It was a beautiful late spring day when my husband, Jay, ventured out for a round of golf. He decided to play a New Hampshire course he’d never played before but had heard was good. Placed with a threesome of thirty-somethings, he immediately struck up a conversation about the course (the others had played it several times) and the hazards that lay ahead.

At the 10th hole each of the players teed off, the best golfer of the four hitting long and straight down the middle of the fairway. Two of the others hooked the ball to the left and my husband’s ball, though straight to begin with, hit the fairway and rolled off to the right near the woods. Disappointed with the result, he was searching for his ball near some bushes when he heard a strange sound coming from the underbrush, but chose to ignore it.

After locating his ball near the base of a tree, he lined up to examine the best possible angle for his shot when, again, he heard the sound and, out of the corner of his eye, saw some movement in the bushes. Looking up he spotted what he later described as one of the biggest wild turkeys he’d ever seen. “Holy cow! That’s one big bird!” he heard his companions exclaim from some 30 yards away.

Without taking his eyes off the turkey, Jay began to back off slowly. The bird took this as a signal to advance­slowly. My husband moved slightly to the left. The bird mirrored his movement. Jay stepped to the right. The turkey did the same. Then, without warning, the turkey took flight directly at Jay’s face. As he fell flat on his back, he remembered thinking, “Turkeys don’t attack people.”

Scrambling quickly to his feet he began to “dance” with the bird while holding his nine iron out in front of him to keep the bird at bay. They made a full 360-degree turn before the turkey retreated to the woods. The other golfers rushed in, incredulous.

Jay pulled himself together and set up, once again, to take his shot. “Hold on, Jay,” one of the guys said. “It’s coming at you again.”

Sure enough, the turkey wasn’t finished. Poking its head out of the tall grass, it glared at the players and flapped its wings as warning, then retreated after having the last word.

“Just take the shot, Jay. I got your back,” one of the guys said, placing himself between my husband and the woods. Jay duffed the shot but got it far enough away to feel safe from attack, and so the round continued.

Throughout the next eight holes the conversation rarely deviated from “turkey talk” and how bizarre the incident had been. Speculation as to why a normally shy bird would do such a thing ranged from thinking that it must have been a female protecting her family, to maybe it was simply nuts.

When we first moved to New Hampshire the natives told us we’d be lucky to ever see a wild turkey, and we found that to be true. As the years passed however, we’ve seen more and more of them, and now they strut through our yard on a regular basis.

Speaking with N.H. Fish and Game wildlife biologist Ted Walski, I learned why: Wild turkeys became extinct in New Hampshire in the mid 1850s due to habitat loss and over-hunting. But the department began restocking them in the 1970s, and the wild turkey population has expanded to around 35,000 statewide.

According to Walski, sometimes Tom turkeys will get into breeding mode during mating season and “forget themselves,” attacking a human­especially if the person is wearing bright colors. The hen turkeys will protect their young from anyone who gets too close.

After looking at a drawing of a hen and tom turkey, my husband said the turkey that flew at him was probably a female. So perhaps the lesson here is to keep your distance from turkeys, especially in the spring, when the birds are mating, nesting, and rearing young.

The day after the golf incident I was awakened at 5 a.m. by a loud gobbling outside and went to the window to see what the noise was about. There, strolling down our street was a huge Tom turkey, gobbling nonstop in full voice to the female turkey in front of him.

Another state wildlife biologist told my editor that the “turkey talk” was just the tom trying to persuade the female to mate with him. “That’s pretty much all they do,” the biologist said. “After the mating season, Tom Turkey retires to the couch with a beer to watch the ballgame and leaves the rest of the work­incubating the eggs and raising the young­to the hens.”

By Susan Ferber, Master Gardener
UNH Cooperative Extension