This Turkey Tuesday is about dominance, and how the desire to assert dominance sometimes becomes so obvious when encountering toms during hunting season. Wild turkeys have pronounced dominance hierarchies, there are dominant birds within groups and everyone else is subordinate. Sometimes called pecking orders, these hierarchies begin to be formed when poults are only a few days old, and turkeys spend much of their lives testing these pecking orders. In the wild turkey world, dominance matters. Testing pecking orders often comes into full display when us turkey hunters are lucky to kill a tom, only to see another tom that was with him suddenly attack his fallen “friend”. As those toms approached, they showed no signs of conflict, so what changed once that shotgun blared? Dominance, and the opportunity to assert it. This series of pictures is something many of us turkey hunters have seen firsthand, and it’s an amazing and interesting behavior. One bird is shot, and no matter what the social status of the other bird is, he takes the opportunity to assert his dominance. Often it starts with posturing or strutting around the fallen bird (1st pic), and sometimes it intensifies to the remaining tom treading or standing on the fallen bird (2nd pic). And other times, it gets more personal – with head pecks and attacks to the head and neck. It’s believed that turkeys at least partially recognize each other from their heads, so these attacks seem to be more personal – at least to me. The take home is dominance matters in the wild turkey world and sometimes a successful turkey hunter will get to see how dominance can trigger some interesting behaviors.
Pics by Lisa Scroggins
