Talking (Wild) Turkey, Vermont's Second-Most Hunted Species
From a cooler in his truck bed, the National Wild Turkey Federation's Vermont chapter president served up barbecue-sauced, pulled turkey leg sandwiches and ladled hunks of dark meat with vegetables and broth into mugs decorated with turkey tracks. His bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers stuffed with Creole-spiced nuggets of turkey breast would've made a solid sports-bar menu item.
"The bacon doesn't hurt," Brett, 56, quipped.
The slow-cooked leg and thigh meat in the soup and sandwich was tender and not stringy, as I'd been warned it could be. Brett's two daughters, who were tasting with me, agreed that both dishes could have used more seasoning.
"Salt at every step," Whitney, a line cook, admonished her father teasingly.
The 20-year-old was sitting in the parking lot wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe over sweatpants. Her sister, Sydney, 22, was dressed in full camo.
Of the four Ladeau kids, Sydney is the only regular hunter. Under her dad's tutelage, she shot her first turkey at age 9. Following in his footsteps, she has also competed successfully in turkey calling contests, during which hunters demonstrate their skills mimicking the birds' vocalizations to draw them closer.
Calling is not unique to turkey hunting, but the extent to which hunters engage in back-and-forth "conversation" with the birds makes it an especially interactive experience, the Ladeaus explained.
Over the years, I've tagged along on deer, grouse and squirrel hunts , but turkey hunting sounded intriguingly different. I planned the Upper Valley trip with the goal of eavesdropping on a hunter-turkey chat and tasting wild turkey for the first time. I'd been advised to wear head-to-toe camo to fool the sharp-eyed birds and been cautioned that the native eastern wild turkey, while good eating, is not suited to become a Thanksgiving centerpiece roast.
Spoiler alert: The eating part went better than the hunting part.
The fact that Vermonters can hunt turkeys at all is a conservation success story. By the mid-19th century, the once-plentiful eastern wild turkey had disappeared from Vermont due to deforestation and unregulated hunting. After being reintroduced in the late 1960s, the species rebounded exceptionally well. The statewide population hovers around 45,000, kept in check by controlled hunting.
Vermont's hunting heritage is still firmly rooted in the deer camp, but the Fish & Wildlife Department reports that turkey ranks second in popularity. In 2023, 24,430 licensed turkey hunters — about 40 percent of the number who hunt deer — harvested 6,972 birds during the short fall archery and shotgun seasons and monthlong spring season. From late October to early November, hunters can shoot one turkey of either sex; in May, after mating season, they can take two bearded turkeys, which are generally male.
The fall season is well timed to land a Thanksgiving bird, but even devotees of wild turkey warn against roasting one whole.
"Everyone's used to going to the store at Thanksgiving and getting their Butterball," said Bella Kline, a former chef who now works as a Randolph-based state game warden and happened to be passing through the Windsor park and ride on the morning of October 27.
In a follow-up phone call, Kline emphasized that lean, muscular wild turkey requires a different cooking approach and will not taste like the buxom, grain-fed Broad-Breasted Whites on most holiday tables. The dark meat, particularly, "takes a little bit more care," she advised. (See Kline's recommended wild turkey cooking method .)
The legs and thighs of a wild turkey are active: The birds use them to forage for acorns and other nuts, seeds and insects, as well as escape from predators, including hunters. "They can be tough, but if you cook them right, it's a rich flavor," Brett said as he packed up the food before we headed into the hills.
While we drove the back roads, scanning for turkeys in open fields, Sydney said she prefers breast meat, especially nuggets, rolled in seasoned flour and fried.
Whether it's light or dark meat, Sydney said, she likes knowing where it came from and taking responsibility for killing it herself. Growing up hunting, she continued, helped her see the cycle of life and value meat in a society she called "highly disconnected" from its food sources.
"Hunting connects us a little more to nature and to our roots as human beings, to our primal instincts," she said. "It's not just a game."
The father-daughter pair said they love hunting together, but Sydney takes pride in knowing she could do it alone. "It's not something a lot of women do by themselves," she said.
