Did someone say...harvest??

Some of the first critters we met when we came to the farm were the resident wild turkeys. We were exporing the fence lines out through the woods when a flock of about a dozen turkeys exploded all around us, and we ALL hustled off in various directions - the turkeys weren't the only ones who were startled! That was in early October, and of course we started making plans for Thanksgiving dinner. Come to find out, it's not so simple.
You have to have a license, then enter a drawing, and depending on what you draw (and IF you win a draw) you can hunt toms in the spring or hens in the fall. So far I've only met one person who claims wild turkey can be edible. So we've contented outselves with watching the various turkeys and poults wander in and out of the woods and corn fields, cheering these colorful magnificent birds on.
Until we realized they had effectively cleaned up the 6 rows of corn nearest the woods. And the oats rotated into that field this year fared about the same.
Now we're getting serious about obtaining a license. One of our neighbors claims that as long as wildlife can be proven to be damaging your crops, you can legally "harvest" them without a license. At least that's how he justifies his occasional bird. Trouble is, unless you eat a couple and have something to compare, how do you know you are eating corn-fattened turkey or berry-fattened turkey??
Yesterday as I was headed out to the garden for some tomatoes, movement just beyond the chicken run caught my eye. It was a snap shot, but I think I caught most of them.

Notice the corn in the background. I'm sure they were checking it out. We apparently "hosted" this little flock all summer - we knew a hen had a nest near the boy's treehouse, and we tried to avoid disturbing them. Now look at what we have - robbers and thieves!

Double click on the photo for a close-up. How many do you figure are planning the raid? They scuttled out of sight so quickly that by the time I snapped the photo and looked up, they had vanished. Kinda like the baseball players in "Field of Dreams"...