00:00:05 Speaker 1: My best turkey hunting stories don't always feature the best calling, or the ideal set up, or even the desired outcome. They include moments like getting superpowers from electric shock. Okay, maybe that isn't all true, but this is my story, and I believe I'll tell it how I want to. 00:00:23 Speaker 2: There must be DNA in humans coded to anticipate the spring, and it feels like some might even have DNA wired for telling turkey stories. The Northern Hemisphere's South Stepping Waltz is a celebration to many types of folks, but to none more than the hunter of the wild turkey. The most noble spring indicator of the wild things that audibly speak is the gobble of the wild turkey, which, by all measurable variables able to be assessed by humans, it's become vividly apparent this gobble is of higher rank than of all nature's claraty of trumpets. 00:01:02 Speaker 3: But then again, maybe the turkey hunters are biased. 00:01:06 Speaker 2: This is episode one of the Bear Grease Turkey story series. We've gathered six storytellers from Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia. We've got a best selling novelist, a TikTok celebrity, an undercover wildlife agent, a museum curator, a Mississippi gas company man, and a ninety two year old Appalachian mountain hunter. Turkey story is just hit different in March, and I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. 00:01:37 Speaker 4: I don't know what it is about that bird that really sticks out in my mind. I guess it's more the friendship than the bird. It's a testament to that good medicine that is spending time in the outdoors. 00:01:58 Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll. 00:02:09 Speaker 3: Tell the story. 00:02:10 Speaker 2: Of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. The story of the wild turkey in North America is one of ups and downs, some of it natural, some of it man induced. The time of your birth often determines your outlook on the bird as a resource, and it's the people that use them that have historically valued them. The Most Native Americans use their meat, bones, and feathers in practical ways, but also sacred the birds. Early Europeans found the place stacked with an estimated ten million turkeys and used them as a plentiful, life saving food source, but market hunting the eighteen hundreds would almost extirpate them, wiping them from ecological memory, their numbers dwindling down to thirty thousand birds contined wide by the nineteen thirties, but the modern conservation movement has helped restore them to around seven million birds today, and they've even been introduced into areas in the Western US they never inhabited pre European settlement. 00:03:36 Speaker 3: Modern turkey numbers. 00:03:37 Speaker 2: In the East peaked in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, right when I was growing up. 00:03:44 Speaker 3: However, in the last. 00:03:45 Speaker 2: Twenty years, turkey numbers have declined in many areas in the eastern United States, none more than in my home state of Arkansas. If there's one thing I've learned from my grandfather, Lewin Nukom, who spent the last thirty five years of his life lamenting the loss of the bob white quail, it's that it's not wise to put your hope and passion into a ground nesting bird. But for some of us it's a little too late. We love turkeys. Most of the wildlife stories in our times are positive, but of late we've been in the valley of what we hope is a cycle. Turkey numbers are on the decline in many areas, but I think it's producing the generation of people that truly value the wild. Turkey scarcity, or even perceived scarcity, is producing appreciation and action for turkey and turkey habitat, maybe more than ever. 00:04:45 Speaker 3: Let's get to the stories. 00:04:48 Speaker 2: Our first storyteller is from Leland, Mississippi, and we're sitting in the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. Billy Johnson is as Mississippi as a cypress and muddy water. 00:05:01 Speaker 3: This story is about a bird he named the blue. 00:05:04 Speaker 2: Yodler, but you'll see it's really about a man iconic in Billy's life, a riverman. 00:05:15 Speaker 5: I'm Billy Johnson and I'm the director of the Missippi Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leyland, Mississippi. I started hunting on a place in the Mississippi River that's on the Arkansas side of the river, and there was an old black man that had lived on born on the island, lived on the island. His name was Clay Matthews, and he had a single shot twelve gage shotgun with about a thirty inch barrel. And he believed that when the hen got ready to do business with the gobbler, that she wasn't gonna yelp but four times. And you know most of the time people calling or up five times. You know, that would be the secret. But anyway, you know, when I was a little kid, you know, he'd tell me about you know, when you deer hunting, you want to get behind a tree and look around it. When you're turkey hunt you got to get a tree wider than you are and you sit sit face, you know, facing the. 00:06:17 Speaker 6: Turkey and all. 00:06:17 Speaker 5: So anyway, as the years went by, I mean I turkey hunted a good bit, but I got to where. 00:06:26 Speaker 6: I liked the crappie finish a lot better. 00:06:31 Speaker 5: One year, we got thirteen inches of rain in three days, and the lake came up six or seven feet and run. 00:06:38 Speaker 6: The crappery fishing. 00:06:39 Speaker 5: It's a lot of little places up in the hills of Mississippi that used to have a store in a post office and maybe at one point of school, and it just got got down to where there the towns just went away. And usually what would happen, what happened to start with is wherever it was a spring looked, where it was water in the hills, you know, it would it would, it would be little towns would spring up. And then his farming became more capital intensive and less labor intensive, they just you know, shrunk back down. And one of those places that we hunt up in Holmes County, Mississippi, it's a place where they had planted all the cotton fields and pines, and it was some tall hardwood ridges behind behind the pines. There was a big gobbler that would that would would gobble on one. 00:07:31 Speaker 6: Of those big hardwood ridges, and he uh. 00:07:35 Speaker 5: He'd get real excited and almost like he was yodling in the middle of the goblins. And so I nicknamed him the Blue Yodler. But you couldn't call. If you tried to call to him, he wouldn't come. I hunted the turkey twenty one days, and it was like I stepped into a different world from a crappee fishing point of view to the turkey hunting. And I would have to try to guess which way the turkey was gonna go that morning and not call, and a big storm came up. One morning he gobbled two hundred and sixty seven times, and finally it was just a day loge I'm talking about. When I started walking out of the woods, my boots got full of water, and you know this, and that I just didn't know how, you know, when you got a three hundred and sixty degree area in the woods and you trying to figure out which way that turkey's gonna walk that next morning. Finally I lucked up and he hooked up with another gobbler, and uh, they hadn't gobbled that morning, and so I started calling and the other goblin was answering and made a complete circle around me, and I mean, I didn't have that good place to hide, and as they would gobble from a little bit farther round, I'd had to kind of try to ease around, ease around, And I finally saw the gobler. 