Funniest/Dumbest thing you have seen a turkey do?

[huntineveryday]

Lets hear some stories, just to keep some light hearted threads going...

Example 1) Late in the day a friend and I were sitting across the fence from the trees that some turkeys would work back to roost in. Before they get to us, a tom pitches up into the trees onto a roost branch. As he is moving around, he slipped and fell off the branch. He tried to gets his wings going, but kept hitting branches, bouncing from one branch to the other before falling the last 15' to the ground, falling around 50' total and landing with a loud thump. My friend look at each other in awe, then look back as the turkey stands up, shaking his feathers out and seeming to gather himself. At that point my friend and I couldn't help but start laughing. I still chuckle at the memory of him bouncing all the way down. He ended up working back out away from the tree and we lost sight of him, but he appeared to be fine. This was all about 75 yards away.

[huntineveryday]

Example 2) One year we had a late cold front drop some snow and freeze everything on a May 6th Nebraska hunt. I had a group of turkeys scouted roosting in an abandoned farm yard, and they would work out into the pastures after they flew down. It was so cold that morning I ended up waiting until they moved out of the barnyard and snuck in behind them, hiding in the barn to stay out of the wind. I'd call out door, then lean back in and shiver. Sure enough, pretty soon I have a pair of gobblers spitting and drumming on the other side of the wall from me. I waited until the tom strutted past the door, drew my bow back, leaned out, and shot him at about 15 yards. I jumped out of the barn ecstatic! Then I turned and saw the other turkey start to run away. He ran straight into an old wire of electric fence, which hit him right at the base of the neck. He hit it, bounced back, ran into it again, bounced back, and continued to repeat this for about a full minute. Mind you, he could have turned and ran to either side, ducked the wire, or flew off. Instead, after a minute of bouncing back off the wire he stopped and just started milling around, like he forgot what he was running for! There I stand, bow in hand, in the open on the snow, less than 20 yards away! What I did not have was a 2nd tag! I went from ecstatic, feeling like a champion hunter outsmarting the weary gobblers to being almost mad for shooting such a dumb species in a matter of seconds! I walked over to grab my bird shaking my head...

[guesswho]

I watched a field Gobbler that would not cross a shadow of a big pine tree.  He would walk the edge of the shadow back and forth, but wouldn't break the plain    He did that for 10-15 minutes and finally gave up.   Temporarily saved his life.

[Happy]

Years ago I had a pet wild turkey gobbler and hen. I had them from poults and raised them with the intention of keeping them as pets. I named the gobbler clyde and the hen Henrietta. Anyways as clyde grew up he was quite tame to me and would follow me around the yard. More often then not strutting in circles around me. I would often hold him in my lap but he seemed to think that rather undignified and would still try to puff up and look manly. He wasnt very trusting of others and didn't want touched by them. Staying just out of reach and strutting. He would come up and eat out of people's hands or peck at shoelaces as long as no one reached for him. Anyways a family friend stopped over one day and was standing in the yard chatting with us as clyde did his normal routine. This fellow was smoking a cigar and after trying to pet clyde a few times he gave up on that approach and held his cigar out to see what clyde would do. Old Clyde's curiosity got the better of him and he slowly walked up and was closely eyeballing that cigar when the fellow reached out and burnt Clyde's snood with the end. This made me mad but being a kid I kept my mouth shut. Clyde hopped back shaking his head for a few and then went back to strutting around as usual. About fifteen minutes later this fellow had to water the bushes so to speak and walked to the corner of one of our buildings to take care of business. Clyde saw his opportunity and when the fellows back was turned clyde came out of strut and raced across the yard and gave that fellow a surprise flogging before running back to me and going right back into strut. I really liked that turkey

[1iagobblergetter]

I was hunting a couple of years ago and a hen flew right over my head off of a hill top in the middle of the day and landed on the outside of my decoys. Took me by surprise...
I did some soft calling and kept her around for a little while until shr milled away. Within a few minutes a big gobbler appeared and ended up dead.

[THattaway]

Saw a flock of around 50 turkeys one fall in a pasture while I was deer hunting.  A hen picked up a orange survey flag and started running with it, 20-30 turkeys gave chase and round and round they went for 10-15 minutes.

Saw a flock of black birds wafting in on a pasture one fall as a trio of toms crossed. One tom stopped putt/purred and jumped up flogging as they tried to settle around him. The flock picked back up, rolled around and tom would duck then jump and flog at them. This went on for about a dozen cycles till the flock moved off.

