Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting turkey wings? keep?

I was cleaning in my garage and I have a box of fans and wings and I wonder why I keep the wings... I may throw all but one set.

Do you guys use wings in you calling for ground beating?
Or attaching to cheap Jake decoys?

Or for putting on your shoulders for a bizarre Halloween costume?

Thoughts?

I use to keep wings and tail sections but I quit doing that. I only keep legs and beards! You can use your hat to beat the ground!

Wing feathers for arrows, you could sell them to traditional archers.

I've in the past gave them to the Navajos. They were extremely happy-------they use in traditional dance & native religious customs.

some will make feathers for arrows out of them

Wings, tails, and body feathers all used for fly tying. There is a nymph pattern called the turkey nymph and it is a good one. You could try offering them on the fly fishing forum.

I tried to give some fans away. My wife tries to keep all of them, but the house isn't big enough for that. The only people who wanted them wanted them for decoys. I'm not for outlawing that, but I ain't helping.

Wings will be welcomed by hardcore tradititonal archers, if you can get in touch with them.

I keep one wing with me while hunting, whether mimicking fly down, dusting, whatever... and it's easy enough to carry.

Wing feathers make pretty good pens if you use ink and like to write. The bones make wing bone calls too. They are kind of fun to make but hard to get sounding right, at least for me.

We make wing bone calls, to hunt with and decorative as souvenirs of the our hunts.

If one wants to service the fly tiers, feathers should be kept/sold in matched pairs. I.e. if one selects the outer most primary feather from the left wing, that feather should be paired with the match from the right wing. Same with tail feathers - bottom right should be paired with bottom left. This makes for consistent and proper curvature of opposing wings on ones flies.

I have a few mounted fans, but don’t keep them anymore. I have enough tail feathers to tie flies with to last a long time Save the beards and spurs.

Save a few fans for the decoys but no wings.

I’ve been doing that for years. Only use the wing feathers from birds I’ve arrowed.

After a while, the only thing I keep from a wild turkey is the breasts and extra long beards.
The legs are always full of cactus thorns and too sinewy to use for anything but soup.

I usually just breast them out on the grass and leave the rest for the varmints to clean up.

Recently made this little neck scabbard for my wingbone call.