Today at sunrise I struck up a couple of birds and shortly after flydown 2 birds came in. Both birds were longbeards but only one was strutting and spit an drumming. I naturally assumed this bird was dominate and shot him. Great bird, great morning. When I weighed him in at the checkstation he weighed, Now brace yourselves..........15lbs, 5oz. Other stats are 9 1/4" beard and 3/4, 7/8" spurs. Obviously this bird has not been eating for a while. This is one reason why comparing birds by weight doesn`t work.

Either not eating enough or BREEDING like crazy!

Congratulations!

Congrats on your bird turk_man. I have heard of many smaller bodied birds killed this spring. I wonder if it has to do with the bad winter? I myself killed a 14 pound, 9 1/2" bearded, 3/4" spurred gobbler last week here in Ohio. He had no breast sponge to speak of.

congrats on your bird, he must really be breeding alot to be that light!

we had a pretty mild winter here in wisconsin as far as snowcover so the birds are pretty fat...mine weighed 22#, but like you guys said they have probably been to busy breeding to eat and thats where the weight loss has occured...just like bucks in the fall losing all their body fat.

ya. he was either not eating or breeding alot. a dominant gobbler compared to the tom to hen ratio can lose up to 10 lbs every spring. and i bet he will be really tuff too.

congrats on the chicken....just kidding...... the bird i took, had what a 9 3/16 beard, both spurs were over an inch and he only weighed 14.5 lbs.....the one taken the next day weighed almost 20lbs... i prefer to think of them(birds with our weight) as stud muffins of the turkey world.......the rest were too out of shape to keep up with all them women congrats on your bird, regardless of the weight....you did awesome

man..i cnat believe the weight....my friend shot a bird like that..only the spurs were 1.5 inches and a 9.5 inch beard...this thing was tiny compared to mine...mine only had a 8 3/4 inch beard..which after looking at it it looks like it may been broke..and 3/4 inch spurs..this thing was massive...im not sure on the weight but it was an easy 20lber...just goes to show age has nothing to do with weight..congrats..nice one..even if he was a baby with a big beard and hooks!