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.