When you are hunting turkeys, being able to estimate the age of the bird you are is important. Hunters generally like to avoid killing hens (female turkeys) of any age, and when going after male turkeys, the fully mature turkey is considered to be fair game. Likewise, after a kill is made, most hunters would like some idea of the age of the turkey they have taken out. Of course, deciding that you want to know the age of a turkey and actually figuring it out are two different things. After all, turkeys don’t exactly carry ID. The good news is that there are away for you estimate the age of a bird, even from a distance. One of the best rules of thumb is checking out a turkey’s spurs. The spurs can give away the age of a turkey relatively easily, as long as you know what to look for.

Before you can start measuring up the spurs of a turkey, however, you need to know the right way to look at the spurs. Spur measurements can be taken by looking at the side view of the turkey. The outside edge of the spur is the guide for measurements – the spur runs from the outside edge up the back of the leg right until the actual leg scales start. Of course, taking this kind of measurement is easy after you have made the kill but a bit more difficult when you are trying to gauge the age of a turkey on the run. When trying to age a turkey while hunting, make sure you check it out from the side and do you best eyeball estimate.

But once you have a measurement of the spurs, what does it all mean? A general rule of thumb is that the spurs get longer as a turkey ages. The shortest spurs are on jakes – one year old turkeys. The spurs on a jake grow to a maximum length of 7/16” – and often can be quite a bit shorter. By the time a turkey gets to be two years old, their spurs usually range from ½” to 15/16”.

Turkeys that are three and four years old have longer spurs still. The typical spur length for a bird of this age is between 1” and 1 7/16”. By the time a turkey has reached five years old (full maturity) and beyond, the spurs generally range from 1 ½” to 2 ¼ in length.

Of course, these general guidelines don’t tell the entire story. There are a lot of reasons why turkeys might have spurs that don’t quite match up to their ages. One of the biggest reasons is terrain. Turkeys that live in areas that are hilly or very rocky may have shorter spurs than expected for their age because they get worn down as the turkeys move around. On the other hand, turkeys that live in areas that are relatively flat and have sandy soil may have longer spurs than expected for their age – the spurs on these turkeys are also usually extremely sharp, because there is nothing to wear them down. Although it may be difficult to make any judgments while stalking the turkeys, after a kill, you can usually tell if the spurs have been worn down at all. If your turkey’s spurs are not every sharp and have cracks, you can assume that they have been worn down and that the bird may be older than the actual measurement indicates. Broken spurs are another indicator than all of the spurs have probably gone through a wearing down process.

Turkey spurs are a good guide to age, but if you still have questions, compare the spurs with charts of turkey feather patterns by age to get a complete picture.

Turkey, part of one of the biggest family dinner traditions in the United States, is a bird native to North America. But not everybody knows much more than how to carve and eat the turkey, let alone how or where to hunt it. To help those that aren’t aware about the facts, here is a gathering of information that might help anyone get up to speed on wild turkey facts.

Fully-grown wild turkeys have a small head, which is of red color and bears no feathers whatsoever. Long reddish-orange to grayish-blue legs, a dark brown to black colored, feathered body are common to most turkeys. Male birds additionally have a red throat. Most turkeys have caruncles on their heads and fleshy flaps close to the bill that expands when the turkey is excited. This happens due to blood flowing into the flap and expanding.

A turkey’s foot has four toes and in male birds, there is usually a spur found on the lower leg of the bird. Fully-grown wild turkeys are often called a tom or longbeard. Generally, turkeys have a dark colored, long and fan shaped tail. The color of the overall feather dress is of dark color. As with so many other birds in the wild, turkeys display big differences in their overall shape and color when it comes to sex. The male turkey is generally much bigger than the female turkey and his feathers also display great iridescence in such beautiful colors as copper, red, bronze, purple and green. Female feathers are overall more dull and in the range from brown to gray. Most male turkeys have white coloration on their wings, lower back or tail tips.

Turkeys have somewhere around 5,500 feathers on their body. The tail feathers of a fully-grown turkey have all the same length, while the ones of young turkeys have different lengths. One of the reasons a male turkey is also called longbeard are feathers that come out of the chest of the turkey and somewhat resemble a beard. These beards are generally 9 inches long and sometimes even female turkeys have a beard, depending on their subspecies. Female beards are thinner and shorter than the ones of their male companions. Young male turkeys are also called jakes.

On average, a fully-grown male turkey weighs about 8.2 kg, which is the same as 18 lb, while a fully grown female turkey weighs around 3.2 kg or 8 lb. So far, the biggest recorded turkey as per the National Wildlife Turkey Federation weighed in at 38 lb. Even though they are not seen to cover vast spans of land flying, the average wingspan of a turkey is about 4.8 ft. Turkeys can reach in flight 50 miles per hour and even though most domestic turkeys might never really be seen flying, turkeys are fairly good fliers. Generally, turkeys fly close to the ground and fly never for much more than a quarter mile.

A turkey is often also called gobbler, due to its gobbling bird sound. This sound is used to attract and fight for female birds. Female turkeys can gobble too, but they normally leave it to the male counterpart to do so. Besides the gobbling, turkeys also are able to make other sounds and actually have many different versions of their sounds. Turkeys like to eat grains, nuts, seeds and grass. More than 70% of a turkey’s diet is made up of grass.

There are several subspecies of turkeys all over the world. Most common in the United States is the Eastern Turkey, followed by the Osceola (Florida) turkey, the Rio Grande turkey, the Merriam’s turkey and the Gould’s turkey. If a hunter manages to shoot in his lifetime one of the first four subspecies in spring, he managed a Grand Slam. If he then adds one of the Gould’s kind, he even managed a North American Grand Slam.