# Beardless Toms?



## Goose Guy350 (Nov 29, 2004)

Hunting has been a bit slow up until this point in the season with only calling in a handful of small toms, a few jakes and some hens. Last night I found a new pocket of birds and set up on them this morning, right away the hardwoods would just rattle with at least 8 birds gobbling at once and I was able to pull four birds my way. The first bird to come about 20 yards from me was a hen closely followed by a bird that seemed relatively large but had only about a 2 inch beard that seemed quite thick but very short. I was unable to see the birds spurs as it walked to my right. The first two birds were quickly followed by a third bird that was just like the second bird that was chasing the hen and I let him walk through too because I could hear a fourth bird gobbling hard and coming my way. I don't think it even took a minute and I could see the fourth bird coming my way in full strut, I was looking closely for a beard but again, nothing. The beard on this bird was 1-2 inches and looked to be about as thick as your thumb and had a gobble that sounded like an adult and had a full fan as it strutted in. I let this bird walk up to around ten yards and still couldn't see the spurs of the bird because of spruce tree crown that had broke off in a recent wind storm until he finally realized something was wrong and wondered off. Both the first and the last tom I saw this morning had full fans but no beards really to speak of, the second tom/jake to come through never strutted. While scouting this evening I found a tom strutting around two hens in a field about a half mile from where I hunted this morning and I glassed him for over a half hour, full fan, large bodied, no beard. This leads me to my question, I've heard of birds in my area freezing off their beards but is it possible that nearly all the toms in this one area were caught in just the right conditions where they froze off their beards this year or am I seeing two year olds that just never grew their beards yet? Sorry this is so long and thanks for any info you can give me


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## blklabs2 (Mar 2, 2008)

Saw 4 toms this am. all adult birds, very small beards full fans good spurs they get broken in the cold ,and some get beard rot, the guy shot one tom,1" spurs big white tipped tail 6" beard, 24lbs, ? also saw several normal beards today!!!


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