00:09:11 Speaker 6: Coming and killed it. 00:09:14 Speaker 5: And it was the big gobbler that I'd been hunting, you know, for twenty one days. 00:09:20 Speaker 6: And for the. 00:09:20 Speaker 5: Rest of that day until when I went to sleep, I was just on top of the world. And I woke up the next morning time to go turkey hunting, And about ten minutes after I woke up, it hit me that I didn't have that turkey to hunt anymore. 00:09:35 Speaker 6: And it was just like a. 00:09:37 Speaker 5: Complete loss of what to do about how to try to kill the turkey. Finally killing the turkey and your old cloud nine. And the next morning you realize that it's over, and it just just complete, you know, I don't know if it's disappointment, but just just sad that that it's ended. 00:09:57 Speaker 6: You know, when a. 00:09:59 Speaker 5: Deer or a turkey here are a big bass that you lose, or whatever takes your mind over, completely takes your mind over, and you know all of your thoughts are about that, you know where you you're thinking about it when you're awake and dreaming about it when you're sleeping, and you know, that's the way I was with with that turkey. I think about that, that that old that old black man Clay Matthews a lot. He was the last of those lamp lighters. They had floating lamps, caroseen lamps that marked the channel and the river. He would row out there and fill the lamps up with Caroseene and you know this and that, and then it's another guy living on another island south there, north of there. They would have those those little areas. But I often think about how simple his life was. You know, he had a he had a garden by his house and had tin around the bottom and you know, fenced in where the deer, you know, couldn't get in there. And he raised hogs and chickens, and he hunted, you know, he hunted squirrels and the turkeys, and you know, his wife fished, and I mean they lived off of what the river and the island afforded. There he would always kill a couple of big gobblers the last week or two of the season, which would be like from the twentieth of April for the first of night. He knew where some mulberry trees were, and those turkeys would come once the mulberries got right, and he knew just to set up in there around those trees, and he knew turkey hunting inside out, and he was self talked. One of my prize possessions. We opened this wildlife museum in Leyland. A guy that used to hunt with us on that island came in with a paper bag. He said, here, I've had this long enough. And it was Clay Matthew's turkey call box call, and whoever made that call had put it together instead of gluing it together, he'd used those little cobbler tacks like somebody working on in the shoe shop used. So, I mean, it's no telling where he got it or whatever. But but after Clay died, you know, he went in his house and found that found that old turkey call. 00:12:27 Speaker 6: So he died in the. 00:12:29 Speaker 5: Late seventies, so I mean he lived on that island, you know, his whole life. It was a whiskey maker, real famous bootlegger up there named named Perry Martin, and Clay made whiskey for Perry Martin and uh, and it was just kind of the way of life on the river, I know, Clay. Clay told me that before they had outboard motors, that the three most important things on the river was flower, tobacco, and whiskey. And then once they had got to use an outboard motors in gasoline, so that was the foremost important things. But we had a drug store and we sold garden seeds and plants and stuff, and my daddy would fly up there in the spring the turkey hunt, and he would bring clay like cabbage plants and sweet potato plants, and enough seeds. 00:13:23 Speaker 6: You know, for his garden and stuff. 00:13:25 Speaker 5: So between his chickens and his hogs, and caught what he shot, what his wife caught. 00:13:31 Speaker 6: You know, they ate what they had. They used to have what they called blue. 00:13:35 Speaker 5: Logs, and they were like cypress. Mostly the river would change and the current would change and those things would shoot up. He would tie them up on the bank. All of the rivermen that collected those logs for the lumber companies had their own knot. Other words, if the timber buyer came up there, he could look at the knot hold them together and know who they belonged to. That was something that Clay Clay did for money. And the other thing he trapped bobcats and uh, you know when spring came and he had all his hides, he had put him on his back and he would take his boat go across that white river cut off walk across Big Island, and somewhere out in the middle of Big Island. 00:14:23 Speaker 6: Was a huge hollow tree. 00:14:25 Speaker 5: He had cooking utensils and stuff in that tree in a lantern, you know, care thing, and he'd spend the night there, and then he had walked to the other side of Big Island, and a friend of his had take him across, and he would go to Arkansas City and sell his furs. 00:14:42 Speaker 6: And come back. Clay was a man of nature. 00:14:47 Speaker 5: In other words, he would go out in the fall and according to high high off the ground the hornets nests were, he would predict whether it was going to be a coal winner or warm winner or whatever. The higher they were up in the tree, the colder the winter was gonna be. If they were low, it was gonna be a warm winner. And in those days, I mean we had a we had a fill turkey season. But before they started having that fall turkey season. All of the guys in my dad's generation were big squirrel hunters, and they a lot of them. 00:15:23 Speaker 6: They hunted with twenty two rifles. 00:15:25 Speaker 5: And Clay could clean squirrels like you wouldn't believe how fast he could clean them, and wouldn't be a hair on, but he would. He would rub his hands over those those squirrel hides in a corner. 00:15:41 Speaker 6: To ever, how much how thick the hair. 00:15:43 Speaker 5: Was, he could predict what the winter winter was gonna be whether it was gonna be cold or not. 00:15:49 Speaker 6: So I mean he learned what he knew from nature itself, you know. 00:15:56 Speaker 5: And you think, in this day and time, with all this instant this communication and all this stuff, how rich a life he had. 00:16:05 Speaker 6: People like Clay. 00:16:06 Speaker 5: Matthews were living in a world that was rapidly changing. 