00:00:00 Speaker 1: M you see that glass deal right there? Yes, Mr Will is pointing out a big glass milk jug, probably two foot tall. It's full of turkey feats jog of some sort, and they're tag every once a while, I'd go and I just remember hunts, you know, because forget a lot of I'll jog your memory. On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, we're doing something we've never done. We've assembled an eccentric flock of turkey hunters to tell their single favorite turkey hunting story. We'll hear from the likes of Steve and Ronella Janice could tell us and Will Primos, but we'll also hear from some backwoodsman who you ain't seen on the TV, who've influenced me in a significant way. Stories are an important part of the human experience. The oral stories of those we respect shape our lives. On this episode, we're going to let stories do what's stories do. And you're not gonna want to miss this one. And he said, I called this old big gobbler. And he said, but when that dude come in, he said, he come in on the other side of the log. He said, well, I just richerd that log. He should I grabbed him and he said the log was something I couldn't reach over to get him on the other side. And guy said, my god, Doc, what you do He said, Well, I did the only thing I could do. He said, I turned him loose and called him around the other side. 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 tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Oral stories have always been important for humans. They operate using the supernatural technology that replays a moment that's been overran by time. The telling of the story a lots of a second life, resuscitating it to transcend time and geography in the mind of another human. You can't tell a story to a dog or a horse and expect them to get much out of it. But that's what makes us special. The words of others shape imagery in our minds, and in many ways it's better than actually being there. The storyteller has rendered out the impurities and the valuable details. Information and the takeaway of the experience is delivered to the listener in a neat, tidy package. That is, if the person an efficient storyteller, and stories always indicate the values of the teller. I'm always looking for where someone puts emphasis and shows what's important to them, because it will show you something about their insides. Well, that was a fancy way to say that. If you like a good turkey hunting story, you're gonna love this podcast. Turkey stories are different than any other kind of story because there's always lots of action, hand gestures, ups and downs, and turkey sounds being replicated. Told by the right person at the right time and the right company of people. They're hard to beat. I don't recall a better lineup of turkey hunters and storytellers than in this year podcast. We got them stacked like turkey beards and the cigar box. I'd like to invite you to sit back and enjoy a campfire with some people from my world. Every one of them I respect in a unique way, but they've all got one thing in common. They live for hunting wild turkeys. This first story is told by none other than Janice, who tell us of meat Eater. Since time immemorial, the South has been the cultural epicenter of turkey hunting, but the burgeoning gobbler populations of the West are spawning some great Western turkey hunters, and Janice is one of them. The man can flat cover some ground and chases some turkeys hard. By my request, here's Jonnice's most memorable turkey hunt, and his emphasis might surprise you, Clay. Here's my hunting story. My turkey hunting story isn't necessarily a story about me. It's it's more about my wife and where I got to see her experience through. A turkey hunt takes place in Montana about seven years ago, and we're gone out. We had just moved to Montana and it was our first spring turkey hunting in Montana. I found a spot on a map that looked good. We drove in there, set up a camp, started hunting. I went out first one day, she stayed back with the kids. I might even gotten a gobbler the first day. Um, it was good. And so when I got back, I said, you should go out for an afternoon and just see what you can do. And she'd maybe been out a couple of days with me, but very very early in her turkey hunting career, little to no experience. I sent her out with a slate pot call in a peg, some basic camouflage, and she was looking at it more like I'm gonna go out and get away from kids in life and the craziness and just go out and enjoy the forest and the outdoors for a few hours. This is maybe two o'clock in the afternoon. She walks out of camp. So the girls and I we go and hike a little mountain nearby with glass. We go pick flower hours, come back to camp. Maybe it's four now Mom's not back yet. We go to leave camp as a pond nearby. We go to the pond, try to catch some frogs, look at turtles, throw rocks in the water. Come back to camp. No Mom. Make dinner, kind of postpony eating dinner, waiting, no Mom. We eat dinner, still no Mom. Starting to get dark now this is probably May in Montana, so the days are long. It doesn't actually get dark until probably close to nine pm. So she's been gone six seven hours now, and soon enough the kids are tired. So I put them to bed. Eventually, it's like getting dusky. I have a beer. Still no mom, no wife. Eventually, I'm like, well, I'm gonna go to bed. She must have gone out for a really long hike and she's just really enjoying herself, so I'm not too worried about it. I'm just gonna lay down next to the kids in the tent, close my eyes. It gets really dusky, and I'm just fading into some sleep. When all of a sudden, that TenTen door zips open and I hear, like, oh my gosh, they was there. I was, and I was calling and he was calling back. Was that you calling? I was calling? And then he was calling, and then I think I spooked him. But then I went around the hill and then I called some more and he called back, and I was making these sounds and I was doing this and he was calling in. I'm like just waking up, and I'm like, ohoa, whoa what? Who? Who are you? What have you done with my wife? What is going on here right now? And she experienced not only one, but gotten to work two different gobblers in her whatever seven eight hours that she had spent out there roaming the hills of Montana looking for Merriam's turkeys, and twice had gotten to experience like the joy that we all find in turkey hunting that I especially love, and that's like the communication with that gobbler, with that bird, and it just bit her so hard, like I hadn't seen my wife so excited about a certain thing in who knows how long, probably since the kids were born. But she was so fired up, just like what, asking all the questions, what did I do wrong? I should have done this? And then she's hyper analyzing it and just the excitement of it all, and um, of course I'm just like kind of coming out of just almost being asleep, and it was all hard to comprehend for me at the moment. But in the end we saw stout that she had been working a bird that had actually roosted and it was on a nearby rich from camp. It was only maybe three or four yards away, and she said, well, I thought he was there. I think he had roosted, and I figured I should just back out and then come back to camp, which is the right thing to do. But when she came out to the road that we used to access the hunting zone, so she says, I backed out of there, but I left a pile of flowers in the road, and if you take a left at that pile of flowers, you go down the ridge, you'll run into this gobbler. So next morning, I get up nice and early, walk down the road. I see a pile of fresh but wilted from being sitting out there overnight air leaf, balsam root, bright yellow. You could, even in the dark, you could see him from fifty six yards away the pile of flowers. I take a left, don't go too far, sit down, and as it cracks flight, I can hear the gobbler start to gobble in the tree, and uh, there was a classic hunt that morning. I worked him for probably whatever in the tree for twenty minutes, and then on the ground for another minutes until he finally committed and came over the hill and I shot him. That's a story and how my wife got hooked on turkey hunting and hooked on communicating with turkeys. Will never forget being woken up by a excited, energized, near forty year old woman after communicating with a couple of gobblers in Montana. Good one, and you'll have to wait till the end of the podcast to hear the story of his main sidekicks. Steve Runella, the next storyteller, is one of the best Ozark turkey hunters I know. His name is Mo Shepherd, and his family homesteaded in the Ozarks in the mid eighteen hundreds. There's even a mountain named after him. Some people are just turkey hunters, and Mo is one of them. I hope you've got some rain gear because we're about to get wet. Well, it's been a rough spring. I hunted hard every day I was able to, and