Turkey in the… Park?
This, Oh Best Beloved, for those who have never seen a turkey lest it was frozen and in plastic wrap, or nicely roasted and waiting on a Thanksgiving table, is a wild hen turkey.
She was hauling butt, so these shots, the only ones I could get of her, are frame captures taken from the low-resolution video I shot of her racing past our car. So the photos are more than a tad blurry because wild turkeys can really book.
Wild turkeys aren’t anything like the domestic mass-raised turkeys I’ve encountered, who are bred for meat, not brains. Turkeys like this hen are amazingly intelligent, wily and fast-moving birds.
And they’re as delicious as the domestic variety, according to my friends who hunt…
Which reminds me. It seems a little sisterly advice is in order for my brother, the Rev Dawg, when it comes to hunting wild critters for the dinner table.
Dawg, bagging a buck with your crossbow and then “bagging” a second deer an hour later with your SUV on the way to the butcher? It’s a little unsporting using your vehicle that way, don’tcha think?
(Glad you didn’t get hurt!)
Tags: car accident, wild turkey
Critters, Village Life | JAS | 
November 5, 2009 8:30 pm
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By Rev Dawg, November 9, 2009 @ 9:28 am
That’s George 1, Deer 1
By Elyse, November 12, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
We used to get wild turkeys coming through till folks moved down the road and levelled all the trees. Sigh. Glad to see no one got hurt in deer vs. car!
By Kris, in New England, November 15, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
I love wild turkeys – they are so peaceful as they peck their way around the yard. We do get them from time to time…and we have an area on our way to work that we dubbed “turkey alley” because we see herds of them crossing there at least 3 days out of 5.
By Balancing Act, November 29, 2009 @ 7:34 am
Judy – what a great shot. We used to have a a few wild turkeys make their rounds early in the morning on the side of our house. They would visit several houses on the block every morning. We haven’t seen them in quite awhile though so I am not sure if they are still around. Hope all is well with you.
By Moo, November 30, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
Dave’s Dad has a number of wild turkeys on his property in Oklahoma – hence the name of their ranch “Little Turkey Creek” Last year Dave hunted one for their Thanksgiving dinner. A long amusing story, actually. This year the COUGARS are making a come back, so the number of turkeys has dwindled. There’s one particular laid back Tom, a big guy of almost 20 lbs. Well, he’s a frequent target of the five or six 8 ounce kittens. The sneak up on him, doing little kitten pounces and pretending to stalk, when they get about 6 feet from him, he turns and flares up his tail feathers and makes all the kittens high-tail it back to the cat house. Quite a picture.