November is a bad month for turkeys.
Some 46 million turkeys are carved up and eaten each Thanksgiving, the USDA estimates. In recent years, the wild turkey population explosion in Massachusetts has sparked numerous complaints about aggressive birds.
We’ve all heard stories of turkeys attacking their own reflections, cars, and pedestrians. This was their territory first. Like the native people, they were here before the Pilgrims. But eventually the turkeys were over-hunted, and they disappeared from Massachusetts by 1851.
Their rebirth would come more than a century later, with a little help from feathered friends across a state line.
In the early 1970s, 37 wild turkeys from New York state were released in Berkshire County. Today there are 30,000 to 35,000 in the Commonwealth, some coming to a bird feeder near you.
Don’t lock yourself in the storage closet with cans of cranberry sauce. These big birds are not out to get you. Their beaks are sharp but they have no teeth.
It is true that the spurs just above a gobbler’s (male) feet are used for defense and could draw blood. But it doesn’t have to come to that, according to Tia Pinney, senior naturalist for Mass Audubon.
“You can absolutely stop an aggressive turkey. Step up, stay in the turkey’s face, carry a broom, be aggressive yourself. They’re displaying more than they’re attacking, let’s put it that way. A turkey is not likely to jump out and attack a full-grown adult.”
Her advice sounds like the strong declaration from another Tom.
“I won’t back down,” sang rocker Tom Petty.
“Most people faced with wildlife think the wildlife are going to get them. And in most cases, the wildlife are just trying to do their thing. Turkeys are no different. If you establish that you, in fact, are in charge of this space, then the turkey will back off,” Pinney said.
“Never run away from a turkey. They just want to establish that they are ‘Number One turkey.’ You have to be Number One turkey. Approach every interaction with a turkey as if you are the bigger turkey.”
This year, with everyone so concerned about the price of groceries, these wild turkeys may seem like easy pickings. It’s turkey hunting season until Nov. 30.
Nevertheless, that’s not really achievable for folks inside Route 128.
“In the eastern part of the state here, certainly there’s no safe place to hunt turkeys,” said Pinney.
Wild turkeys can be hunted in any town in Massachusetts, except Nantucket, during the spring and fall hunting seasons, according to state law.
While legal, it is often not feasible to hunt in densely populated towns. Regulations restrict hunting within 500 feet of buildings and 150 feet of roads, according to Emily Stolarski, a spokesperson for the state Division of Fisheries & Wildlife.
Some people think wild turkey would taste bad, having eaten God-knows-what to survive. However, that may not be the case, because they’re free-rangers.
“Wild turkeys eat plants, seeds, nuts, acorns, berries, insects, and invertebrates,” said Stolarski in an email. “Many people enjoy eating wild turkey both for the taste and for the satisfaction of preparing and eating game they harvested themselves.”
But don’t think you can sneak up on a big Tom and catch it.
They have great eyesight and hearing. Wild turkeys can fly, reportedly up to 50 miles per hour for short stretches of up to an eighth of a mile. They roost in trees or on rooftops. Their takeoffs are loud and helicopter style, their powerful legs pushing off hard from the ground.
Every flight looks like an adventure, more Hindenburg than heavenly. They have over 5,000 feathers and slightly clumsy torsos. Necks stretch forward and massive wings flop madly.
This is not your overfed domestic farm-raised turkey, according to Pinney.
“A Tom turkey has been so altered by the genetic manipulation of constantly raising them with larger and larger, more and more breast meat, it’s impossible for a domestic turkey to fly or inseminate a hen. They have to be artificially inseminated. That’s what they’ve done to domestic turkeys.”
Massachusetts wild turkeys are in fine muscular shape. They hang out in flocks with a distinct hierarchy. Every evening around sunset, they zoom up into trees or onto rooftops to sleep, to avoid coyotes and other predators. In the Squantum neighborhood of Quincy, the jury is out on 13 local wild turkeys, including three Toms and 10 hens. Some love them, others hate them. One neighbor feeds them peanut butter crackers out of her hand, while others complain bitterly about them pooping all over their yards.
But despite a bad rap about their intelligence, they are not dumb.
They do more than gobble, gobble. They cluck, purr, and cackle, among many other distinctive calls, researchers say. They are well aware of their surroundings. They often switch the trees they sleep in when they know they are being watched, so they can’t be easily tracked.
Some places have embraced them. Brookline has made them their unofficial mascot, with turkey sculptures appearing around town twice a year.
The town even gave out “I voted” turkey stickers on Election Day.
Many residents there believe the turkeys won, but they won’t be switching to tofu turkeys just yet.
“Do they know we eat them? I doubt it,” said Pinney. “I mean, especially here in the eastern part of the state, because nobody’s catching them. The turkeys out west, where people are hunting turkeys, behave very differently because they know they have to stay away from humans. They know they have to stay undercover. The minute a turkey or two has been taken out of a flock by a hunter, that flock’s behavior would be very different.”
The good news is the birds don’t know that Thanksgiving is next week.
Let’s keep that to ourselves.
Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.com.