Yellville Turkey Trot Begins, Where Turkeys Are Dropped Out Of Planes

YELLVILLE, AR — The 72nd Yellville Turkey Trot, a weekend festival where live turkeys are dropped from a low-flying plane to an eager crowd below, opened Friday. Arkansas is one of the nation's top turkey-producing states, and the event — supposed to be a celebration of the bird — features a 5K run, music and dancing, as well as the Miss Drumsticks pageant, in which contestants are judged only on their legs.

The festival started a year after World War II as a complement to a turkey calling contest run by the local American Legion hall. During the first turkey drops, which helped the festival draw a crowd, the birds were dropped from the courthouse roof for people to chase, with some becoming pets and the others Thanksgiving dinner. But at least 50 years ago, the switch was made to a small plane.

But many have blasted the turkey drop portion of the event as animal abuse, and the city's Chamber of Commerce has distanced itself from the tradition it once endorsed. Still, thousands emailed the chamber about doing more to protect the birds.

"Why don't you jump yourselves with no parachute. ... Think you'll like it?" one person wrote to the chamber Monday. Others used more colorful language. (For more information on the turkey drop and other Across Arkansas stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Now, the organization hopes a "phantom pilot" won't fly over this weekend.

"It means fall is here," the Yellville Chamber of Commerce wrote in an open letter. "It means a turkey dinner a few weeks earlier than the rest of America. It means homecoming for many. ... Turkey Trot is so much more than turkeys being released from an airplane."

A 1989 National Enquirer article on the flights sparked outrage and prompted the chamber to cut turkey drops from the festival lineup. But local pilots kept it up, though there were no flights for a time after an animal rights group offered a $5,000 reward for the pilot's arrest. The aerial assault resumed in 2015, and last year a Mountain View pharmacist, Dana Woods, said he was "The Phantom Pilot" at the past two festivals. He wasn't punished, nor were others who have been identified as previous flyers.

"They can fly a long ways," Woods told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last year. "We treat the turkeys right. That may sound ironic, but we don't abuse those turkeys. We coddle and pet those turkeys. We're good to them."

Wild turkeys can fly, but they typically do so from tree top to tree top. Questions over their ability to fly made for a "WKRP in Cincinnati" episode in 1978 after a radio station stunt involving birds dropped from a helicopter went horribly awry.

Last year, about a dozen birds were dropped and not all survived the fall.

"Despite officials' insistence that this is 'humane,' at least two turkeys died last year when they crashed to the ground in what was undoubtedly, for them, a terrifying fall," one critic emailed the chamber.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it hadn't been contacted by any pilots about making a run this year, as it had in previous years.

"FAA regulations don't specifically deal with dropping live animals out of airplanes, so we have no authority to prohibit the practice. This does not mean we endorse it," spokesman Lynn Lunsford said. "We sent an inspector to the first day of the event (last year) to verify that the drops were occurring where the pilot said they would. Based on that, we found no evidence to pursue an enforcement case."

A woman filed a complaint this month with the local prosecutor in an effort to prevent the flights, but nothing has come of it. Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police, said his agency typically doesn't work misdemeanor cases. Any investigation would likely occur after a flight, not before one.

"We have no jurisdiction to say you cannot put a turkey on an airplane," Sadler said.

By KELLY P. KISSEL, Associated Press

Photo credit: Jason Ivester /The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via AP; Josh Dooley/The Baxter Bulletin via AP