[Gamblinman]

Had a gobbler coming and he came to a woodline with a big gap in it...no fence. He walked back and forth a few times, then flew over the trees and landed on the ground on my side and walked into range. Why he didn't walk through that gap i'll never figure out.

[Marc]

I have had turkeys refuse to cross a line of fence posts with no fencing...  The posts have been there for some years with no fence, and birds have hung up on that several times.

Also like Guesswho, I believe I have had at least one bird hang up on a shadow...  Maybe there was something else there that I could not discern, but to my observation, he simply would not cross over that shadow, and approach it and then go back...  Super frustrating.

First time my oldest daughter got to be in on a successful hunt, I killed the tom, and three jakes were whipping on the dead bird.  I told my daughter (7 years old at the time) to go get the bird...  Those three jakes started to rush her at full speed, and I immediately stood up and started running towards her to scare them off.  One of them did not run far.

One of those jakes followed us out (of a relatively steep canyon) for about 1/2 mile, and cut in front of us on a bend, when my daughter finally (accidently) flushed it.  Only time I ever thought about shooting a bird in self-defense.

[Tom007]

A few years back I saw a big Tom in my neighbors yard pecking his basement window. I read they see their reflection, and this is common. He did it occasionally, then one day, when he was pecking, things sounded different, the sound was different. Yes, he was pecking plywood, he broke the window, so the neighbor replaced it with plywood. They used to feed the turkeys. They soon stopped that.... be safe

[Papa]

Years ago I was hunting on the edge of an open field in a ground blind set up back in a small woods. As it would happen I had a hen and two toms come up thru the woods. The two toms were more interested in my lone hen decoy I had setting out in the field, but the hen walked right up to my tent and stuck her head inside and just started clucking and looking around. At first she tried to jump in the blind with me (that would have been an experience). I could not move for fear of scaring the toms. She stayed there for at least 3 minutes doing this when she decided to leave the toms were already gone.

[Dtrkyman]

I watched a flock of 50ish birds early one spring prior to season, a jake got singled out by a button buck and those two too turns change each other in circle for half an hour.

I am talking full out sprinting in circles, take a brake switch places and do it again!

[tomstopper]

I watched a gobbler come across a field towards my decoy setup when he stopped about half way and proceeded to mount a cow patty and hump away. After about 5 min of this, he just walked away into the trees. Always said my calling that day must have been pretty crappy.

[Greg Massey]

Back in my early years of turkey hunting , we had to hunt WMA because most places didn't have birds. So i was hunting this WMA and had been sleeping in the bed of my truck and was hunting hard for 2 days and on the second day , you all can relate to getting tired and your eyes closing and taking those cat naps , will i had been hunting this same area , and my back again the same tree for now going on 2 day's and as i wake up from this cat nap , i see this black stump with the prettiest red bird I've ever seen about 25 yards form me, now during these 2 day's i would call about ever 20 minutes or so hoping to just see or hear turkey. As i was watching this red bird on this stump and as i moved little bit , the stump and the red head turned and walked away, I was so tired and my mine told me it was a red bird on the stump , it turned out , it was gobbler without beard, back in those early day's of stocking birds on WMA, there was talk of them taking captured birds and cutting the beards off of the gobblers , this bird just appeared that afternoon and never made the first sound, other than me seeing him as the red bird on the stump. NO shot was fired. I got up and said it's time to go home. I have never forgot this trip and hunt. I never when back to this WMA and sit again that same tree again..LOL

[Sir-diealot]

I had been hunting a field most of the morning and had been having no luck so I decided to do a little running and gunning calling on my way to a driveway that I knew went down into a gully that in the past had some turkey in it. I got to about where that driveway down to the gully was and I got a response from a gobbler and I looked around for someplace to sit and the only thing that was big enough was some sluice pipe with some kind of black stuff all over it and a smaller one in front of it that I figured would hide my legs well. So I sat between them and started calling getting responses every now and again. I was aided down the self made driveway into the gully figuring the turkey would come up this and the calls we getting closer and I figured things were going my way. All of a sudden I heard this crashing noise and then saw a dark blur coming by my left eye and the tom laded on the pipe right next to my head, I am not sure which one of us jumped more! He got away and I sat there laughing for a good long while.

[owlhoot]

What the heck is this silly gobbler doing strutting on the pond dam, gobbling his fool head off right in front of this goose  . And this goose is honking back at him???