Mississippi Turkey Hunter Tags Rare, Snow-White Gobbler on Opening Day

Glace Rone of Kosciusko, Mississippi, tagged a once-in-a-lifetime white wild turkey on March 15, the opening day of the spring turkey season. 

The gobbler first showed up on Rone’s trail cameras during the 2024-25 deer season. But Rone wasn’t the only one tracking the unusual bird. The tom’s striking white feathers made it easy to identify, and it had made several appearances on surrounding properties.

“He’d been seen on a 4-mile stretch, so you can imagine how many people were after him,” Rone told the Clarion Ledger. “It’s like hunting a unicorn.”

But it wasn’t just human hunters hoping to snag the unusual bird. Those beautiful white feathers made the gobbler much more visible to predators. 

“We have bobcats,” Rone said. “We have coyotes. We have hawks. Seeing him is just a miracle.”

Like most ambitious turkey hunters, Rone was in the woods well before daylight on opening day. Although the morning weather was calm, the forecast called for storms moving in later in the day. Rone, armed with plenty of snacks, was prepared to sit through it. He was just hoping to call in a nice gobbler. The all-white turkey hadn’t shown up on his trail cameras since February, so Rone wasn’t expecting to lay eyes on him that morning.

Rone decided to switch spots after about two hours of hunting and no sign of a turkey. Once he was set up in the new location, he did some calling and rustled the leaves around him to see if he could attract the attention of any toms in the area. Three minutes later, he spotted the white turkey about 50 yards away making a beeline for Rone. 

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“I was speechless,” Rone told the news outlet. “It was unbelievable. He just popped up.”

Rone took his shot once the bird was within 30 yards, and the tungsten super shot from his 20 gauge made contact. 

The strikingly white gobbler weighed 17 pounds and had a black 9-inch beard. Its pink legs sported ¾-inch white spurs. 

“I’m speechless,” Rone wrote in a Facebook post. “This is the most beautiful animal I’ve ever had the opportunity to chase, and it’s impossible to be any more grateful for this turkey! A man couldn’t trade me a gold monkey for this moment!”

While skeptics may try to claim Rone’s white gobbler is a domestic escapee from a local poultry farm, Caleb Hinton, a biologist with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, told the Clarion Ledger he believes it is a leucistic wild turkey. Leucism is a condition that results in partial loss of pigmentation. Leucistic animals may be mostly white or have patches of white coloration. The condition differs from albinism, which is a complete absence of pigmentation. 

The black beard and normal colored eyes indicate Rone’s gobbler is leucistic rather than albino.

“That’s very rare,” Hinton said. “It’s so rare, there’s no exact numbers on it. It’s one in several thousand at least.”

The post Mississippi Turkey Hunter Tags Rare, Snow-White Gobbler on Opening Day appeared first on Outdoor Life.

Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/mississippi-snow-white-turkey/