wild-turkey restoration. The other eight inaugural inductees were: New Hampshire’s Chip Page and Ted Walski, Vermont’s Doug Blodgett and Ron Lafreniere, Maine’s Jim Wescott and Gene Howard, Connecticut’s Steve Jackson, and Rhode Island’s Jim Chadwick. All 10 received a decorative plaque along with a handsome, custom, curly-maple box call with their names, states and Hall of Fame credentials inscribed on the striker top.
Bolduc was honored for being the first president of the first, and at the time only, Massachusetts chapter, established in May 1983, year three of Bay State turkey hunting. Back then, less than a 100 hunters were chosen annually by lottery and restricted to hunting towns across a northwest strip of the state. The hunting territory included the northern Franklin and Berkshire County border towns where turkeys started spilling in from southern Vermont and Upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. Discovering this natural flock expansion into the Bay State, Cardoza’s MassWildlife teams started live-trapping flocks of New York turkeys with canon nets and stocking them in northwestern Massachusetts to supplement the natural process already underway.
Back then, Bolduc — a devoted hunter who grew up in Indian Orchard, graduated from Springfield Trade and had lived in Hampden since 1962 — grew interested in turkey hunting. He had applied unsuccessfully for the Massachusetts hunting lottery the first couple of years and, as a result, actually shot his first bird in 1981 or 1982 in Canaan, Conn., a northwest Connecticut hilltown where New York turkeys from the Hudson Valley were also spilling across state lines. In 1983, he contacted the fledgling NWTF, established in 1973, about starting a chapter in Massachusetts and — Bingo! — he soon became the first Massachusetts Chapter president.
“A couple of years later I told my wife it was time to start thinking about moving,” Bolduc recalled. “I was growing tired of traveling to Franklin County for chapter meetings and hunting. She was good with it, we found this spot in Colrain (shown to them by Realtor Carol Bolduc, no relation) and the rest is history. We love it up here.”
And what is there not to love about their idyllic spot with majestic Monadnock beckoning from the northeastern horizon?
Joining President Bolduc as historic first Massachusetts Chapter officers were Vice President Gary Miller of Colrain, Secretary Mary Jane Miller (Gary’s wife), and Treasurer Bobby Phillips of Ashfield. Then, of course, there were other key non-officer members like Rick Ormand of Shelburne, all of whom played active roles in the early days. Today, the Massachusetts Chapter is one of six in the state. The others are from eastern Mass. (1986), central Mass. (1996), WMass Longbeards (1996), Pioneer Valley Longbeards (1996), and Cranberry Country Longbeards (2000). A seventh chapter, the Greylock Gobblers, will come to fruition later this year.
“Jim Bolduc is the man who got it all started. The rest of us followed,” said longtime NWTF member/officer Joe Judd of Shelburne, who met Bolduc quite by chance in wee-hour Shelburne darkness during an early 1980’s spring season (probably 1984). “Jim deserved to get inducted first.”
Bolduc hasn’t forgotten the day he and Judd met in darkness way back when.
“I heard something approaching and didn’t know if it was a bear or what, so I flashed my light a couple of times and saw a guy walking toward me,” he recalled. “He introduced himself, said he was sorry to intrude and asked if I minded him sitting up the hill behind me to watch. He said he’d be quiet, wouldn’t move and maybe would write a story for the old West County News if I got one. I shot a gobbler and he wrote the story. We’ve known each other ever since.”
Back at the time of their wooded introduction, wild turkeys were found in pockets of western Massachusetts before spilling into the central part of the state with the assistance of aggressive MassWildlife stocking initiatives. Today there are turkeys statewide, including urban settings, and hunters can find success virtually anywhere.
Without pioneers like Bolduc and Cardoza, who were leaders of the wildly successful restoration program, hunters and wildlife enthusiasts alike would not have such easy access to what has since become our state game bird. Neither new Hall of Famer viewed their efforts as work, though. For both, it was simply a labor of love.