Tweeners, super jakes

I call a bird with a full fan, an ~6 inch beard, smallish and a full gobble a tweener. They're gobblers just barely. Super jake may have a mostly full gobble and its head will be white n blue, not just red. Supers have a jake fan and wing patch

The past several years I've been walking smallish gobblers unless they gobble fully in sight or throw up a full fan. My unfounded theory is the breeding season has become strung out too long due to varying as thin populations try to find each other, as young hens come into season. Nest burning strings it out further.

What are y'all seeing?

Called in no less than 15 jakes and refuse to pull the trigger on any bird with a beard 6" or less

I just call thsm gobblers. Full fan equals gobbler, jake equals not full fan. No need to make up more words

This. Ive never even thought about anything other than jakes and mature gobblers.

The bird I killed Saturday morning weighed 13.6#s, 9” beard, 1/2” and slick other leg smallest 2yr old I’ve killed in a long time.

I think that's the only way to classify them. A truly full fan would mean the turkey is getting close to 2 years old. I've seen folks from other states claim that a jake had a full fan, but all the tail feathers were short; hadn't molted at all. I don't consider that a full fan.

I have killed a couple with beard rot that I knew to be mature by their fan, so the beard isn't always a reliable indicator.

Looks like the identity problems has crept over to the Turkey world.

There’s jakes and adults. That’s it. No tweeners.

Serious question, is there a phase where the jake becomes an adult through aesthetics alone, but is not able to sexually reproduce?

Not sure if their gun was loaded, but I’ve seen several jakes topping hens and doing their best.

Yep, a good indicator of age is the wing coverts as well.

Damn ,,, just go hunting . Kill a legal bird be happy .

Trophy not Trophy. Lol

Then listen to folks complain about not hearing turkeys and the state following suit with a later and shorter season. Fun stuff.

Just row with the flow .

We used one of three criteria had to be met at the club

Full fan
Minimum of a 6 inch beard
Minimum of a 1/2 inch spur

I’ve killed gobbling jakes that were in full strut with just their head and rip of fan showing.
I’ve killed birds with heard rot that I thought were jakes but saw the full fan and killed him.

It depends sometimes

I see two ways of looking at it. For biological study, you'd want to classify only jake and gobbler, then qualify within those groups as you look for trends to figure out what goes on within a population. My area is air pollution. There are things I know about that would require years of study to characterize and which nobody is really interested even though there are issues which should be addressed. That, I think, is the technical side.

I'm a hunter who can't see detail past thirty yards and that's only directly in front of the lens. What makes a trophy to me is behavior. All the beard and spur length stuff is inconsequential because I don't see it before I kill it. Say a jake that was born early slips in when you're expecting the older you've been working and moving around on for hours. You shoot it for your last bird of the year thinking you had the old boy when that white head popped over the rise. I know I'd be disgusted. That's why I let them walk.

This wasn't an issue in my area until about six or seven years ago. Since then I've called up three male groups that had redhead jakes, short fan gobblers and a single fully fledged gobbler mixed together in them. That's not counting doublets or triplets.

I’m so thankful to have experienced a time of pure turkey hunting before the sport became infiltrated with politics, anti hunters, hollywood wannabes and morons.

Ignorance, they say, is bliss. Boring, too.

I started Deer/Turkey hunting with my late Daddy in the late 60's. Club had 30 members.....10,000 acres in one Block bordering the River....in Dallas county. Dallas County had a fall season back then and rifles for turkeys were legal....but nobody ever hunted them with a rifle. Only 7 members Turkey hunted. In the fall 10 to 12 Jakes would be taken....Bust a young flock up.....call them back together. Spring....10 to 12 mature Gobblers were taken. Nobody complained nor were jealous of one another. Just simple fellowship and fun was had. Those were the BEST Days I have ever experienced.....and I'm 65.

This is for the guys that say they want shoot less than 6 inch beard - seen a few inch beard w 1 3/4 spur - seen 1 1/2 inch spur w a baby beard
Some times the no beard to little beard is baddest dude n woods

Full fan gets shot - beard rot happens and a 2 year old can hav a 12 inch beard

If you want some frustration then try to call up only jakes consistently. Not really to the point, however.

Yeah and the,,,,, I'm a ethical hunter bs

And Turkey contests…

Seems overly complicated to me. Turkeys seem fairly straight forward to me


You yelp, they gobble. Full fan + gobble= shoot and then move on to the next one.

Back in the golden years one could carry binos and check out the spurs
TTM

I just let them get close enough

Whenever I set up, I put out yard sticks in the ground standing straight up, a scale if you will, so I can gauge the length of said bird like the hunting public measures theirs, except I do it before I shoot them. I pass all the small birds and only shoot true trophies.

Y'all making this harder than it's gotta be.

If he gobbles...

Ain't nobody checking beard nor spur length before shooting. At least I hope not. That's as boring as deer farming.

