This Turkey Tuesday is about being synchronized, and the function that beards may play in that process. What function a wild turkey’s beard serves is unknown – but many years ago, Lovett Williams postulated that a tom’s beard could be important to help synchronize breeding attempts. As all turkey hunters know, toms have elaborate courtship displays where they gobble, strut, drum, and look as stunning as possible to hopefully secure breeding opportunities. If a tom is lucky, a hen will be receptive to his displays and in so doing, a process starts that requires both birds to be synchronized. In other words, both birds need to be ready to copulate at the same time. As the hen squats, the tom steps onto her back and treads as he grasps the base of her wings, before what’s called the copulatory papillae inside the tom’s vent puts sperm into the hen’s vent. If you watch this process, which is depicted in the first 3 images taken by Monte Loomis, the tom’s beard is very often touching the hen’s head – Lovett believed this stimulus to the hen helped synchronize breeding and fertilization. Who knows, maybe Lovett was on to something! Interestingly, the jake in the last image taken on a recent hunt shows the same pattern – this jake spent several minutes trying to mount a standing hen decoy and he consistently tried to place his beard on the back of her head. The take home is beards function in ways we don’t fully understand, but it’s certainly plausible that they are important to synchronizing the breeding process.
