What they do after flying down, I read years ago that turkeys like to find water. So I ruined my early turkey career finding standing water and positioning myself between that and the roost. After realizing that I had been misinformed, I set about making a life’s work of finding out what turkeys do after flydown.

The truth is that after a hard night on the roost, the first thing they like to do after pitching down is to find some lowly track in the woods. There in the half-light of dawn, there is a vague far off sound. Eventually it resolves into the sound of a motor and after a while, you see the headlights of a mysterious unmarked truck rolling down that track. The turkeys mull about anxiously as the truck draws up into the turn-around and stops. It is a vending truck. A strange little foreign man gets out and opens the sides of the truck and begins serving the turkeys coffee, sticky buns, doughnuts, and wrapped breakfast sandwiches. After 20 minutes or so, the driver closes up, turns the truck around and heads off. The turkeys smoke cigarettes and mull about for a while.

They then go over to a nearby sewer lid, work together to get the lid up, and then pop down the hole before pulling the lid over themselves. After pulling the sewer lid back over the hole, the turkeys navigate through miles of sewer to emerge hours later in a culvert beside a major thoroughfare. You will frequently find them in these culverts feeding on your way home from hunting. In places like Ohio, where you can only hunt until Noon, the turkeys are relatively safe. If they survive flydown and the trip to the roach coach, they only have to slip into the sewer and find their way to the exit. By this time, the hunters are already out of the woods and the turkeys can slip back into the woods and loaf until it is time to fly back to their roost.

I have seen this happen many times. You just have to be very quiet. Find a lonely road with a turnout that contains cigarette butts, stick bun wrappers and turkey feathers. Wait. You’ll see.

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