00:16:13 Speaker 6: It didn't change for him, but the rest of the world around it. 00:16:19 Speaker 5: In this world we live in now, with the Internet and Instagram and Twitter and emails and text and all that, it makes me wonder what life ever get. 00:16:32 Speaker 6: To be like it was with him living on those isles. 00:16:41 Speaker 2: It's clear that when Billy thinks about turkey hunting, it's filtered through the life of Clay Matthews. The story of the Blue Yodler had nothing to do with the man on the surface. That is, it happened long after Clay had passed away, But still Billy can't talk about him without talking about Clay. 00:17:01 Speaker 3: What an incredible life he lived. 00:17:03 Speaker 2: And Billy did a good job of describing how an individual animal at times can overtake you. As frustrating as it can be, the older I get I realize how unique those times are. 00:17:16 Speaker 3: It makes me grateful. 00:17:18 Speaker 2: If you're near Leland, Mississippi, you're gonna want to stop by the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. It's truly an incredible place that will impress you. 00:17:27 Speaker 3: Tell them that I sent you. 00:17:30 Speaker 2: I wish every state had one of these, and I wish every state had a Billy Johnson too. He's done an incredible job. Our next storyteller is named Jack Hall. He's from Tennessee. If there ever was a living turkey hunting legend, it's him. And it's not because he had a TV show, wrote a book, or got a turkey slam. In some ways, it's a shame to even introduce you to him in this way. I asked the man to tell me one of his favorite turkey stories. He really deserves more. Jack is ninety two years old. I met him through my friend Russ Arthur, who will hear from At the end. Russ says that Jack was one of the original true mountain turkey hunters in East Tennessee. Jack ran Hall Chevrolet in Cleveland, Tennessee. He had the resources to travel and hunt in easier places, but he never did. He loved the mountains. Here's Jack with some history and a funny story. 00:18:42 Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, Well I'm Jack Hall and I live in Cleveland, Tennessee, and I was born in thirty one. 00:18:52 Speaker 6: I'm ninety two. 00:18:54 Speaker 7: I started hunting the mountains when I was about ten years old when we moved here. My dad was a big hunter and fishermen. But when he hunted, we didn't have turkeys here, but he was shown. When I started hunting the mountains, it was squirrel hunting. That's all we did. We didn't have a turkey season back there. We'd run those ridges, squirrel hunted. What I think of that day, I think, why did we do that? But uh, but we loved being into the mountains. 00:19:26 Speaker 6: Then. 00:19:27 Speaker 7: I suppose when I was twenty five, thirty years old, we started turkey hunting. Oh for many years, they only had like a two day hunt maybe three times a year, and that's all. That's all the turkey hunting did. I used to hunt a lot with a fred about it worked at Bowl Water and his name was Clyde Steiner. And uh, one time I decided I'd get one on him. I was all the time trying to pull one on him. Be he said his family said he was gullible because I was all the time getting something. But uh, but anyway, I walked in this place and he was going to pick me up later, you know. I told him give me about two or three hours and come down and pick me up. So I walked a good ways about two miles in, and uh, what I'd done is I had a friend about it had a bunch of eb us, and I asked him he'd give you a couple of evu eggs, and I bought him from me and I got a gas mask, and uh, I put those m u eggs in and packed newspapers a ready and everything through an open shoulder and uh, and I built a desk about that big around and I put these two inbu exit. Before I put the exit, I said it that they could call turkeys for about an hour, you know. So it looked like the desk was hued, you know. And then I put those two eggs in. And when I went out, he I med eve. He said, you do the good. I said no, but you would not believe what I failed. And he said, what do you find? He said, I found a nest back there. I don't know what it is. I said that it must have been a dinosaur egged there's two of them, innut it. And he kept questioning me about that. He said, I don't want to see them. I said, it's about a mile or two back in there. He said, I don't care. Let's go. I want to see it. So we took off, walked and walked and all its uphill all the way to it. And when we got there, you'd have to you'd have to dore him to appreciate it, because he's fuddy. Anyway, he looked at that legs. Soon as he walked up, he said, what in the name of God? 00:21:47 Speaker 6: And I started. 00:21:49 Speaker 8: I said, I don't door. 00:21:50 Speaker 6: I've never seen anything like it. 00:21:51 Speaker 7: He's and I got down there and had a stick and I said, he said, don't move that thinking he said, I don't believe it's a legg He said, I believe it's a bomb. Somebody believe there was are bombs. I said, well, I don't believe her bomb. Anyway, I had more fun with him about to do it at it. We took him back to town and he had a workshop. We took him out there and he kept saying, don't touch those things, and I cared him. He said, I still believe her bomb. I said, give me a drill. That he fussed about that and I drilled it. He saw it was an ad and that I got to think him later, I better tell him better. That he was older than me. Thought he'd lively have a heart attack. So I called him and told him. But that's what his his family told him. I heard of all the telephone that that he said. I can't believe you always believe him. Yeah, I told him I was afraid he'd have hearts. That well. I could tell a lot of stories about killing turkeys, but I thought i'd. 00:23:00 Speaker 6: Tell what about but he just knew they were bobs. 00:23:07 Speaker 7: You know. I still would love to turkey out in the mountains, but but uh, legs just won't let me do it any boy. It's been about three years ago, and I have no idea how many of you, but I'd always killed one or two a year, you know, but that's all you could kill, you know. I've never traveled much and done in turkey out and just just oh. 00:23:33 Speaker 2: Good, Jack Hall, What an incredible guy, and what a sense of humor the old em you ag trick. And I hadn't even told you that Jack is an expert ballroom dancer too. Well, I hate to turn the table too quickly and disorient you. But our next storyteller is about six point five decades younger than Jack. Macy Watkins is from Gordon, Georgia. She's an artist, a hunter, and a fly fisherman. I think you'll enjoy her story about gaining superpowers from a hunt. And yep, Macy is our resident turkey hunting TikToker. 