I will walk away from a round gobble 2yo to get made a fool of by a probable limbhanger, though. That's turkey hunting to me.

What in the world are you taking about?

Aging turkeys and dominant gobblers etc.. sound exactly like trying to make it like deer hunting.


Full fan + gobble = shoot.

I would venture to guess that approximately 8/10 people who claim to be able to age a turkey on the hoof, in the "heat of battle" are completely, totally FOS

Haha aging a Turkey? As stated above…a Turkey with a full fan will see his last day on earth with the pull of my trigger…unless he’s one of the 1-2 I miss a season 😂

I can see where you'd take it that way, but no. Most people into antlers only care about measurements. In fact many of the serious ones I know think in terms of sweat equity, cell cam pics and killing on a food plot with no real hunting. The only qualification for trophy status is the tape measure. You can't measure what makes a gobbler a trophy.

That's why I'll walk away from a 2yo, after I've already killed one. Older birds offer more of a hunt, most of the time. I like hunting turkeys much more than killing them.

You can tell a 2 year old from a 3 year old, BEFORE he is dead? How do you do it?

I had a system that I thought worked pretty well for telling the 2s and 3s apart AFTER killing them, but the biologists on here told me it wasn't reliable. If you can tell them apart when they are still alive, that's very impressive.

This thread needs some chicken litter spread on it

I suspect you can tell the difference between a younger gobbler and an older bird by sound and behavior. Your younger bird is going to be a 2yo more often than not because that is what exists within a population.

Someone told me them jakes is good eatin’. I dunno about tweeners & soupers.

Chit was spread on this one early and often

Aldeer threads generally end at ten or so posts. This is the bullshoot part for entertainment purposes.

I sometimes imagine that I can tell a gobbling turkey is a jake, but would have to admit that I have been wrong often. There have been times I thought a turkey had a weak gobble and was likely a jake, and then turned out to have a long beard. I actually had it happen this season. I got on a turkey that had a real short gobble, and didn't want to hunt him because of that, but he was the only game in town. He turned out to have a long beard when I finally saw him. I still didn't kill him; he might have had a short gobble but he was no dummy.

I've also gotten on turkeys with a strong gobble that I never even thought might be a jake, only to find out that they were.

But a 2 year old gobbler is capable of shaking the ground with his gobble, as much as a turkey that is older. His feathers are the same as an older bird, he can weigh over 20 pounds and have a thick 12" beard and have spurs that are over an inch. I don't believe anyone can say that a turkey still alive is 2 or 3.

I have thought it possible to age them after killing them. Spurs can give you a clue; not just the length, but the curvature also. I have thought that the amber in the end of the beard was the most definitive way to separate a 2 year old from one that is 3 and up. An older turkey will have beard ends that are all black, while the 2 yr has a lot that are amber. Lovett Williams thought the method worked, but some of the current researchers say that it doesn't. I think the exceptions are likely caused when one gets beard rot and the beard breaks off, but I could be wrong.

I still look at them and try to guess their age, but it's just a curiosity and it is only done after the turkey is dead.

I’ve given up on aging them by beard or spurs, live or dead.
Information from trapping and banding them have done away with that for me.

Years ago we had a gobbler that we thought was as a Jake. Very distinctive gobble that we called him the screamer. Finally killed him and had over 1 inch spurs and 11 inch beard. Figured he’d been shot before and had a damaged vocal cord of some sort.

I have killed what would be classified as 4-5 yr old easiest bird I ver killed and then a 2 yr old the hardest.

I remember some guys on a club that would call in jakes and shoot over their heads and scare the heck out of them. They said they never killed a 2 yr old after that. They were impossible to call in as 2 yr olds.

Yeah, I used to believe I could age them pretty good. I believe now, that i can tell if ones a jake, haha.

Y'all are talking measurements. The only time I know a measurement, other than will it hang on a limb or not, is if I have to check one in. Assessing age with certainty, from simple in the field measurements seems impossible. You may do so with some probability within a reasonable confidence limit, but you'd have to be able to exclude outliers based on other knowledge. I'm not seeing it in terms of science.

You can really get sideways trying to compare what you reckon from observation and experience versus the limited conclusions you can make from scientific study. I spend my professional time measuring and analyzing air pollutants scientifically. I often have to remind people what we actually know from having eliminated possibilities is different from the assumptions they can make from personal observation. The subjective observations are generally what we eventually pare down the data to find. Eventually. In between there is confusion if you try to make one match the other.

Remember how Lovett Williams was trashed over his idea that drumming was from rapidly vibrating tailfeathers? That was the appropriate guess based on what had been seen in other species. It was based on data erroneously applied to the turkey.

For a hunter, guesses must be made based on experience as the hunt progresses. Over time you develop a feel for it and prove it out by success. Talking yourself out of it based on what someone else says or a dubious data set is self-defeating.

