Turkey eat snakes
Contributors to this thread:Equipment
From: Condor
16-Feb-06
Last year I shot a hen during the fall season. My buddy and I cut her open and found she had eaten two garder snakes! One 4 inch, one 5.5 inch. Anyone find anything weird floating around a turkey gullet?
From: Appletree
16-Feb-06
I once opened up a largemouth bass with a 6 inch long snake in its belly.
Appletree
From: Deacon Dave
16-Feb-06
I do not find this odd, but just the opposite, snakes eat a lot of turkey eggs. It would take a snake larger than a 4 or 5 inch garder snake tough. Enjoy the great outdoors that God created. David
From: Medicinemann
16-Feb-06
Birds eat worms, and many of them are more than 4-5 inches long.
From: blue wolf
16-Feb-06
Had free ranging farm chickens when I was a kid...a salamander or garter snake would cause a shark like feeding frenzy. Not surprised at snakes in turkey.
From: The Old Sarge
16-Feb-06
I raised turkeys as a kid. The darn things will eat just about anything they can catch.
From: fuzzy
16-Feb-06
Ditto the OLD Sarge....I raised them too, and any snake, rat, mouse, frog, whatever, they caught, was toast! I've seen a flock of 'em kill and eat a 5' blacksnake!
From: Joey Ward
16-Feb-06
Check this out, I saw a flock of turkeys run down a coyote. No lie. Once they had him pinned down, they commenst to eat him. When I got up enough courage to walk to where they'd been, there wasn't hide nor hair of the yote. I haven't turkey hunted since.
I swear.
From: 20ydpin
16-Feb-06
This is going to be my first year chasing turkey, so I haven't personally seen anything like that. However, a friend walked into a large group of turkeys last year that didn't even react to him, they were busy chasing grasshoppers in the sage brush mere yards from him.
From: Earl E. Nove....mber
16-Feb-06
Last fall deer hunting I watched 5 jakes chase an opossum out of the area. No doubt in the opossum's mind that he wanted to leave and stay away from them characters. Not turkeys but ducks. At work we have an enclosed court yard. The last few years a mallard hen has seen fit to bless us with a clutch of young ones. We feed them corn once they get a bit bigger. We have seen several times, the ducks pluck a sparrow out of the air and kill it when it comes to close to their corn. Typically crushes the skull and leaves them lay. It all happens at the blink of an eye and when it's done the duck could care less. Yes I can believe a turkey would eat a snake
From: spectr17
18-Feb-06
Weirdest thing I've ever seen come out of a turkey crop was one of them rubber bass fishing frogs. Hooks and all.
If you want to see asses and elbows over eating a snake, toss one in a hog pen.
From: Shuteye
18-Feb-06
When I would move the chicken feeder mice would run out across the chicken yard. The chickens never let a mouse escape. They ate em like candy. I have also had bass throw up turtles and snakes in my canoe when I brought them over the side.
From: bullelkklr
18-Feb-06
Joey -
You think that is amazing. I was moose hunting in central alaska in september - 2 years ago. I watched a turkey kill a wolverine - poked both eyes out first then just ate him whole...really!
From: fuzzy
19-Feb-06
A turkey I hunt with killed a bigger buck than me last season
:-)
From: Larv
03-Mar-06
Here in Idaho F&G is going to bring in more turkeys to kill the wolves that the Feds grought in.....Really
Larv
From: Teuf
03-Mar-06
But Larv, won't that also decrease the grizzly bear population?
From: bowdaddy
03-Mar-06
I saw 5 wild turkeys do the same thing Joey did ...wait I have it backwards it was after a fifth of Wild Turkey that a coyote came to camp and spoke to me.
From: Longbeard
03-Mar-06
Saw a 3' Northern Water Snake trying it's absolute best to eat a 12" bass last year. I intervened and Mr. Bass went back to swimmin around my dock.
From: Larv
03-Mar-06
After our turkeys eat all the wolves then they'll turn to grizzs and leave the elk alone.........Larv
From: bobby
03-Mar-06
Grew up raising turkeys in a confined barn. We had 4 barns with approximatly 20,000 per flock. When fixing equipment, had to be careful of dropping anything or they would pick at it and if it was small enough, they would eat it. Turkeys naturally pick and eat at shinny or moving objects in the barn, so anything a wild one could get ahold off does not surprise me.
