Able to fly at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour...eyesight and hearing sharp enough to spot a hunter from great distances...look, up in the sky...it's an eagle...it's a falcon...no, it's a turkey.

You heard right, one of the toughest game birds in Nevada is not what people would think. It's the wild turkey. Craig Mortimore, Nevada Department of Wildlife game biologist, points to several attributes that make the turkey such a formidable target.

"They possess all the skills necessary to evade a hunter," said Mortimore. "They can achieve flight of up to 60 miles an hour. They are exceptionally fast runners. They have excellent eyesight and tremendously good hearing."

He adds that the physical gifts aside, the turkey is also streetwise when it comes to hunters.

"Turkeys are a wary target. They usually group in large numbers and are very difficult to entice within gun range," Mortimore said.

Once a hunter is successful, however, he points out that the benefits at the table definitely outweigh the challenges in the field.

"Those that are successful in obtaining a turkey are rewarded with some fantastic table fare. This is definitely not a butterball right out of the freezer."

Wild turkeys were first introduced to Nevada in 1960, but the program was not successful until the late 1980s when the department began releasing the Rio Grande subspecies of wild turkey.

"We received some birds from California, released them in the Mason Valley Wildlife Management Area and low and behold they did extremely well," said Mortimore. "Now turkeys are well established in eight of our 17 counties in the state of Nevada."CV