the last hunt i was on in wma ihunt had 14 hens come withen 15 yards of my treestand feeding, what was different was one had a color phase to her.she was not pure white ,just the tips of her feathers were white,and she was a lighter color than the rest.she really stood out among the other 13.has anyone else seen one like this?time of the year was last weekend in december.
We have had a couple hens here that look like ghosts going through the woods...very cool. Not all white but light gray and/or white where there would normally be the brown and black shading. Only been 2 of them over the past 4 years but there has been a lot of variety in patterns and color not far removed from the normal Eastern wild turkey...one thing that has been speculated(unofficially from MDNR - as they wouldn't be able to require a special tag to eradicate non-native domestic/exotics) is that this is due to crossbreeding with domestics and those genes permeating through the population to varying degrees....I am just waiting for a giant tom to be entered into record books and it gets thrown out because of being part domestic.
was not sure if it was do to inter breeding,but it was cool anyway.the hen was just as you described wolvinekind!
I have heard that white or different color phased turkey come from the 3rd generation of inter breeding.
We had one on our farm about 6 years ago, I watched it grow for three years. first year was black with a white left wing, second year it was mostly white with blachish gray tips, the third year my brother in law shot it, by then it was all white with brown tipped and a few black tipped feathers. It was the same bird and everytime it got new feathers in the fall it changed colors slightly, was awesome watching in grow up, and even cooler that I was able to walk it by my brother in law on a good ole fashion turkey drive! lol every turkey hunter I knew around here was trying to kill that one bird! was fun hunting him! He has full body mount of it, will see about getting a picture of it. I have a friend who is a biologist, he tried to tell me it was from crossbreeding. I don't see how thats possible, there isn't a turkey farm anywhere around that i am aware of. I watched this thing from a polt to, none of the others that were in that group were abnormal and none since in. I think it was just a special bird.
we have them all over by me, my buddy shot a tom that was half white and got it mounted. here is one that was right down the road from my hosue
We get some rio grande/eastern hybrids in our neck of the woods that have noticeably whiter tips in the fan than a true eastern, not quite as pretty as a rio tho. We did have a white chick on the ranch in August, haven't seen it since. I imagine a bird that easy to spot fell victim to predators. My bird last year was a straight eastern, I'd love to kill a magnum hybrid tho and do a full body mount!
