The Wild Turkey

The native wild turkey of North America is Meleagris gallopavo. The world's only other wild turkey is the Ocellated Turkey, found in the area of Central and South America.

We will be referring to the wild turkeys of North America: The heavy game bird hunted under licence in a number of USA States.

Wild turkeys are the ancestors of the domestic, farmed, table fowl, popular at Christmas and in the USA, Thanksgiving.

Wild Turkey adults have a comparatively small featherless, reddish head, that in the male can change colour. A red throat is apparent in males; long reddish-orange to greyish-blue scaly legs and each foot has three forward facing toes and one rearward facing toe, and males have sharp 'spurs' on their lower legs. The wild turkey's head has fleshy growths called caruncles and in [sexually] excited wild turkeys, the fleshy flap above the beak becomes engorged with blood making it swell. Wild turkey males also have red 'wattles' around the neck and throat.

Like the domestic relation; wild turkeys have a dark, fan-shaped tail that fans out when displaying, glossy bronze feathers with light coloured 'bars’ in the primary wing feathers. The male wild turkey is substantially larger than the wild turkey female. The stag or 'Tom' as the male wild turkey is known in the USA has areas within the feathers of iridescent copper, gold, green, purple and red. Female wild turkey's feathers are much less colourful overall, just in shades of greyish brown, brown and gray. Occasionally wild white turkey birds are thrown up.

Turkey hunting is a predominantly male sport, with strict bag limits across the whole of the turkey unting states it can work out to be quite an expensive persuit per bird in purely economic terms. But the thrill of the hunt is priceless.

There are a great number of turkey hunting books and turkey hunting magazines available to the prospective turkey hunter.

We will be researching and including articles covering such subjects as: the turkey call - turkey calls - turkey decoy - turkey box calls - turkey vulture - turkey pictures - turkey run state park - turkey feathers - turkey bird - turkey decoys - turkey run - Michigan turkey patch - Quaker boy turkey calls - turkey hill - turkey picture - turkey slate calls - turkey creek - national wild turkey federation - turkey mount