No tall tale, this.
This actually happened. I witnessed it with my own eyes.
My home is within the city limits of Oklahoma City, but the country hereabouts has a rural feel to it. It is no surprise, then, that a flock of wild turkeys are some of my closest neighbors.
There was the time when I stepped out of my home’s back door, and my ears were immediately assaulted with sounds of a lot of commotion and goings-on. That was when I saw that a wild turkey hen and her brood were pressed up close to the woven wire fence that surrounds my home’s lawn. The turkey hen was most upset. She was frantically instructing her youngsters to hide up alongside the fence.
A flash of motion caught my attention. It was a hawk that was making swift strafing runs at the turkey brood. Cooper’s hawks specialize in catching smaller birds. This hawk was intent upon a dinner feast that would be replete with a generous serving of young turkey.
Well, yeah, but old momma turkey was not about to let that happen. She kept positioning herself so that her fledglings were behind her.