{"id":81524,"date":"2020-02-09T06:22:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T13:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=81524"},"modified":"2020-02-09T12:41:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T19:41:03","slug":"it-was-a-turkey-shoot-yesterday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/09\/it-was-a-turkey-shoot-yesterday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"It Was A Turkey Shoot Yesterday Morning…"},"content":{"rendered":"

until it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Finally, we had a some light yesterday so I ended up in extreme northern Utah looking for birds.<\/p>\n

When we’d nearly reached our primary birding destination for the morning we spotted an adult Bald Eagle close to the road and in good light but there was already a pickup with two photographers in it photographing the eagle with one of them shooting over the top of the pickup. They had staked out their spot close to the eagle and I didn’t want to flush their bird by pulling up behind them so I just drove on by and continued down the road without even trying to photograph the eagle.<\/p>\n

I mention the above photographers for reasons that will soon become apparent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Focal length – 105mm<\/em><\/p>\n

After a very long drive (at one point on this trip we were only about 10 miles from the Idaho border as the crow flies) the only good chance I had to photograph birds all morning was this flock of Wild Turkeys feeding on a stack of very old hay.<\/p>\n

But it was a sweet setup! I stayed far enough away from the turkeys that they weren’t nervous at all, the early morning light angle was perfect, I had lots of birds to choose from and it looked like I was going to have oodles of time with them. After I’d passed the photographers shooting the eagle I’d turned off onto two different remote roads and there was no traffic at all on the country road that early in the morning.<\/p>\n

But the shooting wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought (hoped) it would be. The turkeys mostly kept their heads down as they were feeding which doesn’t make for great photos. Most of my shots had one bird in front of another or partial birds in the frame so that complicated matters further. Often I chose the “wrong” bird to aim my lens at. And as you’ll soon see, I didn’t have as much time with them as I expected to. There was a single tom in the flock but I wasn’t able to get any good photos of him.<\/p>\n

So none of the photos below are “great shots” and many of them are only of documentary quality, at best.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This turkey caught my eye because she has so much white on her which made me wonder if she was leucistic or possibly a hybrid Wild Turkey\/domestic turkey cross. Probably not – she isn’t much lighter than many of the others but I wondered.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Immediately after I took this shot I changed my aperture to f\/10 to give me a better chance to have enough depth of field to get both large birds sharp. That was a mistake because…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/500, f\/10, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

when one turkey unexpectedly attacked the other I now didn’t have enough shutter speed to prevent motion blur so their heads are soft. The attack surprised me a little. In my past experience with Wild Turkeys they’ve seemed unusually peaceful. For birds anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/400, f\/10, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

The aggressive turkey had a pretty good grip on some of the neck feathers of the victim but eventually the bird on the left was able to escape.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I managed to get a few shots like this one that were pretty good of an individual turkey but with most of them I had to crop too tight to keep parts of other turkeys out of the frame. I don’t like to crop this tight on my birds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’d had 7 minutes with the turkeys and was just beginning to figure out some patterns in there behaviors that might give me a better chance for good shots when everything fell apart.<\/p>\n

The photographers in the previously mentioned pickup that I’d passed something like 30 miles behind me drove up, saw the turkeys, and stopped on the road within no more than 30′ away from the haystack to photograph them. They were far too close to begin with and the driver compounded that error by leaving his extremely noisy diesel engine running for the entire time.<\/p>\n

For the first few seconds the turkeys were surprisingly tolerant but within about 15 seconds that rattling, knocking diesel engine was just too much for them to tolerate any longer so…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

singly and in small groups they began to fly off…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/3200, f\/7.1, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

with most of them landing on the far-off hillside.\u00a0Within a few seconds every last turkey was gone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

Focal length – 50mm<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a wider look at the haystack while the turkeys were still there and before the diesel pickup showed up. If the pickup had been there when this shot was taken we’d see its right front fender just above my driver’s side mirror at the bottom right of the frame – they were that close to the haystack and that’s where they stayed to photograph the turkeys. Their closeness compounded by their very noisy diesel engine that they left running the entire time meant there was zero chance the turkeys would stick around.<\/p>\n

I don’t think they flushed the turkeys on purpose. My best guess is that they were inexperienced bird photographers and just endlessly oblivious. And to give credit where credit’s due, after the turkeys were gone the driver stopped to apologize for flushing them, saying to me “We didn’t see you.” (even though we were right in front of them with two huge 500mm lenses sticking out my windows and aimed at the turkeys).<\/p>\n

I hold no animosity for the photographers in the diesel pickup. Who knows, even though I’d never in a million years own a diesel pickup I may have done something similarly stupid and inconsiderate when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears bird photographer (but if I did I don’t remember it). But I surely hope they learned from this experience and don’t repeat the performance.<\/p>\n

If the driver of that pickup had made other choices I’m quite sure that four bird photographers would have been able to fill their memory cards with hundreds of quality photos of Wild Turkeys.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

until it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,16,392,394,3664],"tags":[2448,4945,140,2744,311,2743],"class_list":["post-81524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-photography-ethics","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-wild-turkeys","tag-bird-photography-ethics","tag-diesel-engines-and-bird-photography","tag-fighting","tag-meleagris-gallopavo","tag-utah-2","tag-wild-turkey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/wild-turkey-9671-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lcU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}