You can’t call in a henned up tom. Turkeys don’t move in the rain. Don’t overcall. Devoted turkey hunters know that this is just a bunch of hearsay. That’s doe poop and this is buck poop. Sure it is, pal. As it turns out, you actually can differentiate the sex of turkey excrement. It’s true, the elongated J-shaped turkey turd is left behind by a tom, while the round clumpy scat is that of a hen. This is due to the cloaca of a hen turkey being wider and more round in shape than that of a gobbler. More fun feces facts for ya, birds don’t produce liquid urine like mammals do. Instead, birds excrete nitrogenous waste as uric acid, which comes out as a white, pasty substance. The dark color within the scat (black or brown) is the actual feces, while the white excrement is the uric acid.
With turkey facts and folklore on the brain, I reached out to Patrick Wightman to learn more about misconceptions in the turkey woods. Patrick is a research scientist at the University of Georgia, a fellow turkey fanatic, and is armed with field-proven data relating to the wild turkey.
Aging Turkeys by Spur Length
“One of the most common myths is that turkeys can be accurately aged by spur length,” claims Wightman. “Research has shown this method to be inaccurate more than 30% of the time. By capturing birds as juveniles and tracking their age at harvest, we’ve seen many instances where this method leads to misidentification. For example, I had a 2-year-old bird harvested with 1 ¼-inch spurs, while at least a 5-year-old bird had ¾-inch spurs and a 9-inch beard.”
The predominant theory is that a bird’s spur will wear down over time due to environmental factors. A bird that lives in a rocky environment will incidentally file down its spurs over time by fighting, scratching, and chipping. Conversely, a bird that inhabits a home range comprised of only soft soils won’t have the day-to-day abrasion to wear down its spurs. Genetics also likely play a role in spur length, just as some birds grow a thicker, or multiple, beards. Osceola’s tend to have the longest spurs, while Merriam’s and Rios have much shorter spurs on average.
Toms Roost in the Same Location Nightly
“Another common belief is that toms roost in the same or similar location every night. Our research suggests that this is actually uncommon. Most toms use multiple roost sites across their large home ranges (3,000 to 5,000 acres) throughout the breeding season. However, certain areas appear to be important communal roost sites, used by multiple toms within a reproductive season,” Wightman said.
Roost site selection seems to vary as the breeding season progresses. In early spring, when birds are still flocked up and peak breeding is underway, the birds will typically roost in the same communal location. As hens break away from the flock and start seeking out nesting sites, that’s typically when less and less of the flock returns to the community roost. When you begin hearing less talking on the roost, it’s not only because the flock went quiet, it’s more likely due to the fact that the flock has split up and is roosting separately from one another.
Toms “Gobble Out” Early in the Season
Wightman shared that, “Every March, I hear people say, ‘Toms are gobbling now and will quit before the season starts.’ However, years of research on a non-hunted population show that gobbling follows a consistent pattern year after year. In the South, gobbling activity begins in March, peaks in mid-April, and continues through May before declining in June. Instead of turkeys ‘gobbling out,’ research suggests that once hunters enter the landscape, they negatively affect gobbling activity.”
Areas with active hunting pressure often see a rapid decline in gobbling after the season begins, likely because dominant toms are harvested or remaining birds become more cautious. When dominant gobblers are harvested, gobbling activity temporarily decreases, suggesting social disruption in the flock.
If You Bump Them, the Hunt is Over
In my earlier years I used to think all hope was lost after bumping the flock that I was after. Since then, I’ve had some pretty fun encounters by successfully calling in birds that should have been a lost cause. The secret lies within the assembly call.
On a regular basis, turkey flocks are being broken up by predators. Naturally, the flock wants to reassemble and begin talking to each other, to check the other birds’ whereabouts. After bumping the flock, if you’re able to sneak back in, you can assume the role as the lead hen and initiate the assembly call.
Just last spring, while hunting with my wife, I shot a gobbler down in a canyon. As we began hiking up and over the adjoining ridge, a tight, narrow canyon with about 500 feet of elevation gain on either side, we heard the remainder of the flock start talking again, with enthusiasm in their yelps. Thinking it was quite odd, given the commotion of the shotgun echoing in the canyon below, we decided to initiate the assembly call ourselves.
The result was a thing of beauty. The entire flock pitched off the knife-back ridgeline, flying across the canyon and landing on top of us, just like a flock of mallards landing in the decoys. We don’t need to address what happened after a tom almost landed on my wife; that’s a story that we’ll save for another day.
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