it come down to the last two days of season. I hadn't hunted in four or five days, and I decided to go back up to my mom and dad's old place in the mountains. Anyway, I got up there that night before spent the night with him. It started storming during the night, bad storms, just lighting and thundering, pouring down rain. I had my alarms set. I got up, and when I woke up it was still this thunder and lightning and pouring down rain. I just shut my alarm off. I thought, I'm gonna go back to sleep a while, no worry that. I thought that, and the door opened on the bedroom. By sleeping in, my dad walks in. He says, what you're doing still in bed? I said, well, it's stormy. He said, you can't kill a turkey lander in bed. He said, you've hunted all the season. Said you just well get up and go. So I got up, got my stuff together and headed out. Got to the place I was gonna go, and it was still raining and thundering. I sent in the truck for a little bit. I thought, well, I'm already out here. I just well get out and get wet. Turkey's gonna make a living too. And I started rounding old logging road and it was just breaking light, and I thought, well, I don't know if anything gon goble this morning or not in this storm and like this, and it was thundering. Usually they're goblet thunder and stuff, and I hadn't heard a goble or anything. But I got the spot where I liked the hunt. Right there there was a little spot where two three ridges broke down off the big ridge. Thought I'm gonna get right here and I'm on al who al hoo did and the turkey answered me. I thought, well, that's cool. There's the least one god were left in here right at the end of the season. So I uh. I got up there and got up on the hillside and got set up and made a few soft calls. The turkey answered me, and I just waited and I waited and I waited, and I never did hear him fly down. A lot of times, you don't. I was pretty close to him. I don't noticed how close, but I was closing, and I thought I could him fly down. I never heard him fly down, and it was getting pretty good light, and I thought, well, i'll call again. I made a few soft calls. I didn't hear anything, but I looked, and I can see a tail fan up on the hill by me. I was in some pine country, they're up here in those arcs. And I got my gun up and ready, and he finally gobbled at me a time or two, and then I seemed making his way around towards me. And it was still this whole time, it was just raining down, pouring down, rain and thunder and lightning, and then he kind of vanished, and I thought, well, he's probably had enough of this rain, you know. And I sat there a little bit. I thought, well, I wanna I'm gonna give you a few more calls. Anyway, I made a few more calls. Somewhere or another, he had circled around and he was back on the other side of I mean, I caught movement and seen him and he was in range of me then and my gun, My Shotgod, and he started strutting in that rain, and he come right in. And when he got in good range of me, I just clucked at him real out, and he stuck his head up and I pulled the trigger. And I had a down turkey on the next last day of season, and I hadn't had no luck all season. Well, I got the turkey and I headed out and I went home, or back to my mom and dad's. And uh, that's a that's good, said, that's a good deal you went this morning. I said, well, Dad, I wouldn't win if you hadn't got me up, because I sure didn't want to get in this weather. He said, well, it's one more day. Are you gonna go to mar And I said, well, I probably will. He said where you gonna go? I said, I don't know. I said, I thought I heard one another one goblin there this morning while I was working this one. But I said, I'm not sure because it was so noisy from the rain and everything. Well, I went to bed that night, woke up next morning to the same scenario. It was storming and raining, thunder and lightening again, and I thought, man, I don't know if I want to do this two days in a row. About the time the door swung open my dad. He said, better get up, he said, if you're gonna get after another turkey, And so I got up. He said where you gonna go? And I said, I don't know. He said, why don't you go back in there where you killed that when heristy? He said, you said you thought you heard nothing. I saill, I don't know if I heard one or not. He said, well you said you thought you did. That's better than the other place you've been listening to him. So I drove back over the same spot, and believe us or not, I walked around that old road. Hadn't heard a bird gobble. It was raining hard, thundering. In I got the exact same spot where I heard that one the morning before. I alhoo did and another one gobble. He couldn't have been fifty yards where the one was the morning before. On that same little ridge up above the old road I'd walked in on and nearly identical scenario. He didn't go well, but a couple of times I got set up. I didn't hear him fly down. One thing was when he finally got fired up, he started gobbling. He gobbled quite a bit, and thirty minutes of working maybe less than that, he didn't come strutting, and he just comes slipping in like they do sometime, just to ease and a long and I finally seen him, and he got within about twenty five yards and before I could even get a shot at him, And when he got in the open, I pulled down my shot and took that turkey got him, and that was too big, and they were both big tims. I still got one of the the last night kill. I still got his tail fan and beard mounted in my house that I fixed myself. That was probably twenty five or thirty years ago. I guess it's been thirty year ago because my dad passed away the next year after that. Most stories shows the wisdom of age held by his father, encouraging a young man to stay persistent, and you can take the values of that story to the bank. Most of the time. What makes a great hunter great is simply that he showed up more than others. If you don't recognize the voice of this next storyteller, you've been living under a buzzard roost. This is Wilber Primost telling about his favorite gobbler hunt. So something that's interesting. You see that glass deal right there. Yes, I don't know what year I quit putting them in there, but those are feating beers and there is an aluminum tag. It's actually a tag for a rose bush where you could imprint on the metal and will never fade away. And their tag. Mr will is pointing that a big glass looks like a big glass milk jug, probably two foot Talllet's full of turkey feet jug of some sort. So I would every watch while I go, and I just remember hunts, you know, because you forget a lot of they'll jog your memory. Oh, I was down in Capai County, Mississippi, and I got there. This is a man who's got eighteen thousand acres, got very successful industrialists, was one of my mentors in life. And I pull up to his big house. He's there having a little bit of coffee. He goes, where are you gonna go hunting this morning? Will that sad? Mr Hood, I'm gonna go wherever you tell me, he goes, I know that, but I wanted to know where you think you might want to go as a kno, I want to go where you And let me tell you what. There's a turkey up on the top of Moss Hill and we can't kill him and you can have him. Oh my god, anytime you give somebody a turkey, you're the name. His name was Mr Moss because he lived on Mass Hill. Here we go, so I said, well, tell me about it. He said, well, you know that hill. I got gravel on that hill because you can't hardly get up it without some traction. It's real, real steep, he said. We're driving up are the top of that hill. We get up on the top and we wait to leave gobbles and usually gobbles two ridges over right below you. Okay, he said, but he won't come. I said, okay. If I'm driving over that spot, and I'm thinking, how am I gonna hunt this turkey? And by myself. This is before the days of strict video truth series, before the Truth series, And I went, I'm on park a hundred yards from the foot of that hill where the gravel starts, and I'm gonna walk up at hill. I started walking and the gravel was loud under my feet, so I moved over to the edge and there was so much but oak trees, and there's all hardwood, and they were louds. I'm trying to go real slow and trying to be careful. I get up to the top of the hill and I wait, and that turkey gobbles right where Mr. Hood said he was gonna be. And I ain't no way. I can't get that turkey. All him leaves are dry. He ain't gonna come over here. I came up with a little planning, so I'm gonna get light. I let it get light enough that I could see the walk. He's gobbling steady, and so I started walking to him. I scratching the leaves. He started gobbling non stop. He was hearing it. And I back up and scratch a little bit. Oh, and I'd go. So I got to that second reage. He's right over that second one, and I'm on the side, and I put my gun right there, thinking he's gonna flat in and walk up if he does come. And I sat