Posted on 10/14/2017 7:45:14 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
It really seems like it is animal cruelty actually. The immorality of abortion doesn’t change that. I don’t think the folks on this thread calling this animal cruelty are perpetual protesters either, they just rightfully believe that throwing flightless birds out of airplanes is cruel. Is it any different than throwing dogs out of airplanes? It’s one thing to eat animals. it’s another to celebrate their suffering. I’m done with this. It’s pretty revolting actually.
I looked it up on youtube - one guy was saying he’s seen turkeys get hit by cars, electrical lines, etc. They dropped four that year (last year?).
They interviewed a Fish & Game Guy, paraphrasing “Nope - no laws are broken as far as Fish & Game is concerned - they aren’t wild - they’re farm animals. Yeah, I don’t know - some folks are for it, and some are against it - you know, everybody’s gots there own ways at lookin’ at things.”
Some lady was doing a bang-up-job at selling her plainly labelled T-shirts: “Turkey Lives Matter”.
My all time favorite!
This is cruel and evil.
***This is cruel and evil***
Yes, it is cruel to drop a bird from a plane that can’t fly even though it was bred to be eaten, but how is it evil? Which of God’s laws was broken?
There are many turkey breeds some are good flyers. I once spooked some wild turkeys in a field and they flew over a quarter mile into the top of a tree line on the other side.
........ nope, will flush and evade the predator be they critter or hunter but never saw them fly to any height or distance ...... pretty much the aviation skills of a leghorn chicken.
+2...laughing just thinking about that scene.
Also true.
Wild turkeys can glide just fine. And they are strong enough to fly high into the big pines.
The ones that are worthless flyers would be the high production commercial turkeys that can’t even breed without assistance, the broad-breasts. They put on far too much weight -and too fast- for their airframe to handle. Anyone who drops one of those should be beaten with a split river cane, smeared with corn syrup and tied out spread eagled on a hot gravel bar for the ants.
Antique turkey breeds like the Kentucky bourbon turkey, which is a beautiful but slow growing reddish brown domestic breed with white wings and tail, can fly as well as a wild one when young, and the females can generally fly well at any age. Mine like to fly up onto the house at night... or into the trees, and in the morning can fly down without breaking their legs.
And many people also raise wild Eastern and Rio Grande turkeys which roost in trees, too.
Yep—and the callousness of some Freepers to the needless animal cruelty as entertainment is the same.
What, God is okay with senseless animal cruelty?
Is that the sort of dominion over them that we have been given?
Turkeys can indeed fly. I admit, first time I saw one fly, I had a reaction similar to the first and only time I saw a cockroach fly, but without the revulsion!
I was horseback riding in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia, and it was a beautiful day. As we came into a high meadow, we surprised a turkey, and it began to run. The meadow was probably 100 yards across with knee-high grass, and as the turkey ran for the far woods, it picked up speed and its head tilted far forward.
At some point, it panicked, and took to the air, which made me sit straight up in the saddle! It was BIG in the air, looked ungainly, had very broad but stubby wings, but it was indeed about 5-10 feet in the air and making for the woods!
When I saw a cockroach fly, I was at NAS Cecil Field in Florida near Jacksonville, and was sleeping in my room in the BEQ (I was lucky enough to get a room of my own, it was a small oddly shaped room that could only fit one man!) I woke in the night to hear some odd scratching noise...it was going on in the room, and I thought “What the **** is that?”
When I turned on the light, it was the sound of the biggest cockroach I have ever seen scurrying around on the floor...I could actually HEAR it! I instinctively leaped out of bed, and wearing only boxer shorts, grabbed one of my boondockers and began chasing the thing around the small room...WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! but the blasted thing was too agile for me in my newly woken state, and I just couldn’t hit it. As it made a break to the gap under the door to escape, I nailed it.
When I hit it, the boondocker created a sickening CRACK-CRUNCH sound, and I thought “Well, that’s the end of THAT”, but as I lifted the shoe expecting to see a gooey mess, I saw a large, intact roach. For a second, it didn’t move...and then suddenly, it took to the air! It made this horrible whirring sound with its wings as it flew, and the blurring pattern of the wings seemed to create a gray sphere the size of a softball!
I can tell you, in the cramped confines of that room, it was quite unnerving!
It suddenly dropped to the floor, and ran under the door into the hallway, and I opened the door in hot pursuit with the boondocker repeatedly striking the floor with a WHACK-WHACK-WHACK sound, but it was too fast for me and ran under the next doorway it came to!
See my post above...they do! Not completely gracefully or for long distances, but they do!
They aren’t flightless birds. I don’t know about throwing them out of a plane doing 100 mph though.
I don’t doubt if you dropped them off a bridge, that they could fly and glide to safety, but out of a moving plane might discombobulate them a bit and disable them when they get thrown into the airstream.
During the Spanish Civil War the Nationalists used turkeys as makeshift parachutes to drop supplies to an encircled garrison (IIRC, the Alcazar in Toledo). It slowed the drop sufficiently to prevent the destruction of the supplies on impact (though I believe the birds died). Worked better than traditional parachutes because there was much less drift, and the garrison was in a small area.
Did you preview your graphic, it doesn’t show up.
We are our own country california demands Pet Stores only to sell rescue dogs.
California Just Became The First State To Require Pet Stores To Sell Only Rescue Animals
https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/california-just-became-the-first-state-to-require-pet?utm_term=.gtj2XVEAX#.pt8qdAXzd
I suppose it will stop when one of the poor things lands on some child or old person like a sack of cement and kills them.
Can Turkeys Fly?
While the turkey you cook for Thanksgiving has never been airborne, wild turkeys can fly. Apparently not fast or high enough, however. Hunting by early Americans brought the wild turkey population to a low of just 30,000 birds back in the 1930s. Conservation efforts since then, including the release of pen-raised birds back to the wild, has restored the population to about 7 million today.
Wild turkeys feed on the ground, which may have something to do with the myth that they can’t fly. The have to fly, however, because they roost in trees at night. Some accounts say they can soar up to 55 mph for short bursts.
Oh, and the Thanksgiving turkey: It is so grossly fattened up in the farm that it has about as much chance of flying as you do after your pumpkin pie.
https://www.livescience.com/32229-can-turkeys-fly.html
Yes, only now they have one of those hovercraft boats.
Well, it’s a log raft with a fan on it, but we call it a hovercraft for the tourists.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.