Those wild turkeys are driving me crazy!

General Fruit Growing
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From May to October, I seldom see them. During winter they are mostly busy getting out of site from coyotes and when they feel adventurous the pick grains in my neighbors fields. One of them is a former colonel who enjoys guns like others enjoy hot dogs. Chacun à son goût!

I believe he misses shooting gallery (Covid-19, you know…) so he practices on turkeys. He has been nice enough to give me one:

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It ended up like this:

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Mind you it was my first wild turkey… The breast part was delicious but the legs… Did you say: rubber ???

Anyway let’s go back to my problem… Now is April and they come very close of the house. They even parade on the street like it belongs to them!

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Sorry for the poor photo definition… My iPad can not take good pictures past a certain amount of meters.

So now they fly, YES. THEY. FLY Over the fence and land in my orchard and when I get out and chase them they come back the next day.

I could have forgotten 1 or 2 apples on trees and 1 or 2 on the ground but certainly not more because when you put so much efforts in growing them you simply: EAT. THEM!!!
There no grains or cereals of any kind so what the hell are they looking for?

Should I worry about them or let them do their business? I don’t believe they will act like woodpeckers and kill my trees… I need reinsurance.

Thanks!

Marc

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They’ll eat bugs, worms, seeds, fruit, mushrooms…etc. I doubt they’ll hurt the trees unless they scratch a new one out of the earth or try to land on a newly grafted limb.

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Hi there:

I tend to agree with you: they seem to be looking for food but the fields have been depleted from snow for the last 3 weeks so they should be there not in an enclosed orchard?. Why do they take the chance to be stuck in the fence. Anyway… Marc

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Wild turkey is one of the best wild game meats in my opinion… but as you found the legs can be quite difficult…

Most clean them by simply pealing the skin back to expose the breast plate and then just filet the two large breast meat halves off the breast plate. You end up with a couple of LARGE chunks of breast meat (3-4 times that of a large chicken breast).

You can slice that breast meat across the grain, and fry or bake like chicken strips and the are very good. Cut across the grain to get tenderness.

I have harvested a bunch of those, with shotgun, and even a few with bow and arrow.

BlueBerry is right, they will eat grains, corn, wheat, etc… but they also eat grass, greens, fescue seeds, bugs, worms, nuts, lizards, frogs — I have even seen them lay and dust in a fire ant hill and eat the fire ants.

They can scratch up a area pretty bad… can do damage if you are planting forest grown things like goldenseal, blood root, ginseng…

Don’t think you have any worries for established fruit trees or berry bushes though… I have a Turkey in my back yard now (a Hen)… and they have never harmed any of my fruit tree or berry bush type plantings.

TNHunter

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This is what you normally harvest… The adult male, Gobbler, Tom Turkey.

What you have there looks like possibly a Jake — very young male.

Yours had little nubs for spurs… where mine has spikes… the longer the spurs — generally the older the bird, the smarter the bird, more of a trophy bird. The length of the beard is generally considered in that as well.

I have one mounted in my home office (whole bird)… that has 3 beards.

Jakes and young hens are by far the best eating.

Also notice in your tail fan, how the tail feathers in the center are longer… but in my mature Tom, they are all the same length… That is one way you can tell from a distance (if the turkey is strutting) whether it is a Jake, or mature Gobbler.

TNHunter

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Mine usually do not creep onto the property till late night with the deer. How bad was the game taste on it?

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Wow, you are really knowledgeable in the subject. Here wild turkeys are an invasive pest coming from our southern neighbor thanks to climatic changes. The only problem? Nobody here knows nothing about them since they arrived here about 6 years ago only. I read in the paper last week that someone about 50 km from here captured an opossum. They look weird… I remember that in N. Zealand every child has to learn this phrase at a young age: a good possum is a dead possum…

Any truth to that? Are they as bad as raccoons? Same remark as above: nobody knows nothing about those around here.

Marc

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This is what one did to my favorite Mulberry tree.Those Kiwis have it right.

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@Shabou - I have been hunting wild turkeys since around 1980. When I was a kid, there were none here (Middle Tennessee), never saw one when I was younger (not a wild turkey) but our TWRA started stocking turkeys in this area late 70’s early 80’s and they soon became more heavily populated. They have declined some in the past 5 years or so, not sure why.

I think I killed my first one when I was about 20 years old… and that was almost 40 years ago.

My Grandfather, Father, were very much outdoorsmen, hunting and fishing was our thing. We were somewhat like Duck Dynasty… it was a family thing and we all did it, all the males anyway… we hunted Deer, Squirrel, Quail, Dove, Rabbit, Turkey, BullFrogs, etc… and fishing… Bass, Crappie, Black Perch, Catfish.

I still do quite a bit of hunting, but more fishing now days.