down and I'd reached my hand out scratching and leave. Ain't said a word, ain't yet. One time I had my guns in there. All of a sudden I heard big, huge wings. He lit in a hickory tree about fifteen feet off the ground on my left side, on the side of the hill that I'm sitting on, and hammered it. And you're looking right down at me. And I got my gun pointed right here, so he's to my left, you know. And I got my eyes cocked like that, you know, so I'm gonna buy it. I cannot move. He gobbles again. He jumps off that limb and lands right below that tree. He's thirty yards from when he did that. I got it boom, and that was in the Mr Ball. It was incredible. I felt like I was in a gun match on the tree, you know. I had to draw fast and I had yeah to shoot before he did. That was a wonderful, rewarding hunt. Yeah, and you talk about your chest puffed up. Walk back to Mr Hood's house him and wait on Mr Hood to show up and go I got him. Oh my god. I was riding that, Oh man, you could ride that was putting on a clinic for hunting the pressure turkey, wasn't it. I guess doing doing things have worked another day, But it worked that. I'll be done. Didn't call him one time, And I learned the scratching in the leaves because one day I was walking in the leaves and I stepped in a really loud spot talk and a turkey gobble, and immediately hit me. He ain't just gobble, he's gobbling at me walking to the league, Yeah, he thinks. And I stood there in that one position, standing up, scratching with my foot, and I almost killed that trick. I'll be done. I can probably find Mr Moss's beard and feet in that old right there. Will's voice, accent and passion just draw you in. His story was chocked full of insight and tactics that a young Wilbur learned long before he became a legend in the turkey hunting world. But one thing you can always count on from him is that he delivers the excitement. You won't have heard of this next storyteller unless you're from the same town I'm from. Andy Brown is a name that has bounced around stories in my county my whole life. He's as good a turkey hunter as has ever walked these hills. Most people that are involved in outdoor media, if they're being honest, will admit that the vast majority of the best hunters have never been anywhere near a camera. And those are the kind of guys I like. Andy's son, Scott is about my age and we've been longtime close friends. We'll hear from Scott later, but not before Andy tells about his first hunt in nineteen seventy one and then Scott's first hunt in the early nineteen nineties. Here's Andy, So, growing up, my father, he liked to hunt, he liked he was he liked to run dogs, and and uh, he wasn't a still hunter, and he wasn't a turkey hunter. And he wasn't he wasn't a coon hunter when when I was growing up. But I was fortunate and I had a I had a uncle and uncle Laurie that took a interest in me. And uh, anyway, he was all of the above. He'd be trapped. He he coon hunted, and and he was one of the first turkey hunters to kill a turkey in Pocunty. I think in nineteen sixty six. He was one on the list. But anyway, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a lot of time with him, and and uh listened to his stories. Of course as a kid, your bug eyed, and uh he could tell a big story. He could get a big chaw red man and a in a peach cannon and he'd ran back and he'd tell a story. And uh, he took me on my first turkey hunt, and I think Clay was the spring of nineteen seventy one. Up until that time, all I had heard was stories how about how smart they were. And you know, Uncle Auris still back in those days, was u uh the best thing you could do once you call a turkey is just get up and sit around on the back side of the tree, because he's gonna come in behind you, you know, and you can't move, you know, you don't, you know, you've got to be still. And but anyway, the first turkey hunt we went on was what we called two mile Motorway. And we got over there, I mean it was double early and and dark dark, and had a little litle flashlight and and we got out and we walked we walked back east or south there to be south up the high line and we got in there, and we put a little mountain there and we got out on top of it, and I'll never forget him saying to me, he said, when it starts getting daylight, there's gonna be one gobble right here. And I've never heard a turkey gobble in my life. And so the anticipation was just unbelievable. And sure enough, when it started getting just a little bit light back in the east, just right straight across the horror, there's an old, bigger gobble right out on top. And of course I didn't know what to do. He said, well, we're just gonna sit here till he flies down and see what he does. And so he taught me a little bit there about turkey. And he didn't like to call a turkey on the roost until he pitched down. And that's the way I hunted all my life. I mean not to say that I never called one on the roost, but I wanted him to fly down before I really got excited with him. But anyway, the turkey flies down, and and uh, we go down there, and he gets some y'all set up, and and at that time I had a eleven hundred Rimington automatic modified barrel shotgun shooting super X shells. Number six is and I'll never forget sitting there. And he says, now, I'm gonna get right up behind you on the ridge here, and I'm gonna call. And he made his own calls. He had a little old uh he hollowed it out. He was a carpenter and had a little bridge on it and a little striker that he struck. He yipped with and I saw he did. He was a three up guy and shut up. But Turkey gobbled he calls a turkey. And he'd always told me he sitting Now when they quit goblin, you need to get the looking for him. I sat there. I was afraid to even breathe. I'm mean, the anticipation was. I can't even describe how the excitement was for me to just sit there. And I sat there, and I sat there, and I must have sat there for twenty minutes. Of course, Uncle Aurie never said another word on the call. And in a little bit about a hundred fifty yards west of us, Turkey gobblers, he says, come on, we get up and we leave, and so we go down and we set up on this one. He calls him turkey shuts up. Anyway, we sat there and sat there, and sat there and sat there. In about that time, the turkey that we've been we've been after start with gobbles. Right back where we're at, there was two gobblers. And but I said, I said all that to say this, which I'm gonna get into my story about Scott's first turkey hunting. That did something to me as a thirteen year old boy. That obsessed me with turkey hunting, and I spent I neglected, uh well, in the springtime, I neglected my family because I spent thirty days before season of scouting. I mean I was after him. I mean I that I lived and breathe. That's everything I wanted to do in life. And so with Scott growing up, I was a little concerned because, like I said, I didn't make it. I didn't make it fun for him in a lot of ways. But his first turkey hunt, we took off and it was probably I don't know, half three quarters of miles to the top of the mountain. So we pulled it on the top and what we call the low gap, and there was a fine, fine morning, nothing I mean got daylight. No turkey's goblin. And so we fell off the north side and went down through a divide into a little low with I don't know you, just a little high ridge that lays uh north in there, and and all of a sudden, a turkey gobbles behind us, back up on the mountain the way we come off, and I said, look here, I said, we're gonna get that dude, you know, so we we uh anyway, I got Scott set up, and of course, you know, looking back on the way I did it, I did it wrong. I didn't put him. You know, I should have had him between my legs where I could talk to him. But I had always tooke up Scott. I said, Scott, trying not to shoot one walk And I said, but I was. When they're walking. I said, there's a lot of air around those dudes. And I said, you know, wait till they stop. Anyway, I got Scott set up, and I told, turkey's right there, gobbling one gobbles out west of us out there. I called him. He gobbles right back, and then this all of a sudden, here he kept, you know, just drumming every every crunch, snap crunch, snap crunch, And I look up and here that dude comes right down. He's gunning barrel. I mean just right. Scott's got is g gonn up and he's coming right down. He's gunning barrel right. He just kept coming and I'm going shoot, he's got shoot him. And he just kept coming and kept coming, and finally he gets out there about fifteen steps and he just turns and he just walks off in the r get up and I go out there and I said, wine, world one you shooting that turkey? You know? I mean, I'm I'm double being out of shape about that, you though, And he says, well, Dad, you told me not one walking walking right to you, you know. And I said, that's okay. This one gobbles over here. And so we just immediately I said, come on, we'll