We put camera's in some of our nest boxes and the electric line is laying on the ground that runs to these camera's and often we will see turkeys that CAN NOT CROSS these lines.
Often they will turn around and go around the yard a different direction.
I often wonder if they see these lines as Snakes or something.
They could fly over if they really wanted to go over your fence, but who knows what they are thinking
Connie/Michigan

Hi there....we live in the woods too but also have a large fenced in garden 8ft tall (deer here). The Turkeys will wander in if the gate is left open then they cant seem to get out. They pace back and forth for what seems to be forever. I will often go out and try to shoo them to the gate but if I get to close they suddenly remember they can fly. I attribute this to...well.... being a Turkey I guess LOL!

I don't know how tall your fence is, but our fence is only 4 feet high. When our Guinea Fowl were young, a female turkey flew over that fence everyday to check out the guinea fowl in the pen. She would hang around out there for hours. I assume she was thinking those were baby turkeys. By evening, she would fly back out.

Yes ours is 4 feet also, so I know it could fly over easily. Hey, maybe what they say about turkeys' intelligence is true.

I do think they're about as smart as rocks. I know my guinea fowl are.

Turkeys do some really odd things.

I had one in front of my vehicle on the gravel road leading to my property. Even though there were no fences on either side of the road, the darn thing trotted down the road 5 foot in front of my truck (going about 4 mph) for nearly a mile, nervously going from edge to edge, but never leaving the road. It could have easily darted into the woods on either side, but did not. It waited until the first clearing and then dashed onto the grass and slowed down and walked by the woods. I wish I had taken a video, it was totally hilarious.

They do seem to like roads. A few years ago a turkey hen with some half-grown chicks visited my yard every day (I put bird seed on the ground).

One day I heard frantic turkey noises from the direction of the road and went to see what was going on. The hen had apparently gotten half of her brood across the road when a car appeared and the chicks in the middle of the road just hunkered down in front of the car. This is a narrow low-traffic road and the driver was sitting there laughing. I shooed the chicks off the road, to the great relief of the hen. She took her brood off into the woods.

Claire