I wonder is this tweener thing an indication that nest burning is more of an issue than they think and more than they can find with the studies they do.

I’ve killed a few jakes I would’ve sworn were mature birds as the hunt progressed. A buddy killed one I called in actin all grown up full strut, booming gobble, the works. Problem he was in sage grass we couldn’t see but the top 1/3 of the bird.

Gotta set them measuring sticks out like Ol hevi

I look for beard length. I want to make sure he has a long beard and not a nub. I do this because I have called up Jake’s that have had a booming gobble and long beards that have had weak gobbles. I don’t kill Jake’s but I could care less if he is a 2 year old or a six year old. If that beard is hanging it’s a done deal for me.

Howl = whild Bill

Full fan gobbling bird will get shot. Most of my hunts, I don’t see the beard. I’ve killed several 1”+ spurred birds with less than 4” beards “beard rot”.

I’ve done this over 40 years and I’m still having difficulty figuring out how to walk away from a 2 year old. Keep believing that brother…….if you really do, and I’ll gladly help keep him a 2 year old.

Struck one up one evening after a front passed through. He cut me off and full fan strutted up/peeked over about 30 yds with a stubby 4” beard. I kept looking at his beard but he didn’t act like or sound like a young bird, I smacked him and he was toting a pair of 1 3/8” spurs, weighed 22.5lbs

Y’all know the difference in how they walk. Turkeys are a lot like people, that’s what makes them fun to hunt

Y'all keep typing full fan like every bird you shoot throws it up. Must he some easy birds y'all hunting if they come up waving at you.




Anybody know what yhis thread is about now? Sure ain't where it started.

Carter - shooting over turkeys as jakes is one of the dumbest things i ever heard in hunting - whipping way too good for those guys
I also hear dumbies say before - i could call them in before season now i cant - because u already educated them u big dummy

I wasn’t in that club, those two were killers but didn’t wanna share. I guess you can say karma cause after that they weren’t killing either. LOL

I'm surprised people can consistently call jakes up on purpose. I've had them show up. I've had them follow me around. I've called one near and walked over to look at it. Calling them to a youngster's gun on purpose, that's been pretty iffy. Gobblers are a surer bet.

I believe a lot of gobblers got an education on hunters when they were jakes by watching hunters trying to call up gobblers. They skulk around looking. They stand on a road or ridge listening to you coming. They are conditioned to ignore calls and look for hunters when they don't.

Not sure what it’s about now but it started out as a way to over complicate turkey hunting

The original post was about behavior and plumage and what others see. Didn't make it ten post before it went sideways as people with no observations to offer made it about themselves.

Of course if people stayed on topic, threads would be five posts long and much less entertaining. So, there's that.

Kinda like how after shooting doves for a while you don’t get them confused with every other bird that flies over

I would guess you are being generous. Probably more like 9 or 10 out of 10!

The "if I am ignorant, everyone else must be also" egocentric fallacy rears its head again.

Full fan gobbling turkey is dead.

I agree with PCP on the color of their beard tells a story about how old they are. Also the size/color of their head and some of the really old birds will have extra scaly looking legs from what I’ve seen but who knows

If I think he ain't a jake, I'm killing him. Respect to you guys that only kill gobbling, strutting turkeys.

I'm struck by how many jakes people call in. I've turkey hunted since the late 80's, killed tons and tons of birds, and virtually cannot remember calling in a jake, and have never killed one unknowingly in the Spring. Now when we were young boys we graveyarded them fools in the Fall, but heck nothing was safe back then (and it was uncommon to get a chance at a longbeard in the Fall). We'd bust them up and call 'em back, and jakes and hens was about all that ever came in, you didn't bust up and call back longbeards.

Maybe it's how different we hunt? 99.9999% of my hunting since the 80s has been mountainous Nat'l Forest birds, and I don't "deer hunt" turkeys....if he ain't gobbling (like a grown turkey), I'm not even going to that turkey. But then again, I almost never hear jakes gobbling either. And in all those years, I cannot remember one hunt where a jake came in. I feel like if you're hunting private land with lots of food plots, and/or just sitting up on a field and waiting (deer hunting turkeys), then you'd probably encounter jakes more commonly. But in them mountains, if he's telling the news, it's a longbeard. I guess my point is, by default due to the way I hunt, I'm never even going to a turkey that isn't already identified as a mature gobbler.

Kinda just an odd topic, because y'all talk like it's commonplace.

Ikillbux ,,,, was pretty common here to call up jakes . Course I ain't hunted them in a few years .

Few of them gobble pretty damn good . Some strut too

I don't have a problem tell jake from tom. I hunt them close up . I never see the turkey till he's 30 or so yards away at times its closer

It sounds like you just called Mr. Turkey an ignorant egocentric.

Maybe you could give Michael Jordan a lesson in how to shoot a jump shot while you are at it.