They're everywhere in Sacramento this time of year; strutting across streets and holding up traffic around Arden, destroying gardens in Orangevale and leaving droppings on Fair Oaks sidewalks. Wild turkeys have become the area’s most visible, and arguably most annoying, neighbors.
With some grocery store turkeys pushing past $2 per pound this Thanksgiving, the question practically asks itself: Could you just grab one of these street birds and call it dinner?
The short answer is no. The longer answer involves some creative problem-solving for next year.
Legal reality
California Department of Fish and Wildlife public information officer Peter Tira said that most urban areas prohibit hunting or discharging lethal weapons within city limits.
Those Rancho Cordova turkeys holding up traffic? Legally untouchable. The flock roosting on cars in Midtown? Off limits. Even if you could somehow catch one without a firearm, you would still need a hunting license and an Upland Game Bird Validation to legally possess it.
The city of Sacramento stopped responding to calls about healthy trapped wildlife in 2010, deciding instead that residents must learn to cohabitate with the birds. Homeowners experiencing serious property damage can apply for a depredation permit from Fish and Wildlife, but that’s a bureaucratic process, not a shortcut to Thanksgiving dinner.
The irony is thick: Turkeys colonize urban areas precisely because they're safe from predators there, including human hunters. They've figured out that downtown means no mountain lions or coyotes to worry about.
The alternative
For those willing to plan ahead, California's fall turkey season runs through Dec. 7, with another season opening in spring. But becoming a hunter isn't a quick process.
First comes hunter education; a required course before getting licensed. Then you need to buy a hunting license and the appropriate validations. Finally, you have to find somewhere legal to hunt, which means leaving city limits and driving a ways depending on where you live.
"It's not necessarily something you can do right overnight," said Tira. "It takes a little bit of a commitment and some planning."
The process also requires some investment, though costs vary depending on what gear you already own. Tira strongly recommends finding a mentor; an experienced hunter who can loan equipment, share knowledge and help accelerate the learning curve.
Given that fall hunting season ends soon, anyone inspired by this year's expensive Thanksgiving is realistically looking at spring season or next fall.
Why bother?
Why go through all the trouble when Safeway has perfectly fine frozen turkeys?
“You are literally cutting every single middleman out of the food system,” said Hank Shaw, a chef, author and wild food expert. “It’s an extremely empowering act.”
Shaw, who has written six cookbooks and runs the James Beard Award-winning website Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, said the flavors of wild and heritage breed turkeys are actually quite similar, though both differ significantly from a standard Butterball.
“You can taste the cruelty in a Butterball turkey,” Shaw said. “The meat is flaccid. The meat is wet.” By contrast, he said, wild birds have denser meat, stronger flavor and “everything about a wild bird is more real.”
That perspective is shared by Sacramento County hunter Holly Heyser, who is in her 20th season and hunts for all the meat her household eats. While she doesn’t hunt wild turkeys often, she sees street turkeys regularly.
“I literally just saw them in the street yesterday while I was walking my dog,” she said. “She’s a hunting dog. She completely lost her mind.”
Heyser said the difference between suburban turkeys and true wild birds is night and day.
“Urban turkeys don’t see humans as a huge threat. They’ll let you get pretty close,” she said. “But turkeys in the wild know that we are predators, and they stay away from us. If they see us, they book it really fast.”
She also pushes back on the stereotype that turkeys are dumb.
“People think turkeys are stupid, but that’s because the ones in neighborhoods have no reason to fear anything,” Heyser said. “When you see them in the wild, you realize they’re incredibly wary and smart. Give the turkey some respect. They’re smarter than you think they are.”
On flavor, Heyser said wild turkey is actually one of the easier game meats for newcomers.
“Of all the game meats that I eat, I think wild turkey and domestic turkey are the closest to each other,” she said. “The biggest difference is fat. Wild birds are much leaner, requiring more careful cooking.”
She also said she’s never had safety concerns eating wild birds compared to grocery store poultry.
“They’re not caged, they’re not standing in waste, they’re not packed together,” she said. “I think you’d be hard pressed to find a case of salmonella from someone eating a wild turkey. They’re surprisingly clean animals.”
Field to table
If you do manage to harvest a wild turkey, you'll need to process it before it reaches the dinner table. Shaw recommends looking for younger birds — jakes or hens — which are easier to pluck and more tender than old toms.
For a proper Thanksgiving presentation, you'll want to pluck the bird rather than skin it. "I highly recommend you not doing it in your house," Shaw said with a laugh.
For cooking, wild turkey requires adjustments from the standard Butterball approach. While USDA guidelines call for 165 degrees, Shaw recommends around 155 degrees internal temperature for the breast. "If you do that, you can actually treat a wild bird just like a farm bird," Shaw said.
The Sacramento County Department of Health Services confirms wild turkey is safe to consume when cooked properly. It recommends the same food safety practices as domestic poultry: thawing safely, preventing cross-contamination, cooking thoroughly and refrigerating leftovers within two hours.
Tira said many hunters serve both wild and domestic turkey at Thanksgiving, creating an impromptu taste test. "Many guests are surprised at the end of the night how much they preferred the wild turkey over the domestic turkey because the wild turkey has flavor," he said.
Those flavors come from birds that flew, foraged and lived free; the same qualities that make them so maddeningly successful at colonizing Sacramento's streets. You just can't eat the ones you see there.
For now, anyway, the turkeys blocking traffic on your morning commute can strut with impunity. But next Thanksgiving? That could be a different story.
