Purdue University researchers who set up cameras in fields to
catch wild animals in the act of gobbling up crops found that
deer and raccoons -- not wild turkeys, as many farmers believe
-- are the greediest crop-raiders. After two years of field
work, the Purdue team vindicated turkeys by showing that deer
and raccoons caused 95 percent of the damage in the fields
surveyed. Squirrels, groundhogs and other species, but not
turkeys, inflicted the remaining damage. The researchers staked
out fields, using infrared cameras during their nighttime
surveillance to catch the animals in action. Those cameras
revealed largely nocturnal deer and raccoons gorging in the
darkness, their mouths stuffed with leaves, soybeans or corn,
said Gene Rhodes, a Purdue professor of wildlife ecology. Many
farmers have long believed that turkeys, which are active during
daylight hours and feed in flocks, were the critters eating and
damaging their crops. But during the two growing seasons
surveyed, not a single incident of crop damag