12'' beards

[Turkeytider]

Beautiful bird! Tn bird?

Russell county Alabama.  I've killed roughly a dozen multi beards off this one 200 acre tract, and my hunting partner had killed about as many.   Crazy genetics there I guess.

Yep, genetics. Certain populations in certain locales have a likelihood of atypical birds. Also, different local populations may have different feather barring on their fans. I`ve personally seen that in birds from different counties in Georgia.

[reflexl]

This ones got a few hairs that when pulled strait measure 13.5. Not sure if a few hairs count for length or not. This is a public land Florida bird I got a few years back. Most of our birds have big thick ropes and quite often good spurs, overall poundage not so great. Its rare to get a pencil thin one around here but I've been to other parts of the country where a much larger bird would have a thin beard.

Yes those hairs count as the total length.

[bear hunter]

never killed one with 12 inch beard dont think I have ever seen one with beard that long my best was 11 1/4 it is rare in area i hunt in in mtns for bird to have 10 inch beard. Most are 9 to 9 and a half.

[GobbleNut]

Fun thread for discussion.  My take is that genetics play the major role in spurs and beards, but with habitat type and nutrition having some influence in such things as beard and spur wear.  Regarding weight, although I believe genetics can play a role here, as well, I suspect habitat and the available nutrition base play a much larger role. 

All of these things can get really complicated when we throw the general differences in subspecies genetics into the discussion.  For instance, there is no question that the Osceola subspecies has significantly better spur development than the others, from what I have personally seen.  A hunter is much more likely to kill an Osceola gobbler with those coveted inch and a half spurs than any of the others,...and most likely by a long shot.

On the other extreme, Goulds gobblers very often have poorly developed spurs, and many I have seen have either had no spurs at all, or a spur on one leg and nothing on the other. 

Even within subspecies however, localized populations can exhibit unique genetic traits that would be considered uncommon within the overall subspecies.  Probably the most apparent of these is the much higher occurrence of multiple-bearded gobblers in certain places as compared to their occurrence in that subspecies in as a whole. 

Bottom line is that comparing turkeys from across the country to each other can get real complicated real fast.   

[briton]

I've killed many with 9-10 inch beards but only one with a true 12 in beard. It was a really thick beard with a full twist in the beard, I assume the twist in the beard kept it from dragging as much as it would have if it were straight like normal. I had to untwist and hold the beard on a ruler to measure it and was shocked that it was a true foot long. One of his spurs was also 1.5 and the other just shy, weighed 21 lbs. He was quite the bird and I don't think I will ever top him with another single beard bird. I have never got a multiple beard bird though. My friend hunting with me has killed over 100 birds and said he had never been lucky enough to snag a 12 incher and was as equally shocked and excited as I was.

[JeffC]

I'm not sure if your talking about me or Derek.  My seven bearded bird had a little over 44" of beard.  My six bearded bird had more than the seven.  He had 56".  Here's the six.

Thank you GW, was referring to Derek, knew about his . That's a lot of beards. Never killed a 12" or a multiple bearded bird but was lucky enough to take a 4 spured bird.

[guesswho]

4 Spurs?   Dang, that's a lot rarer than a multi-beard.   I've never killed one, but did see one that had two on one leg.   Congrats!

[deerhunt1988]

I know a lot of 12" beard claims are simply loose strands from the shot.

I don't like talking overall numbers, but I've killed 10 multi-bearded birds to give you an idea. I've taken about a 1/3 of my gobblers in my home state of Mississippi and never even hit the 11" mark on a beard. I've taken three 11"+ beards in MO from the same general area. Out of 8 Alabama birds, two have had 11" beards (once again, taken from same area). No doubt some areas are more prone to produce those beards than others. Same thing with multi-beards.

I've only measured one legitimate 12" beard on a freshly killed gobbler. It was a MO Ozark bird that also sported massive 1 5/8" spurs.

On the subject of spurs, my best is 1 3/8" and I've only taken one of them. That 1 1/2" mark is extremely hard to hit!

[eggshell]

Back when I was working and running a check station I saw hundreds of gobblers. We rarely measured beards or spurs, but recorded them as adult or juvenile. However; one day this guy brought in a bird that just made me go "WOW". It weighed 25 lbs, had spurs that looked like Egyption daggers and a beard to match. We marveled over it and recorded the check in data. Two days later he shows up and ask if he can get a copy of the check in card for submission as a possible new world record. I made him a copy and I think at the time it was close if not the record. Here is the record of that bird:
https://your.nwtf.org/records/index.php?details=7369&location=USA+-+Ohio

This is the best over-all gobbler I ever laid eyes on.

