Superfact 20: Domesticated Turkeys and Wild Turkeys are the same species, but Wild Turkeys can fly. So yes, there are flying turkeys.
I think this is a super-fact, because the Turkey is a very important bird to Americans and at the same time a lot of people, including Americans, do not know that Turkeys are not flightless birds.
Domesticated turkeys are flightless but wild turkeys are not flightless. Wild turkeys can fly distances of more than a mile, sometimes at speeds of 55 miles per hour. I’ve seen it with my own eyes on turkey hunts. I’ve seen turkeys fly and glide across the sky at the height of 30-50 feet. I’ve seen them flap their wings and then take off.
The photo above is a Tom, a male turkey, that my oldest son shot when he was 11 years old. Male turkeys are called Toms and females hens. We took it to a taxidermist for preservation and mounting. I should add that we typically ate the meat of everything we shot. Taking a wild turkey to the taxidermist makes eating the animal more complicated but you can typically ask for the breast meat of the turkey.
Personally, I think that legal hunting is a lot more humane than eating meat from animals from factory farms.
I should add that legal hunting is often encouraged for conservation and population management. For example, moose are hunted in Sweden (my native country) to manage their large population (400,000 moose), which can cause damage to forests and agriculture, as well as starvation among moose, if not managed. Illegal hunting, on the other hand, is something nefarious. Below is a video showing wild turkeys flying (video is about one minute long).
I wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving
Newstrade