00:24:30 Speaker 1: I'm doing to the mut My name's Macy Watkins, and my best turkey hunting stories don't always feature the best calling, or the ideal set up, or even the desired outcome, but yet they are plagued with adversity, bloopers and such. They're always colorful, never dull, and sometimes victorious. They include moments like getting superpowers from electric shot. Okay, maybe that isn't all true, but this is my story I believe, I'll tell it how. I want to more on that later. So I had a pretty rough season in Tennessee. Was bounding, determined to kill a bird there, entered a tournament that just did some other hunting in Tennessee and just came up with no luck. Hunted multiple locations just came up shorts like it wasn't meant to be until the divine appointment of I met Slade and we got to turkey hunt and doubled up and that was our first date. So that was the beginning. Finally got one in Tennessee. So after that, now I went back to Georgia. Slade and calls and says, let's go back to Tennessee. I have somewhere we can hunt. So I said, all right, I'm spontaneous, so I just I picked up went back to Alabama and we drove back up to Tennessee, hunting with our friend Tyler Sanders. So us three deep in the woods. Slade kills his bird very quickly. So but my luck or lack of luck, actually, you know, it wasn't that easy moving forward. The opportunities to kill did not come easy. Hunted another day, had the opportunity to kill some if they would have just taken a few more steps, which I'm sure a lot of turkey hunters have those similar stories. But we were right on a line, probably had them ten feet in front of us, and Slade said, hold off, we gotta do it by the book. And I'm a person of integrity too. I enjoyed doing things the right way. If you're gonna do something, it's worth doing right. So we did not shoot those turkeys. Probably could have shot a few, Yeah, So we held off. So another day passed, did not get Macie her bird. We said we could hunt the next morning. Then we had some heavy rain coming in, so we went out and we just we were kind of running and gunning, and we parked. The truck started calling. We immediately heard one fire back and I was like, oh, snap, that's not that far away. And then we call again and this turkey was coming in hot and bothered. He was fired up. We were like, dang, that's closer. So the time was ticking. We were on a clock, us versus the bird. Who's gonna get there first? And it was absolutely my last chance. Yeah, So it was probably mid morning. We had hunted other spots that morning. We actually saw this patch of cedar trees outside of the woodline. I don't even think we actually had time to make it into the woods, because that's how fast everything was happening. Everything that happened from here on out is the funny part. So there was a fence, and you know, the guys are a little taller than me, so they easily got over it, and they wanted to like me to step in their hands and get over the fence, but I was like, no, no, that's too hard. I'm just jumping. It's not even that high. Anyways. Well, I backed up, I got a running start, and I ate my words, but after that, I also ate dirt that I tripped over the fence. But like I said, there's clumsiness and adversity plagues all with my turkey hunts. I'm a very clumsy person. And one thing I always say that it's not a turkey hunt for me until I saw until I busted. Doesn't matter how short or long a turkey hunt is, I'm usually gonna fall just because I don't know. Maybe that's my trademark. But the fence caught my rubber light boot. I almost made it. It's just this much that got me and I hit the ground and the guys just start laughing at me. I'm like, y'all, shut up, we got a bird. 00:28:42 Speaker 5: To go kill. 00:28:42 Speaker 1: Quit messing around. They were just laughing. I'm like, we're we were on the clock. Quit laughing. 00:28:49 Speaker 5: Come on. 00:28:50 Speaker 1: And we finally got her composure, and when we ran over to the patch of cedar trees. I mean it didn't take long after that. We only had a minute or two once we got set up. Then we just finished the deal of the bird came in and just if I had one word to describe how that turkey looked was haggard. He was just road hard and put up wet, and actually he was wet because it had started raining pretty good at that point. And that's really when I become one with the turkey, because at that point, after three days of hunting hard and coming up short, so tired and getting rained on and my hopes were down, became one with the turkey because I was also road hard and put up wet. So he came in. I guess he was like, so where's this hen I was here and and just oblivious to us. They're hiding. And now I pulled the trigger and got it done. We had some high fives, and when I say I absolutely dirt rolled him, I did. We were on a decline, so made a successful shot, rolled down the hill a little bit, and we were pretty high. It was awesome turkey. So when I kill a turkey, I usually just can't believe it. I'm surprised and excited every time, I mean, mouth opens just I usually laugh out of just pure happiness. There's just such joy in it, especially when there's so much adversity, so many things that might go wrong, coming up short in Tennessee with all my hunts there, it just makes the moment sweeter. 00:30:26 Speaker 3: Lots of high fives, hugs. 00:30:28 Speaker 1: Picking people up, yelling at the same time. I'd say, so Macy finally got her bird. It's an amazing moment. And then we headed out of the woods having my bird over my shoulder. But what stood in the way of getting back to the truck was that dang fence and the guys got over it. And this is a fence that we had permission to hot, by the way, I just want to point that out. So I got to the fence, I'm like, well, that fence ain't hot. I already touched it when I fell over it. But I made one step over it with my turkey, and I'll be dan if it didn't shock me. And I screamed so loud, and Slade was in the truck laughing so hard. Tyler, who was trying to help me over, was laughing. And you know, like when people laugh at you, but that you're there laughing a little harder than you're laughing, So I. 00:31:25 Speaker 8: Was a little embarrassed. 