When the wild turkeys forage for acorns in the snow, they have to dig them up. I’ve tried to get some photos of massive turkey scratches in the leaf litter early this year, but they’ve not shown up well.
But in the snow, they are quite clear:
Wild turkeys are survivors.
Unlike their domestic kin, they aren’t hatched out into warm brooders.
They poults hatch here in the middle of spring, when it can still get quite cold and rainy.
Many poults die of exposure, and all the wild ones you see that are older than a month old have had to survive that gauntlet.
Further, these turkeys fly pretty well. I’ve seen them fly across really broad rivers, and if a dog spooks them, they will fly off for more distant trees.
During the winter, the turkeys bunch together in really large flocks. If the weather gets too bad, they leave the oak-covered ridgetops for the bottom land along rivers.
The wild ones are very graceful and wary– as different from their domesticated form as an Arabian wolf is from a St. Bernard.
I used to have a flock of wild turkeys that visited my yard daily. After Hurricanes Charlie & jean went through i was concerned for them…no need – the day after the hurricanes they were back in the yard hunting for the corn I strewed for them. And the best part is that they were joined by stragglers…a flock of chickens from a neighbor’s destroyed pen joined the wild turkeys int heir daily forage. The turkeys pretty much ignored them. Wild turkeys are indeed survivors.
For several years we had one lone hen turkey that roosted in the maple tree on the south side of our house, but I’ve only seen true wild turkey roosts in the mountains. My main impression was that the ground beneath them bore a marked visual and olfactory resemblance to the floor of my domestic turkey coop.