These heavy birds can fly, but generally, in their normal lives, they fly from tree top to tree top at altitudes up to around 100 feet.
The plane's much higher altitude and being thrown out can stress them out and cause disorientation.
Last year two died on impact, this year four were found injured and bleeding on the ground.
Yes, they DID die and splat on impact like bags of cement at a similar festival in another state.
I'm not PETA, don't have pets.... but I certainly can't find any cause to champion such twisted treatment of living creatures and I can't find humor in it all as evinced by some on this thread.
To each his own, I guess.
Leni
I agree that this is a very inappropriate thing to do. It is hard to believe that the authorities have allowed this to go on year after year. Throwing them from a courthouse would be much more humane. I am assuming they stopped that because most of the wild turkeys probably got away since jumping off of a courthouse would to them be similar to jumping out of a tree.
It is amazing to me that wild turkeys thrown out of a airplane going approximately 100 mph survive at all. Obviously most meet the wind tail first or in some other odd angle and at a much higher airspeed than God intended. Many probably have their wings broken or damaged immediately. It is a miracle that any of them are able to achieve controlled flight before hitting the ground no matter what altitude they are thrown out of. This would be a risky stunt even for a parakeet.
I fly and own several hang gliders, an ultralight aircraft and a general aviation airplane. We live on a small airport. Flying a hang glider is the closest experience to flying like a bird. But even when jumping off a cliff we have to launch into conditions where the wing will meet the air at an angle of attack and airspeed where it will produce the appropriate amount of lift. Too much lift and the wing will break.
If you jumped out of the back of a military transport airplane with a hang glider the wing would most likely be destroyed instantaneously. Even if it were not; it is unlikely that you could get things under control before hitting the ground even if jumping from high altitude.
The only way to perform this stunt would most likely be to have a properly designed harness on the hang glider attached to an anchor point in the transport airplane. I have such a harness that we use to tow a hang glider behind a boat. You would then have to be released into the wind from the back of the airplane in the correct orientation and the airplane would have to be traveling less than the hang glider's maximum allowable airspeed. It would still be difficult because of turbulence from the airplane. It might be possible, but probably not for turkeys.