On the contrary, wild turkeys are found in forests across the country — 49 states, to be exact! Five subspecies are scattered throughout the continental U.S. and Hawaiʻi, indicating the turkey’s ability to live in a variety of forest ecosystems, from swamps to oak forests to deep desert.

Locating Roosts

• Proximity to water. The old hunter’s adage suggesting, “Turkeys love to roost where they can hear their droppings hit water,” rings true here.
• Heavy, mature timber. Dense cover is particularly appealing during bitter cold or strong wind.
• Open areas.
• Evergreens.
• Shelter sites.
• Look for sign.
• Use your ears.
• Use your eyes.

Focus on flats, knobs, and plateaus. They’ll also use slopes, but the walking and nut-searching is easier on flats and knolls, and the hens can see them strutting at greater distances in those areas. Gobbler and hen in ag field. Turkeys need open areas as well as woods.

Locate concentrations of droppings and feathers beneath large trees. Squeeze the droppings to assess their freshness. Chalky droppings indicate a retired roost, but moist droppings are a sign that it’s being used and may be a good spot to hunt. Sometimes birds use the same roost daily.

Male turkey poop tends to be elongated or J-shaped, while the female’s is like a spiral blob, more or less similar to a snail’s shell. The contrasting configurations arise from the different internal anatomy of male and female turkeys.

In 1880, the German zoologist Carl Chun suggested a pair of tiny pores opposite the comb jelly mouth might secrete some substance, but he also confirmed that the animals defecate through their mouths. In 1997, biologists again observed indigestible matter exiting the comb jelly mouth—not the mysterious pores.

According to Discover Magazine, you can tell male and female wild turkeys apart by looking at their poop. This is a byproduct of the bird’s cloaca, or the multipurpose orifice used for both waste disposal and reproduction. Without the extra room to coil, male turkey poop comes out in a longer J shape.

Male and female members of the species actually produce very different droppings. A female turkey’s poop tends to look like a kind of spiral blob about 3/8 inch (1 cm) in diameter. They sort of look like a snail shell with one white end (this is uric acid).

Size: As one of the largest Native birds in North America, the turkey requires more room than the normal back yard fowl. Mess: *(Manure) Like all birds, turkeys poop a lot, you could even say, “all the time”. The Turkey’s high burning metabolism requires they eat often and what goes in, come out processed turkey style.

Turkeys’ heads change color to express their emotions. Berkeley scientists have used this adaptation to create a biosensor for germs, toxins, and TNT. Turkeys can change the color of the skin on their heads from red to blue to white, depending on whether they are calm or excited.

Although turkeys spend most of their time on the ground during the day, they sleep in trees at night. Turkeys cannot see well in the dark. Sleeping in trees provides protection from predators that roam and can see at night. They fly up to roost at dusk, and fly down at dawn to begin their daily rituals.

One way is to hang the turkey upside down, which pacifies the bird and makes it easier to drain its blood; the other method is to straddle the bird, slit its throat (sometimes clean off), and then hold it down as it flaps around. This sounds more like a prelude to Halloween than Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Once the turkey has been slaughtered and is confirmed dead, pluck it straight away. Dry plucking by hand is so much easier whilst the bird is still warm. Hang the bird in a cool room for about ten days, which tenderises the meat and improves the flavour.

Modern meat birds are bred to be ready for slaughter at 14 to 18 weeks depending on the size you want. But heritage birds take double that time to reach slaughtering size, 24 to 28 weeks.