A Merriams turkey gobbler struts for a hen in the Sand Lake WMD. Photo Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS
November 24, 2019 - Maybe you’re already dreaming about Thanksgiving: turkey, stuffing, all the pies. And maybe you thought you knew everything about turkeys. Think again.
Finding Wild Turkeys
Wild turkeys are not hard to find — if you look in the right place. National wildlife refuges are great places to find wild turkeys whether for bird watching or hunting. Refuge trails generally are open sunrise to sunset, many even on Thanksgiving Day when refuge visitor centers will be closed. Free trail maps are often available outside a visitor center or at a refuge entrance kiosk. Find your trail online.
Encourage lively talk around your holiday table with these facts.
- They don’t just gobble, they make a lot of different sounds.
Thought the only turkey sound is gobble, gobble? In fact, turkeys make all kinds of sounds: fly-down or fly-up cackle; kee kee run; excited yelp and more. A male turkey’s gobble can be heard up to a mile away. Hear them all, thanks to the National Wild Turkey Federation. - Turkey droppings tell a bird’s sex and age.
Male droppings are j-shaped; female droppings are spiral-shaped. The larger the diameter, the older the bird. - An adult turkey has 5,000 to 6,000 feathers.
— count them! — on its body. - Turkeys are fast.
Wild turkeys can run at speeds up to 25 miles per hour and fly briefly up to 55 miles per hour. When they need to, turkeys can swim by tucking their wings in close, spreading their tails, and kicking. Domesticated turkeys cannot fly. - Tom turkeys aren’t the only ones that swagger
It’s not just the males that fan their tail feathers to woo mates and ward off rivals. Some hens strut, too.
- Adult male turkeys are called gobblers or toms, females are called hens. Young chicks are poults, while juvenile males are jakes and juvenile females are jennies. A flock of turkeys can be called a crop, dole, gang, posse, or rafter. Or you can just call them a “flock.”
- Young turkeys — poults — scarf down insects like candy.
They develop more of a taste for plants after they’re four weeks old. - The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is one of only two birds native to North America that has been regularly domesticated, the other being the Muscovy duck.
- The English name “Turkey” derives from historic shipping routes that passed through the country of Turkey on their way to delivering the birds to European markets.
- There are five distinct subspecies of wild turkeys: Eastern, Osceola, Rio Grande, Merriam’s and Gould’s.
- Wild turkeys nearly went extinct in the 1930s, perhaps reaching a low of 30,000 in the United States by 1940. Through conservation efforts over the last century, with funds derived from the Pittman-Robertson Act, and thanks to sportsmen and women, there are approximately 6.5 million wild birds in the United States today, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation. It is probably the most successful game bird restoration in history.
Source: USFWS
