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PHOTOS: North Carolina Hunter Bags Extremely-Rare White Leucitic Turkey

In the fall of 2019, North Carolina hunter Troy Cornett spotted a white, leucitic turkey on his father’s 10-acre property for the first time, and ever since then, he’s been waiting for the day when it would wind up between his crosshairs. On April 9, he finally took the shot.

When Cornett first saw his white turkey (or should we say white whale), he was looking for a pair of antlers rather than a fan of feathers. With binoculars in hand, the North Carolina hunter couldn’t believe what he discovered.

“I was like, that looks like something white!” Cornett told Field & Stream. “I kept looking through my binoculars. The gobbler was inside the flock, so I wasn’t able to get good eyes on him, and it was kind of late in the evening. Finally, the bird got positioned where I could see him, and I was like, Oh my god, that’s a white turkey!”

Surprisingly, he continued to see the tom through the following year. In the past, Cornett had even come close to landing the shot on the bird, but it wasn’t until last week that the hunt for the leucitic turkey finally came to an end.

“I was shook to the core when I actually got to harvest that thing,” Cornett shared. “It was a really special moment, something I’ll never forget.”

Understandably proud of his bagged game, Cornett posted pictures with the incredible trophy bird on Facebook.

National Wild Turkey Federation Official Confirms White Bird Is Leucitic

Leucism is an abnormal pigmentation because of inhibited melanin. This is different than albinism in which the animal lacks pigment in the eyes, making them appear red. Mark Hatfield, the National Director of Conservation Services for the National Wild Turkey Federation, noted just how rare it is to spot, let alone bag, these turkeys.

“It’s pretty rare to see a turkey like this,” Hatfield said. “How rare leucitic turkeys are is a question we get all the time. We see photos of these show up once or twice a year. If you think about how many birds are harvested each year—three quarter million to a million—it kind of summarizes how rare harvesting one is.”

Typically, when we spot albino or all-white animals, the reaction is to preserve them and encourage others against taking them as trophies. But in this instance, Cornett was actually doing the North Carolina turkey population a service by removing the leucitic, white turkey from the local gene pool. Somehow, Cornett’s bird managed to evade predators and fellow hunters despite its pure, white feathers, but this is a huge disadvantage for the creatures, especially for nesting hens that can’t camouflage into their surroundings.

For this reason and the fact that leucitic birds demonstrate no other biological difference from other turkeys, Hatfield said that they are completely legal to hunt.

“We do not advocate for letting these birds walk. If it’s a legal bird and possesses the traits set forth in the regulations of the state where it’s harvested, then we fully endorse the harvest of that bird,” Hatfield explained. “Every bird that we harvest is unique in some way. Some people may want to preserve the rare individuals, but it doesn’t mean that they have any higher or lower value biologically.”