white wild turkeys

[hotspur]

It is not uncommon to see a white turkey, or off color turkey on one pine plantation I hunt. There are homes nearby with free walking tame turkey but these stay around the house, I friend tells of his father releasing tame turkey on a lease several miles from where I hunt. What do u guys think of these? Obviously there is alot of domestic blood running through this area, I was thinking of a question. If you called up a white hen, say just blind calling , no gobbling turkey around, what would you do?

[Spring Creek Calls]

Take a picture.

[Gobble!]

Take a picture.

Yep. No desire to shoot a hen.

[TauntoHawk]

Look at it

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Spitten and drummen]

wait on her boyfriend.

[OldSchool]

I'd be amazed. I saw a hen here a few years ago that had some really light colored feathers on her left wing, but other than that our birds don't seem to vary much from the ordinary coloration in my experience.

Bob

[MK M GOBL]

So it sounds like we are talking a domesticated "white" bird crossing with "Wild" birds... can't see how this could be good, if I had the chance (fall season) here I would be taking every one of them I could out of the gene pool. I can understand a naturally occurring oddity/mutation but purposely introducing domestic stock w/wild is just not something I could see being good in any way shape or form. Funny your state agency would allow this, unless they are just not aware of it...

MK M GOBL

[GobbleNut]

Letting domestic birds intermingle with wild birds is a recipe for disaster.  Obviously, it dilutes the wild gene pool of the birds, but more importantly, the possibility of the domestic birds introducing a poultry disease is significant, and can jeopardize the entire wild turkey population in that area. 

You should ask your wildlife agency about whether you can legally shoot those birds or not.  They might want you to,...assuming there was some verification that the off-colored birds are domestic stock or hybrids.  I'll guarantee they don't want them there.

If those birds are domestic/hybrids, you would be doing your true wild turkeys a favor by wiping them out.

[fallhnt]

A released turkey wouldn't survive a day in the wild. As Gobblenut said...BAD idea.

[dirt road ninja]

A released turkey wouldn't survive a day in the wild. As Gobblenut said...BAD idea.

Yep, not a chance.

I've only seen 1 white bird and it wasn't all white. Saw out of my truck feeding with regular looking birds in a pasture outside of Waynesboro Mississippi. I saw birds there quite often, but only saw the white one once.

[2eagles]

There's a neighborhood in the city next to me where there is a stupid amount of turkeys walking around. Kind of a slummy place where this is happening. The turkeys range from white to the color of a wild bird and every mix in between. I saw 30 or 40 birds that were just walking around doing turkey stuff. It's a wild kind of place, trees and ponds and I'm sure this is the result of wild and domestic birds breeding. Just reporting what I saw a few years ago......

[Fatbeard]

I watch this guy as he was a poult. Split from his mom hen and start running with a group of 7 other jakes. Have about 20 trailcam pics and was very fortunate to kill him a few years ago.

[Double B]

Cool pics!

[Cottonmouth]

We have a good many turkeys in MS that have some white patches on them but usually not solid white like a tame turkey. I think it's just a natural color phase. I'll try to post a pic of a fan with some white streaks in it that I took a couple years ago.

[hotspur]

I bunted a white and black gobbler in this area that stayed in a pasture,never got him after two of trying