Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Cleaning turkeys

I'll be hunting on a river trip in April.
Never turkey hunted before.
I've cleaned pheasants by stepping on wings at shoulders and pulling legs and it makes a pretty nice package. Leaves breast attached to wings, legs are in my hand and guts come out pretty easy.
Can you do with with Turkeys? How much of the head do you keep/ how do you keep the beard if you're so interested?
I was thinking I could cut skin around the beard and keep it that way, but wonder about other ideas?

Please share what you do as I'll be putting it in a cooler and floating some more if we find some.
Thanks in advance,
Jon

I usually just breast them out like a dove and throw the rest away, with the exception of the beard and Spurs. You could boil the carcass and pick it clean for stock. It's just not as palatable as store birds imo.

Just grab the beard and tug, it pulls off fairly easy,

I tried cooking/eating the whole bird a few times, just isn't worth it to me,

pull back the feathers on the breast and follow the breast bone, done.

The wife and oldest daughter take care of the birds around here. I haven't actually done one in years. In addition to the breast for fried nuggets, they take the legs and thighs for enchiladas or pot pie. You want a pressure cooker for that. Cook it then pick it for the recipe. We eat a good many squirrels, so the extra effort is not out of the ordinary.

You can also save the marabou feathers for any fly tiers you might know. Wing feathers can go to a traditional archer for fletching arrows. The wing bones can be used to make a turkey call. Mounting the fan is pretty easy and makes a nice piece for the man cave.

plucked and smoked my share of them. Really a chore when they live in cactus country.
since my family likes fried turkey better than smoked or roasted, I filet out the breast and thighs cut into strips and fry it like chicken. Easy and quick way to clean them.

JonS,

I hunt turkeys here in CO, and usually take a tom every spring.
I tag 'em, take them to the truck, open the tailgate, and proceed to filet the breast meat. CO requires the beard to stay on the bird until final destination, not a problem to cut around it and leave it attached to the breastbone. Skin out the legs and detach, put the breast halves and legs in Ziploc bags, and transport along with the carcass back home. At that point, I remove the beard, maybe the tail if it's really nice, and the rest goes into the trash. Very quick, and easy.
Where are you doing your float trip? Seems like the same method, sans the tailgate, would work just fine.

As far as eating goes- there are some great recipes for grilling wild turkey that I use. They involve marinating before cooking, and result in very tender, non-dried out table fare.

Same here.

+2

Bone out the breast and run it through a meat cuber. Like a pork cutlet. Then bread it and fry it.

My favorite recipe for wild turkey breast is as follows-

For two people, I use 1/2 of one turkey breast. Marinate overnight in Honey Dijon dressing.

Put on the grill at 325 degrees, I use a smoker box with cherry wood chips for smoke.

Cook for 5 minutes, turn over, insert meat thermometer, cook until internal temp. of 165 degrees is reached.

Comes off the grill juicy and tasty, IMO better than any domestic turkey.

Sounds like a good recipe for turkey!!!

breast it out, cut it up in to chunks and fry it like a chikfila chicken nugget.

now you might think I am cazy,i have shot a lot of turkeys but I usually tag one in the fall season when all sizes are legal, I now always shoot a smaller one better eating and more tender.those big tom`s sure look good but are tuff and not as tasty. same as a deer or a elk the smaller ones are always better to eat ! good luck ,Pete53

I agree with others, filet out the breast and call it good. I've tried the thighs and legs many diff ways and they're real tough unless you pressure cook or boil them for a long time. I keep all the legs and thighs on mine and either give them away or use them for crawfish bait.

I too skin the birdand cut down the breast bone and cut to finger size chunks,marinate with Italian dressing and garlic,,grille or fry.
As far as the beard,just pull it out a bit and cut at the base,zip cut the spurs as well.
good luck!!

Breast them out, throw the meat in the freezer for 4-5 yrs and then feed it to the dogs. Turkey sicles.

Tried eating them once, ....once

They tasted like muddy carp.

I've done about everything there is to do to clean a turkey. Plucked quite a few. It's not as bad as it sounds or others make it seem. I've skinned them. I wouldn't do that anymore. Mostly now I just breast them out and either grill them or crock pot em.

You can cut the beard off easy enough if you get some skin with it. I do the same for the tail. Youtube would show you a video I'm sure if you searched there.

The meat is decent, but dry. The legs are pretty useless unless you're starving as far as I'm concerned. They're stringy as hell and just not very good.

I have smoked them, bbq'd them, and deep fried them. Most always they come out tasting pretty good. The dark meat ain't much to talk about. However a breast injected with a mix of butter, curry powder, creole spice and grape jelly comes out mighty fine either deep fried or hot-smoked with pear wood.

I've had plucked and roasted birds that were great. The last one I did was a bird I killed during fall season and saved for thanksgiving. It was so tough we ended up having hamburgers. I threw it out in the back yard and my daughters cats had a hard time chewing the thing. Less risk in cutting the breast meat off and slicing it in steaks across the grain and frying or grilling them.

I use the same Gerber Gator knife I use for field dressing a deer for my Spring Turkey kinda like this: