No Beard??

[ccaldwell]

Had a great hunt this afternoon and killed my second bird of the year! It had 15/16 inch spurs and a full fan but it didn't appear to have any beard at all. When I was cleaning the bird, I dug around and finally found a little 3/4 inch beard. I don't think it was a jake, anybody have idea why this is?

[tomstopper]

Did the beard look normal in color. Just wondering if it was beard rot.....

[longbeards]

If it had a full tail fan IT WAS NOT A JAKE,,beard rot can cause a beard to be short,,but they also can lose them fighting with other gobblers,,killed 3 year old with a fresh scab where his beard had been..

[mikejd]

I have seen that before. My dad shot it but technically in my state it is an illegal bird. So it is one of my familys funniest stories. it happened about 10 yrs ago and we laugh about it every season. The 1/4" beard that i finally found under all those feathers is on display in my camp.

just a bit of the story. I was walking a trail with my dad and brother at about 11:30 am half hr left of hunting time in NY. Well this bird just lets loose about 75yds in front of us all on his own. Well we just grab a few seats 15yds from each other. I starty to call my dad and brother plan to take a shot if we can.
Well this bird comes strutting down the trail to my brother with 2 hens at his arms as if he's saying come on girls its ok they cant shoot me "I cut off my beard". In NY a hair must protrude beyond the chest feathers to become legal. So anyway all the time by brother is straining to see a beard and cant all the time the full mature fan is up. Well my dad who is about 20yds away can see all this but not that great, from this point he figures something must be wrong that is keeping my brother from shooting. Remember the time clock here is ticking away with just minutes of legal hunt time. My dad gets up runs up a few steps and shoots. Bird goes down like a stone. I walk over to the bird first and first thing I say is dad where is the beard. His response is look closer you see that fan, now my brother says why do you think I wasnt shooting, dad was like I figured you were sleeping or your gun had to fail. At this point we are rolling in laughter. Dont forget the now illeagal part. So we had to send my brother out to my truck to make sure we were all clear to carry out the bird. The lesson learned was to always carry an old beard in your vest.

[Fatbeard]

I have seen it before. In TN you have to visibly see a beard on the bird. Had a bird about 10 years ago strut in full fan big ole white head and probably 1 1/4 spurs but no beard and had to let him walk

[DirtNap647]

Had one 2 years ago around my house mature bird no beard