Well first let me congratulate my buddy Frank (Kidd642) on his first ever arrowed longbeard! and of course like anything frank shoots he made sure to shoot it multiple times to get his money's worth.
Most of you have seen Frank's monster non-typical freak of a buck from PA.........well his gobbler from this morning came from the same area and apparently the 2 fed under the same power lines.
You guys have heard of a "melanistic" or "Black" buck where there is an overabundance of pigment creating a very dark animal?........well this gobbler I THINK has that as well. I say I think because I have never seen anything like this bird.
It's short with a squat build (Imagine that
) has a stunted looking tail fan and short wings, and of course you can see in the pics that it has an amazing overall BLACK coloration. There is no irridesence to the body feathers except for one or 2 oddballs that are normal Eastern Turkey breast feathers.
It has a black beak and there is no barring at all in the tail feathers or flight feathers (primaries and secondaries) and these flight feathers seem thin in profile. I'm not even sure this thing could fly? It's built like a giant Grouse. [:-]
Oddly enough his head and waddles etc look normal?
In spite of the weird coloration and build it sports a 9" beard and weighs just shy of 22lbs. (weighed on frank's digital scale) with 1" rounded spurs.
Crazy looking bird and unfortunately Frank shot off every feather on the thing so a full mount isn't going to work.
So Step right up and pay your $.50 to see The Freak! Cool bird, too bad he's Swiss cheese. We'll let Frank tell the tale, but for now here are the pictures.
The Freak Show continues for Kidd642 !! (pics)
