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I have heard of this . My friends and I have seen some large toms that sported short beards in the early spring. We thought they could have been snapped off. I haven' t shot one with this feature. I does make sense.

Foo, The winter is hard on the trophy of the Turkey hunter. Beards tend to be cut by the ice in the snow and it is very common to have Toms with Ice balls hangin from the ends of there beards. Sometimes these balls get stepped on when feeding and flyup' s to the roost and it freezes to the branch and the beard pulls from the breast.I have seen alot of beardless birds in this part in the spring season. The thing that puzzles me is in the Reg' s it states ( 2 Bearded Turkey' s) and hunters still shoot the birds, because it Gobbles...BT

Last year i saw a a dozen or so of what i thought were jakes but now that i think more about it i think they were toms with worn down beards, you can see where they have been rubbed down.

Several years ago I shot a bird that had a very thin beard. Many of the " hairs' were brown. Since then I have heard this can happen due to extreme cold. It kind of burns them. The brown " hairs" were very brittle, so I am sure many had broken off leaving only a pencil thick beard. This winter will be a good test with deep snow and very cold temps for the last three months.

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Here in Missouri, it states the same thing, bearded birds only, which includes bearded hens, not " male" or " female" . The same thing applies to deer here, that is why we call them " antlered" or " antlerless" . Now, to get back to your question, I have had many experienced hunters and game officials tell me the very same thing about snow shortened beards. Just normal feeding activity can do the same thing if the beards are long enough from the start, by dragging the ground, hanging up on sticks and weeds, ect.

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I think I read a post last year that mentioned feather mites or some kinda fungus affecting turkey beards. There' s probably several things affecting beard length. Over here, in some areas, lava rocks tend to wear down the spurs a lot.
You' ll also see the tips of the primary wing feathers are worn a lot too.

IA regs state " bearded or male wild turkey"