Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Wild Turkey's favorite food?

This time of year, it has to be grasshoppers!
Killed a fall season Tom on Saturday. His crop was chock full of grasshoppers, in spite of the fact that there is plenty of other food around. Must be high-protein, easy to get food source.

I shot a couple of hens last year and their crops were chock full of bees. I can just imagine them standing by a bee hive pigging out. Most of time their full of acorns. Around here anyway.

Turkeys are out making a living every day.....so.... depending on the time of year and what is available becomes their favorite food.

My chufa patches would say chufa and it’s not even close

They'll eat anything that doesn't eat them. Had a Tom, one spring in central Wisconsin, that had a small mouse in its crop. One year the grasshopper hatch was huge, every step created waves of them getting out of the way. Every bird in camp that time, was full of them. Complete dietary opportunists!

^^ THIS ^^ and plenty corn ,soybeans and acorns

Killed a gobbler on opening day one April and his crop was full of corn. I was like, where is corn at this time of the year. Turns out the guys on a neighboring farm were baiting.

I know a guy who would purchase crickets for his foodplots, that was the turkeys favorite spot until they were all eaten.

we can't plant chufa due to hogs

turkeys love a black oil sunflower seed, lots of guys I know fill their feeders up with them before season.


Was killing some birds full of wheat, so I got to investigating, someone setup a ground blind on the line up near the paved road with a ton of wheat around it, where I rarely hunt. Guy even had a pool recliner in it and took a leaf blower and blew a clean trail all the way from where he parked to the blind, so he could slip in quiet. GW busted him about two weeks later.

If the acorn crop was good the previous fall, I'll find the first gobblers I take in the spring to be full of acorns.

If its not acorns, it's undoubtedly clover.

This year, the cicadas are due back. It won't change the season-- it ends 5/8 and the cicadas start emerging after Memorial Day. However, it'll make next year a circus; there will be scads of jakes and jennies running around.

An old guy I used to know walked around on PA gamelands with wheat in his pockets. Guess he figured it wouldn’t show up like corn. I think he was trying to keep them in a general area, not setting up a shot, as he sprinkled it here and there according to his daughter.

Even at 80, he was still out there plugging away, and could still get up the hills, at his own pace anyway.

I’ve seen them gorging on grasshoppers. Probably why they taste so damn bad.