Brett grew up deer hunting in Norwich. Unlike his daughter, he didn't see his first wild turkey until he was 17, after the population had rebounded.
As soon as he tried turkey hunting, he was hooked. "I respect turkeys. I study turkeys. I think like a turkey," he said. "I'm a little silly about turkey hunting."
After crisscrossing Windsor, Hartland and Brownsville for more than an hour with only one distant glimpse of a flock, we headed for the wooded hillside where Brett had shot his turkey the day before. He strapped on a backpack of gear, including the tools known as calls used to converse with turkeys. Sydney carefully loaded her shotgun and slung it over her shoulder while I slipped on a roomy, borrowed camo jacket.
Hiking up through the woods, we crunched through leaves, ducked under sap lines and navigated around stone walls. A white deer tail flashed a few hundred feet away, but the turkeys remained elusive.
We sat quietly at the foot of two trees while Brett tested a few calls using a round pot call. He deployed a wooden striker, which looks like a thick chopstick, to agitate the aluminum surface of the call. It emitted a string of purrs, clucks and high-pitched yelps that mean something like, "I'm here, and I'm ready to socialize," Brett told me later.
After a couple of tries with no response, he popped a small, flat semicircular mouth, or diaphragm, call into his mouth and used it to make soft clucks and coos that aim to sound like a contented hen saying, "I'm relaxed over here. Come see what I'm doing."
Neither seemed to do the trick there or at a second spot where Brett showed me several examples of what is called "turkey sign": feathers and scat near dust bowls where the birds roll to dislodge mites.
After he made a round of calls rubbing the lid on the base of a box call, I asked what he was saying.
"Today," he replied ruefully, "it's apparently, 'Don't come here.'"
Before we parted, Brett gave me some breast meat that he'd ground with a little bacon, which became delicious meatballs simmered in my last garden tomatoes.
The trip had convinced me that wild turkey makes good eating, but I still yearned to witness a hunter-turkey conversation.
A few days later, I drove to meet hunter Ron Lafreniere at another park and ride closer to home and much earlier in the day.
It was barely light when we got to a hunting spot in Richmond, not far from where Lafreniere lives in Bolton, on the road where he grew up on a dairy farm. The 66-year-old lifelong hunter said his family eats more wild game than supermarket meat.
Lafreniere started turkey hunting in the 1990s and runs the National Wild Turkey Federation's Chittenden County chapter. His truck license plate used to be "Gobblers." Like Brett Ladeau, Lafreniere volunteers to take out a lot of newbies.
His advice: "Look like a tree; act like a tree."
As the sky lightened, the low whoosh of cars from Interstate 89 floated up from below. Lafreniere used his pot call to no avail, despite seeing some dust bowls along with abundant acorns, a prized food.
Back in the truck, we headed down River Road through Duxbury toward Waterbury. As he drove, Lafreniere scanned the landscape until he exclaimed, "There's turkeys up that hill, baby!" and took a sharp turn onto a dirt road.
Lafreniere uses a phone app called onX to log game and track his route. It also has land ownership details. Technically, hunters in Vermont can hunt on land that is not posted, but Lafreniere prefers to have permission, especially if he's close to a house. He hoped that the turkeys he'd seen were moving toward a property on which he has permission to hunt.
We scrambled up a steep bank and navigated to a spot with a clear view down on the field where Lafreniere had spotted the birds. He crouched and pulled his camo face mask up, indicating I do the same. "Stay still as you can," he whispered.
One turkey soon appeared, head down, pecking, followed by another 10. Lafreniere used a pot call to get the attention of the flock, which was about 50 to 60 yards away, moving slowly across the field. One hen clearly heard him, pulling her long neck up and gyrating like a periscope seeking the call's source, but she didn't reply.
We watched quietly for a few minutes as the flock drifted further away from the land Lafreniere has permission to hunt and closer to another house.
Reluctantly, we retreated. Lafreniere didn't want to get more involved with the flock given their proximity to houses. He offered to take me turkey hunting again in the spring when, he promised, the birds are chattier.