go kill that. When we just went and we went west of him, pull the top of the mountain, got in above him, and there was a big old log laid down on right up on top where it topped out there, and there was a limb kind of went out like this, and I put Scott right between the log and the limb and the big Steve Holler and I just got over behind the log. I called it old gobbler man. He just he just broke me off down there. And here he comes to scrunch snap of that ridge. Well, Scott's got his gun like this right here. Well when he comes up, he comes up out of the holler right here. Well Scott just throws that gun up over that hill. Anyway, that one flies off, And so I ripped him pretty good like that, and he's got his lip pooched out pretty good. And you know, I've doubled bent out of shape because he, you know, moved. You can't do the two big gobblers. You know. To make a long story short, we never fired a shot that morning. So so we go back to camp. And anyway, so we get up the next morning and we go south to camp down in the ridges, and we get down there and we get on some gobbers down there, and and he's got that eight seventy and I've got him on a leg just kind of out from me there, and I called him a old turkeys in here. They come right up that ridge and about the time I'm gonna say get it, let him get a little closer, cur wam, and he kills the first one. Anyway, he killed his first turkey and I've got a I've got a picture of that, and he was proud of it. And he was certainly not even more proud than I was. But it's kind of neat to have kids that, uh, you know, they've turned out. Scott's the next on turkey in and I think he's one of the best there is in this country. He's he's he's very good at what he does. And I would like to think I have a little bit of that. But I was not easy on him as a father. And he has one more story to tell. And I bet you're gonna like this one. Does the frequency of this one sound familiar? And and just one more little story. I had God tell me one time. And he talked about a renowned turkey hunter down to South Louisiana called Doc Robern. He said he was he was well known, He's supposed to be the best turkey hunter there was in that country. And he said, I sat in the coffee shop one morning and says, old Doc walks in there in turkey said he said, Doc, He said, how did you do this? More? He's a man I killed the big in this morning, he said, he said, Well, tell me the story. He said, that's what I live for, He said, tell me what happened this morning? He said, well, he said, you ain't gonna believe this, But he said, as I was out there, he said, laying by a log, he said, and he said, I called this old big gobbler and he said he dis answered me right back, and he said, he said, but when that dude come in, he said, he come in on the other side of the log. He said, my god, Doc, what happened? He said, Well, he just walked right on the other side of the log, and he said I could look under that log and I could see him standing there by me. He said, Doc, what you do? He said, well, like this ritcher that log, and he said, I grabbed him and he said he was too big. He said, I was trying to him under the log. He said, I couldn't get him under there. He's too big. And he said the log was some big. I couldn't reach over to get him on the other side. And guy said, my god, Doc, what you do? He said, will I did the only thing I could do. He said, I turned him loose and called him around the other side. That's a turkey huttter right there. That's a turkey gettor right there. This is my good buddy, Brent Reeves. He's a lifelong turkey hunter, and a good one at that. This story involves some family, the Saline River bottoms, a tough turkey, and some mosquitoes. Now this story happened over twenty five years ago, but it was turkey season, was going into the second week of turkey season. I'd already killed one, but my brother hadn't. And we always did everything together. We were goose hunted, we squirrel hunted, we duck hunted, any kind of hunting, fishing, whatever we always did together, except turkey hunting. Turkey hunting was it was understood that every man was on his own. But we're getting into two weeks in the season and he calls one night and asked me what I'm doing. The next morning and said, what, it's still turkey season, naming I'm turkey hunting. He said, look, I need you to help me do something. And I thought, oh my gosh, he wants me to help him work on something. It's turkey season. I guess apparently he's given up. But whatever it is, he's my brother, so I'm gonna help him. I said, well, what is it? And he says, I want you to come help me kill this turkey. I'm like, what turkey? He said. Look, I'm gonna be honest. I've been hunting this turkey every day for eleven days in a row. In eleven days in the row, I have zigged when I should have zagged. He's done everything in the world opposite of what he did the day before. If I set up on the north side of him, he flies down to the south. For two days in a row, he'll do that. On the third day I set up on the south side, He'll fly down to the north. He's doing everything. He's reading my mind. And the only way I think I can kill him as if we tag team him. Will you help me? Well, yes, yes, I will help you. And all the time and in my mind I'm thinking I'm gonna kill that turkey. So the next morning I get to his house well before daylight. He's got breakfast ready, and we sat and we have breakfast and we drink coffee, and we discussed on how we're gonna attack this turkey. And he tells me then where he's at down the river bottoms. So with breakfast at we uh we load up in his truck and down the road we go. Now where this is at is in the Sleen River bottoms in Cleveland County. There's a boat ramp there that's named after my father. My family's connection with that area and that hunting ground is go dates back to when our family helped settle that part of Arkansas before the Civil War. So it's we to say that we've got a connection to that place down there is is a very huge understatement. But anyway, we get down there, we park on the side of the road, the gravel road, and there's an old dim logging road that goes up into the woods. And that's where he's been here in this turkey gobblin every morning two or three days before the season it started, so actually about fifteen days in a row this turkey has gobbled, Tim said, from the same tree, almost on the same couple of acres. Anyway, so morning number twelve, we're sitting there, birds start chirping a little bit. It gets goblin time. Nothing, it gets on past first goblin time, nothing, nothing, no turkeys anywhere. It gets past fly down time. Nothing, not a peat. So he said, well, let's go down the road to another spot. Let's make a big loop up through the woods. Let's see if we can strike up a gobbler. So that's what we do. We drive about half mile down the road, we get out of the truck and we start walking. We make a huge loop up through the bottoms, up through the river bottoms, and we never find or here a turkey. We find lots of fresh sign but we don't do any good. So it's now it's after ten when we get back to the truck and we're we're just defeated. I just knew I was gonna be the good luck charm for that, but also I was kind of aggravated that I had wasted my morning to kill my second turkey down there helping my brother in his feudal attempt with this turkey that was obviously smarter than both of us. So on the way out, he says, you know, I'm gonna pull back in and see if I can uh make this turkey gobblin old hickory nut, old tough one. So he pulls over on the side of the road there. I just cracked my window to listen because it's it's dinner time. And for those of you that don't know, down here we eat breakfast, and then we eat dinner at noon, and then we eat supper. So now you know the time of the day I'm talking about. So he walks in front of this truck. He's got an old box call in his hand, and and he doesn't get to the third yelp on that box when that turkey gobbled out there, and he couldn't have been more than a hundred yards. It was so loud in the truck that I thought he could see it. So we were so close. And the look of astonishment and amazement and surprise and fear on my brother's face when he turned and looked at me sitting in the cabin of the truck was a look I'll never forget. So I eased the door open, grabbed my call, and up the road. I mean, we are tiptoeing up this road. It's a little dim road to get away from the truck, just far enough and at an angle that you can't see the truck that that's parked there on the gravel. So we get just out of side of that truck and we sat down. And our plan had been for him to sit close and me to sit behind him, or at a different angle, and maybe I could we could get the turkey working and then I could take over the calling and he would come on end to investigating, and Tim would be close to him, and he had dropped the hammer on. But this morning, since we