Beards

[pdqt]

My hunting buddy killed a gobbling, strutting, turkey, with good spurs, a few years back that had  a 3/4" beard that was light tan in color.
   

[njdevilsb]

Probably beard rot or it froze and broke off during the winter.  I shot one like that a few years ago.  A mature bird with barely a 2 inch beard and the ends were an amber color.

[huntinhard]

Lack of melanin causes that

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[Hognutz]

All turkey beards are not created equal... It's not the size of the ship...

[Jourdan_D]

All turkey beards are not created equal... It's not the size of the ship...

HAHAHAHA

[TRKYHTR]

Lack of melanin causes that

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I agree. Alot of people call this beard rot but it doesn't have anything to do with the beard rotting. It's the lack of melanin that gives the beard its black color and its strength.

TRKYHTR

[OLE RASPY]

Lack of melanin causes that

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I agree. Alot of people call this beard rot but it doesn't have anything to do with the beard rotting. It's the lack of melanin that gives the beard its black color and its strength.

TRKYHTR

[whiskey]

I killed a bird 2 years ago that started the season with a 8" thick wide beard. I saw him all season and he was the boss bird, but I didn't kill him until a month later near the end of season. By the time I killed him his beard was about 4" and and turned blond the last 1.5". The game warden called it beard rot.

[FLGobstopper]

I've heard the lack of melanin, or beard rot like most people call it, will make the beard brittle and it will result in the beard breaking off in places producing a smaller rotting beard. I shot a bird a few years ago that was a fat stud with big ol sharp curved hooks and about a six inch super thick beard. It wasn't blonde or anything but it looked like someone had taken scissors and clipped his beard perfectly across. I'm guessing he was recovering from beard rot.

[turkeyhunter60]

 :chucknorris:I shot a big Tom once, and it had 3/4 inch spurs, and a 2 inch beard, 23 lbs.Rio Grand turkey... out of Cottonwood Calif. It was brown at the tip of the beard....I heard it was beard rot.... 

[hookedspur]

Lack of melanin causes that

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[pdqt]

 Well you do see a white, wild turkey now and then. I killed a hen in the fall a few years back that was mostly a dirty or grayish white on the upper body. The tail was mostly black. She had been around a while, had a #4 buckshot near the tip of the wing and a #4 small shot elsewhere that had healed.
   A little more recent I killed another that was brown, best way to describe it is, it was about the color of a woodcock. There were two of them in the fllock. My buddy saw another one a few days later. Don't know what happened to that one, we never saw it again.

[FttFttVroom!]

I've also killed a mature tom with a short beard that was yellow and brittle on the end.