Turkey Lore

In 1975 I visited a turkey farm in southwest Virginia to write a cover story about turkeys for the Kingsport Times-News’ Weekender magazine. Here is that story.

 Tom Turkey, being held by Lee Akers, was captured on film at the Kyle Akers farm near Gate City by Times-News Chief Photographer Earl Carter.

 Eight-year-old Lee Akers inched forward, picking his steps, gingerly tiptoeing around the fallen cornstalks. Carefully, he stalked his prey.

Closer, then closer, his fingers curled in anticipation.

His steel-blue eyes never flinched. One more step and he’d make his move.

But his prey moved first. Without hesitation, Lee dove, his golden hair falling over his eyes and obscuring his vision.

He’d touched the turkey’s claw but once again the bird had eluded him.

Back up quickly, as if on a bounce, Lee Akers was off and running. But the turkey was too quick. Lee Akers stopped, breathing rapidly. He was overmatched.

And as he slowly moved closer to the westward ridge, the Weekender cover looked more and more in doubt.

Turkey catching was more than a one-boy job.

Lee Akers returned from the barn of his family’s southwest Virginia farm with a fishing net. He drove the eleven turkeys toward the sunlight as the photographer and the writer positioned themselves to cut off any possible line of retreat.

Five of the smaller turkeys hurried by Lee, but he didn’t notice. He was out for bigger game. Tom, the biggest turkey on the Kyle Akers farm. Only thirty pounds, sure, but enough for the three to handle. The photographer remembered two years earlier when a bird twice this size had attacked photographer Charles Dean, ripping his shirt and cutting his lip. The writer remembered the photographer telling him about the severe thrashing the turkey he had given Charles Dean. Neither was ready to give his life for a Weekender cover.

The smaller hens slipped out of the triangular web until only Tom was left in the underbrush. The web tightened slowly, more tightly on the Lee Akers’ side, looser on the writer’s side. The turkey was desperately circling, looking for a hole. Could he possibly sense the weak spot in the web? (The writer.)

Lee lunged with his net, half-trapping the bird.
The turkey flapped his way out of the net and into the waiting arms of 8-year-old, 95-pound Lee Akers. Any of three directions would led to safety — the turkey, as is his custom, chose the only wrong one.

The turkey is a turkey.

Even his rise to most-favored status on the Thanksgiving menu came in a round-about way. When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, they found the turkey being bred in captivity. They exported the bird to Spain and from there to England and France. When the Pilgrims came to America, they brought the bird back with them. The turkey was already a staple for English Christmas feasts — so it was only natural the Pilgrims would use the turkey for the first Thanksgiving.

So let’s talk turkey. And while we’re at it — the origin of the expression “talking turkey.”

Legend has it that an early settler and an Indian were hunting. When it came time to divide up the kill, the settler said:

“You take the buzzard and I will take the turkey.
Or I will take the turkey and you can take the buzzard.”

The Indian replied: “Not once did you talk turkey to me.”

If Benjamin Franklin had had his way, the turkey, not the eagle, would be the national bird.
Franklin reasoned the turkey, by virtue of the fact that it was native to every state in the union, should represent the country on the national seal.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, or that we’d have the Auburn War Turkeys. Advance Boy Scouts would be Turkey Scouts. Philadelphia’s football team would be the Philadelphia Turkeys. Planes would soar like a turkey. And the 101st Airborne Division would be known as the Screaming Turkeys.

Americans consume over two billion pounds of turkey meat each year — more than double from a generation ago. One hundred and thirty-five million turkeys are grown each year in the United States.

Rockingham County, Virginia modestly refers to itself as the Turkey Capital of the world. More turkeys are grown and processed there than any other place in the world. At the county line on U.S. Highway 11, the citizenry have erected a large monument, a bronze turkey on a stone pedestal with the words “Turkey Capital” emblazoned on the stone.

