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Food

Wild Turkeys Are Making the Bay Area a Shitty Place to Be

Gangs of wild turkeys are pecking, scratching and shitting their way across northern California. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, hunting them down and serving them up is an attractive option.
Photo via Flickr user Teddy Llovet

"A turkey turd is huge," Bruce Wurth, a turkey hunter and member of the National Wild Turkey Federation, told the East Bay Express earlier this month. "If you've got fifty or sixty birds standing around your front yard, all pooping, it makes a huge mess."

It's a mess an increasing number of Bay Area residents has had to deal with over the past few years as the wild turkey population there has ballooned. There's no specific data on San Francisco-area numbers, and the most recent statewide data showing a California population of about a quarter million hasn't been updated in a decade. But according to the state's Department of Fish and Game, gobblers now occupy about 18 percent of California, and the populations are "healthy and growing."

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A flock of plump, attractively plumaged wild birds doesn't exactly sound like a menace, but turkeys are indeed causing problems for peace loving Bay Area residents, who have complained since the early 2000s of the increasing population's tendency to mess up their gardens, scratch the paint on their cars, steal food from their pets' bowls, and, of course, leave a mountain of shit wherever they roam.

In the Bay Area, where natural predators such as coyotes and foxes are long gone but where's there's still plenty of food available, word of mouth suggests that wild turkeys present a particular problem. Last year, in an informal survey of the readership of the Contra Costa Times, more than 70 respondents counted 1,618 turkeys in dozens of flocks. The letters the editor received from the East Bay city of Hercules, she wrote, were "tinged with a bit of hysteria."

"They land on rooftops with such force," one letter read, "it feels like an earthquake. They hang out in your yard, pooping on the roof, decks and driveways, and feeding off your flowers, lawn and garden. They do not change their path. In the evening hours they return, back on the streets everywhere and hanging out in the front yards eating and making a mess."

A little cosmetic destruction of a nice flower bed doesn't sound like such a big deal. But run-ins with wild turkeys have sometimes proven to be dangerous. In 2012, an experienced and helmeted cyclist died of internal injuries when he was thrown from his bike after a flock of turkeys ran in front of him during a ride. In the same year, a motorcyclist crashed but survived when a bird flew into him.

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"Turkeys can become aggressive during the breeding season, occasionally even charging, threatening, and acting aggressively toward people," the Fish and Game department's informational page warns. One solution the page suggests? "If confronted by a wild turkey that has lost its fear of humans, an open umbrella may help steer it out of your path."

But hey, Californians—Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Why not take matters into your own hands and bag one of those birds for your holiday table?

Normally, hunting within city limits is a no-go, since it's illegal to discharge a weapon in the metropolitan area. But in recognition of the Bay Area's turkey epidemic, the Department of Fish and Game will grant some residents a depredation permit that allows them to hunt and kill turkeys of particular nuisance.

While wild turkeys are not exactly a prized game bird—they're significantly leaner than the factory-plumped counterparts most of us are accustomed to, and are therefore even more susceptible to dryness once cooked—some hunters praise the meat's "rich and full flavor" and laud the fact that it's 100 percent organic and additive-free. The National Wild Turkey Federation's got plenty of ideas for wild turkey recipes, including Sweet Smoked Turkey and Black Walnut-Crusted Turkey, and in an article published over the summer, Edible East Bay suggests slow-poaching turkey thighs, then basting them with a soy-maple syrup glaze and grilling them.

On turkey day, carving into the very same jerk who took a massive dump on your pristine lawn would be the ultimate revenge.