I saw a strange gobbler that was taken the last week. He had a 9 3/4 inch beard , little pointy 5/8inch spurs and a jake fan ,15 lbs. Whats the deal, hatched late in the summer 04 ?

My guess would be Hatched Early in Spring 05 ..

my guess is that it needed to be out of the gene pool.

The second longbeard I shot in WV this year had a 9 1/2" beard, 3/4" spurs and he weighed 14 lbs. That is the second bird I have shot in that area that had a very light weight...the other was about 7 or 8 years ago and weighed 15 lbs, had a 10" beard and 1 1/4" spurs. I could not see anything visably wrong with either turkey and both gobbled as if they were healthy birds.

Sometimes you just shake your head and move on.

-Eric

this is related, my friend shot a 17lb 10"beard 1" spurs but had a fan like a jake in georgia, what's the deal with this? Off the same property he took a gobbler 20lbs fullfan, 1 1/4 spurs but the beard was about 4" cutt off straight at the bottom and blonde the last inch?

T.W. the broken blonde beard is beard rot. Ive killed a couple w/ it. I guess the other tom just still has a butt like a teenager! I thought the one I saw was a molt shy of having a full fan but maybe it wasn't developing.