How long does a Jake.....????

[VTbowman]

How long does a Jake stay a jake?
Or better said, how old is a male turkey when he becomes a Tom... LOL

[rutnroy]

he'll be a jake his first spring and be a tom by his second spring.

[RyanH]

How Long? ABout a year!

I would have to say that a Jake will have 1/2 spurs or smaller! (being a 1 year old bird!)

When you get to 3/4 to 11/4 spurs I would have to say a 2 year old bird!

Then anything over 11/4 spurs would be pushing 2 1/2 to 3 year old bird!

Hope this helps! I may be off a bit!

[Rhino]

A jake is just called a jake because he's a 1 year old bird. Sort of like a teenager. As you probably know his beard is short and sticks straight out and his fan is notched because it has not finished growing yet. The outside tail feathers are 1 to 2 inches shorter than the middle tail feathers. He's about 60% to 75% of the weight of a mature gobbler. His spurs are just nubs on his legs too. The nubbed spurs don't really apply to Merriam turkeys though because they don't grow much for spurs compared to the other 3 North American species of turkeys. Once a gobbler reaches his 2nd year he is considered mature. The tell tale sign of a mature gobbler is his tail feathers will all be about the same length. A mature gobbler's beard will be over 7" long and will hang down unless something unusual has happend to it. Once I passed up killing a mature gobbler in Texas because he didn't have a beard at all. There's also a disease (I think it's called a deficiency in Melanin) that causes the beard to become very brittle. Birds that have this can have all or part of their beards broken off pretty short very easily. I killed one of those birds that had about 80% of the beard strands broken off at about the 4 1/2" mark and the other 20% measured 9". Let me know if you want a pic of that wierd looking beard.

[maytom]

I agree, one season!!

[rutnroy]

11/4 would be 2 3/4 " , ryanh i think you ment 11/16" . other than that i totally i agree with the measurements.