It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Turkey drop has both
Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006
It's a mystery that the locals don't want solved: Each year, during Yellville's annual Turkey Trot Festival, a rogue pilot circles the crowd and drops a few turkeys out of a plane.
Few people know when it will happen and even fewer know who is responsible, but organizers say that after the 61 st annual festival begins today, the unsanctioned turkey drop is likely to happen again.
"If I was a betting man, I would say it was a sure thing,"said Ron McPherson, president of the Yellville Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the festival. "It's a nonsponsored, nonsanctioned event, but it happens every year."
The first hint is usually the sound of a plane overhead, said Yellville Mayor Janell Kirkwood, who attended the very first festival in 1946 and has only missed about four of the merrymakings since.
"You know the swallows that go back to San Juan Capistrano every year ? Well, the turkeys come back to Yellville the same way,"Kirkwood said.
"We don't know who flies the plane, we don't know who the plane belongs to,"she said. "I don't ask and nobody tells."
Even local law enforcement can't identify the anonymous aviator.
"I'm the last person that they want to know who it is,"Marion County Sheriff Carl McBee said. "I have no idea."
The turkeys are dropped - one, two or three at a time with each pass of the plane - and they fly away as children try to catch them. The pilot typically makes four or five drops each day over the course of the twoday festival, McBee said.
"They're wild turkeys, and they can fly,"he said of the released birds. "A good percentage of them head south to the Buffalo River, and they don't even fool around to be chased."
Though some festivalgoers catch them, most of the turkeys get away, McBee said.
"Actually, it's probably a pretty good restocking program,"he said.
The turkey drop has been a staple of the Turkey Trot Festival since its inception. Originally, turkeys were dropped from the roof of the courthouse to the crowd below. Plane drops began sometime in the 1960 s, McPherson said.
Animal-welfare activists got involved after the 1979 festival. In December of that year, the regional director of the Humane Society of the United States wrote letters to city and state officials accusing the Yellville Chamber of Commerce of violating several state laws, including: subjecting an animal to "cruel mistreatment,"allowing "livestock" (including fowl ) to "run at large"and carrying "any creature in a cruel or inhumane manner,"according to an article in the Arkansas Democrat.
Protesters showed up the next year and aired their complaints to the Federal Aviation Administration, which, eventually, temporarily suspended the license of the pilot that year - then-Marion County Judge Gay Rorie - for flying a plane inside the city below the minimum 300-foot altitude set by the FAA.
In 1981, two pilots made separate runs during the festival, but they obscured or altered the identification numbers on their planes, according to a 1981 story in the Arkansas Democrat. The FAA began an investigation to identify the two pilots, one of whom later admitted to flying one of the planes.
"The main reason I did it is I wanted to show it can be done safely and that the turkeys don't go splat on your loved ones,"said Hugh "Hasty"Williams, according to an Associated Press account. "The whole thing was done safely. The turkeys lived."
The drop from the second plane, whose pilot was never identified, caused the death of at least two turkeys, who were killed when they hit the pavement, according to the AP article.
In subsequent years, the drops were moved to an area near Crooked Creek on the edge of town so pilots would be in compliance with FAA altitude regulations.
Williams, who continued to pilot the planes for a number of years, explained his technique in a 1987 Arkansas Gazette article.
The former Navy pilot said he put socks over the heads of the turkeys and rubber bands over their feet while they are in the plane, because "if you get a turkey loose in the cockpit you've got a lot of fun."
The actual drop is a two-man job, Williams said at the time.
"We fly over a tract, and I just throw that sucker out. If you throw them out butt first they'll tumble on you,"he said, adding that he aimed them into the wind. "Just like an airplane. Lay them out gently and softly."
In 1990, after national attention from animal-welfare activists and the news media -including The National Enquirer and The Wall Street Journal - the Yellville Chamber of Commerce said it would no longer sponsor the turkey drop. That was the first year of the unauthorized flyover, according to an Arkansas Gazette article.
The crowd cheered as the turkeys fell from the sky, then-Marion County Sheriff Roger Edmonson was quoted as saying.
"It sounded like you were at the Arkansas Razorback football game and they were winning,"Edmonson said.
The tradition has continued every year since, McPherson said.
"Someone makes sure it happens every year,"he said. "We don't know who does it, and we don't want to know."
Jackie Vergerio, an animal and entertainment specialist with Norfolk, Va.-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said city officials should make it their business to find out, and stop the drop, which she called a "clear violation"of state statutes prohibiting cruelty to animals.
"I can't believe that this is still being done with live turkeys,"Vergerio said. "It's a disgrace to Yellville and an embarrassment to the state of Arkansas that this barbaric event is still occurring each year."
But Kirkwood, the mayor, said the turkey drop is done in good fun as part of a wonderful celebration that draws between 12, 000 and 15, 000 people to town every year.
"It's a great time in Yellville,"she said.
As for the identity of the anonymous turkey dropper, Kirkwood insists she doesn't know.
"And if I did, I wouldn't tell,"she said.
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