Toms attacking a Black Snake

[stmpy907]

What I have here in these pictures was something that I haven't seen before and i was curious whether it is all that common of an occurrence. I'm a noob to this sight, but I thought what better place to find out about this than here on this turkey forum. I've posted the same thing on a different forum, but I really thought that you all might like it.

I was coming home from lunch on the other day and as I was driving toward my driveway, I noticed four toms in the field behind my barn. They were closer than what I had seen before, about 50 yards away from the barn, so I thought that I might try to get a few pictures snapped off before they caught me. After taking about 10 or 12 pictures I realized that they were pecking and fighting over something on the ground. Then I noticed it was a snake about 4 or 5 feet long. One bird would drop it and then another would quickly grab it and try to run off with it. But with the snake still very much alive, he wasn't in the mood to play their game. He would struggle and try to squirm away from which ever bird was holding it at the time and as soon as he twisted free and fell to the ground the others would be all over him. I've heard stories like this, but this was the first time that I was able to watch a turkey/snake fight.

I snapped off about 100 pictures. When I got them back to the computer and was going through them I had noticed something that while out there I had not. In almost all of them, only three birds would be pecking at the snake. It wasn't always the same three, but almost always it was only three. The fourth bird was always keeping a look out. No wonder they are so darn hard to kill.


Turkey and Snake by stmpy907, on Flickr


The Look Out by stmpy907, on Flickr

Like I stated earlier, I don't know how common this is, but it was a first time sighting for me.

Steve.

[albrubacker]

Thats sweet!!

[FullChoke]

Very, very cool!

FC

[weave]

That is awesome

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[wingbonehntr]

Awesome. Never seen that before.

[Fastcat]

That is great. I wonder what kind of snake it was?                                         

[M,Yingling]

Cool pics

[tomstopper]

Very cool.  A once in a lifetime experience.

[Gut_Pile]

Great pictures