We had an old timer in town who would tell tourist that he would goose hunt by tying a line to a ball bearing with a hole in it and put it in a field. He told them the first goose would eat it and "crap it out" and the next goose would come along eat it again. By the end of the day he said he would have a whole "stringer" of them to take home!!!!
From: bear
06-Mar-06
Let me start by saying that I feed many wild turkeys in my front yard - up to 90 birds at a time. They spend hours each and every day of the year at the feeders and I've been doing this for lots of years. I've never seen anything like what I saw two days ago. Many other birds, large and small, eat right with the turkeys, right alongside of them with no agression shown at all. Two days ago I watched a tom reach out real quick, snag a "camp robber" or "whiskey jack" as some call them, peck it to death and proceed to eat it. The other toms went nuts trying to take it away from the killer but to no avail. When he had killed it, he threw it up in the air like a cat does with a mouse. Within 3 or 4 minutes he had completely eaten the jay except for the feathers. Also - four times I have watched mature bald eagles try to catch a mature tom and all four times he failed. But the attempt was real, three times the eagle hitting or landing on the ground. The flock of turkeys goes nuts when that happens. Bear
From: Blue Buck
07-Mar-06
My cousin found a spent .30-.30 casing in the gizzard of a tom. The end was crimped so it must have been in there for a while. That bird must have thought it was a grasshopper.
From: HeadHunter
07-Mar-06
I found a turkey head in my fries at McD's.
From: Fahey11
30-Aug-21
Thanks for sharing this wonderful post. google
From: Shuteye
31-Aug-21
When I raised pheasants and would move the feeders, the mice was scatter but never get away from the pheasants. Same with the chickens. I have seen ospreys catch snakes. Eagles catch them too and take them to their nest for the young.
From: Basil
31-Aug-21
Found several little pink baby mice in a Tom’s crop one time.
From: Basil
31-Aug-21
Found several little pink baby mice in a Tom’s crop one time.
From: APauls
31-Aug-21
We had chickens and turkeys growing up. Ya if anything ever moved they'd hammer it. Watching chickens take big bull frogs was fun. Heck the ducks ate the frogs too.
From: drycreek
31-Aug-21
Dayummm ! The first liar ain’t got a chance !
From: Rupe
31-Aug-21
Was at my buddies house and he was cooking steak for us. As we were sitting outside around the campfire enjoying the food one of chickens ran up and snatched a huge slice of steak off the plate. Soon the 4 other chickens were fighting over an 8 ounce chunk of meat. It was hilarious.
From: 4nolz@work
31-Aug-21
I found a rubber worm in a crop once apparently pecked off a snag in a dry swamp
From: redquebec
31-Aug-21
I have personally witnessed turkeys eating insects, young snakes, berries, little baby mice in a nest, baby birds that fell out of a nest, and just once...a toad. Kentucky is packed with turkeys, I love watching them.
They're somehow the smartest and dumbest animal in the woods?!?!
From: Milhouse
31-Aug-21
Turkeys, pheasants, chickens.... all omnivorous. We raised pheasants and turkeys when I was a kid. It was great fun to turn mice loose in the pen, and see how long before the birds would have him..... we were blood thirsty savages.
From: Milhouse
31-Aug-21
On another note, I remember reading an article in Outdoor Life magazine, as a kid, that said Whitetail deer were observed (by biologists) eating ducklings in North Dakota.
From: Zbone
01-Sep-21
Have a series of photos somewhere on one of my flash drives of a deer eating a frozen dead rabbit... There's a bunch of photos out there online of deer eating baby birds and such...
From: TGbow
01-Sep-21
Dang..didnt know they ate snakes
From: Brian M.
01-Sep-21
One winter years ago, I stopped on a bridge over a local river to check for ducks, etc. There was a mallard hen with a frog, head first in its bill. All four legs hanging out. She must have plucked it out of the mud because there was snow and ice along the edge. I don't recall seeing her ingest it, and thought it was a bit big to eat. Had no idea ducks would eat a frog.
