Turkeys and other riders

Yesterday's ride was full of turkeys.  It is mating season and the turkeys are everywhere.  The toms are out to impress the hens with their feathers spread out and rattling.  Seem to me like the hens usually ignore the toms however they must decide to like a tom since we have soooo many turkeys around.  Soon we will have little turkeys following their moms all over the place.

We found turkeys at almost every turn we took in the forest.  Zoe is getting used to them.  I've heard stories of some of the toms being aggressive towards the horses but have never experience this-and never hope to.  I remember a few years ago I was riding Skippy, came around a corner and I stopped.  I heard a rattling sound on the other side of a large rock.  I wanted to go past the rock to get home otherwise it would have been a long ride home to turn around and go back the way I came.  I discovered that it was a tom turkey trying to impress a hen.  Those toms can sure make those feathers rattle.  It almost sounded like a rattlesnake!

We met 2 riders on our way back.  They were also riding back towards Lomida.  I didn't want to follow them the whole time so after following them for some distance, I took a different trail that lead in the home direction.  I was curious...would Zoe do ok?  It was like we were doing a separation game.  Only we didn't really know these horses.  We met up with them again, this time passing each other on the same trail.  We continued on towards home and they "appeared" to be leaving us.  This was a different kind of separation.  We kept meeting them but eventually left them to go home by ourselves.  This was what I was curious about...would Zoe do ok?  Her ears told me she was paying attention to where the other horses were, her feet were moving at a steady pace-she didn't speed up to find them or to get home faster.  We did come around a corner and saw some horses in a pasture grazing and I guess she couldn't help it...she called out.  But the pasture horses didn't know her and the 2 other horses were too far away now to answer, so she didn't get any call backs.  We kept moving towards home and to keep her mind busy I asked her to sidepass right and left as we traveled down the wider trails towards home.  She did ok, not super calm but she worked thru it and we got home just fine.