It's no big deal; GK is a good guy that has posted lots of useful info through the years. Whatever he says on farm machinery is likely the truth, and he he knows a lot about many other subjects.

I think he is wrong in this case, but anything is possible. There are likely thousands of smoky gray turkeys seen in the wild every year, and as I posted above, they seem to be in every population of the Eastern bird. In order for all of them to be escaped domestic turkeys, it would mean that thousands of them are escaping every year, and they are doing it all over the country. And they somehow do it year after year after year. That seems unlikely to me, especially when there is a simple explanation that wildlife biologists everywhere seem to accept. I don't accept everything the nwtf says, but their documentation of the various color phases of the Eastern wild turkey seems very thorough to me.

I first saw a smoky gray in Perry county in the late 60s, and the last time I saw one was in a fall flock maybe 3 years ago. We saw her several times and then she disappeared. I think that it is likely that most of them don't live very long due to their coloration being more visible to predators. The smoky gray turkeys I have seen in AL and GA looked identical to the one that the OP posted, and the odds of any of those Perry county turkeys being domestic turkeys have gotta be greater than one in a million. For a tame turkey to live on our place, it would have to escape from it's home, make a journey of many miles, and then take up with a flock of wild turkeys that were the same age. The odds against that are pretty long, though I guess not impossible.

It doesn't matter a whole lot, though I think it does matter. I've heard of people intentionally killing smoky gray hens to get the "tame blood" out of the flock. I would say don't do that; the GW is not gonna buy it and we will never eliminate it from the gene pool. Just enjoy seeing an unusual turkey if you see one.