Most hunters don't know these 10 wild turkey facts, but they should. From snoods and spurs to gobbles, beards and caruncles, this turkey trivia can make you the smartest hunter in camp.
You know how to call a turkey, and maybe even how to cook a turkey, but do you know what to call the bird’s most recognizable features? Wild turkeys have plenty of traits most hunters recognize on sight, even if they don’t always know the proper names.
Here's the Hook & Barrel list of 10 wild turkey facts and features every hunter should know.
1. The top of a turkey’s head is called the crown
We may as well start at the top. There you’ll find the head crown, which seems appropriate for the king of North American gamebirds.
What makes a male turkey's head so unique is how it changes color based on his ... let's just say his excitement about nearby female birds. The brighter red a gobbler's head, the more fired up he is.
2. That fleshy thing over the beak is the snood
Just forward of the crown is a fleshy appendage called the snood. It grows long and prominent when a gobbler is excited and retracts when he’s not.
We still don’t know exactly what function it serves, but most hunters know it when they see it.
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3. Those bumps on the neck are called caruncles
A turkey’s featherless neck is covered with warty protrusions called caruncles. The two largest ones at the base of the neck are known as major caruncles, which sounds a little too formal for something on a turkey’s neck, but there it is.
4. Spurs can tell you a lot about a gobbler
Most hunters know those sharp, pointy things on the back of a tom’s scaly legs are spurs. On a jake, they may be little more than buttons or nubs, but they grow longer with age.
Most birds have one per leg, but occasionally they may have two, or even more.
Because of injury or genetics, some adult birds never grow more than nubs, and some males lack spurs altogether.
5. A turkey’s feathers all have names
Wild turkeys wear a variety of feathers. The body is covered with contour feathers, which are black-tipped in males and brown in females.
The outer wing feathers, the ones turkeys scrape the ground with, are called primaries, while the next rearward set are called secondaries.
The tail feathers that make up the fan are called retrices, and there are usually, but not always, 18 of them. Some are lost during molt, but if you find a full fan with more or fewer, that’s unusual.
Just below those are tail coverts, and their tip colors vary by subspecies. Last but not least is the beard, which consists of modified feathers.
6. A gobble is a built-in behavior
Like a songbird’s serenade, a turkey’s gobble is what’s called a fixed action pattern. It’s always delivered the same way from start to finish.
Even so, gobbles can vary in tone from one subspecies to another and even from one bird to another.
Eastern birds are known for their deep, raspy gobble, while Merriam’s often sound lighter and higher-pitched.
And although it’s rare, hens can gobble too, a fact I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears.
7. Turkey poop can help identify the sex of the bird
Here's an interesting wild turkey fact: Unlike deer, turkey droppings can actually tell you the sex of the bird that left them. A male’s will be long and cylindrical, and sometimes J-shaped.
Just remember “J” for jake. A hen’s will be more of a blob, like an overcooked kernel of popcorn.
8. The crop is where a turkey stores food
Some things you won’t see until you start processing a bird. At the base of the neck is a sac called the crop.
That’s where turkeys store food before passing it farther down the digestive tract. It can expand, allowing the bird to gather a lot of food in a short time and work on digestion later.
If you cut it open, you can see what the bird has been eating, which might help in finding others.
You also might find small stones, which aid digestion by grinding up large or coarse foods like nuts.
9. A tom has a “fat sponge” that helps get him through breeding season
Another thing you’ll find, at least on males, is a fat sponge. For lack of a better description, it looks like a mass of something you’d rather not study too closely.
Still, it serves an important purpose. Like a rutting buck, a randy tom tends to ignore food in favor of romance. Instead, he relies on that sponge for nutrition during trying times.
10. Even the turkey’s name is a little strange
The wild turkey’s scientific name, Meleagris gallopavo, is a misleading mix. Meleagris is Greek for a kind of guinea fowl, which the turkey is not.
Gallus is Latin for a chicken-like bird, which is close enough. Pavo is Latin for a peacock. Sure, they’re all related, but it still seems like odd company for such a regal bird.
We all know adult males are toms and juvenile males are jakes, but do you know why?
It’s rumored Benjamin Franklin coined the term “tom” after Thomas Jefferson as a way to ruffle his feathers over the idea of making the turkey our national bird.
Since that national-bird story has largely been put to bed, the former claim is probably a myth too, so we really don’t know.
The term hen for an adult female makes sense, but why we call juvenile females jennies remains a mystery.
Maybe that’s fitting. There are still a few unknown wild turkey facts, just as there are in turkey hunting, and that’s part of what makes both so enjoyable.