00:31:27 Speaker 1: But anyways, I really feel like that day I gained superpowers, some kind of turkey hunting superpowers from my electric voltage that I got shocked with. And the thing is, that's not a lie, because that was my last bird of the season last year. So time will tell. If you see me out there on the Dagone killing spree just having a record year this year, you'll know Macy's got something that the rest of us don't have. And that's because I gained superpowers that day. This story ends in a trout stream in North Carolina. So later that week I went back home, and I love trout fishing. That's my mother passion turkey hunting, trout fishing, or what I was put on earth to do. I tied a bunch of flies that week, and I took a bunch of feathers from my turkey and tied some pheasant tail niphs, which I affectionately called my turkey tail niphs. We do a bunch of euro niphing in North Georgia and the streams, And if you look at my page, you'll see that I catch the occasional giant trout because I do have access to a few trophy streams, but my passion is going way up in the mountains, way past cell service and catching wild rainbows, brook trout with your native to our area and brown trout. So I almost got my Cherokee slam. That's where I was fishing in Cherokee, North Carolina, not far from my house. I caught every fish that day on flies that I had tied with my Tennessee bird, which is just all encompassing full so moment, I feel like turkey hunting makes me a well rounded outdoorsman, but also a resourceful and more appreciative angler. 00:33:13 Speaker 2: Thank you, miss Macye for the story, and we'll see if those big talking superpower predictions come true. It's go time and showtime in the spring woods. 00:33:22 Speaker 3: Right now. I'll be paying attention and I'll be rooting for you. 00:33:29 Speaker 2: Be prepared to be disoriented even yet again as we move across the state line to the great state of North Carolina to our next storyteller, David Joy is as country as cornbread. And if you lined up ten people and we're asked to guess which one was an award winning novelist who just got off a European book tour. I bet you wouldn't pick him, but you'd be wrong. If you didn't, you might have didicted that he was a ridge running Southern Appalachian turkey hunter by the length of his legs. He's a tall fella and a bona fide turkey hunter. Here's David's story and it involves a man getting shot. 00:34:14 Speaker 4: So I guess one of the things that I like most about turkey hunting is that you have the potential to develop like a partnership with another person that you're hunting with. And in some ways that differs from other pursuits in the outdoors. So, you know, especially like whitetail hunting or something where you're you know, spending a lot of time in a tree by yourself. With turkey hunting, if you can find the right partner, it serves as a tremendous advantage. And I've been very fortunate to develop a relationship with with just an incredible sportsman who's probably about twenty five years my senior, but just a hell of a turkey hunter. I mean, it's killed hundreds of turkeys, and you know, through the years I've had. I've had the chance to hunt with him a lot, and he and how I have kind of developed a relationship where he knows what I'm going to do and I know what he's going to do, and because of that, we have the opportunity to kill a lot of birds that we probably couldn't have killed by ourselves. And so really that's become one of the things that I look forward to most every Turkey season, is just spending time in the woods with him, because I know one day I'm not going to have that. So, you know, jumped to last year. This was real early in the season because I was hunting in South Carolina, just over the line, and I was up on a mountain. I was hunting by myself, and I had been on this bird multiple days and it had woked me every day, and it kind of played out the same way this morning. And I sent this buddy of mine a text message, you know, telling him what had happened, and he texted back, I've been shot. And I immediately thought he was joking, you know, I thought he was just making it up, and you know, I sent something back and he said he said he was at the hospital and that he was he was going to be fine, but that he had been shot. And where I was on the mountain, it was kind of an odd spot because typically you don't have service in the mountains, but I had very good service there, and so my immediate thought was, Okay, he's safe. But I knew he was at the far eastern end of North Carolina, and we live in the mountains of North Carolina. So my immediate thought was his wife, And it was like, how is his wife going to get down there to the hospital? But so eventually she she reached out and said she was fine, she was headed that way, and and that was that. Uh So, so what wound up happening was was that another hunter shot this buddy of mine thinking that he was a turkey, and he had just enough time to kind of roll on his side so that he took the majority of the shot into his ribs, his shoulder. He was shot with long beard copper plated number fives, and somehow or another, you know, just by the grace of God, it none of it got him in the head. And thank god they were shooting, you know, copper plated lead instead of tungsten, because because I think it would have been a different story. I think he'd be dead. So he immediately, you know, is at the hospital. They're working to get the shot out of him. They put him on antibiotics. He comes home pretty much that next day, but within a week there was a secondary infection that started that luckily another doctor caught and you know, they wind up working on him and get him healed. But you know, that doctor told him that if he hadn't taken care of that secondary infection, it would have killed him. It would have traveled to his brain that had killed him. So all of this is going on, and turkey hunting is kind of out the window, you know, And and I'm devastated for him, but I'm thankful that he's alive. And so my turkey season last year was real funny, you know. But I decided I was gonna hunt with an old Winchester Model twelve because that's what he always hunted with. So I hunted all season with an old Nickel still nineteen twenty eight Winchester Model twelve twenty gage. So time goes on and through the month of April, and I'm you know, men are not wanting to share their feelings, so it was always hard to try and you know, feel him out on where he was mentally. And so I spent a lot of time talking to his wife, and she kept saying he needs to get back in the woods, and I thought she was right. But at the same time, that's not one of them things you can pressure somebody to do, you know. I mean, he had just been shot and thank god, you know, didn't die. But you know, that's an incredibly traumatic experience that was obviously going to linger pretty heavy. And so it was this delicate balance and act of not wanting to push him but also knowing that where he needed to be was in the Turkey woods. And so we started having those conversations and I just kept telling him, you know that if it made him more comfortable, I wouldn't carry a gun. You know, We'll just go in the woods together. And you know, he didn't really want to do that, and you know, I'd almost giving up on asking him, and out of the blue, he sends me this message one evening and he said, I've got a bird pinned down and I said, well, let's go chase him. He said, you know, he said, we'll meet me at the house the next morning, and