Pennsylvania Game News - May 2023 - 60

I have watched turkeys fly up into
a grape thicket to feed. They grasped
rocking vines with widespread feet and
stretched their necks to glean every grape
within reach, all while flapping wings and
levering their tails to hold their balance.
It was like being audience to wild ballet,
with a hike the price of admission.
Turkey wings are " cambered " or
cupped. Cambered wings not only capture
and displace more air underneath,
but their curve forces air passing across
the convex upper surface to move faster.
That creates more lift quickly, something
needed to get up in a hemlock tree on a
cold night or to tickle a bobcat's whiskers
with tailfeathers.
Turkeys show their aerodynamic best
when they're up and going, launched out
of trees or leveled off after a flush. Sailing
in what's essentially a controlled fall,
they've been clocked at nearly 60 mph
and, in the right terrain, can stay airborne
for a mile, alternating glides with spurts
of furious wingbeats.
Once, while perched in a tree stand
halfway up a ridge, odd thwacks ricocheted
through the woods upslope,
coming ever nearer. Then I saw the
sounds' source. Turkeys were gliding
down the slope through the trees at my
eye-level, flushed by some threat above.
They passed me, hurtling, on both sides,
15 or 20, necks craning for the best path
and rounded forewings battering limbs
they couldn't avoid with deft yaws and
shifts.
One passed so close that I saw for a
moment its amber eye. It seemed to spot
me, too, in that same flash of time, but it
could pay me no mind. Its attention was
locked on flying as a turkey must, at the
border of lift and gravity through a complex
space, course set for the forest floor
beneath its feet.
More than once, driving through the
hills near Interstate 79's southern end
in the state, airborne turkey flocks have
distracted my eye, gliding from atop some
knob into a hollow across the highway.
I like to ponder the reaction of longdistance
motorists who don't come from
turkey country. Do they wonder what
kind of huge birds just passed over the
windshield? Unlike Aaron's classmates,
do they know turkeys can fly?
GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY
As Pennsylvania spring gobblers holler from the hillsides, the Game
Commission would like to send out a call of its own to a longtime
conservation partner.
Established in 1973, the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) is
celebrating its golden anniversary this year. In the last half-century, the
NWTF has done a world of good for turkeys and turkey hunting - in the
Keystone State and across the country. Nationwide, it's invested more
than half a billion dollars in wildlife conservation and has conserved
or enhanced more than 22 million acres of critical wildlife habitat.
The organization continues to drive wildlife conservation, forest
resiliency and robust recreational opportunities, and in its 50th year set
ambitious goals to carry its mission well into the future. In recognition
of the special anniversary, the Game Commission's marketing division
added the NWTF's 50th anniversary logo to the May 1973 cover of
Game News. It was a much different time for turkey hunting indeed!
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Pennsylvania Game News - May 2023

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