Wild Turkey

About the Wild Turkey

The Wild Turkey needs no introduction, but the wild bird deserves a better reputation than its barnyard cousin. A mature gobbler is a genuinely spectacular animal -- bronze body feathers that shift copper, green, and gold in the sun, a bare blue-and-red head, and enough wariness to humble any hunter or photographer who thinks this will be easy.

Texas holds more Wild Turkeys than any other state, most of them the Rio Grande subspecies that thrives in brush country and river woodlands. Flocks feed through the morning and afternoon on acorns, seeds, and insects, then fly up -- surprisingly gracefully for a 20-pound bird -- to roost in the tallest trees along a creek or resaca.

The birds in my photos were part of the flocks working Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park in December 2022, strolling the trails with the confidence of birds that have never had a bad day inside a park boundary.

Park turkeys are the exception that lets you fill a frame; ranch turkeys will school you. Either way, meter for those iridescent body feathers in direct sun -- they blow out easily, and the color shift as a tom turns is the whole photograph.