I’d been advised that the start-time was 0800 sharp: Sunday, 18 November. The clock on my dash read exactly that as I rolled into Mike’s driveway – and yet; still my phone began to ring. I flipped it to my ear as my eyes locked with the person making the call; none other than the host himself; Mike, standing in the doorway of his immense garage. Knowing that he’d dialed my # thinking that I was going to be late, I shot him a smile as I slid to a stop in front of him, and then cut the wheel hard as I eased my truck back into an available spot between some trees. I snapped the phone closed, but not before I heard his voice float out of the speaker, taunting me with “Nice of you to join us”.
I sidled up to the garage and greeted the other chaps who had gathered to assist with today’s events. The chill in the air outlined our breath as we exchanged our hello’s, and with that, we were off for breakfast. (Need to get a good base going for what lay ahead of us.)
Upon our return, we set to assembling and cleaning the various tools and other implements which would be needed. A few more guys began to show up and soon we had a good sized crew assembled and we were ready to roll. Mike set up shop, as it were, in the shed where he raises the turkeys and the process was set into motion.
I took a number of pictures of the day’s events but I’ll just post non-gory ones. I do want to specify that Mike learned this trade from his family (going back into the 1800’s) and has been doing this himself for over 10 years. He does things quickly and cleanly and there is little-to-no suffering of any kind. That said, we had 41 turkeys to work with and we completed the task in about 4 hours. Not an incredible pace, but for us; it was quite good.
Mike handled the actual killing and bleeding-out of the turkeys, I was the runner, bringing them up to the garage, where they were soaked for one minute in (exactly) 128 degree water. Then they were hung, defeathered and then moved to a second shed where they will hang for two days before being dressed (with this time of year, the temp in the shed will stay between 30 and 40 degrees; not unlike most refrigerators).
Here’s the "before" photo; the group of turkeys, calmly wondering what all the commotion outside is all about.
Here’s one of the birds being dunked (stupid blurry pictures!)
Here’s the defeathering crew, hard at work
Here’s the last little guy… “Hey, where did everybody else go?”
Hanging in the shed.
When all was said and done, the real cleanup began. There were buckets of blood and piles of feathers which needed to be disposed of. Which leads me to a funny story;
Mike doesn’t just take care of turkeys, he also cleans/dresses deer, bear, moose, etc. Just about anything that you can hunt, he’s the guy you bring it to. Which means he has a lot of (animal) body parts which need to be disposed of. When he first started doing this, it didn’t take a genius to realize that he would need to have this stuff hauled away – it’s not like he could just toss all the remains in the woods. There are already far too many coyotes in his area as it is. So, he called around until he found a waste company who was willing (able) to handle this type of refuse, they dropped a dumpster off and things worked well…until the first time he had one of these turkey days.
When all was said and done (way back on that very first turkey day), he dumped the feathers into the dumpster and then poured the blood in on top of the feathers. The feathers would soak up the blood, keeping it from sloshing around all loose-like, and everything would be fine. Except that he forgot that the feathers are basically water proof. So the blood didn’t soak in. It just ran down to the bottom of the dumpster…and waited for the dumpster truck to come.
Along comes said dumpster truck…lines up on the dumpster and proceeds to hoist the dumpster up. Oh, did I forget to mention that the dumpster truck happened to be one of those front-dumping ones, which hoists the dumpster up and over the cab of the truck? Yeah. So when the dumpster was upended…above the cab…blood came RAINING down, covering the windshield and doors in deep crimson. Apparently the driver dropped the dumpster, drove back to the company’s location and quit on the spot. Mike almost had to start his waste-removal company search again, as they were reluctant to send anyone else out for fear of losing them as well, but a contract had been signed, so they had to learn to deal with it.
But Mike’s not a difficult person, so he’s learned to be a bit more amenable with things…things like gallons of blood and what to do with them. So when asked if he wanted the blood dumped over his back wall, he said no, spread it out on the front garden. He said that helps keep things away (yeah, like neighbors), but he insists he’ll mix it in with fertilizer and that’ll help keep the coyotes away from it.
So after the cleanup was finished, the eating could begin. Mike kills a turkey several days prior, and then cooks it up for today’s events. Everyone else brings some food and it’s all assembled and we dig in and set more beer consumption in motion. An old TV was set up on the side and we took turns shooting the breeze, cracking jokes at each other and watching football.
As the sun slid deeper into the afternoon sky and the November chill began to reassert itself, the group slowly began to dissipate. I watched the end of the early games and then took my leave of the assemblage. It would have been great to stick around – hell, the Pats weren’t on until 8 that night – but I knew that it was a good idea to set to the roadways before I’d had too much beverage enjoyment.
Once home, I cranked up the wood stove, popped a fresh beerverage and settled in for what would turn out to be another impressive game by the Pats. (Apologies to you guys out in Olean!)
And thus came the end of Turkey Day 2007.
Ride Hard, Take Chances
