Turkeys in the mist

[WV Sawmiller]

   About 8:30 this morning we heard a gosh awful racket outside and looked to find the hillside above the house was covered in turkeys. Two big gobblers in full strut bring up the rear. The morning fog had not lifted yet. They were taking advantage of these last 2 warming days and the damp ground is oozing with worms and such. It is good to see this many made it through the winter. Those 2 gobblers are obviously feeling their oats. I never saw them break strut the whole time they were out there.


 Try counting them. Its even worse when they are moving.


 Bringing up the rear.

[Roxie]

26?   Went crossed eyed trying to decide if there was one at the base of that tree.  

[mike_belben]

*POW*

24 or 25 now, dependin how ya look at it.   ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

   Your guess is as good as mine. Is that a turkey behind the willow tops? Is that a rock or stump on the hillside? Can't tell in the fog. Also not all were in the frame. Some were to the right and upper rh corner. It was a sizable group for us although I have seen 75-100 in a big hayfield about 8 miles up the road on the way to my son's house.

[FLPINERAT]

Cool!

[WV Sawmiller]

   Well, I guess the ladies drove the boys off. They came down in the yard a yew minutes ago by themselves. Landed in the access road to my pasture, fed to within 5 yards of my truck, walked the fenceline and decided not worth the effort to crawl under so flew back across the road to my neighbor's pasture. 


 I may have to start hunting them from my truck in the yard.


 This one was eye-balling my old smoker pretty close and decided maybe he better go feed elsewhere.

[AZ_builder]

When's turkey season in your area? Here we get a spring hunt in April/May then a late fall hunt. I've always wanted to hunt turkey out east.

[WV Sawmiller]

   That is when our season runs too. I go a time or during the 4 weeks of season here but don't get too serious about it and am not a very good turkey caller. As often as not I get foxes or bobcats looking for a dying hen when I try. Some years we have a week of Fall season too in October. In the fall hens are sometimes legal too but in the Spring it is only Gobblers. I see a few every year around my deer feeders. If they come out while I am there I discretely shoo them off so they don't eat up all my deer feed. We had a hen nest above our house a few years back and she would do the broken wing act to lure us away if we got to close. I knew quail did that but did not know turkeys did. Kildeers at my son's place do the same and I have seen Ibis in Mongolia do the same and I believe Ostrich in Africa will - I know the young Ibis and Ostriches will lay down and hide like quail.

[WV Sawmiller]

    Well, the girls are back today. I watched them come down the pasture to around my old goat barn. There were 7-8 of them that came to the back gate about 40 yards from the house. I spotted a big fox squirrel with them. We noticed last year most of the time when there were groups of turkeys there would be a squirrel with them. I don't know if it was for protection or if the turkeys exposed nuts and such they did not eat but the squirrel did. In Africa it was common to see impalas and baboons hanging out together for mutual defense. The baboons were very alert with sentries posted and such. I think the squirrel may have figured that out too.


 These were almost to the yard. There are 2-3 times this many still scattered down in the woods.


 Thi big fox squirrel (on grape vine) ran out of the group and perched here.


 Here's one of the turkeys about 3' under him and another fixing to be.

[mike_belben]

I use a mouth diaphram for turkey clucks and purrs when stalking deer on days when the leaves are too crunchy to stay quiet.  I dont have the patience to sit in a stand with the same old view and really like exploring a lot more.  If i dont see a deer i went hiking and just happened to have a rifle.  It doesnt feel as bad as sitting all day getting skunked. 

Anyways, turkeys make a ton of racket raking through the leaves and dont spook the deer, so i just copy that travel sound.  Step step, rake leaves, step step, rake, cluck purr step rake.  I bump bedded deer then know where to set up next time.  I consider bumping just a means to collect info.  Like a forward observer in combat, except deer dont shoot back.

[starmac]

I cut firewood for a living, or at least to see how long it would take to starve,in the Capitans one year in New Mexico.
Turkeys were thick that year down there, and one flock would come down the mountain right by my camp, just as the sun was coming up every morning. I never wanted to shoot them, but really enjoyed watching them.

One evening about dark, I was crusing a new area I was going to start cutting in and it got dark on me, walking through the woods back to the pickup, I walked under a roost tree, and spooked a few thousand off the roost, it took a second to realize what kind of boogie man was after me.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I used to hunt further afield than I do now and often would come back home in the dark and scare turkeys off the roost. When you do that if you come back to the same area the next day you will find turkeys all over the area yelping to get back together. Old timers used to always try to break up a flock. I knew several who said back in the day if they could shoot the old hen they could sit right there and call back and shoot every one of the young ones. They used to like to use a dog to break up the flock and I have heard some wizened old turkey hunters tell me to shoot just to break up the group if nothing else.

  I was working a project in extreme western PA and every morning I'd pass a turkey carcass hanging in a fork in the top of a tall poplar tree. I always figured something spooked him off the roost in the dark and he killed himself flying into the fork in the dark.

