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Age???

You can do some fair estimates with beard and spur length. Remember however, beards and spurs wear down, get broken off, etc.

We had a 12 year old turkey harvested with 1 inch spurs. Bird was trapped and banded as an adult, relocated, and killed 10 years later.
 
InfoMan said:
You can do some fair estimates with beard and spur length. Remember however, beards and spurs wear down, get broken off, etc.

We had a 12 year old turkey harvested with 1 inch spurs. Bird was trapped and banded as an adult, relocated, and killed 10 years later.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's old for a turkey. Which brings me to my next question. What is the oldest bird ever harvested & what is their avg. life expectancy?
 
If this is the case, most of the gobblers I have killed are much older than I have given them credit for.

I always thought that a bird with 1 inch spurs would be a 2 year old.

Of the mature gobblers I have killed, which isn't that many (6 I think), 1 inch spurs are the smallest of the bunch.

The bird I killed on Saturday had spurs right at one inch. I guessed him to be 2 years old, due to his spurs, and the way he responded immedietely to my call and came in fast.

I guess I'm not much good at aging turkeys. I am great at eating them though! :D
 
I got this info from a website called "Turkey Hunting's Big Bang Blog". It gives some different info, more like what I was thinking...

But once you have a measurement of the spurs, what does it all mean? A general rule of thumb is that the spurs get longer as a turkey ages. The shortest spurs are on jakes � one year old turkeys. The spurs on a jake grow to a maximum length of 7/16� � and often can be quite a bit shorter. By the time a turkey gets to be two years old, their spurs usually range from �� to 15/16�.
Turkeys that are three and four years old have longer spurs still. The typical spur length for a bird of this age is between 1� and 1 7/16�. By the time a turkey has reached five years old (full maturity) and beyond, the spurs generally range from 1 �� to 2 � in length.

Of course, these general guidelines don�t tell the entire story. There are a lot of reasons why turkeys might have spurs that don�t quite match up to their ages. One of the biggest reasons is terrain. Turkeys that live in areas that are hilly or very rocky may have shorter spurs than expected for their age because they get worn down as the turkeys move around. On the other hand, turkeys that live in areas that are relatively flat and have sandy soil may have longer spurs than expected for their age � the spurs on these turkeys are also usually extremely sharp, because there is nothing to wear them down. Although it may be difficult to make any judgments while stalking the turkeys, after a kill, you can usually tell if the spurs have been worn down at all. If your turkey�s spurs are not every sharp and have cracks, you can assume that they have been worn down and that the bird may be older than the actual measurement indicates. Broken spurs are another indicator than all of the spurs have probably gone through a wearing down process.
 
Here is a handy chart I just found. This is from a sampling of Eastern Wild Turkeys of known ages. These are averages from the samples.

1 year old= avg. spur length = .26 beard = 4.44 weight = 15.5
2 year old= spur = .87 beard = 9.47 wt = 21.1
3 year old= spur = 1.01 beard = 9.46 wt = 21.9
4 year old= spur = 1.08 beard = 9.00 wt = 22.5
5 year old= spur = 1.16 beard = 10.93 wt = 23.8

Source: www.wildturkeyzone.com
 
Birds can also break off spurs from fighting or terrain, to be regrown, just like human fingernails.

I've seen and killed several birds with 1.25-1.5" spurs on one side, and nubs- 1/2" spurs on the other.

One of my buddies killed a fully mature 23# tom 4 years ago on my farm with nubs on both sides.
 

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