had no time to prep no no time to get where we initially plan to do. When we sat down, we sat down beside each other. He is his shoulders touching my show older. Now we're staring out and through this the bottom, and it's it's a hardwood bottom, but there's there's some undergrowth in there, and there's some briar bushes, and there's a few small trees and the leaves have put out pretty good. So it's while it's open, there still is places where you could actually move. A turkey could walk through there and you wouldn't be able to see him. So my brother sticks his mouth, calling his mouth, he makes lot up in the turkey gobbles. I mean, he's just wow. I mean it's right there. And I look and my brother says, he whispers to me, can you see him? I said, yeah, I can see his fan. He said, don't shoot him. I said, okay, I want I need to mention that. When we sat down there, the mosquitoes were so thick and in the grass on the edge of that road, and it sounds like a covered quail. When we sat down, it was just a constant buzzing until that turkey gobbled. And when he did that, all our attention was directed towards him, and I forgot about the mosquito. So I'm looking at him and I said, can you see him? No, I can't see him. I said, what I can see him? Tim said, don't shoot him. I said, okay, I won't shoot. Where's he? I said, he's straight down my gun barrel. I'm looking at it. Can you see him? He says, no, No, I can't see him. Please don't shoot him. I said, I'm not gonna shoot. Turkey goes behind some bushes, said I can't see him, and here my brother go make a soft moment. He just went m I thought that he's scared. This turkey's gonna get away. About the time the turkey walks out behind that bush and he's coming towards us. Now, this turkey is fifty yards and he's getting close to the gun range for sure, but he's walking towards us, and he's not scared. And the goal for this mission is for my brother to kill this turkey. I said, I can see him. He said, please don't kill him. I'm like, okay, I won't kill him. I thought he was fixing a cry. But the turkey makes two or three more steps, goes into full stred. I said, can you see him? He said no, please don't kill him. I said, I'm not going to kill him. Then my brother went and I and here he's grunting, he's straining, and I don't have any idea what what the problem is. But I can't look over at him to see him, because the turkey is within forty yards now, and there's no way that he wouldn't see either one of us moved. My brother keeps making that sound. I thought maybe he was having a stroke. I didn't know what was going on. But finally he says, I see him. I said, you can you kill him? And boom, his shotgun goes off. Old turkey rolls over and commences the flopping. We get up and run out there and we're he's got his foot on his neck and we're high fiving and hugging and talking about all the things that culminated in that hard morning to hunting that finally we're we're victorious and standing there looking at that turkey on the ground, A big turkey too, And I said, hey, that racket that you was making, What in the world was that? He said, huh, I said, while we were sitting there beside one another, you kept talking and then he was grunting or straining or something. They just I didn't what was going on. He said, Oh, man, remember moskeeters back there. I'm like, yeah, I do, I sure do. It was at this point my brother described how multitude of mosquitoes had taken roost in his nether regions and proceeded to give him a very painful one way blood transfusion. He said it was almost to the point where he couldn't keep the wagonhage. Anyway he did, We prevailed, and we got the turkey. Ha another regions. For a cornbread connoisseur, this was pretty diplomatic. You ever considered working for the United Nations? Pretty boy reeves switching gears. This next story is one of my personal favorites. It involves a tough public gland gobbler and some lightning. I'll be telling this story. It was late April and I've been hearing a couple of birds roosting on a big pine ridge across a big holler from where I was hunt. I decided that I would look on a map, which I didn't have on x back in those days, looked out a map, figured out how to drive around there closer than I went in the next afternoon, and I took my son Bear John nucom with me and it was gonna be one of his first kind of real turkey hunts where we had a gun, we're actually on birds. I took him out of school and we went over there. My plan was to just get within you know, a hundred yards where I felt like they were roosting, set up and just call lightly all afternoon and just see if we call on him. Well, we get over there, set up the blind. I yelled Tira to cackle a little bit, and I go to sleep and Bears sitting there and I kind of had him scratching on a slate, call and he's having a good time. Got him some snacks and drinks and stuff, and I'm dead asleep after probably thirty minutes, and we've got probably two and a half three hours before dark, and directly I Bear starts poking, and he says, Daddy, I heard a turkey gobble. And I didn't really know how much he knew what a turkey sounded like. And so I said, did you really which direction? He pointed right the direction you know, he thought it came from, and directly, sure enough, our turkey gobbles is just probably within a hundred fifty yards. I call a little bit of answers. I call a little bit of answers. And basically, we spend the whole afternoon working this bird from the blind, and it came in just almost within gun range. We never did fully see it while it was on the ground, and it gets dark on us, and this birds probably gobbled fifty times. But Bear sees the turkey fly up into a big old pine tree and he says, Daddy, I just saw that turkey flying to that tree, and I didn't see it. And then I said, which tree? And he points out the tree and describes to me where the tree is, and you know, I believe him, and I know the tree this turkey is in, which is a pretty rare thing in turkey hunting. So we go home that night and the next morning I decide that I'm gonna go in and it's late in the season, and these birds are tough, man, they just don't respond to calls. They've been highly pressured. And I knew that to kill this turkey number one, I wasn't gonna call much at all, if any, And I knew I had to be very close to that tree, and so I had a game plan. I was gonna get in there a minimum of two, probably three hours before the crack of dawn. The woods were dry, man, it was crunchy, crackly dry, and there was no way that I was gonna slip up real close to this roost tree without spooking this turkey. So my idea was to get in there super early, and I was gonna get within about two yards of the tree. I was gonna take my boots off, and I had some little booty inserts, like in an insulated boot, and I was gonna put those over my sock feet so that I could walk essentially barefoot. And I was gonna take two hours and get basically within shotgun range of that roost tree. And I was just gonna walk because a turkey, you know, they're they're up in a tree at night and they're hearing deer walk. They're here, and possums walked by there, hearing skunks walked by, so they're used to stuff walking, but not the cadence of a man. So I was just gonna creep in there, and I was gonna be within shotgun range of that tree at daylight. Well, I wake up that morning that it is a fine April morning for killing a turkey. No wind, you can see the stars, everything's beautiful. There's no forecasted rain whatsoever. I drive out there is about an hour from my house. I pull up, I walk all the way back in their long ways back in there, and I pull over the mountain to where I'm kind of in this turkey's domain, and I hear him gobble. I mean, it's probably two and a half hours before daylight, and I hear that sucker gobble in the dark, and it just kind of shocked me. But that you know, it's like, okay, well good, I'm gonna know just where this tree yet. I'm just gonna walk right to him. And I go to taking my boots off, and I see just kind of like a flash of light from a long ways off that just kind of makes me jerk my head up and I look again, and I see another flash, and I go, Man, that's lightning. But it was so far away that I couldn't hear the thunder. Well, I pull up my phone and I was able to get self coverage, and I pulled up weather dot Com, and man on the Arkansas radar map, there was not a single cloud in the entire state of Arkansas except four. A few miles west of where I was at, there was a thunderhead, bright red thunder head about as big as the end of a pen, showing up on that radar and you kind of zoom in and it's just a single thunder head and it is a couple of miles from me, and man by the time I pulled it up, I saw more lightning, and all of a sudden I heard the thunder and Turkey gobbles at the thunder. He was here in the thunder and I couldn't even hear it. Well, it's closer, and I just go, I'll be darn, here