Wild Turkey, especially the breast filets are not gamey at all. Taste just like a store bought bird. Very good.

I have harvested close to 200 deer with bow and arrow and a few turkeys too. I used to be very much into archery. 11 time Tennessee State Champion… National Staff shooter for HighCountry Archery 1988-1992, sponsored by PSE for 4 years before that. That was several years ago… and all just part of my love for the outdoors… and gardening.

Possums - I have some experience with them too. Back in the late 70’s thru 1987 I was a trapper.

I have eaten possum, raccoon, muskrat and beaver… can’t say any of them were all that good, but if you were hungry they will do. Wild Turkey is much much better.

Possums are not very bright, easy to catch. I used to run them down and catch them, when younger. They have a nice handle for a tail. Some pretty good teeth too.

Trev-Doug-Trapping-12-1987-Wk1

In the pic above, there is a male mink up front then 4 possums… then muskrat, coons, grey fox, bobcat. One nights catch on the Duck River… back in 1987.

@Bradybb - a Turkey did that ? if so, Wow.

I cleared some land down the ridge behind my house a few years back, and found a wild plum in a thicket. I cleared everything but it… leaving it out in the open. That fall, a big old buck worked it over and broke it off, he sure wiped it out. Never seen a Turkey cause such damage to a tree though. Not nice at all.

TNHunter

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Turkeys are a plus in an orchard. They will eat mice/voles, in addition to insects.

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In general I like having them around.
I have had them get into apple trees that were very heavy with fruit.,after which many branch’s were broken from their added weight, looking like a folded up umbrella .
Also they like scratching in mulch ,…
I heavily mulched over a hundred young fruit trees with old hay in the spring a few years ago , by mid summer the turkeys had scratched all the hay away from the trees, I guess just eat the worms

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Before I retired, I worked in a 1970’s style office building out in a rural area. And I do mean rural. One evening when I was working late, I was taking a break on a bench outside the back door, and a bobcat walked past about 10 feet away from me.

The doors of the building were glass, and we used to have hordes of wild turkeys congregating around the doors, pecking and clawing at the glass trying to get in. This would go on for about 6 months out of the year, because the office workers would feed them snacks. Every time you walked out the door you had to navigate a minefield of turkey dookie, and sometimes the turkeys themselves. They had absolutely no fear.

The worst damage they did was when they would land on peoples’ cars and scratch the paint (they fly very well); otherwise it was just the ever-present dookie. As pointed out by other posters, in an orchard setting they can actually be helpful because they eat a lot of pests.

Unfortunately, they like junk food better. :grin:

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Ha ha,no,Shabou was asking about Opossums and commenting about a common phrase,learned in New Zealand.

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Our guys have gone to do tree jobs and found porcupines. The trees are all chewed up, tons of poop under the tree, and neither homeowner knew they were there. They removed those tree climbing and eating rodents in both cases.

We have wild turkeys here and while they don’t really scratch much, they love some garden crops like broccoli and cabbage, and they will fly up in big fruit trees and eat the heck out of peaches and apples!

We like eating them on occasion…but also raise heritage turkeys for the table.

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I always hears from orchardists in southern MN that turkeys would eat the fruit buds off the apple trees on the outside rows closest to to nearby woods? Luckily I have had no turkey issues in my orchard and one end is near a woods.

That roasted wild turkey sure looked tasty! Breast good and legs like rubber? How about eating the breast and then chucking the rest of the roasted carcass into the stock pot and making turkey soup? Just wondering if simmering those rubbery legs for 6-8 hours in water would tenderize them enough for turkey soup? I make a lot of soup and roasted turkey bones/carcass works well from a domestic bird. Anyone make turkey soup from a wild bird? And if so, does the meat on the legs ever get tender?

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You know it must…the toughest cut of beef gets tender in crock pot for 24 hours!

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Better than geese, then, they don’t do ANYTHING but eat and crap

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Not even an egg or two…or a goose for the baking pan?

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Hey… forgot to mention this… on a wild turkey… or farm raised… be sure to harvest the liver. Excellent eating.

If you like chicken livers… you will like turkey livers… much larger but very good.

Liver is the TRUE superfood. So nutritious.

I also always collect squirrel liver and even fish liver and roe. Again true superfoods.

Calf liver and chicken liver is available ot our local grocery stores… but if you harvest wild game… don’t forget the liver.

Ps… I have tried deer liver… and it was not good at all… very tough and strong… had a hard time getting that down. I might try that again on a young deer… but not from older buck.

TNHunter

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We’ve seen as many as 30 at a time walk through our yard. So far they’ve not damaged fruit trees or other edibles, or the wife’s flower beds for that matter. I have watched them eat blueberries off of some wild plants at the edge of the woods though. Humorous to watch them jump to get the ones just out of their reach.

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