Wyoming Mama Turkey Teaches Future Gang Members

A hot summer day.

The sprinklers were on.

Actually, it's better to water the lawn overnight so most of it doesn't evaporate.

Plus, watering in the middle of a hot day can actually burn the lawn as the water droplets act like a lens.

But mama and babies don't care. 

They are happy to see the water.

This was the scene in front of my neighbor's house in Wyoming.

Mama seemed to be teaching her little ones how to find the place where the water gathers and lap it up.

Watch these birds attack an Amazon Prime driver

I'm sure the sprinkler felt good as it passed back and forth over them, cooling them down from the intense sunshine.

Unfortunately, these chicks will grow up to be HOODLEMS like the rest of the turkeys in this Wyoming town.

Yes, you are looking at the next generation of gang members.

Like a scene from West Side Story, turkeys fight right in the middle of neighborhoods over food, territory, and mating.

It is not uncommon to see dozens of turkeys gathered in a Downtown Casper neighborhood to mix, mingle and, in some cases, fight each other.

Wyoming is home to one of the largest wild turkey populations in the West, but that wasn't always the case.

Up until the 1930s, there were no wild turkeys in the Cowboy State. That changed when the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish organized a trade with New Mexico, exchanging several sage grouse for 15 wild turkeys.

As it turns out, Wyoming offered an excellent habitat for these wild turkeys and became one of the state's greatest wildlife management achievements.

Turkeys are not indigenous to Wyoming.

They were originally released near Laramie Peak, the wild turkey population quickly grew to over 1,000.

In the 1950s, several of those wild turkeys were relocated to the Black Hills, where another flock thrived. Since then, wild turkey populations have grown large enough to provide local hunters with two seasons annually, one in the spring and one in the fall.