comes up. Here comes a thunderhead. Well, I don't sit there very long, and I started seeing the trees sway, and I start hearing the wind blow a little bit, and directly I see lightning and thunder real quick. I'm up on a high knob. Man, it was no time before that thunderstorm was on top of me. And the way I described it is that it engulfed that mountain. Wind started to blow, trees started to shake, rain started to pound the ground, Lightning started to crack. And what did I do? Man? I put my boots back on and I took off and almost a run straight for that turkey. I thought, holy cow, what an incredible cover to get close to this turkey. And as I moving through the woods, I'm carrying my shotgun on my right hand, and a bolt of lightning strike so close. I literally threw the shotgun and laid face first on the ground and was just praying that I didn't get struck by lightning. I laid on the ground, and I promise you I threw that shotgun and laid there and tell the bulk of that storm passed by me. And you know how a thunderstorm is. You know that the peak of it passes and then it's still raining behind it, and it's a little bit less. Well, as soon as the peak passed and the thunder the lightning was kind of away from me, I went and found my shotgun, and man, I just walked right up. It's still black dark, it's still two hours before daylight. And I just walked right up to where I believe that turkey is and get set up. And I am soaking wet, my gut is wet, but man, I am in the game. Well, daylight comes, birds start chirping, crows start crowing, and that turkey is there. I know it. I heard him gobling before the thunderstorm. That he does not say a word. He doesn't say a word. Fly down time comes and I'm not I don't dare yelp at this urkey very much at all. But I put my diaphragm call in and I did a a cluck and probably a three note yelp, and I put the call up. I was done in directly. Man I just I knew I was so close to I would see this turkey fly down. I never saw the turkey fly down. Just right at about fly down time, I see that sucker as wet as a Labrador retriever that just jumped out of a river from retrieving a Mallard duck. He comes walking up the hill, big old beard, just swinging, and he was kind of skirting around me going up the mountain, and I kind of wheeled to my right just a little bit, never gobbled, and man, he raised up his old neck and boom, killed that turkey. Man, I've rarely been so proud of a turkey. And I went and got him, and it was just a big gobbler, and I hiped him out of there, put him in the truck, and I took him to Bear John's school and I got him out of school, and a bunch of the kids from class came out. And I killed what I called the lightning bird. But I never would have done it without Bear's help of telling me right where that sucker was roosted. I'll never forget the old lightning bird. This next story, though, it is from my dad, Gary Newcom. It's important to know going into this that when he killed this bird, very few people were using bows to kill spring turkeys, and if they were, they were using blinds, which is something that he didn't want to do. Here's old Gary Believer Newcomb. Well, you know, years ago what I don't know what ten fifteen, I had that black Max Matthews bow. I'm pretty sure you had your old green truck. You were in high school, and uh, back then we had quite a few turkeys, and I killed. I'd usually kill a turkey just about every year, and then i'd bow hunt, bow hunt for turkeys, bow hunt for turkey. So I went out and UH had my bowl in that morning. Nothing was gobbling. It just looked like a dead morning. And so I went in an area that I knew how it was quite a few turkeys, and UH started climbing a mountain. Got kind of tired, and I thought, well, this looks pretty good right here. I think I'll just sit down, take a break, and uh actually set up, you know, I mean not blinds or anything, but just set on the ground in a place where I could actually shoot. And so I'm sitting there on the side of this mountain, up against a good tree, which gave me a little camo, had some brush out around me, and so I just I'd call, just normal calling, I'd call, and UH sit there, and you know, fifteen minutes later, it was real dry, and I heard what sounded to me like two turkeys, and one of them sounded like a big turkey. So in my mind, I had a I had a I had a gobbler, big gobbler of Jake coming in. They came in about twenty yards above me, and they just kept walking, you know. They they walked to the west. You know, I'm kind of looking to the north, and uh, they did it just by the textbook. That was what was so interesting to me. I mean, it's like I figured this old gobberl was probably a professor. He was teaching these young guys what to do. Don't come downhill to a call, You'll get shot. So they they go down, you know, out of sight. I never did see them. I could just hear them, and and they dropped down to my level. And then the big gobbler just came in. The other bird didn't come. I don't know what the deal was. So I had my bowl ready, had everything ready to shoot, but the birds coming straight at me, so I don't get a shot. Well, there's a log on the ground, you know, eighteen inches tall or so foot, and it ran about ten fifteen feet running down the mountain, and there was a brush at one end, but there was an opening at the at the top side up here. So I'm sitting there and I mean, this bird put on a show like I've seen very few times, and he came in and he got the strutton, but when he got to that log, he wouldn't cross it, just like the textbooks. So he started going up and down that log, and I noticed as he on the log. No, no, he's not on the log. When you repeated it to me the other day, you said on the log, he wouldn't on the log. He he he wouldn't come over the log. He was on the other side of the log, and he and he would he would strut up, which I didn't have a shot because he's looking at me. Then he had turned and he had strut down. And so when he when he made his turn and started down, I had a shot. And so I watched him do this two or three times, and I mean he's close. I mean he's ten fifteen feet away. So once I saw his pattern, then then as soon as he came up and he made his turn and I'm like this, I'm full draw. And then once he started down that log, I just shot his head off almost, you know, I mean it was pretty simple. And so once I shot him, I shot him right at the base of the neck. And uh, you know, when you're when you're shooting with a bow, it's pretty hard to kill them unless you hit him just in the right spot on the wings or take the head off or something. And I was shooting the big jackhammers. One reason the hunt was special. I mean, I've got like all hunters, and I had a lot of turkey kills that were really special. But and the only reason this was so special was that the bird put on a big show. He was real close. But also nobody was killing birds with a boat. Now. When I was off at a big bow shop, I ran into one guy that killed him pretty regularly. And one thing he told me, and that's I used that a lot. He told me that that if you'll cackle real hard, they can be looking right at you and you can kill them. So I didn't want to blind. I knew the blind would work better, but if I couldn't kill them just looking at him straight in the eyes, I didn't want. I didn't want to kill one day an so I never took anything. There were times when I might throw some camo cover out around if it was really out in the open, but almost never, I just, you know, I just like to sit in the woods and see if I could get them in close. So there were guys doing it, but not around here. Scott Brown is just a few years older than me. We grew up in the same town and I've always looked up to him as a deer and turkey hunter. When I was in my early twenties, I'd spend hours listening to Scott tell turkey and deer stories and describe in detail how game used mountain terrain. I've never forgot what he taught me. Here is one of Scott's favorite stories. My friend of mine, Randy Steph, had called me and some man we ought to tell what we ought to do on Wednesday, and we're off, I said, turkey in I well, I guess we could do that. I said, I don't know where we go. I hadn't been out, and you know, i'd I'd be going in the blind, but go to a place that's pretty familiar with and we probably find a bird. He says. Man, I'm game for whatever. So drove in here west of town kind of access this mountain that I like to hunt from the south side. You know, we got in here extra early because it's a it's a good thirty minute pull from the time you get out of the truck to the top of the mountain probably, So we pulled it on on on top and there was kind of a big gap in there, and we sat around in there till daylight, and there was a turkey that started gobbling on the south side of the mountain across a big holla out there. Within the first couple of hours of daylight, Scott and Randy moving on a bird that was a long