The cluck is a softer sound than the putt. Needless to say, you do not want to putt when you are calling. As you will read below, the putt is a warning call signaling danger to other turkeys. In the video below, you can hear this hen clucking and purring. The cluck can be heard in conjunction with purrs when a turkey is milling about at peace with the world. Unlike the yelp, it is less uniform and more erratic. Like the yelp, the cluck is also commonly used in a series. Hens will cluck to signal contentment or to let other turkeys know where she is. The cluck is another prominent hen turkey sound. Notice how the tone is deeper than most hen calls. Yelping is not exclusive to the female turkey. “Yelp,” “chuck,” and “shock” are just a few of the words commonly used to humanize the turkey vocabulary. There are a variety of words hunters will use to imitate a yelp with a mouth call. Hens will also use a loud series of assembly yelps to gather her flock together. This is in sharp contrast to the excited yelp you will hear in the spring as a hens answer gobbling toms. As a hen wakes up, she will make very soft, content tree yelps. The emotion of a yelp can vary quite a bit. Hens will also emit single yelps as well. These strings are usually very uniform and rhythmic. While hens typically yelp in three to seven-note strings, as you can hear in the video, they can create much longer strings. Hens commonly yelp to let other turkeys know her location. The yelp is the most common of the hen turkey sounds you will hear. There is a video or link to a video of each sound so you can hear and see for yourself a real turkey calling. This article covers seven different types of hen turkey sounds. Learning to distinguish the different calls, what they mean, and when to use them will make you a much better hunter. There are a variety of hen turkey sounds that all mean different things. I also can’t wait to get out into a turkey field and look for scat.To the untrained ear, it may sound like turkeys are just doing a bunch of squawking. It’s good to know that displaying for other males is part of their normal repertoire of behaviors. Males have a rudimentary internal sex organ that is believed to influence the shape of the scat.Īfter learning more about turkey mating behavior, I don’t feel as bad as I used to for my female-less male turkeys. Check that out next time you are in a field! This is due to differences in the internal anatomy of the genders. The males is j-shaped while the female’s is spiraled. One fascinating difference between the genders is the shape of their scat. Males also have a prominent beard - a tuft of modified feathers that can grow as long as 12 inches! Females sometimes have these, too, but they tend to be short and sparse. While similar in appearance the males are bigger and blockier and more colorful than the females with a metallic sheen to their feathers, whereas females are more slender with dull brown feathers. For now though, when you see a flock of turkeys in a field, it is most likely a mixed flock of mature birds. Once all the eggs are hatched, family groups will often combine forming large flocks of young turkeys along with two or more adult females. Males form all-male flocks while the females go off to lay the eggs and rear the young. Since learning this, whenever I can observe flocks of male turkeys during breeding season, I try to figure out who is going to be the dominant tom, who has the most colorful face, the longest snood, the most upright military posture.Ī male wild turkey uses his snood, the blue fleshy piece protruding down over its beak, as well as its wattles, the three red features hanging off its neck, to attract females during mating season.Īfter mating, the big male-female flocks disperse. Studies have shown that females prefer longer snoods. The red coupled with their striking blue faces signals to both their rivals and potential mates their health and vigor. When excited, their wattles (the fleshy protuberances that hang from their neck and throat) as well as their snoods (another fleshy protuberance located above the beak) swell as they become engorged with blood and turn bright red. These dominance displays involve not just strutting, but also gobbling, standing upright with tail feathers fanned, wings dragging on the ground, making non-vocal hums and chump sounds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). The dominant tom gets the pick of the females. They strut at each other (and sometimes fight) to establish dominance. Wild turkey males use changes in facial color as well as strutting, gobbling and displaying their feathers to show their dominance and to attract females during mating season, which occurs in April and May in this area of New Hampshire and Maine.Īt the start of the breeding season, it is mostly males doing the strutting.
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