Joe Hutto finds a clutch of wild turkey eggs on his property in the Florida flatwoods and decides to incubate them himself, becoming the first thing sixteen hatchlings see when they break out of their shells. Because turkeys imprint permanently on whatever raises them, Hutto spends the next year as their surrogate parent, sleeping outdoors with them, following them through palmetto scrub and pine forest, and learning to read alarm calls and pecking-order disputes the way the poults do. Reenactments filmed years after the events show Hutto, now older, walking the same land and narrating what he saw: chicks learning to spot hawks, a flock scattering at a predator's shadow, the slow shift from clumsy hatchling to wary adult bird. The film stays close to his written account, treating the turkeys as individuals with distinct personalities rather than specimens. Nature loss and a fox attack cut into the flock over the year, and Hutto has to watch it happen without intervening, since raising them wild means letting wild things happen to them.