A REAL THANKSGIVING BIRD

(Page 7 of 7)

October/November 1998
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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As bad, or worse, Hightower notes, "The poor bird is injected after slaughter with vegetable oil, water, salt, emulsifiers (mono- and diglycerides), sodium phosphate, annoto color, and artificial flavors."

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These measures produce a low-cost turkey that looks good, with its oversize breast and artificiaIly blanched white meat but it lacks what you really want from a turkey: flavor and nutrition.

A SHORT PRIMER ON TURKEY HUNTING

Various species and subspecies of the wild turkey now occupy appropriate habitat in most of the lower 48 states. This is one of the great wildlife conservation and recovery stories of the twentieth century, with the wild turkey going from scarce to widespread and plentiful in a matter of decades. With turkeys, it is usually the toms, or gobblers, that are legal game during a fall and sometimes a spring hunting season.

This is a remarkably challenging game animal. Wild turkeys have great vision and are extremely wary. Unlike other game birds, you don't go tromping through the woods then try to shoot a bird as it flushes into the air. Nor do hunters commonly stalk the birds, since it's virtually impossible to sneak up on one. Turkey hunting means turkey calling.

Even before the season opens and while unarmed, you scout for turkey signs. No other bird in the woods leaves a track like a turkey, and their scratching and foraging is distinctive as well. Once you have located the range of one or more flocks, you gear up for the season.

A 12-gauge, 16-gauge, or 20-gauge shotgun is the usual choice, full choke since you shoot them on the ground and aim for the head. Other options include a bow or a muzzleloader. Everything must be camouflaged, not just your clothes (camo coveralls are the usual choice), but also your gun, face, and hands.

The morning of the hunt, you sneak into turkey range before dawn and set up where you can see but can't be seen. Then, with first light, you try to call in a gobbler. Hunters use a variety of hand-held or mouth-blown calls to try to imitate a variety of turkey sounds-the cluck, yelp, cackle, gobble, purr, etc.-in an attempt to stimulate, challenge, or arouse a big tom turkey to come within range: inside 40 yards.

If you get one, you have achieved a major accomplishment in big-game hunting and you take home a 15-pound to 25-pound feast to boot, with more dark meat than your free-range domestic bird but just as good.

Contact your state's fish and game department for all the rules and more information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/INFORMATION

Raising Small Meat Animals by Victor
Giammattei, DVM (The Interstate Publishers).
Raising Your Own Turkeys by Leonard
Mercia (Storey Communications).
Hunting the American Wild Turkey by Dave
Harbour (Stackpole Books). One of many good books on turkey hunting.
Cabela's (catalog sales), I Cabela Drive,
Sydney, NE 69160,1-800-237-4444. Sells gear for turkey hunters.

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