so I did and we rode out through the mountains. It was first day we hunted, you know, together last season. We head out this ridge, you know, to try and hear if this bird is roosted where he thinks it'll be. And we get out there, and sure enough, that bird starts hammering across the valley before daylight, and you know, I know that it's on. I know, you know, Raymond's got him pinned down, and I know for a fact he's going to know the landscape and know the moves we need to make to get on him. So it's super, super steep, and we just drop off the side of this mountain through a bunch of laurels and rodeo and get down into the bottom along this field, and the birds are roosted at the bottom of that field, and we kind of make a plan on what we're going to do. And right about the time that I was going to go sit at my tree, I could just since that he was really nervous. It was something I'd never experienced with him before, because he knows how safe I am with guns. He's been around with me with guns all the time. 00:40:42 Speaker 6: You know. 00:40:43 Speaker 4: I always tell him that when the gun's loaded, I tell him when it's unloaded, and he just started asking a lot of questions about the gun, and so I told him, I said, Raymond, I said, I'm gona unload my gun. I said, I'm not going to touch it. I said, I'm gonna get behind you, and I said, I'm not going to touch it. 00:41:00 Speaker 6: I just wanted him to hunt. 00:41:01 Speaker 4: So we start calling to this bird and they pitch out into that field, and they had a bunch of hens with them, and for the most part, we spent the morning, you know, calling to Noah Vail, trying to call a bird that had everything he wanted. And so, you know, we spent the morning calling at him, and every once in a while he'd answer, but never made a move up there towards just just stayed in the bottom of that field. And about mid morning, probably around ten, those hens started to leave the field to go to nest. When they did that, Tom started following them, and I had already made a move further away from Raymond. My plan was to try and pull those birds up to us, and that that field made a real hard like a hard right dog leg back up above us, and so my plan was to try and make it sound like there had been birds that moved up that field that they couldn't see. And so I was up there and I was calling and they were still answering me. And it was late season. So I started gobbling on a box call, and every time i'd gobble on that box call, they'd answer me. But so those birds are working up the field, and as turkeys you know, always do, they did not cooperate. They went the opposite direction and they went up the left hand side, and that gobbler just just kept on, you know, gobbling with his hens up up through the woods. And I thought, well, this is over. And about that time I seen a turkey pop up over the hill in that field, and he was on the right hand side, and he was coming in silent. I think he was probably a subordinate bird, you know, that had broken off from them others, but was coming to check out all that noise he'd been listening to all morning. And so he pops up and he starts walking through that field. I mean, just gorgeous. The sun's just hitting him perfect, and I'm watching him work up through that field and I think any minute he's gonna get in front of Raymond, and you know, and Raymond's gonna smoke him. And it gets to the point where I'm convinced that he's past him. And all I'm thinking is, you've let that bird get past you because you want me to kill it, because that's something he would do. That's just him. 00:43:18 Speaker 6: Uh. 00:43:19 Speaker 4: He's always like he's always thinking of others before he's thinking of himself. So I'm thinking, you idiot, man, You've let this bird get by you, and now we've got to hope it gets all the way up here to me. And right about the time that that that thought is settling in my mind, I don't hear Raymond, but I know he must have called because that bird threw his head up and he just walloped him out there in that field. And I don't know what it is about that bird that really sticks out in my mind. I guess it's it's more the friendship than the bird. And I think it's it's just a testament to, you know, what the outdoors and what the sporting life means to people who can't live. 00:43:59 Speaker 6: With out it. 00:44:01 Speaker 4: You know, it's a testament to that good medicine that is spending time in the outdoors. 00:44:13 Speaker 2: That was a good story. David and a serious one. I think you should write a novel about a man getting shot by a stranger in the backwall turkey hunting, and the shooter escapes on. 00:44:24 Speaker 3: A crooked hoofed mule. 00:44:26 Speaker 2: Years later, the shot turkey hunter unknowingly saves the life of the mule trapped in swirling Mississippi River Eddie. The steed presumably belonged to the mysterious shooter. We don't know who he is, and the beast has a unique brand on his left haunch BP three. 00:44:43 Speaker 3: But unfortunately, the mule dies three days later. 00:44:46 Speaker 2: And I mean, it's a long story and David would do such a better job telling it. But it's kind of a plot twist and weird. But the shooter was actually the man's brother, and they didn't know about each other because of the father's double life, and their father, a turkey hunter, had accidentally told them both about the same ridged a turkey hunt on where they faithfully met on the morning of the shooting. 00:45:09 Speaker 3: Oh my, at the drama, And the. 00:45:11 Speaker 2: Mysterious brand stood for black panther three because three generations of those Hillbillies believe they'd seen a black mountain lion. Like I said, David, would tell it better anyway. In all seriousness, the thought of getting shot turkey hunting is a nightmare. And if you don't know much about turkey hunting, it's a unique hunt because we roam around in the woods making the calls of a turkey without any hunter orange on. Because turkeys can see color, most firearms hunting requires people to wear hunter's orange to be visible. Hunting accidents are rare but possible. But honestly, to me, the other version of the nightmare is being the one who made the mistake and shot someone. I think about that more than getting shot. Be careful out there, folks. We're now going to go back to Leland, Mississippi, to the Wildlife Heritage Museum to meet our next storyteller who is from the Delta. His name is Roy Stubbs, and he worked for the gas company. Roy is in his eighties and it's clear that he has a unique appreciation for the wild turkey. I was so glad to be able to capture his story in a little bit about his history. 00:46:34 Speaker 6: My name's Roy Stubbs. 