All you want to know about turkeys!

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Alls I wanna know is if it’s over-cooked or not.

There’s a row of trees along the back of my property where one spring morning I noticed abuncha blobs about 30’ feet up. Out came the binoculars when one of ‘em moved around a bit, flapped it’s wings and crashed down to the ground with the elegance and grace of a turd vs a ceiling fan.

Then one after the other, ‘like sacks of wet cement’ they crashed down and strutted away as the sun came up.

A good half hour of entertainment that was.

That's funny.
When I was 6 or 7 years old we raised turkeys. They weren't wild turkeys, but their feathers were gray and black, not white.
At night the chickens would all go into the hen house at dusk, but the turkeys flew up into the apple trees. And every morning there would be feathers and blood under the apple trees.
So my parents had us climb up into the trees at dusk and throw the turkeys down. When chickens and turkeys are roosting they go into kind of a trance. You can go right up to them and grab them. When we threw they down they went down ‘like sacks of wet cement’ and my folks grabbed them and put them in with the chickens.

[stevej37]

^^^ Did you ever (as a kid) help butchering chickens?

I did, and it was always a bloody job. Chop the heads off and hope they don't run back into you.

[Evans, Marv]

^^^^ My grandpa would chop the heads off and show me how they would run around like that for a while. I don't know if turkeys would do that. I imagine they would.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Evans, Marv

^^^^ My grandpa would chop the heads off and show me how they would run around like that for a while. I don't know if turkeys would do that. I imagine they would.

I've seen it. Probably why I'm a veggie. No, not really, I was 10 then and I was past 40 when I stopped eating things that had eyes (except potatoes).

[Crowbob]

Chicken lives 17 days with no head. True story:

http://localhost:60736/2023/11/11/this-week-in-history-headless-chicken-lives-for-17-days-in-sault-ste-marie/content.html

[stevej37]

Chopping the heads off was the easy job.
Plucking the feathers was not so much fun.

[id10t]

Originally Posted by Evans, Marv

^^^^ My grandpa would chop the heads off and show me how they would run around like that for a while. I don't know if turkeys would do that. I imagine they would.

1.75oz of #4 lead makes em fall and flop on the spot but I take the extra step of then cutting throat or snapping neck. They flop a little more vigourously if you hit 'em at 40 yards than when you whack 'em at 20....

I would imagine they'd have similar behavior to a chicken if you chpped the head

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by stevej37

^^^ Did you ever (as a kid) help butchering chickens?

I did, and it was always a bloody job. Chop the heads off and hope they don't run back into you.

Yes, as a little kid my mother and grandparents butchered the chickens with the “help” of my little brother and I. It was a family event (absent my father). My grandfather would grab them by the neck and swing their bodies around to kill then. He’d throw them on the ground and they would run around for a while.
One year Mom had to do it herself. She drove nails in a stump, put the bird’s neck between the nails and stretched their necks out, the, CHOP.
My mother hated it and for some reason, at about my age of 6 we stopped doing it.

[stevej37]

^^^ We had a block of wood that was used for the job. It had a raised portion on one end that worked for laying the head/neck over. A sharp double sided axe made it a one swing job.

I can still remember the smell from the kitchen when the pin feathers were burnt off after the plucking.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by stevej37

I can still remember the smell from the kitchen when the pin feathers were burnt off after the plucking.

Me too. And the scalding kettle for plucking. Yuk!
We must be the last generation to know where chicken McNuggets actually come from, and it ain’t pretty.

[stevej37]

^^^ yup

[stevej37]

I also remember that the hen chickens were huge in that day.
One cleaned and roasted chicken would feed 8 people easily.