Dropping turkeys from planes triggers Arkansas festival flap

The 72nd Yellville Turkey Trot opened Friday with questions over whether the turkey drop portion would continue. The Chamber of Commerce for the small northern Arkansas city has distanced itself from the tradition it once endorsed and is hoping a "phantom pilot" won't fly over this weekend. But that hasn't stopped thousands of people from emailing the chamber about doing more to protect the birds.

"Why don't you jump yourselves with no parachute. ... Think you'll like it?" one person wrote to the chamber Monday. Others used more colorful language.

Arkansas is one of the nation's top turkey-producing states, and the weekend festival is meant to be a celebration of the bird. There is a 5K run, music and dancing, and the Miss Drumsticks pageant, in which contestants are judged only on their legs. Of course, turkey also stars on food vendors' menus.

"It means fall is here," the Yellville Chamber of Commerce wrote in an open letter. "It means a turkey dinner a few weeks earlier than the rest of America. It means homecoming for many. ... Turkey Trot is so much more than turkeys being released from an airplane."

The festival started a year after World War II as a complement to a turkey calling contest run by the local American Legion hall. During the first turkey drops, which helped the festival draw a crowd, the birds were dropped from the courthouse roof for people to chase, with some becoming pets and the others Thanksgiving dinner. But at least 50 years ago, the switch was made to a small plane.

Further information:
The domestic turkey lost its ability to fly through selective breeding that created heavier, broad-breasted birds, a feature much desired by chefs and commercial turkey producers. The shorter legs of the domestic turkey also mean it can’t run as well as its wild cousin.Domesticated vs wild turkey.

The separation of the wild and domestic turkey began hundreds of years ago. Native Americans had accomplished the domestication of turkeys before Europeans set foot on the continent. Turkey bones have been found in Indian burial mounds in Tennessee, Kentucky and some other parts of the South, and turkeys were being raised in Mexico and Central America for more than 500 years before the Spanish arrived. Turkey relics have been found in Arizona dating as far back as 25 A.D., and turkey-raising may well be one of the oldest forms of organized meat production in the Northern Hemisphere.

Spanish explorers took Mexican wild turkeys domesticated by the Aztecs home to Europe in about 1519. The turkey then spread rapidly through Europe and was introduced in England between 1524 and 1541, where they were highly sought after for gourmet dinners.

After the domestic turkey spread across Europe in the 1500s, the colonists who settled the New World brought these tasty birds with them across the Atlantic to the land of their origin. Imagine the pilgrims’ surprise to find the turkey already one of the most plentiful foods of the American Indians.

Domestic stock from Europe was eventually crossbred with the wild turkeys of North America, leading to the six standard domestic varieties in the United States: Bronze, Black, Narranganset, Bourbon Red, Slate and White Holland.

But Ruth said because domestic turkeys lack the “wood smarts” of their wild cousins, they generally fall prey to a host of hungry predators such as bobcats, foxes or coyotes before getting a chance to breed with native birds.

http://www.dnr.sc.gov/news/yr2013/nov21/nov21_turkey.html

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