THIS MONTH'S BOOK EXCERPT -- NOVEMBER, 1999

From Turkey Hunting - A One Man Game, by Ken Morgan (color hardback, 194 pp., 1987)

From Chapter 12, "The Preferred Male":
"Back to the preferred male -- no photograph does him justice and no written word is entirely accurate.  He is above all other wild things. While it is true that he exhibits all the personalities and traits described here and in other writings, he is a cut above.  He is the reason the wild turkey exists as a species.  I will attempt to explain what he is the best I can, and how to deal with him in a sporting manner.

To say that the preferred male wild gobbler deserves a chapter all his own would be a tremendous understatement.  He needs several volumes for himself.  He is that important.  I will, however, deal with him only briefly here.  If you hunt turkeys very long, you will make your own summaries anyway and I have not yet found two people who see him in exactly the same light.

A preferred male turkey is one which has come to be favored by more than one or two females of the species within a given stretch of woods.  How this comes about, I do not know.  I used to think it had to do with the way some males gobble.  Then I began to think it was the way some of them displayed or strutted before their captive female audiences.  Now I say that I so not have a clue as to the reason they are so much more attractive to the he  turkeys than the other male turkeys in their areas.

Some biologists will suggest that the peck order, the ranking system, or power alignment within a flock, determines which gobblers will be selected as the most prolific breeders.  Some claim that the most dominant gobblers are the ones occupying the status of breeding males.  I will agree that often the most aggressive gobblers are those which are also preferred for breeding by the hen flock, but I can cite many instances where preferred gobblers were not the dominant gobblers of the area.  Sometimes, a lesser gobblers is the preferred mating partner of many hens within the locale of a super dominant gobbler who hardly gains the favor of but a few hens.

I do know that these preferred males control the breeding activities of the areas they occupy, whatever the reason.  At this latitude, these preferred turkey gobblers have the uncanny wit to be in the company of a group of hens from mid February until mid April.  These gobblers show much stronger territorial behavior patterns than other gobblers and do set up sort of a generalized daily routine or pattern.

These daily routines unfold according to season.  If it is early in March (here), his routine on good weather days is occupied with the following of a large number of hens around through their feeding grounds.  He usually gobbles a little from his roosting tree which is normally close to the roosting flock of hens and sometimes younger gobblers.  Hens, as you might expect, gravitate to his gobbling, and he flies down near the first arriving females; he struts and breeds the first hen to show the proper response by crouching before him.  The bred hen shakes herself and moves away toward the feeding grounds.  Traveling as a flock, many hens will be "struck" by his display during the day and the old boy will respond properly every time.  Twenty or more hens may be in the flock and he will follow them around all day.  Depending upon food supply, the gobbler and his flock of hens may travel several miles per day, often traveling in a big circle or oval pattern through the turkey woods.  I have observed this phenomenon during the first two weeks of March over two hundred times with at least one hundred and twenty-five different gobblers and hen flocks.