I killed the strangest bird Sunday morning thatI have ever seen.
If you've read any of my previous posts you may recall me saying that this is my 28th turkey season - and absolutely the best ever in terms of success and excitement. I've been 5 times and taken 4 turkeys (actually I've killed three and called in one for my 12 year-old son on the opening morning of the youth hunt). It has been a "DREAM SEASON" so far.
My goal was to call in another one for my son this weekend, but despite a lot of gobbling and getting on 3 different birds and hunting until 2:30Saturday we didn't connect. We heard the turkey shown below absolutely hammering it on the roost Sunday morning on another part of the property and double-timed it to get to him before fly-down. I chose a small food plot that was really to far from the turkey for my liking but I thought it offered the best shot opportunity for my son. We got sat down, put out my best-looking hen decoy, and I starting calling pretty aggresively in the hopes of getting the bird to pitch down in our direction. After some tree-putts and a couple of whiney yelps I did a series of two fly-down cackles, beating my cap against my leg to simulate wingbeats. When he hammered back with a triple gobble I knew that he heard me. A few minutes later he gobbled from the ground and it sounded closer. I yelped back and he double gobbled - things were heating up no doubt. He made his way up a wooded draw gobbling and, after about 10-15 minuteshestepped out into the food plot in a strut about 70yards away.I looked him over through the scope at 1.75 power and he looked darker than normal,adult fan, a shortish beard but he was in a strutandbeards always look shorterin a strut.He strutted outtoward the middle of the field and closed the distance to what Iguessed 45-50. He went back and forth in a strut looking at this hen and gobbled I think 4 times total but not getting any closer. After more of this than I could stand I startedgettingnervous, so Iclucked to make him stand tall and took the shot (too far for my son's 20 gauge unfortunately). The Nitro 4X5X7s and the Mossberg 835 did their job and the bird was on his back instantly - I latermeasured the shotat 49 steps.
When I got to the bird I had trouble finding his beard because the feathers and the beard were the same color. After looking closer I notice he had black feet too and - dang it - he was a jake. Actually what I call a jake +, a turkeyin a state of transition between juvenile and adult (sort of like myteenage daughter). Perhaps hewas a late-hatch bird in 2006. Anyway, this bird had "spurs" that were trying to come to a point and a full tail fan. The beard was only 4 inches and he weighed 16 lbs. I never even looked at this turkey's beard while he was strutting in front of us because I just knew he was an adult. The thought of this turkey being something less than an adultgobblernever entered my mind based on his"normal" gobble, the full tail fan, the way he strutted and his overall behavior. But this bird couldn't have given us a better show if we would have passed and let him grow up than he did yesterday and the fact that he wasn't afull grown gobblerdidn't dampen our excitement one bit.
Take a look at thisturkey - he looks more like a bussard than an eastern wild turkey. Black feet, very dark breast and tail with only a tiny bit of dark brown coloration at the tips. The wings are colored like an Osceola - black with narrow white bars instead of white with narrow black bars of the typical eastern subspecies.
I'm thinking this is a hyper-pigmented "melanistic" color phase described in the link below from NWTF. I have seen plenty of the smokey gray color phase turkeys and a few true albinos butI've never seen a melanistic turkey before.
http://www.nwtf.org/new_turkey_look.html
It any of you guys have ever taken a melanistic eastern I would enjoy hearing about it.
One more turkey left and I will be out of tags for 2008. The rest of the season will be spent calling for my son and trying to capture some of it on video.
Mouthcaller
I think I killed a melanistic color phase eastern (pics)
