Newbie gets lucky on opening day

[NC Rich]

I posted here a few times and got some good information from the wonderful folks here.

I'm 68 years old and took my 3", 12 gauge, 28" CZ Canvasback O/U out to the field. After about an hour of hearing gobbles from numerous directions 3 Toms walked out in front of me, I shot one and he went down immediately. Yahoo, my first turkey ever. Strange that the other 2 just hung around, and 4 more Toms came to join them??? I didn't want to get up until they left because my neighbor was hunting the next field over and I didn't want to spook them. About 20 minutes later they wandered off in his direction but disappeared into the woods before they got near his hunting range.

Later he told me that he heard my shot and looked over but could not see the down bird so he thought two things. He thought I missed and he wondered why I wasn't shooting one of the 6 other Toms in front of me. Of course I could not take any because I was at the one bird limit.

It was fantastic, once my adrenaline calmed down I watched the way they act and they seemed to be mourning the down bird, one in particular put his fan up and walked around and around the dying bird gobbling over and over.

Can anyone explain this behavior?

Anyway, here he is. 7/8" spurs and a 9 1/2" beard.

[daddyduke]

Congrats!

[SD_smith]

In my experience I think it's a show of dominance. We have even had other gobblers attack's dead ones right after the shot. Congrats on the bird!!!

[tomstopper]

Congrats. Not sure why exactly turkeys do anything they do, but I have shot gobblers before only to have their buddy come rite back to them and put the spurs to them. Just strange animals. Once I even seen one come through a cow pasture towards my set up only to stop and try and mount a cow patty laying in the field. Maybe my calling was really crappy so he was more attracted to the manure patty than my decoys only 30 yards away....LOL

[Rzrbac]

That's pretty common behavior. All turkeys (gobbler and hens) have a pecking order. Flogging a downed bird is their way of trying to improve their position in the pecking order.

Congrats on the gobbler

[Bowguy]

Congrats! I agree it was showing dominance. Sometimes they attack a downed bird.

[EZ]

Congrats! Beautiful bird!!!

[Alavoie52]

Congrats!

[MK M GOBL]

Congrats on the 1st!! and many more to come

What you were witnessing is behavior in the social strucure in turkeys (dominance) Turkeys live this everyday, your downed turkey was put in "subordinate" position and the others were asserting dominance over it. This is a key thing I talk about during seminars when either taking a dominant bird or setting up for "Double" Success. There are a lot more keys in to this, but that's another topic.

MK M GOBL

[Alberta Jonny]

Congrats

[oakraidia]

Congrats!

[eddie234]

Congrats


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[SteelerFan]

Congratulations!!

[Sir-diealot]

Congratulations

[Twowithone]

Congrats on your first Gobbler. Turkeys will be turks with the strange things they do.