Each year, the Poultry Association sponsors the Friends of Feathers Festival in Harrisonburg. There’s a parade, with turkey-related floats, the International Chicken Breeding Contest, and the crowning achievement of a Rockingham County girl’s life, to be named Poultry Queen.

Rockingham County is the home of a number of major turkey farms — virtual perpetual motion machines. Here turkeys are raised without ever seeing the light of day or touching the earth.

Turkeys are fattened in wire cubicles in giant barns. When grown, they are hung on a conveyor belt and slaughtered, scalded, plucked, processed and frozen. Turkey rendering is extremely efficient with no by-product going unused. Turkey blood is used for fertilizer. And the bones and organs which can’t be sold, are dried and ground and re-processed into turkey meal to feed, what else, other turkeys. If humans could do that, they wouldn’t have to eat turkeys.

No one will claim that the domestic turkey has much intelligence. John Hudson of Harrisonburg, says turkeys on his family’s farm will stick their beaks toward the sky, watching it rain, and will remain in that position until the rain stops or the turkey drowns.

For this reason, many turkeys are now kept indoors.

The turkey will starve to death while surrounded by vast quantities of food, simply because it doesn’t occur to him to eat. On the other hand, some turkeys, when they do decide to eat, will keep right on eating until they founder, strangling to death on their own crops.

Turkeys will run all over each other trying to escape loud noises — often ending up in the same corner of the pen in a pile with their fellow turkeys, smothering the turkeys on the bottom.

When a turkey decides to roost, nothing can change his mind. In the old days when turkeys were driven to market, they could be coaxed onward once they decided to roost. During hurricane Carla in 1961, eleven turkeys tried to roost at their accustomed spot in a tree in the Welder Wildlife Refuge. Eight were blown out.

Thomas Morton, in New English Canaan published in 1637, wrote:

“Turkeys are easily killed at rooste because the one being killed, the others sit fast nevertheless. If the turkey has his head out of sight, he feels safe and will permit a dog to point him.”

The turkey’s digestive system is a marvel. Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany forced turkeys to eat glass balls, hollow lead cubes and wooden pyramids to test the bird’s gizzard. The next day when the experiment was concluded, the turkeys were found to have crushed the glass to a powder, flattened the lead cubes, and worn down the wooden pyramids.

No one knows how the turkey got its name. The name turkey was in use in Europe long before the present bird was found and referred to peafowl. In the sixteenth century the turkey was often confused with guinea fowl and both were referred to as turkey. The early Spanish explorers were no help — at various times, they referred to the crested guan, the horned guan, the curassow and the chachalacas as a turkey.

Columbus was the first European to see a turkey. And also the first to eat one. He was hospitably received by the Honduran natives on August 14, 1492 and treated to a feast of native fowl including the turkey.

Some have suggested that the bird was so named because it was thought to come from Turkey. Others think the name comes from the bird’s call note, which they say sounds like “turk, turk, turk.” Other derivations range from the Hebrew word for peacock — tauas — to the Malayab word — togei. The Indians had over twenty names for the turkey — none of which was turkey.

Wild turkey hunting is permitted in Tennessee during certain weeks of the spring. Limit one gobbler to a person. No hunting after dark.

Eldridge Hawks at City Poultry in Kingsport says he was unloading a truckload of frozen, processed turkeys at a Rogersville market when a flock of turkeys gathered around his truck — to watch.

 

After 36 clicks of the shutter, the Weekender cover session was over. “I don’t know what I’ve got but I’ve got something,” said the photographer. “I hope so,” said the writer, as he backed up in anticipation of a rogue turkey being turned loose. “O.K., Lee, you can put the turkey down now,” the photographer said to Lee Akers.

The turkey’s drumstick barely touched ground before he was off and running. But after ten steps, the bird stopped. He lowered his head and curiously eyed something on the ground. The fish net that had been used to snare him.

 

From the November 1973 issue of Knoxville Magazine (I was the editor and even then fascinated by turkeys)