I thought something was wrong with my game cam when I saw this picture. But cameras don’t lie so, needless to say I spent lots of hours in the woods calling and looking for him. Bad as I hate to admit it I did end up calling him in and can’t make any excuses for MISSING him at close range but that’s why they call it hunting!!  Upon researching it I found the following article:

Disease — Turkeys will occasionally get a melanin deficiency in their beard. Melanin is the pigment that makes the beard black and sometimes the melanin production is stopped during the growth of the beard and the beard gets a blonde or light colored streak across it. Usually the melanin production will pick back up and the rest of the beard will be black but the beard will always have that blonde streak through it. The light-colored portion of the beard is much more brittle and weaker than the black portions and the beards will often break off at that point or stop growing. Some turkeys suffering from this will have completely blonde beards.