00:46:36 Speaker 9: I lived in the Mississippi Delta and that was the place to be if you had the opportunity to hunt turkeys, especially along the Missippi Roup. My desire for turkey hunting started at early age when a friend of ours and the town I lived in but aught Misissippi with keller turkey and bring it by when if we'd have our little Wednesday morning at school, and he would bring his turkey in and lay it down and talk about the turkey, and then he'd take a leave off of a tree of some kind and use that as its call. And so it kind of stayed with me, and so I fast forward then several years and I had the opportunity to become a member of a honting club along the mist every rubber and there was lots of turkeys, lots of turkeys, and the timeframe were talking about it's a late nineteen sixties, so it'd been around those turkeys for the first time in the woods. I just had this desire building. But it hunting turkeys just so much different than the hunting anything else. You just have to have a lot of knowledge. So I had a friend of mine there was a barber in a small town near me, and I used to go and set any and talk with him. He made his own malcohols and he taught me a lot about calling turkeys. He taught me how to make a malcohol even and I hammered out a piece of aluminum and some rubber and I made my first first turkey I killed in nineteen sixty seven. I called it up with my mouth call. 00:48:24 Speaker 6: Later on I developed the weight. 00:48:27 Speaker 9: That used my natural voice, and I used it most of all time until I got too old too. Turkey hunters have a bond all across the country. That's it's just a part of hunters and camaraderie, the love we all have for each other and for the sport itself. The turkey is a magnificent bird and it's not to be taken lightly that when you could kill, to thank the Lord for naming you have this opportunity and his creation. So in nineteen eighty four, had I lived in Greenville, Mississippi, which is right on Misssippi River. My club I hunted on with just a few minutes north of town, and so started the season off and had a turkey that has caught my attention right away. The main line Levy, if you've never been there. This runs from Memphis to Vicksburg. There's dikes on it we call dikes that are running and they're there for to control the water flow as it flows on toward the Gulf and so on. These we traveled on these dikes. There our road on top of them, and you can drive down for you woods and most of them, a lot of them go all the way to the bank of the Mississippi. So we ride down them in Stoton, call and the turkey answer. 00:49:59 Speaker 6: We get to they get a hunt on. 00:50:02 Speaker 9: So this particularly year started off with this turkey. And I noticed the first few times I went, I'd drive down there. 00:50:10 Speaker 6: He would cop them. 00:50:11 Speaker 9: So I said, okay, I know where you are, I know how to give you. Well that that started my season long turkey honk. So I would go out and call that turkey in he would gobble, and so we would get in. I'd move, he'd move, and literally literally I would go every day and want that turkey. With my job there I had that time. I'd get all my men working and I'd sneak off and get my truck, drive up there and call and he'd answer me and I'd go hunting. So we did this day in and day out. It's the weather permitted and sun Sundays off mostly well, we came down it's gonna be the last day, last day of trucky season. Well, unfortunately, on the last day of trucky season, my wife had us a social event to go to. Well, I thought I had a train, but she slept a scept through on men. So I'm thinking about my turkey. I got one last chance, one last chance to get him. And so I had many encounters through the year. I'm crawling up on snakes. I had deer walk up to me check and see what I'm doing. I mean, coons follow some of armidellas because I did a lot of belly crawling that food that year, trying to crawl up on this turkey. He was a smart he's smart smart, and he. 00:51:51 Speaker 6: Was really fun to hunt. 00:51:53 Speaker 9: And it was just calling experience and learning experience that I'll never forget. So the last days and so I get there bout the middle afternoon and I start my hunt. 00:52:06 Speaker 3: I got a plane. 00:52:07 Speaker 6: I know what. 00:52:08 Speaker 9: I know what he's done the last few times I haunt him. So I've come in a different direction, changed everything up, got a different call. But I was gonna have to do my crawling, so I eased up and kept going going, and he's kept coming a little bit. Finally I had him in range. I guess one of my disadvantages was I was laying down and it's hard to chew the gun hold it up. Besides the turkey ahead and anyway, I got it all set, got all ready, got my gun up, and just looking at that turkey, just the magnificence of him, and I already sometimes think the Good Lord has a hand and who we are and what we do, and he also has control over what happens in the woods so many times with us, and I'd rather blame the Lord, I think sometimes than blame myselfthing not being able to make it, you know, make the kill or whatever. So very carefully I had got my gun up and got my head down on it. I thought, just right, which is difficult to do laying down and not can't move. 00:53:21 Speaker 6: You can't move. 00:53:22 Speaker 9: So I get everything just right. I pulled the trigger, and the turkey had expression on his face. So he just lifted up and flew right over the top of me, about five feet over my head, and he said goodbye for the day, for the season. 00:53:42 Speaker 6: And I got up. 00:53:43 Speaker 9: And I said tip my head to him, and I said, thank you, thank you for a break. Season, and I think that Turkey today, if he's in Turkey Heaven, I know. 00:53:56 Speaker 2: What a classic gentleman overflowing with appreciation for just getting to chase one and who knew there was a Turkey Heaven? These boys from Mississippi are just made different. And I'm extending a genuine Bear Grease hat tip to mister Roy Stuves. Our final storyteller is Russ Arthur from Cleveland, Tennessee. If Russ's name sounds familiar, it's because he was on our genuine Outlaw series of Bear Grease episodes fifty two through fifty six a couple years ago. Russ was the undercover agent who hunted with Louisdale Edwards in western Arkansas in the nineteen nineties. Louisdale said Russ was the best turkey caller he'd ever heard. Russ is one of those guys who has a story much bigger than a single turkey story, and it was an honor to sit with him and hear this one about his late father, Jim Arthur. 