ways away. He was gobbling every breath, but by the time they made it to him, so did someone else, and the bird got spooked. The boys were pretty down. I think we're both a little bit disappointed that that didn't work out. So decided we're gonn to work our way back. So we pulled back up kind of headed east and I told Brandy, we said, let's walk up this ridge and we'll get out in this divide up hair is a really good place and we'll spend some time. So he pulled this big ridge just one of those places when you walk into it you just know, you know, it's just a beautiful place. Everything ties together right there. I walked in there. I said, Randy, you might not know what you're looking at right here, but I said, I know of half a dozen big gobblers have been killed right here in this divide in my lifetime. I mean, this is the spot. We sit around there about five minutes probably, and I decided I was gonna call. And when I called, a turkey dis gobbled above us on the mountain, just just like like it's supposed to happen. And when he gobbled, Randy looked at me and I said, Randy, we're about to kill this turkey. And he said, all right, where do you What do we need to do? And I said, just get right out there, but that big pine tree face your gun towards the mountain, right there in those open woods, and I said, were we are where that turkey wants to be? Anyway, in a minute, the turkey hadn't seen anything, so I'm gonna call him one more time. See where he's at. When I called that time, that turkey gobbled, and I mean we should have been looking at him, you know, he's just right there. And about that time I looked past Randy looking towards the foot of the mountain, and I see the bird fan out. And when I saw the fan come up, I saw Randy kind of get down on his shotgun. And it's a pretty good ways it's fifty sixty yards through the woods to where this turkey's fanned out. Well, I'm looking at a bird over fifty yards away probably, and all of a sudden, I hear I mean bad close. I don't even have my shotgun up. I gota laid across my lap, you know, just kind of kick back to watch the show. Anyway. I said, Randy, did you hear that? And Randy never said a word. He just because the whole time he's looking at what he believes as the turkey that we're trying to kill here, and so am I. And about that time, just again just just close, really close, and I can't I can't find this turkey. And I'm thinking, there's no way that turkey. I'm looking at the one I'm here. There's a big old bull pine tree. I'm when I'm talking, one of them huge pines, about ten steps in front of Randy. So this big gobbler just steps out behind this bullpine tree in about ten yards from Randy's gunn barrel. What had happened? He came in to us right behind that pine tree the whole time, and we just just never saw him. And he steps out front this pine tree he's just right on top of us. Of course, I panic. I'm sitting there with my shotgun laid across my lap, wishing I had it on my knee because Randy's out of position. He's aiming at these other turkeys. The turkey comes up hard to his right. Anyway, the turkey just kind of just kind of walks out behind that pine, and the walks behind another big pine. And when he does, Randy's able to He did, he did perfect. He just stayed still until the turkey got behind the next pine and he just swung the barrel over, got it up on his knee. Turkey walks out from behind the pine, hasn't seen any of that go down, and Randy just bam, he shoots, and when he shoots, he just kills the turkey stone dead, which rarely ever happens. Right, So you shoot probably nine of turkeys. You shoot flop for a little bit after you shoot him. He pulled the cord on this thing. Look when he shoots, the thing just falls over stone dead. Of course, there's a big commotion, and these other turkeys blow up and fly off and all this other stuff, and so Raine's kind of standing there. He goes tell you just had to look on his face. He said, I don't know how I missed that turkey. Randy, you didn't miss that turkey. He's like, I didn't. I was like, no, that thing. He's laying stone dead right there. He's like, oh, man, He's like, because I thought i'd missed. When I shot, he was nowhere to be found. I thought he was just gone, you know. I'm like, no, man, he's laying right there. You killed him, you know. So anyway, we jump up and go out there, and I mean, he's killed a dandy. I mean it's a you know, close to a twenty pound turkey, had good beard and spurs and all that. And he's like, what do you wanna do down? I said, let's pull back up on the mountain where we started out this morning. So we pulled back up and on the main mountain, walked out across what we called a big gap. It kind of got back around in there. We got in there and I said, Randy, that turkey this morning, it was about halfway down this leg. I want to call right here and let's just see what happens. And man, I put my calm my mouth. I called one time that turkey just gobbled big right below us. This is about eleven o'clock in the morning, and I really wanting to gobble again without me calling him, so I'm just kind of sitting there waiting on the gobble. Well, he gobbled, but when he did he was half the distance. In fact, he wasn't much out of sight from us, and so we just had to take what we had right there. Randy, sit down right there. I sat down, I got my gun up, and by the time I got my gun up, I reached down and grabbed my face mask, which was down around my neck, and I pulled it up over my face. And when I pulled that face mask over my face and put my hand back down on my gun, I looked and can see that turkey coming the whole time. He's instruct Randy immediate is like I seen him, and I was like, yeah, I've caught him right here. He's coming round with the leg to us. He just keeps coming up. The leg to us, just keeps coming, just keeps coming. Anyway. It kind of starts around to my left, which is be kind of the east of me there, starts around to my left a little bit. The whole time his turkeys and struck like he has not dropped out of strut even to take a step. I mean, he's just coming the whole time strut. He's drumming good. I mean the whole he's doing everything you want a turkey to do. You know. He finally gets down here below. It's probably about forty yards, maybe a little bit more gobbles. Look, try to add his kind of gobbles. All I'm really waiting on at this point is for him to get out of strut. Anyway. He swings around there, swings around, and he just won't drop out of strut, and he's about to get around to my left heart enough that I'm I'm not gonna be able to swing around anymore. So finally he walked out there and open, and I just cut at him a little bit. And when I cut out him through his head up big, just like you want. I shot him at about thirty yards, you know, pulled the double. There can't be a better feeling than walking out of the spring hardwoods with two big gobblers. Our last story is told by a young author and aspiring media personality named Steve ronnella of Meat Eater. He just recently published a book called outdoor kids in an inside world. You might want to check it out. You might be surprised to to know that turkey hunting is probably Steve's favorite animal to hunt, and he's chased after a lot of them. Steve always has some insight and a good story. Here's Steve. Now. I like UH books, like films, I like to cook. But when it comes to UH, you know, physical disciplines, right, Like I'm only interested in one thing. I'm interested in hunting and fishing and trapping three things. But I imagine I'm all sort of bundled together as a single entity. Anyhow. I have kids, and so I put a lot of pressure on my kids to do what I like to do. Like I want to take them to do what I like to do because I am my best as a parent when I'm in an arena that that resonates with me and brings passion. I want them to see like discipline, passion, drive, like manifested to the things we do. I don't care if like if someone told me, like in terms of my daughter, hung and tell a story about if someone told me that when my daughter is twenty, she's gonna like move to l a and open a smoothie shop. Right, I wouldn't be liked. I'd be like, okay, good, I'm glad she'll go there and do that. Knowing the stuff she knows from the time she spent with her old man out hunting and fishing. I'm glad I armed her with those experiences. Right. So it's not like a means to an end. It's sort of an end in itself. In the state where I live, a kid's gotta be ten start hunting turkeys. Other than Montana, right, there's other states, a bunch of them in fact, But this particular one has story has to do with Wisconsin, where they don't have that age requirement. As long as they're worth their mentor a licensed mentor, right, they hunt whatever age it's. It's it's as it should be, and it's up to the family to decide when it's appropriate for a kid to hunt. So when my daughter got to be eight years old, this is last spring, I