5 Strange Places Wild Turkeys Like to Roost

Travel the country enough to hunt wild turkeys and you'll see birds roost in some unusual places.

1. Telephone Poles

In places like Texas, where roost cover might include live oaks where available, wild turkeys might also choose other places to roost. This sometimes includes telephone poles.

2. The Ground

Ask anyone who has hunted Hawaii, and they'll tell you those transplanted Rio Grande turkeys often gobble from the ground in the dark. Why?

No ground predators . . . unless you count human hunters.

3. Manmade Structures Over Water

I once had a non-hunting reader back in my newspaper outdoor-column days tell me they had wild turkeys roosting in tree branches near their backyard swimming pool. They wanted to know what they could do about it.

"Are you feeding them?" I asked.

"Yes," they replied.

"Maybe stop."

As my friends know, I like to call these turkeys "untouchables."

4. Landfills

I know, you'll never see the town dump featured in a classic wildlife painting of strutting gobblers. Still . . .

A friend once told me about locating a northern New Jersey bird on the roost at daybreak and slinking in, then setting up. That strutter, he said, had to navigate a toppled rusty stove, broken bottles and several bed mattresses to come into range. Beautiful bird.

The surroundings, not so much.

5. Barnyard Buildings

I was hunting out West, with access permission from the landowner, and simply couldn't figure why the hammering gobbler wouldn't come to my sweet hen yelping in the nearby river bottom.

By day two, I eased closer, only to see silhouetted hens, with the strutting tom, on the roof of a big building near a cattle feed lot before fly-down.

Again, untouchables.

What's the strangest turkey roost you've ever seen? Comment below.

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