“One in a million chance”
When Brian Carroll of Mount Pleasant, SC killed a Berkeley County gobbler on April 1, he was glad to have another specimen from which to collect “turkey pearls.”
“Turkey pearls are the gizzard stones from a wild turkey, and I’ve been collecting them for a while. When I inspected this gobbler’s gizzard, I found what looks to be a single pellet of buckshot,” said Carroll.
He figured the bird was picking up pebbles and found the pellet of shot that was lying on the ground, presumably from a hunter’s errant shot on a deer.
“That must be a one in a million chance that this bird found a buckshot and swallowed it. It was a fitting end to another amazing adventure!” he said.
Turkeys, like chickens, swallow small rocks to aid in the digestion of their food, because they lack teeth to chew.
Carroll’s gobbler weighed 18 pounds and had a 10-inch beard and 11/8-inch spurs. But the buckshot pellet is what made this bird a truly unique trophy.
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