When the turkey has been breasted, beard removed, wings cut off and spurs taken there isn't much left to eat. The swamp is a five minute walk from the house and where the remains are left for skunks, coyotes, fisher cats, racoons or whatever will come and eat the leftovers. There is always speculation as to what takes away the the carcass. This year I set the game camera with hopes of catching a glimpse of an elusive bobcat or fisher cat or even the neighborhood dog. What took it away was really surprising.
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| The carcass just sitting about 50 feet from the hydric soils. No sense in letting a rotting bird contaminate the water any more than nessisary |
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| The tree cover is pretty dense and my surprise was pretty big at having vultures cleaning up the carrion |
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| The next photo has no carcass. I can only imagine the vultures picked off enough meat/guts/feathers to lower the weight enough to fly off with the remains. |
My hope was seeing a fisher cat or bobcat or something at least slightly exotic or elusive to the Vermont country side. The vultures are an extremely unexpected but really satisfying substitute. By the time stamps on the photos the vultures had a leisurely meal.
My only regret with the game camera experiment was setting the capture mode with a relatively long delay and shot spacing. A bit closer timing and the photos might have been more exciting. Seeing the turkey flying again without its own wings would have been really fun. Setting the camera up to capture the entire event is a bit more motivation to fill my autumn tag.
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