   Many times I have seen and heard them go to roost and they make a gosh awful racket crashing into the limbs as they fly up and shift from limb to limb and such. I often try to go up near dusk in the Spring season and see if I can hear them fly up so I know where to go hunt the next morning. Also an old gobbler will often gobble when he flies up to the roost. I killed one many years ago that had roosted in the holler above the house and we had a full moon. He gobbled all night long and I don't think my son slept all night. We got up and sneaked above him. Sean sat down at the head of the holler and said he was going to hunt there. I sneaked around further and actually spotted him on the roost but before I could shoot him he pitched down. He'd answer every time my son called. Finally he came by my spot trying to sneak around Sean and I busted him. I figured Sean would go get on another bird as there were several more close by who were gobbling. I walked down the holler and found Sean in the pasture. When I got to him he looked like he was about to cry and asked "Why did you shoot my turkey?" I told him "Because he got in range". Seemed like a reasonable explanation to me.

[Chuck White]

I remember when it was extremely rare to see a wild turkey and now, they're everywhere, especially in farm country!

[mike_belben]

Too much fast food on main street.

[nativewolf]

I remember when it was extremely rare to see a wild turkey and now, they're everywhere, especially in farm country!

You can thank your taxpayer dollars.  It was a huge effort by many govt agencies Fed/States to reintroduce turkey, regulate hunting more effectively, and monitor.  People sometimes complain about tax's and lazy govt people but it is good to acknowledge the efforts of the really dedicated folks that believed in their jobs and did a wonderful job of it.  Of course, it helped that demographic changes came along at the same time and many small farmers left farming and so we had a resurgence of woodlands. Without the govt agencies we would not see nearly as many.

[Magicman]

Don't overlook the efforts of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

[WV Sawmiller]

    Ditto that Lynn. My old Wildlife Professor Dr. James Earl Kennamer is/was very active with them. He was my professor at AU but I remember him talking about some of his exploits in Mississippi as a grad student IIRC. One tale was trying to raise a record sized copperhead and getting in trouble when he told the cleaning guy to be on the look-out for him as he had gotten out. I think the wildlife dept at Old Miss Mississippi State had to do their own office cleaning after that.

[Magicman]

Yup, I chuckled when I read Ole Miss.  ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

Lynn,

   Yeah I caught myself on that after I first posted it. Dr. K would probably not appreciate such mistakes and casting aspersions on his good name that way. :D He really was a very good professor.

[Ljohnsaw]

We have huge flocks of turkeys all over the place out here.  It doesn't matter if it is in town or out in the country, busy street or around a fountain at a business.  I was finishing up pouring concrete at my buddy's house.  There are lots of deer and turkeys roaming around all day.  As I was getting ready to leave, two turkeys walk past the back of my truck.  One sees his reflection in my rear bumper.  He passed back and forth, faster and faster looking at himself.  Finally he stopped and went around the side looking for the bird.  Went all the way around the front (painted bumper) and looked disappointed that he couldn't find the bird.  Then he saw his reflection in the paint on the side of my truck and started all over again!  Stupid birds...

[WV Sawmiller]

   I took a bale of hay up on the 4 wheeler to feed the horse and mule and the two gobblers were behind my old concrete goat barn. They ran the fence line while I did some chores then when i started back they were in the middle of the field. I guess they had run the fenceline but weren't smart enough to fly over it. They looked to be about 2-3 year old birds with 6-8 inch beards. When I got too close to them on the way back they finally jumped up and flew over the fence. I have had friends run them in to a fence and catch them like a chicken. Most who did so said they would never do it again. Like my Uncle who blinded a bobcat in the car lights one night and sneaked around and caught him. He said he'd never do that again either. Another one of life's lessons.

[starmac]

We used to have 2 big old turkeys, and unless you herded them into the chicken house at night, they were considered coyote bait. The chickens would always go in and roost themselves, but the turkeys never learned.
When my youngest daughter was 7 or 8 I told her to go put the turkeys in and shut the door, the turkeys had already jumped up on the back of the lean to roof, so she just grabbed one leg of each bird  and hauled them around to the front. It was quite the show, so I ask how she liked getting scratched up like she did, her coment was it was like grabbing two helicopters. lol

[WV Sawmiller]

   I have a friend here who was grouse hunting with a Brittney Spaniel and it ran up on a bunch of turkeys and chased down a big turkey gobbler and grabbed it by the tail. He said it looked like a plane doing touch and goes landings. The gobbler would get 10-12 ft up in the air with the dog then crash down and repeat. He said it did that several times before most of the tail feathers pulled out and the dog was left with a mouth full of feathers while the bird flew away. I'd love to have had a video of that.

[Magicman]

My Dad chased one into a briar patch with his tractor.  Hopped off of the tractor and walked the briers down and caught that rascal.  They had it for supper that night. 

[starmac]

Lordy, I doubt I could make any sort of usable video, while rolling on the ground laughing.