A wierd turkey I shot, Unknown Sex.

turkeyhunter_15 · 10-20-2003, 10:56 PM

I Bought me one of tho' s nice fold up dog house blinds,and i used it the day i got it and got me a turkey that day.
I saw 3 groups of jakes and 2 groups of hens. One of witch groups i shot a turkey.
There was 4 hens and this one in the middle had a beard! Dont get me wrong some hens have beards. So I shot at it and killed it then it did its crappie flop.
I picked it up and it had a 7 inch beard, No Spurs,A Fan Like a tom,With out the 2-3 tall feathers these feathers were all even.
So Iduno What the sex is of this turkey,

No spurs
7 inch beard
Even Fan,Not a jake fan
Im thinking a hen with a beard.... Iduno. lol
But its dead now w/e it was [X(]

jalvja · 10-21-2003, 07:31 AM

Sounds like a bearded hen to me.An easy way to tell is do the feathers run clean up to the base of the head on the back of the neck,If they do it' s a hen.I f they stop short of the base of the skull it' s a gobbler.Either way,Congrats

Washington Hunter · 10-21-2003, 05:12 PM

Did it strut at all? Was the head a red-ish color? Or a Blue-ish color?

Nathan67 · 10-23-2003, 09:48 PM

Maybe it was a hermaphrodite.

Ridge Runner · 10-24-2003, 02:46 AM

hens in the reproductive cycle of they' re lives secrete a hormone which makes them the dull brown color to help camoflage them while nesting, if something happens that stops egg production, they will develope gobbler plumage on the next molting cycle, but I' ve also taken a 20 pound gobbler with a 10 1/2" beard with no spurs. if its in hen plumage its a hen, if in gobbler plumage you' d have to check reproductive organs to be sure. How heavy was the beard? most bearded hens have a pencil thin beard.
RR

TeXLaXHunter · 10-26-2003, 12:30 PM

MOTURKEYTAMER saw some hens with beards as he described on his forum, thats probably what it was

Red Hawk · 10-30-2003, 11:02 AM

Quote:

Maybe it was a hermaphrodite.

That would have been my guess too lol