Thanks for the kind words fellas, always worth the time and effort sharing pix and stories with the "Gang"!
Ok...where was I.... ahhh the next "twist" to this story....
After getting home and eating a good breakfast I grabbed my camera like I always do when I'm about to breakdown a turkey.
So, I check out the entrance side and see the 1 1/4" VPA had broken the radius, ulna, and the humorous bone of the folded wing on the way in..
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And entered right behind the ball joint of the wing...
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Although the BH was completely inside the bird when I first found it, it was apparent by the small hole on the exit side that the BH had come partially out the far side....but in its retreat had worked back inside...
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Next I weighed it...".hmmmm, just over 13#'s"..."awful light for a 2yr old gobbler".
Around here they are usually 18-20#'s...again just figured he was a ladies man and was running ragged...
I flipped it on its back to start to open up the skin on the breast and feel I something hard and seemingly out of place inside the skin on the breast. I kinda shrug it off at first thinking it was just something stiffened up.
What I found after opening the skin was totally unexpected......
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It was very firm, but not rock hard...and as you saw in the pix, even the "normal" side of the breast was very thin and flat.
I knew right away this wasn't a bird I would eat, and decided to take a ride to our DEC regional office that's about 20mins away in New Paltz.
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While waiting for the biologist to come out and examine the gobbler....I got to looking close and saw this....
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Yes, he'd been shot with a shotgun last year as a jake!
More in a bit.....
Topic: "Miss Faith" Gobbler....not a "normal" bird.... (Read 2375 times)
