Just a couple of miles from my house is a long streach of farmland. Open pastures, uncut woods. You can literally drive for miles and not see a house. There is a flock over there, I see them a lot when I'm passing thru to my house close to sunset. There must be between 30 and 40, we lost track last time we tried to count around 25. And they will cross the road in a flock, never paying attention to the car or to our intrusion. I also have the same thing going on with a lot of deer around here too. Broad daylight and they will just stand and stare at you. The turkeys are supposed to be shy, I had never seen but one before and I've been a pretty avid outdoorswoman all my life, riding horses, camping and on dirt bikes. I was so shocked, I just stopped in the middle of the road and watched them pass. I understand the population is getting much larger, maybe that has something to do with it. I'm no expert, but they look the same as the ones here.

Hey min, perhaps your dog would like to watch the turkey from OUTSIDE the window!!! Jan

Now this is an interesting discussion. I had a very funny wild turkey experience. My neighbours have a pair of domesticated wild turkeys - though when Tom struts, puffs and gobbles, he looks pretty wild. I was sitting on my front porch when the pair came visiting a few days ago. They gobbled around for quite some time, and eventually Tom seemed to become curious. He approached the porch, jumped up onto it, looked me in the eye, gobbled, and jumped right onto my lap! Boy, was I startled. I flung him off and went inside the house. The pair stuck around all afternoon, hanging out by my bonfire pit. The female spent the afternoon rolling around in the ashes, while Tom stood by gobbling. It was a bit startling to have a wild turkey jump on your lap, but it sure was funny.

ThunderBoltBee, They are amazing! Turkeys; they're not just a side dish for cornbread dressing and cranberry sauce! LOL I don't use any millet mixes in my bird feeders because I have to battle the non-native English House Sparrows (HoSP) tooth, beak, and nail. Millets attract them like magnets. I have a Purple Martin colony (April-August), nesting tree swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, nearby bluebirds, and various other cavity nesters that the HoSP love to kill. They will go box to box breaking eggs and killing chicks to clear "their" territory of other cavity nesters. I trap all them all breeding season and have managed to clear my native birds' immediate nesting territories of these pests. While the HoSP will eat black oil sunflower seed, if they're starved to it, it's not their favorite food so I offer only BOSS. All the native songbirds, and native cavity nesters (insectivores excluded) love it best. I use different types of feeders, making it easier for the native birds to pick the one they are most comfortable using, but all the feeders hold the same BOSS. I also offer suet blocks; I usually make my own. During the coldest part of the winter I offer shelled peanuts in a special feeder that only allows them to pull out one peanut at a time. That cuts down on waste, too. Of course, the doves (and turkeys) and other birds love to glean from the ground, too. And my turkey flock - they are real turkeys. I bought 50 lbs. of cracked corn last winter. They wouldn't touch it. I even did tests. A big pile of corn near a smaller pile of BOSS. The cleaned up the BOSS and turned their beaks up at the corn. Wes finally took it out to a field and dumped it for the deer. It was gone the next morning! From now until deep snow time the turkeys will have to glean under the feeders and be content with a quart or so of "extra" BOSS on the ground. Once they are in distress I'll start with the two-gallon bucket a day limit. One reason I think they are so spoiled is that I am surrounded by thousands of acres of sunflowers, wheat, soybeans, etc. There are corn fields, too, but they love to hang out in the other crops. I guess they think the corn is for the deer and raccoons!