packed her up and took her out to Wisconsin for the youth turkey season. In preparation for this, I'm pounding in her head that she's gonna shoot a turkey, like we're gonna call in a turkey she's gonna shoot the turkey in the head. And I get her a little break open four ten shotgun, and we loaded with the stuff called federal ts s right like Tongusten super shot. Right. It makes it that you can shoot it four ten but really deal death on turkeys with such a small caliber, if you will, shotgun. To make it easier for her to aim, I put a red dot site on it, so we start shooting at targets to look like turkeys, and I load her up with game load, like a load that doesn't kick that strong, not that very a very powerful load, right, so she doesn't learn to flinch from the re coil and the noise. And we just train her up on that, aiming this little break open shotgun with a red dot site at turkey targets. And I'm like pounding in her head, like you know, you gotta aim for the waddles, right, aim for the waddles, aimed for the wattles. And I make it in her head that the measure of success as a turkey hunter is whether or not you aimed for the wattles and shot the turkey in the head. And I even told her everything else, everything else, I'm gonna be heavily involved. But when it comes to that, that's your job, right. So we go out and youth turkey seasons come early in the year, and you know it could be like a snow blizzard, right because it's in April. But we go out and it's just glorious weather. And uh, we go out and has some encounters, and then it gets to be late in the afternoon and there's a couple of gobblers just ripping up on this ridge line at my buddy Dugs place. So imagine you've got like a gentle uh Wisconsin driftless area valley floor. There's a creek running through the bottom. On either side of this brushy creek bed, you've got corn fields and then the corn fields kinda at the edge of the corn fields, and then you enter mixed forest, hardwoods, pines, a lot of briars, grape vine um, multi flora rose. Right, we hear these gobblers ripping up on this ridgeline and we go greasing up to the edge of the corn field to where we can get some cover, leaning on this pine tree, and there's one gobbler in particular going hammering up there. I put a hen decoy and then Rosie and I back up about twenty yards from that hen decoy and we lean against this big white pine and we're facing the decoy and the birds are goblin. What's now to our left? We just had to put the decoy the clear like like the only clear kind of shooting land we had. And this gobbler strutting up and down the ridge top just hammering. And after a while it hammers its way down to where it's it's not to our left anymore, but it's like way behind us, to our left, and then it starts coming. And eventually I'm looking out my peripheral vision and I can I can like sense and see this gobbler goblin and also drumming, and he's like like right off to my side, man. And I'm just telling my daughter, who's facing towards the decoy. I'm saying, Rosie, do not move. I'm like, Rosie, do not say a word, don't talk, don't talk, don't move, don't move, do not talk. Right, And I'm just pounding us in their head because this birds come and come and come and coming, and this thing passes us by, like I think I could have reached out and grabbed its neck. But then it's got to pass us by, but then walk twenty yards before she's going to become aware of its presence, right, And you know, I could have just swung around and shot it, but I'm trying to like get a good shot opportunity for so the bird comes to get this too. That Rosemary is like shorter than I am, and she's in my lab, so my view at my eye line is different than her view from her eye line. My eye line is like crystal clear out to the decoy. Her eyeline, unbeknownst to me, is just a bunch of sticks. But this is her first like real close encounter shooting at a gobler, so she doesn't even know to mention it to me. Well, this gobler passes me by and it gets to the decoy, and this thing is like trying to assault the decoy. Right, he's fooled. And I'm telling Rosemary, I'm waiting for the gobbler to get in like the right position where it's holding still. I'm like, shoot, shoot, shoot, and damn she shoots. And Norman want alone shoots at a turkey, expect turkey just to pile up, right, This turkey doesn't This turkey kind of spins and then lifts off, flying and it flies across the cornfield we're in, flies over the brushy creek, flies across the other corn field on the other side of the creek, and burrows into the nastiest briar patch you've ever seen, to the point where it burrows into that briar patch and basically imprisons itself in the briar patch, like it couldn't leave if it wanted to leave out of the briar patch. So I grabbed her we go running down across the creek up the other side. I am shoots the turkey again, and rather than it being like a triumphant moment for her, she is just disappointed in herself because that first shot, she hid it in the leg, and she said, once we got to analyze them, what happened. She said, I couldn't see his head and you had to shoot, so I had to shoot and the only part, that's the only part I could see. And I said, well, why didn't you say that you couldn't see its head? And she said, you told me not to say anything. So I felt pretty bad. And then I felt like I was trying to move the goal post, so to speak. I had so focused on marksmanship and hit in the head. Then, even though she got the turkey, which was like the result we were actually after, in her head, it was somehow like her first hunt was a failure because I hadn't said our goal is getting a turkey. I had said, your job is shooting that turkey in the head. Advanced ahead of year. Next few turkey season, we get a bird comes in and bam, head shot. Bird just piles up in her head. If you went and asked you, if you went and interviewed her right now, she would tell you the that was my first turkey anybody, But what about the other turkey? You got? No? Because I didn't hit it in the head. And I had asked her this year after we hunted, I said, you need to write a thank you note to the landowner where we hunted and write him a letter and thank you for letting him hunt. And she writes her letter, and I read her letter, and she's like all this stuff like as your property and all that, and she gets to the end and a paraphrase a part of this and directly quote her the other part. She basically says, if you really stop and think about it. Uh, this is technically my second turkey. But the last line in her note verbatim is but this is the first one I nailed. For the first few seconds that I see a guyler's red head bobbing through the timber coming to my call, after I've only heard him gobble, I am mesmerized to the point of emotional trauma. I continued to be amazed at how it feels like a gobbler can look into your soul, scrutinizing every square inch of your beam. It feels like he can hear your thoughts. For a moment, you're completely out of control. It doesn't even make rational sense. But it's at this moment we connect to and flow inside of something. Primal chemicals are released in the body, no less addictive than crack, and then the spirit, which science can't track, flames to red hot interaction with a wild place that's such an incredible time of year, the spring is surely something special. The moment, however, is ephemeral. It doesn't last long. It either quickly evaporates as the turkey slides into the timber after a soft put. But now and then the plan comes together and the big gobbler steps into range and you get to take him home after the blast of a shotgun or the release of an arrow. This happened so few times in one's lifetime that most of us keep detailed counts of its occurrence. We notch knife handles, keep the beard and spurs of turkeys, we collect their tail. Fans, think about that, how many things do you actually keep count of in your life? Like we said in the last podcast, turkeys, especially in the Southeast, are in a tougher spot than they've been in a while, and we're gonna have to work hard to protect and improve habitat and be cooperative with our state game agencies as they begin to manage turkeys in a new era. Opportunity is key to igniting passion, and passion is the gateway to getting humans excited about protecting wildlife. It's a fine balance between a lot of opportunity to hunters protecting the resource in the in whatever we have to do will be worth it to see that big red headed gobbler strutton through the timber in the April's yet to come. Long live the goblin turkey. Hey, thanks so much for listening to bear Grease. Do me a favor, leave us a review on iTunes, and tell the worst turkey collar that you know about this podcast, and tell somebody about bar Grease this week. I hope you finish out your turkey season strong and we'll see you next week on The Bear Grease Render

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