With Tennessee’s wild turkey season in full strut, a remarkable harvest by a young lady has gained the attention and garnered the respect of many sportsmen and sportswomen across the state.
Sydney Fann, who is about a month shy of her sixteenth birthday, had never killed a turkey before the young sportsmen hunt on March 28-29. That was about to change in a big way. Joined by Chad Wilson and Greg Cook, who lead an organization called Appalachian Outfitters that mentors youth hunters, the party set out on the family farm of a young man named Ridge Clark. Having already harvested several turkeys, Ridge offered Sydney the first opportunity to shoot, which led to her landing a potential record book turkey.
“I got the attention of some hens and called them to us,” said Mr. Wilson. “The gobbler came in and saw the decoys and skirted around us in a half circle at about 65 yards.” After some time, the flock began leaving and the hunters decided to let them ease away until Mr. Wilson made a veteran turkey-hunting move. “I began cutting and made the boss hen mad which drew the flock back in. This time, the gobbler came in on the other side at about twenty yards and Sydney just raised up and shot him without us even having to tell her to,” said Mr. Wilson. “When Greg ran out and grabbed it and held up those spurs, we were just in shock.”
Lee Crisp, who is on the NWTF state board of directors and a member of the Little T. Longbeards chapter out of Maryville, inspected Sydney’s gobbler giving it a tentative score of 83.75 total points. A turkey’s score is determined by the following formula: Weight in decimal form + (combined spur length times 10) + (beard length times 2). Sydney’s turkey weighed 25.4 lbs., had a 10.5-inch beard, and had spurs of 1 13/16 inches and 1 15/16 inches. The scores will be submitted to the NWTF for verification this week. For more information on scoring turkeys, visit: http://www.nwtf.org/for_hunters/how_to_score.html.
If verified by the NWTF, this score would place Sydney’s gobbler as the largest typical Eastern wild turkey on record in Tennessee ever harvested by a female and would be the third largest typical Eastern on record in the nation ever harvested by a female. The top scoring typical Eastern ever harvested on record in the nation by a female scored 86.655 points and was taken in Missouri in 2006. This would also place Sydney’s turkey as the fourth largest Eastern ever recorded in Tennessee by a male or female hunter.
The Eastern wild turkey is the most widely distributed, abundant, and hunted of the five distinct subspecies found in the U.S. with a population estimate between 5.1 and 5.3 million (NWTF.org). Once only present in 18 of Tennessee’s 95 counties, the population is now estimated to be over 300,000 and Tennessee hunters annually harvest about 35,000 birds.
Tennessee’s statewide turkey season began on April 4 and will continue until sunset on May 17. The current total harvest for the 2015 season is 16,706 birds. Of these, 1,075 turkeys were taken by during the young sportsmen hunt on March 28-29.
Sydney Fann