Turkey Tracks

The more you treasure hunt the more things you will run across in the field. One of the most prevalent things to find, especially if you are hunting outlaw treasure, is a turkey track. There can be just one track or there can be two or more in a carving. You may find several turkey tracks carved one at a time but laid out in a series taking you from one spot to another.

In general, and I say this because there are very few absolutes in treasure hunting, the turkey track is a “travel” sign. If there is just one track you travel in the direction the track is going. For all of you that have never seen a track left behind by a real turkey, you go in the direction the toes are pointing. I’ve met a few turkeys in my life, the kind that stand upright and wear pants and believe me, you don’t want to waste anytime following their tracks!

When is a turkey track really a turkey track? This is where it can get a little confusing. Because a turkey track is a V with a line in the center it can be mistaken for several things and it can actually be several things. You have to make sure you are actually dealing with a turkey track. How can you tell if it really is a turkey track? Trial and Error. Unfortunately I don’t know of any foolproof way to tell if a turkey track is a track giving you a direction or some other symbol or symbols made to look like a turkey track. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

If you have more than one turkey track on the same carving you may be getting a direction and distance at the same time. The number of turkey tracks is the distance you are to go in a certain amount of increments. How can you tell what the distance increments are? Trail and Error. Are you seeing a pattern here? You should also keep in mind that the number of toes on the tracks could be a distance or other number you may need when working this trail. Generally speaking, if there is only one track it is a direction. It would only be when you have two or more tracks on the same carving that you might consider adding the number of toes on the tracks to get a number.

In the case of the turkey track carving I have posted a photo of, this was a simple “look to the left” carving. And in this case I literally mean, look to the left. This carving was on a bluff about six feet above the ground. The bluff had a right angle to it so when you were looking at the bluff where the turkey track was you were standing in a “corner” with the rest of the bluff to your left. There was a carving on the left side and the right side of the corner and this turkey track was simply telling me that the two carvings were connected and needed to be used together. It didn’t take me anywhere; it just turned me to my left to see the rest of the carving.

When you are treasure hunting don’t get caught up in the illusion that everything is a “code”. For the most part the carvings you run across are just pictures relaying a message just like a traffic sign does on the road. If you see a traffic sign with an S shaped line on it it is telling you that the roads curves back and forth ahead. A lot of carved symbols act in the same way. You are getting pictures instead of words to tell you what to do.