Don was a regular in our check station and a wonderful guy from what I knew. I think I recall he died of cancer.

[GobbleNut]

I'm sure you have seen a pile of dead Eastern gobblers from your days at that check station, eggshell. From my own past experience with Merriam's gobblers from their southern range in New Mexico, I suspect I have looked over, and scored, probably close to five hundred of them,...maybe more.  Here are some statistics from my own personal experience that those from other parts of the country, and that hunt other subspecies, might find interesting.

I have seen exactly three Merriam's gobblers here that had certifiable 1.5" spurs. I have never seen a dead Merriam's gobbler with a beard exceeding 11 3/8", and very few of them that made 11".  The heaviest Merriam's I have weighed was somewhere around 22.5 pounds. 

Again, from my experience, our average mature Merriam's gobbler will have a beard average of about 9.5", spurs between 3/4" and 1" (even many very old ones), and will weigh around 18 pounds.   

Taking those numbers and converting them to the NWTF scoring system, a good, mature Merriam's gobbler from this region will score an average of roughly 55 points.  The highest scoring Merriam's turkey I have ever seen from this region scored right under 70 points, as I recall (it's been probably close to 15 years).   

[reflexl]

GobbleNut- that blows my mind. I have never hunted Miriam but plan to. I like their fan but had no idea they were that small.

[bear hunter]

The averages that gobblenut speaks of for merriams is really close to the size of easterns where I hunt in mountains of North Carolina.

[reflexl]

I have actually held a 14 1/2" beard in my hand. Some of you TN boys probably heard about the bird from Lincoln Co back in the 80's. I typed up the story surrounding the bird for posterity. A 8 year old killed it with his dad. No one around here at the time thought anything about turkey records. We heard about the bird at work and were interested because of what we thought were exaggerated claims.
   I found out the father of the boy worked less than a mile from me. I went over to see him and asked him about it. He produced a polaroid picture of his son holding the bird and you could tell it was a beast. He promised to bring the spurs and beard to work to show me.
     About 3 months later he came in at work carrying a big grocery sack. He set it on the counter and we pulled from the bag two legs died with the spurs and the beard. The spurs measured 2 1/2"  and 2 5/8". They weighed the bird at Delina store on their meat scale. He said it was exactly 30lbs. This would make the bird the world record typical Eastern.
    I ran into the father and recognized him a few years ago in Walmart in Fayetteville TN. I asked him about the spurs and beard hoping to take a picture of them. He told me when his son got grown and moved out he took all of his hunting stuff with him. He said he asked him about the spurs and beard and said he didn't know what happened to them.

[eggshell]

yeah Gobblenut I couldn't even count them all....worked the station 28 years and many years we checked 100 or more birds. I only have one merriams for reference and I didn't have a scales, spurs were maybe 3/4" and beard was three hairs about 9" long. That was southeast Montana, around Broadus . That was in the mid 90s. I quit hunting big birds a long time ago. I do get vendettas against some still, but I pretty much kill what comes to the call. I don't figure I'll kill any that are any bigger than what I already have...if I do it's just happen stance, I probably didn't plan it. It's actually more fun this way.

Around me we see a fair number of birds up to 23 lbs and 11" beards but, not many over That. A lot of our birds will have 1 1/4 to 1 3/8 spurs, but over that is not so common.

[reflexl]

The averages that gobblenut speaks of for merriams is really close to the size of easterns where I hunt in mountains of North Carolina.

In this area they grow some big bodies. 25lbs birds are not unusual. Occiasionaly some real big birds pop up. I killed a dinosaur that weighed 28lbs 7oz and another bird that was 28-4.  I am somewhere around 100 birds total and out of all of them I have only beat  1 1/2" spurs on two birds. One bird had two 1 5/8" spurs and one of them had 1 5/8" on one side and 1" on the other. I have collected around 40 11" and slightly over beards. The rest of them run from about 5 to 10. Out of that many birds I have only killed 2 birds with 2 beards and 2 birds with 3 beards. Kind of strange the difference from region to region. Of course food sources have a lot to do with the weight and the rocks around here are murder on spurs and beards.