Just in time for Thanksgiving!!

[gsganzer]

I was sitting in a deer blind in central TX this morning. Right as the deer feeder went off at 7am, about 30 wild turkeys, which must have been roosting nearby, came in like a flashmob hitting a California department store. They came in flying and running in one giant swarm and proceeded to scamper around picking up the corn like a flock of chickens on scratch grains. Fighting one another until every last kernel was gone.

Then the darndest thing happened, the entire flock fell asleep! It was like they all put themselves in a food coma, like the rest of us do at Thanksgiving. Standing there with heads under their wings, heads on their backs, standing, laying down and roosting on nearby branches or on the feeder itself. They all napped for about 20-30 minutes and then slowly started waking up.

When they had all finally awoke, they just wandered off as a group to somewhere else in the pasture.

It was one of the wildest things I've ever seen. I'm still in disbelief.

 

[MossRoad]

Turkey old folks home?

 

[BackRoad]

Corn mash?!?

 

[oosik]

I can imagine how that would spook you. Turkeys are not known for their stealth and silence. I get a small band coming into my yard quite frequently. All the flapping, squawking and horse play. For sure - you know they are here.

However - they hit the pine trees when they need to sleep. A ground sleeping turkey could easily become coyote food.

 

[gsganzer]

However - they hit the pine trees when they need to sleep. A ground sleeping turkey could easily become coyote food.

It was the falling asleep part that I found so surprising. Turkeys are usually so wary and flush at the slightest thing. A few went to some low limbs to roost, but the rest of them just zonked out in place. I still can't believe what I just watched.

 

[EddieWalker]

A Texas Stage Biologist told me that the reason we don't have wild turkeys in East Texas is because the land has been cleared and farmed, then abandoned to grow back. The process of the forest growing back makes it too thick for turkeys to survive here. Not having wild turkeys is one of the bigger disappointments in moving to East Texas.

We have a few pet turkeys, and they are fun to hear and watch. But having wild turkeys would be a lot better!!!!

I've only shot one wild turkey in my life. I breasted it and grilled it on the BBQ. I thought it tasted amazing!!!!

Did you shoot one? How do you cook it?

 

[oosik]

Ha, ha. I read your post again - gsganzer. Right there is the obvious reason you have no deer. I look at the turkeys in gsganzers post and again in yours - Eddie. Your Texas turkeys are quite a bit bigger than ours here in Ea WA.

Must have been 20 - 25 years ago. I shot one. We cooked it like a normal turkey. It was very tasty. But - man was it tough. Made me mad that the wife had spent so much time in prep and cooking. So.. I boned the bird and ran it thru our meat grinder. We added German sausage spices and it made pretty good breakfast sausage.

Had a good friend that cooked one and it was good and it was tender. He cooked it in one of those deep oil cookers. He was a coonass from Louisiana and said that was the way they were normally cooked down there. Whatever - sure a lot more tender than the one we cooked.

Tony Capdebasque - he carried a magnificent Cajun drawl. He and his wife moved to Alaska. He's a sport fishing guide on the Alaska peninsula now. One mighty fine fellow.

 

[MossRoad]

A Texas Stage Biologist told me that the reason we don't have wild turkeys in East Texas is because the land has been cleared and farmed, then abandoned to grow back. The process of the forest growing back makes it too thick for turkeys to survive here. Not having wild turkeys is one of the bigger disappointments in moving to East Texas.

We have a few pet turkeys, and they are fun to hear and watch. But having wild turkeys would be a lot better!!!!

I've only shot one wild turkey in my life. I breasted it and grilled it on the BBQ. I thought it tasted amazing!!!!

Did you shoot one? How do you cook it?

View attachment 1898916

This guy is about 7 years older than me. (He got me over my fear of water and taught me how to swim when I was about 8). He was instrumental in turkey reintroduction to Indiana, as a state biologist, as well as ruffed grouse.

There were no turkey's in our area when I was growing up. From the IDNR:

Indiana Wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) are a conservation success story. They were extirpated from Indiana and many parts of the U.S. in the early 1900s due to loss of forested habitats and lack of regulations. Between 1956 and 2004, 2,795 wild trapped turkeys were released at 185 sites around the state as part of conservation efforts to restore wild turkeys. Wild turkeys are now found in all 92 counties. Indiana has the Eastern subspecies of wild turkey.

They stopped stocking turkeys in 2004. Now they are in all 92 counties, and in many places are now nuisance birds.

 

[EddieWalker]

I went to a meeting put on by the Texas Fish and Game about improving wildlife on your land. They are actively trying to bring turkeys back to East Texas. For years, they where catching wild Easter Turkeys from places like Georgia and Alabama, then releasing them here. In every case, their numbers decreased every year until they where gone. Now they are securing access to at least ten square miles from landowners, and then doing what they are calling a Mass Release inside that area. The strategy is to release so many birds that enough will adapt and reproduce. So far, they say it's working and after an initial decline, they stabilized and now they are starting to increase. I think there where two areas in East Texas that they where doing this. The hardest part is getting access to that much land from all the different landowners. If they cannot get access, they keep looking until they can find what they need.

 

[gsganzer]

Spring turkey hunting is my favorite hunting of all. In TX, the spring hunting rules are gobblers and bearded hens taken by shot gun or legal archery equipment only.

