Backyard nature

[bjt]

One of the things I like about living a little outside of the city is some of the nature that you get to experience without having to leave your house. We have hawks scouting our field for food, deer milling about, the occasional fox passing through and a woodchuck that likes to hang out by our pole barn. I looked out the back window this morning and saw some wild turkeys doing what wild turkeys do this time of the year. A tom trying real hard to impress a couple of hens.

[DynamoBT]

Cool!! I love seeing wild turkeys about.

[Lamonster]

Very cool

My neighbor has his eye on a Tom that hangs out on my side of the fence. He came over last year asking if it was alright to hunt him. I said yes but the wife wasn't real happy about it.

He called me again a couple of days ago wanting to hunt this guy again and after talking with the wife I told him yes. He's going to bring us the meat. I've never had wild turkey and would like to try it.

By the way my neighbor is the base player for a little Bluegrass band you may have heard of so it's kink of hard to say no.

[Lamonster]

Here's a turkey story for you.

Right about where that Tom is hanging out now I bush hogged over a nest of turkey eggs.



They were fine but the hen would not come back with them exposed like that. After two days I started calling around to see what I could do to save them. Everyone pretty much said they won't make it if they had been unattended for that long.

So I called up BajaRon and told him what I did. He said bring them over and lets see if we can save them. He Googled raising turkeys and got all the info he needed to give it a shot. It didn't look good for these guys but he tried it anyway.

He was able to hatch 4 of the eggs and raise them by hand. It was a lot of work.



So guess who these little guys call mama now. As they grew they became like a dog following him where ever he went. He finally had to move them outside because they got so big. When he let them go it took a while for them to leave the house but two of them hung out for months. Ron could be cutting down trees with a chainsaw and those turkeys would stay right by his side. He had a real hard time keeping them out of the house.

Right around Thanksgiving one of the turkeys got in and offered up himself as a meal. Ron declined but is this a classic photo or what?

[Degaman]

Great story... glad the gobbler got pardoned.

[bjt]

Thats a great post lamonster. Nice pics of Ron's young'uns.

[babyanlee]

I think that gobbler was just checkin things out to make sure he was eatin mor cow

[BajaRon]

I got so many accusations of "Fraud" with that picture I quit sending it to family and friends. They claimed that I PhotoShoped it and would not believe it was the real deal.

Right after that photo my wife came into the kitchen not knowing the turkey was there. She screamed and it scared Mr. Tom. The mess he made of all my paperwork when he flapped his wings to get out of there took me awhile to sort out.

His demise came the following Thanksgiving. He was just too friendly and a neighbor (who hunts) could not resist. He was well fed and probabably tasted pretty good.

Such is life! Thanks Lamont for reminding me.

[docdoru]

Hey Ron, did anybody told you that you resemble Bill Gates?

[BajaRon]

No one has ever told me that I resembled Bill Gates... I would like to resemble his income though!

[SLO RYDER]

That was great that you were able to save a few of them and they even got a new Mom. We have several that go through our yard every day. The hen and baby's on the roof was last years batch. They take flight and love our pine trees.

Mike

[Lamonster]

That was great that you were able to save a few of them and they even got a new Mom. We have several that go through our yard every day. The hen and baby's on the roof was last years batch. They take flight and love our pine trees.

Mike

[Roaddog2]

Hey Ron, did anybody told you that you resemble Bill Gates?

great story when things like this happen in CT.
this is were my wife volunteers every weekend wildlifeincrisis.org BJT looks like Tom was doing a great job nice picks also

[Smylinacha]

Wow, never saw baby turkeys before - they are cute when they are little!