Tennessee Hunter Harvests Rare Seven-Bearded Turkey

Wild turkey
Cameron Freshour

Turkey hunting season is now in full swing, and this lucky hunter in Tennessee bagged and tagged a turkey with seven beards.

Cameron Freshour was hunting with his wife when the rare turkey strutted out in the open. After successfully taking down the “tom,” the hunter was surprised once he started to examine it.

Freshour told his local news station WJHL 11:

“Opening day in Tennessee was one to remember for 2023. We sat there and hugged and laughed and celebrated with our 2nd (turkey) of the day.

To our surprise, there was something different about this bird. We started examining him and said, ‘Oh, he has two beards … wait actually three … no four.’

He ended up having seven beards in total.”

The turkey was around the average size for a bird in that area of the country, but what set it apart was the crazy beard count, all of them adding up to be 43 inches in length.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency certainly took notice of the impressive turkey and even made a post on their Facebook page about it.

The post reads:

“Tennessee turkey hunter Cameron Freshour harvested this seven-bearded gobbler in Greene County. Cameron’s bird weighed 18.5 lbs., had 1 1/16” spurs, and over 46 total inches of beard!

Multiple bearded turkeys are uncommon, with estimates suggesting less than 10% of gobblers have more than one beard.

While TWRA does not keep turkey records, NWTF does and unsurprisingly, multiple bearded birds top the list with the world record having 13 beards!”

Might as well call it quits for Freshour right? It isn’t going to get much better than this, unless a two-headed turkey were to cross paths with the hunter.

You would obviously want to get this rare turkey mounted, and it sounds like Freshour is in luck with that part of the process too:

“There (have) been many people (asking) me if I’m going to mount it.

Luckily, I’m a full-time taxidermist at Freshour Taxidermy in Greeneville, so I’ll be doing the work myself.”

God bless ’em.

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