Forbes Road residents remained stunned this weekend after a state game warden gunned down Butterball, a free-roaming, friendly turkey that some had come to consider the unofficial mascot of this Salem Township village.

“People are in shock. It was a pet,” Josh Nuttall, 35, said Saturday of the dark-feathered turkey that had run around the former coal mining patch for the past year. Nuttal said his brother, Jerome, had given the bird to his 5-year-old daughter, Nixie.

Last week, Nuttall joked that Butterball had “become the town mascot.”

That was before Friday’s shooting.

Nuttall said he could not figure out why the Pennsylvania Game Commission warden shot the family pet. It didn’t bother anyone and people enjoyed playing with it, including the children, he said.

“All the neighbors are upset,” Nuttall said. “It did not have to happen.”

A makeshift memorial popped up outside the village’s lone playground.

A sign reading “R.I.P Butterball/ My Pet Turkey/ I Love You/ I Miss You” was flanked by toy stuffed animals. The bottom of the sign read: “In Memory of Jerome Nuttall.” He died Jan. 10.

Mike Papinchak, the Game Commission warden for Salem who shot the turkey, said Saturday he understands why people are upset. He was dispatched to take care of the turkey after the agency received complaints from people entering the Forbes Road Post Office on Fire Station Road.

“I truly do understand,” Papinchak said. “We do our best to take an animal to rehab center, and it is not very good when you end up with a dead wild animal.”

On Friday, a Game Commission dispatcher said they had received complaints about the shooting, which was reported shortly before 3 p.m.

The warden said, however, that the “human component” created problems in domesticating a wild animal.

Nuttall was not permitted to legally own a wild animal, nor was Nuttall’s brother, Jerome, permitted to give the family a wild turkey.

Although people are allowed to buy a live turkey from a licensed propagator, the buyer is not permitted to transfer ownership under Game Commission regulations, Papinchak said.

Nuttall did not have a pen for the turkey and wanted it to be able to roam the town. But by letting the turkey to run free, the bird essentially became property of the state, Papinchak said.

“That is a wild turkey as far as the law is concerned,” Papinchak said.

Geri Stone of Forbes Road said the warden had an alternative, which was to allow someone to transport it to a farm in Somerset.

But Papinchak said Game Commission regulations prohibit transporting wild animals.

“Why could they have not let it alone?” Stone asked.

Nutall said he believed the warden could have captured the bird, but Papinchak said it’s not that easy.

“It was domesticated,” Nuttall said.

Local resident Geno Skiavo said he understands a wild animal can’t be kept as a pet, but he also wondered if the turkey could not have been caught, had its wings clipped and placed in a reserve for protection.

“In my opinion, it could have been saved,” Skiavo said.

To James Malone, Nuttall’s neighbor, it was “totally unnecessary” to kill an animal that did not create any problems. The shooting occurred not far from where children who were playing basketball, Malone said.

Butterball’s death occurred the same week that Jerome Nuttall died last Sunday. The family had his funeral Wednesday.

“That’s all I have left of him. It is really sad,” Josh Nuttall said Thursday of Butterball after a Tribune-Review photographer took a picture of the wild turkey outside the post office.

“She (Nixie) has had to deal with two deaths in a week,” Nuttall said Saturday.

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