00:55:02 Speaker 8: Well, my name is Russ Arthur. I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in a community called Hickson, Tennessee, right outside of Chattanooga. I was blessed to have a father who was a passionate outdoorsman. My dad killed his first turkey in nineteen sixty one. Of course, I was only two years old at that time, so I don't remember that. But he would always hunt on this management area where there was only the season. Back then in the sixties, there was only one or two days a week that you could hunt. There were very limited counties in the state of Tennessee that had turkeys. He would always come home and talk about his adventures. The hunts were normally Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and he would always go up on a Thursday in camp. He had an old station wagon fifty something mile station wagon and he would go up and camp out of it, and he would normally hunt on Friday and Saturday and come home Saturday, even for church on Sunday. As a kid, growing up seven eight nine year old kid, I could not wait to hear the stories. 00:56:09 Speaker 6: And it was later in. 00:56:10 Speaker 8: Life that I figured out that my dad had done a very noble thing, and that is he took the curiosity of a kid and turned it into a passion. Because he would give me just enough information about what he was doing where it was at, and I had this this mystical place in my mind that I wasn't old enough to go to yet. And he didn't drag me along as a six year old or a seven year old or an eight year old. He waited till I got old enough that I could I could handle a single barrel, and he started taking me. So I had this passion to my dad. And one of my favorite turkey hunting stories will have to go back to. And this is if I get emotional, I'm sorry. Well, he had an old call and he called it sweet Thing, and it was and I've got that call with me today. He bought it for I think it was three dollars from a gentleman by the name of Earl Dishram. As a ten, eleven, twelve thirteen year old kid, I had heard all these names, the Earl Dishram, the Bobby Card, the Jack Hawks, the Charlie Elliotts, the Jen Denton, the Dan Layman's, the Glenn Honeycutts. These were all people's names that were these true turkey hunters. And I was kind of like a little kid that was hearing about a gunfighter. You know, these were legends you know, when I first started getting to come and stay at camp, I wouldn't meet all these guys. And we had a place in the mountains that he had taken me to the year before, and we'd heard a few turkeys. And I was thirteen this particular year, and I was carrying a single barrel twenty ga and he said, sign, I'm gonna take you on this ridge. And there was an old trail. He called it the Indian Trail, and it was just a hunter trail, nothing that's marked on a map. And he took me up there when I was thirteen, and he set me in a gap and he said, you stay here. I'm going to go on out the Indian Trail. And after about two hours, if you hadn't heard anything, come on out the trail. I will either be on the trail or I'll put a rock in the middle of the trail and draw you an era with a rock telling you which direction I went, and you wait right there. Well, that was our way of communicating. So I'll admit I'm thirteen. I'm sitting there. I cannot wait for it to get daylight. And I thought it would never get daylight. And I never heard anything now I'm going to have to back up again. The only call that he bought me what was called a lynch jet turkey call. I still got it today. In my opinion, it was a terrible call. It was a very small slate calls insect in wood and had a burnt wooden peg and it was good for a cluck or a pr but that was about it. So an hour after daylight, I couldn't stand it. I needed to go find Daddy. I was ready for some action. So I ease out the trail and I get, oh, probably three or four hundred yards from where I had left, and I hear a turkey just hammering, and I mean, it's just hammering its hat off, and I think I can call that turkey up. You know, I've sat with my dad and I watched this last year. I can do this. And I set down on that call, and it was terrible. And that turkey gobble and and it gobbled, and I just kept doing it, and it gobbled every time, and then it started going away. Next thing I know, I heard something coming up through there. It was my dad and he was he was frustrated I'd run that turkey off of him. 00:59:53 Speaker 6: He had it. 00:59:54 Speaker 8: He was getting ready to shake hands with it. 00:59:56 Speaker 6: He came. 00:59:57 Speaker 8: He came right straight from where that turkey was gobbling, and all he said was, he said, son, He said, we need to work on your calling, you know. But I've got to tell this story if you think that there's not a higher being. Ten years ago tomorrow, my dad passed on February tenth, twenty fourteen. Well, we were getting ready to bury him, and he had left in his workshop. He was very meticulous. There was a wooden box full of notepads. They were all the same making model. And I reached in. I said, I've never seen this before. And I did not know that my dad had kept a diary. And the literally the day we were burying my dad, I found this in his workshop and it was as if he had set that out for us to find. I reached in and I pulled out and I said, what is this? And I opened it up and it was a journal. And when I opened that up, it turned till April twelfth, nineteen seventy two, and I got to read about what he thought about that morning when he left me in that gap. I closed it up, I put it back, and I'm not read anymore since. So one of these days I'm going to take that and go the mountains and go the cabin and read it. But it was pretty amazing that the very day that he left me for the first time in the mountains, that I pulled one of the seventy two books out and turned that date. 01:01:46 Speaker 6: So what did he say? 01:01:48 Speaker 8: It was just talking about how proud he was, and I didn't be Honestly, I didn't read it all. But when I recognized where it was at, what we had, what he was writing about, it would just overwhelmed me. I closed it up. Well, But anyway, that was a great man, what. 01:02:23 Speaker 2: An incredible story in man. Jim Arthur was the first chapter president of the Chattanooga National Wild Turkey Federation Chapter, and in two thousand and three he was inducted into the Tennessee Turkey Hunters Hall of Fame. Russ said there was a time when the state was trapping turkeys out of areas where Jim hunted, and many people were mad about it. But around the campfire, Jim would advocate to his peers that this was a short term sacrifice for a long term game. He was influential as a grassroots spokesman for the Wild Turkey relocation, which ended up being the salvation of the wild turkeys. I truly love these Turkey Stories episodes, and, like mister Roy Stubbs said, turkey hunters share a unique bond around the unique bird. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. We've got another Turkey Stories episode coming up. We put our heart and soul into these episodes documenting the stories of our collective history. Be sure to check out Brenton E's Mississippi River Expedition film on the Meat Eater YouTube channel, and if you're out west, check out the Meat Eater Live tour schedule. I'm gonna be there at every show.