I'm not 100% sure on why the turkeys seemed to come out of it better. The fire was huge...I don't remember the size exactly but somewhere around 150,000-200,000 acres. The south west edge of the fire was my house. It burned here for over 2 weeks, and by the time the fire fighters where given the equipment to stop it on our end of the fire, it was already a few hundred yards behind our home. They brought in a dozer and cut a fire line from the top of the valley wall to the river, just west of my home. Almost everything east of the line burned, except my house and out buildings and my neighbors place. All that to say, I think the turkeys had moved out of the area long before the fire, whereas the smaller game birds where seen around here leading up to the day before the fire.