Thanks for sharing Curt Congrats Again! TD.

Great story, with a surprising twist autopsy.  Even bringing in a special forensics team.

Pretty neat, congrats.

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!   :eek:    :eek:    :eek:    :eek:

Neat story!!    

My first thought is a youth hunt. Kids always seem to want to take body shots.

Sitting on ready....for the rest of the story....      

......another eason I wanted to bring the bird to the DEC office is to see if they would deem him "unfit for human consumption". If so, I would be given another tag to get something "hopefully" edible.

I'd done this about 15yds ago with a gobbler I shot with a shotgun. He'd acted normal, gobbling and strutting his way in. But when I went to pick him up it was apparent he'd tangled at some point with something....he had a big greenish festering wound on his,wingbutt/breast area....and it smelled foul!     They gave me another tag....

When the biologist came out he looked the bird over and I showed him the lead shot. Explained I'd killed it with my bow and showed him the beard I'd already cut off before my discovery.

After examining it all he came to the conclusion that I already had....this "lump" was caused by his encounter with a shotgun some time back in his life. This was no wound from anytime recent, everything was neat and healed over except for this giant "lump" that was leftover.

He without a doubt deemed him unfit, and offered to give me another tag for that reason....but there was now a catch....I would have to turn over the entire bird to him...every part, including the tail, beard, and spurs!

No way!!  This bird meant way too much to me to even think about giving him up for the possibility of shooting an extra bird....no way!

Besides I still have another tag to fill...

So I went home and got back to taking it apart...

Here's the entrance side, you can see the end of my GT trad shaft...

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As far as the beard goes...... when turkeys have an off-colored area like thatUsually reddinsh to yellow), it's from a stressful time in their life....the result is a hard brittle area. They usually eventually break at the point of the damage.......looks like his was damaged enough that only part of it grew longer.

Exit side...the tip of my 1 1/4" VPA 3 blade...
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Again the bh, and another lead pellet that was right by the ball joint of the wing...
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Wow......Great story and hunt Curt.  Good for you for keeping the bird too, and for all the right reasons too.  Great job!

David

Wow pretty amazing and one tough turkey!

A lot of folks still talk about trying to hit the "wingbutt" on turkeys. A lot of us have gotten away from doing so for good reason. One is penetration.  A hit directly on this joint will cause major problems with your arrow getting in far enough to do any damage. But the additional problem is that there is hardly anything there to hit on a broadside bird...

This hit a bit further forward than I like to hit them, but as seen by this pic, it was still behind the wingbutt, both entrance and exit....
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The result was a shot that barely, I mean barely nicked the front of the lungs.....the reason this bird dies quickly was because the big broadhead when through the neck/breast junction where all the Carotid artery, Jugular vein,trachea enters the body just in front of the heart and lungs...note all the coagulated blood that settled up in the front of the chest cavity...
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The broadhead after extraction...
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Now,  the million dollar question...."what exactly was inside the "lump"?

What I found was unexpected, well at least the color of it.....
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Best I could figure it was some kind of blood sack that formed from the shotgun blast it took, the bleeding obviously was pretty bad, and his body just never absorbed it as it would a smaller injury...
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It was firm, and fairly dry but not powdery dry or mushy wet either.....it smelled bad, but not horrible.

Obviously it was taxing on his body...he was only 13+ pounds. Looks like he was lucky we had such a mild winter.

So once again it seems I've killed another "wierd" critter, not sure why, but I seem to do that a lot....but.... how boring would this story have been had he been "just another gobbler"        

Curt as always great story and pics.Thanks for sharing.

True, very true Curt.  Very interesting and thanks for sharing with us.  

Thanks for sharing Curt. Great story and pics.

Wow amazing how a body recovers from such things. Cool stuff Curt.

Attta Boy Curt!!  

Well done Curt.......Informative as always  

Way to go Curt. Very interesting!  

Wow buddy! That's a bird your going to remember for sure.    

Congrats my friend for the pics and story and good luck to you and Cade on the next one.    

Tracy

Awesome story and pics as always, thanks for sharing, J