We’re talking turkey

Watching and studying wild birds is a passion of mine. I currently have four pet birds sharing my home. I’m quite fond of eating birds, too. And this is the season for eating the biggest birds we can find.

Not many of us go out and shoot a wild turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, which is probably a shame because there are far too many wild turkeys in North Idaho. Instead, when it comes holiday time, most of us rely on the domestic turkey for our gustatorial satisfaction. From what I have heard, wild turkeys do not taste all that good, anyway. Wild or domestic, however, a turkey is a bird, and as I said before, I love all aspects of birds.

Turkeys are most closely related to the grouse and pheasants, both of which are also quite tasty, and in Africa and India, or in barnyards here, to the guinea fowl and peafowl, respectively, which I have not tasted. Domestic chickens, of course, fit into this group, too, and hearken back in wilder days to an Indian jungle fowl origin. There is though, evidence of domesticated chicken breeds in China 5,000 years ago.

Wild turkeys are native to North America and were originally found throughout wooded parts of what would become the Eastern, central and Southwestern United States, and in similar areas of Mexico. Turkeys were, in fact, domesticated in Mexico and taken to Europe by explorers in the 1500s. They were returned to North America by English colonists.

Both wild and domestic turkeys have done very well in terms of population growth, but domestic turkeys don’t do so well on longevity. Wild turkeys not only thrive throughout their original ranges but have been introduced into the Northwest, including Oregon, Washington, Idaho and southern British Columbia and Alberta. They have flourished here, too, often to the detriment of native grouse populations, and are thought of by some ecologists as giant starlings.

Domestic turkeys are prospering, too. They are produced in this country at a rate sufficient to give each man, woman and child in the United States their very own turkey each year, around 300 million birds. They are allowed a life span of about 7 months; and they are worth many billions of dollars.

So, I thought that you’d like to know a little more about your fowlish benefactor this holiday season. To many who know the domestic turkey best, they would consider them foolish rather than fowlish. Through selective breeding to get a better table bird, turkeys have been turned from their iridescent blacks, browns and reds to an all-white plumage, males have become so large and full-breasted that they cannot fly or breed, females must undergo artificial insemination, and they are all really stupid.

In my mother’s early teens, she lived on a turkey ranch in Oregon for several years. The young turkeys would arrive from the hatchery with no common sense at all. Her job was to place the birds on their roosts at night. Otherwise, they’d all huddle together on the ground, and the birds in the middle would suffocate. Eventually they’d learn to roost on their own, but if frightened, the whole flock would again clump together and kill many birds.

She recalls turkey roundups, where several thousand birds would be herded into a coup for vaccination and banding. Without freezer facilities in those days, all turkeys were fresh-killed, so they’d leave the ranch a few hundred at a time until, by Christmas, the last had gone to market.

You’ve probably also wondered why turkeys taste so good, so here’s a little turkey biology to explain. Turkeys are predominantly a ground bird. Thus they have well-developed leg musculature (drumsticks). Leg and thigh muscle (dark meat) is dark because it’s rich in myoglobin, a red pigment that is good at storing extra oxygen for prolonged muscular activity. Turkeys, pheasants and grouse are great runners.

Domestic turkeys don’t fly, but if they did, they’d use their breast muscles to move their wings. Grouse, pheasants and wild turkeys are not long-range fliers but are good at short bursts of very rapid flight. For this activity, they have a different muscle fiber in their breast musculature (white meat) that is light-colored.

Dark meat also stores more glycogen, a sugarlike material muscle cells can use for energy in protracted activity, such as running. Dark meat is thus more fattening, when eaten by a predator such as you, than white meat.

Since that’s probably already more than you wanted to know about the centerpiece of your holiday feast, I’ll spare you an anatomical and physiological description of the heart, liver and gizzard – those giblets in the little bag that’s been tucked away inside the plucked carcass.

I will say, however, that you should not just boil these turkey organs and feed them to the dog. They are great when included as an ingredient in the stuffing. Why else would domestic turkeys have them?