There are so many things at play that need to all align to have a successful hunt. Your location, the weather, you're calling ability and then just the luck factor. Part of the beauty is in the TX hill country, where I hunt, the wildflowers are also coming into bloom. There's just something about getting out into the bush, watching, listening and smelling nature come alive again, after the long doldrums of winter. When you finally get it all correct and a gobbler comes strutting in, they almost look fake, because their face and head colors are so vibrant. It's so amazing to me every time.

 

[EddieWalker]

I know what you mean about looking fake. Mine are strutting around the barn right now, and when the sun hits them just right, the color is just amazing!!!!

 

[gsganzer]

Eddie, What breed are your turkeys? We have two Broad Breasted Bronze toms, Tom Selleck and Tom Cruise. We had a third tom, named Tom Brady, but he got killed. Ours are pretty friendly and follow us around the yard. But they're dumb as heck. I'm constantly rescuing them from some predicament they get themselves in. They get themselves stuck in some of the strangest places.

The rancher gets some pretty cool birds at some auctions. He has a Royal Palm tom and two hens. We call that tom, "Tommy Tutone", because he's just black and white. The Royal Palm are really beautiful birds.

 

[EddieWalker]

We started with a pair of Narragansett turkeys. She laid eggs, sat on them, then abandoned them. We're not sure if she doesn't sit long enough, or if she realizes they are not going to hatch because he didn't fertilize them. I'm guessing they are getting close to being ten years old.


Last year, a buddy of mine in CA sent us some turkey eggs from his place. He as Red Bourbons, but there are also wild Rio Grande turkeys in his area that mate with his domestic birds. One in the video looks like he's almost pure Rio Grande. The other looks like Red Bourbon, or mixed. We're not sure. There is also a hen that looks more like the Red Bourbon. We only had three hatch out of a dozen eggs. We're going to get more eggs in the Spring and see what happens.

My buddies name is Allan, so we named all three of them Allan. It's kind of confusing, but for me, it's also a lot of fun. Allan, Allan and Allan!!

 

[ultrarunner]

Lots of Turkeys in the SF Bay Area even sightings in urban areas.

After the Turkey invasion the coyote population boomed.

A few of my brothers friends hunt turkey and deer on the farm which is sandwiched between city limit and tens of thousands of acres parkland..

 

[MossRoad]

Cracks me up that there will be 3-4 tom's strutting their stuff and 20-30 hens ignoring them completely.

 

[MossRoad]

We let our neighbor hunt our vacant property. He says there are lots of turkey in deer season and lots of deer in turkey season.

But, he always manages to get some of each.

 

[ponytug]

Cracks me up that there will be 3-4 tom's strutting their stuff and 20-30 hens ignoring them completely.

For about 51 weeks a year...

We have flocks of hens and Tom's that are resident about nine months of the year. The turkeys are ok flyers, and will often glide hundreds of feet from our place downhill when spooked. They often roost 60-80' up, almost above the house in some big trees. For whatever reason, the great horned owls use one of the adjacent trees for their nightly pre-hunt psych up hooting sessions. Doesn't seem to bother the turkeys. The coyotes basically never get a turkey. I think we have found turkey feathers once in twenty years or so, and that could easily have been old age or disease.

During peak rainy season, the turkeys drift away and head down the hill somewhere. I suspect that they hear hanging out along the creeks, where they are roosting and foraging.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Torvy]

I was confused, because I've seen wild turkeys here and we're only about an hour or so north of Tyler. Not on our land, but in more open areas nearby.

I saw this article about the efforts to restore them.

Wild turkeys are strutting into spring - AgriLife Today

More Texans may encounter turkeys this spring thanks to collaboration by Texas A&M AgriLife and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

agrilifetoday.tamu.edu

 

[MossRoad]

For about 51 weeks a year...

We have flocks of hens and Tom's that are resident about nine months of the year. The turkeys are ok flyers, and will often glide hundreds of feet from our place downhill when spooked. They often roost 60-80' up, almost above the house in some big trees. For whatever reason, the great horned owls use one of the adjacent trees for their nightly pre-hunt psych up hooting sessions. Doesn't seem to bother the turkeys. The coyotes basically never get a turkey. I think we have found turkey feathers once in twenty years or so, and that could easily have been old age or disease.

During peak rainy season, the turkeys drift away and head down the hill somewhere. I suspect that they hear hanging out along the creeks, where they are roosting and foraging.

All the best,

Peter

Almost every year, when I bush hog along the highway that fronts our remote property, I'll blast a dead turkey carcass. Feathers everywhere. Usually the only thing recognizable is something like this....

 

[ponytug]

Yikes! Early on here, I brush mowed a pair of turkey nests. No birds, just a few eggs, so I moved my mowing times and it hasn't been an issue. The few dead turkeys that I have found in the open space nearby look as if something exploded, though the tail seems to be generally intact for whatever reason.

For perspective, deer carcasses go from live to skeletons with a few thin patches of pink in twelve hours or so. Perhaps the odd hoof with a tiny flap of skin. It is a fully stocked ecosystem around here and everything plays a part.

I am still smiling over @gsganzer's original photo. I've seen the local ones flake out on roosts midday, but never on the ground.

All the best,

Peter