For Dusty Altman, Director of Trade Marketing at SPYPOINT, the opening day of 2024 Missouri spring turkey season will go down as a memory he will never forget. His intentions were to sit out the season to focus on taking his nine-year-old son, Jones, out on the turkey hunt. That all changed, however, when the two came across a unique reddish-brown colored turkey with a double beard while on the lookout.
Turkeys come in several non-traditional plumage variations, also known as “color phases,” which are caused by genetic mutations passed on from generation to generation. “A [erythristic turkey] is a turkey that lacks dark pigments resulting in a reddish/cinnamon colored bird,” says Daniel Rensel, SPYPOINT Prostaff Team Lead and Regional Director at the National Wild Turkey Federation. “You also have other color phases such as smoke phase (lacking browns exhibiting a smokey white color with some black), black phase (melanistic-almost all black), white phase (leucistic-lacking all pigmentation but not an albino) and lastly albino which is also all white but determined by the pink eyes common in all albino species.”
It turns out, the turkey that Altman and his son came across that day is very rare. “The chances of harvesting, or even seeing a erythristic turkey are very slim,” says Rensel. “Just seeing one would probably be 1 out of 100,000 wild turkeys. The chances of harvesting a male and one with a double beard would be almost like winning the lottery. Even comparing male to female erythristic turkeys at, say, a balance of 50/50--the chance of one having a double beard would be like rubbing a magic lamp and wishing for the genie to find you a double bearded erythristic turkey.”
“It was a whirlwind of emotions,” said Altman, who explained he struggled to find words to describe the event. “I wanted Jones to shoot this bird, but unfortunately – since he had already harvested one during the youth season – he was not able to take a second bird until the second week of regular season. We made the joint decision that we didn’t want to risk the bird getting away from us, so Jones gave me the thumbs up to go for it.”
The rest is history.
