One of my game warden friends denies that turkeys prey on quail, but I had an experience last summer which makes me wonder. My wife and I drove up to the house and were surprised to see a turkey in the yard just outside the living room window. Seeing the turkey was really nothing unusual, but this one paid no attention to us as we drove past, about 50 yards away. We drove the car into the garage at the other end of the house and went through to the living room, where we could see from the window that the turkey was pecking at something, then throwing it into the air and attacking it again when it hit the ground. He paid absolutely no attention to us watching from the window, perhaps thirty feet away.

Eventually I got tired of watching and went back to the garage, loaded my duck gun and walked around toward the living room window. Naturally, when I rounded the corner of the house, the turkey flew, and I hastened it on its way with an ineffectual load of #4 shot.

I then walked around to see if I could find what he had been toying with. Eventually I found it. It was the mangled carcass of a blue jay nestling which had evidently fallen from its nest. A wider search revealed another, unharmed nestling. The mangled bird had not been eaten, just killed and played with, as a cat would play with a mouse. Certainly a baby quail would have had no chance under the same circumstances. After watching a flock of 60+ turkeys feed across an open field, like an army of combines harvesting grain, I can hardly imagine that a clutch of quail eggs or quail hatchlings would escape their scrutiny. Res ipsa loquitur.