00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening Hunt don't meet to eat podcast. You can't predict anything. So Johnny, there you are. The clock's ticking. You are. You just can't get it done. You got in the evening, hunt morning, hunt left. No. I can hunt tomorrow evening, possibly another evening. But you just can't get it done. If we don't kill one tonight, you probably won't see me tomorrow. I don't care what my responsibilities are. I'll just be in the woods. You just can't get one. Meanwhile, I've gotten to turkeys. Mm hmm, dogs gotten to turkeys. Is that really? How are you gonna paint this? I feel like you're being a little a little harsh on me. Well, I've gotten I haven't gotten into the details yet. I'll come to your rescue. Yeah, I was trying to make for the for the listener. I was trying to paint like a dramatic, you know what I mean, like drama coming down to it. Yeah, like I was trying to make like a dramatic. So people at home, right we're like, oh my god, Johnnie, and they get all excited and worried, and they have an enhanced listening experience. Well, let me ask you this, Let me ask you this, has the up thought entered your mind? Are you starting to grapple with the idea that you may not fill your turkey tag your Wisconsin Zone one season see turkey tag? Not at all, because this morning at daylight, we were exactly halfway through our hunt. We had four days this morning when I started, I had two left, a lot of hunt left to do. So I'm not too worried. Tomorrow at about this time after the morning hunt, if I'm still gobbler less, then I'll be sweating it a little bit. Okay. Now the second thing is have you um are you have you entered into Jake time yet? Yes? Now? Uh? Jake is a is a one year old male turkey. Yeah, maybe not even quite Jake when you like, when you're hunting the spring season, right, yeah, you might be catching him at eleven months of age. Okay, depending on how the season falls like. Generally, spring turkey seasons are comprised portions of April portions of May. Pretty if you're gonna average out spring turkey hunting, I think you'd probably wind up like you like. Most turkeys in the country are killed between like April one and May ten or something. Yeah, mid May um. So the turkey a male that's born one spring, once his egg hatches and he is in his first spring. He's got a little teeny teeny beard, which is the it's a feather the girls out of their chest. Now a big rope drag or like the one I got. We'll have a beard that's twelve inches long. But a jacob have a little dinker beard that's anywhere from three quarters of an inch too, about five inches about. Yeah, Doug shot like a big stomper. The other thing is that Jake so so years ago I was in the Philip Means and I went to see cock fights, and you know the chicken fights with his spur right when you hear of a cockfight. What they do is they enhance the spurs with these big long sickles, these big long stainless steel razor sharp sickles that they strap onto his feet so he can spur as opponent and kill him. Uh, that's a spur. So turkeys have spurs, but Jake's just have a little nubbins, a little nub that looks like the tip of your pinky. And then did you're a big giant rope dragger like the one I got, but not Jake's don't have any right, No, they always have a mark. They have a little pebble. The one I got, the Jake I got today, um had a little didn't had a little nubbins. Not as big as dougs of the nubb but not as big as dougs nubbing dogs. Snubbing was like a half inch of it. Yeah, I'm talking as turkey nubbing h on a platter. So Doug Snubbings was remarkably bigger than the nubbins on my Jake. But now I got two turkeys. Um, I'd like to say twice as man as Johnny, But I don't know when someone has zero, I don't know how to do like mathematics to talk about how many more I have than him. But my big rope dragger had spurs that you could that once a turkey is like three years old, that spur will be it'll get a hook to it, It gets very sharp on the end, and it'll get where you could hang that son of a bitch in turkey up from allege off his hooks. But there's great variants in that, yes, from I think, well, probably a lot of factors, but what they're eating, their diet, certainly you know how much you're growing. And then they're walking walking on in the in the mountains where it's rocky um, like those Mountain Marrias were hunting, they rarely get one that has those nice, big curved because he's scraping them off. Or you killed turks that have the spurs busted, which I've killed. I killed broken, busted spurred turks. But in this fertile farm country, deep rich loamy soil, they they have pristine spurs or as Yanni calls them, hooks um years ago for the misses, I took a hack saw and hacksawed off some I don't remember where I killed this turkey. Hacksawed off the spurs and they were black like like like rhino ivory, rhino every black what I imagine rhino ivory to look like, it's what these look like, black, beautiful like black pearls. Okay, hack saw them off and took him to a jeweler, in fact, the same guy that I bought her wedding ring that you know the I guess you called the wedding rings that I bought her wedding ring from. Took him to him and had him take those little pieces that they set gemstones in for ear rings and had turkey spur earrings made, and she wears them, and uh, A lot of people have no idea what you're looking at. They think it's teeth or something like that. But it's those turkey spirits, beautiful earrings. How big were the for those earrings? Big fatties, big mam so like an inch plus spur is a big as spur and they get sharp, like if you walk up. The spurs can be so sharp if you walk up, like when you first hit a turkey in the head um his life he's dead, like his life force has left him. But if you, you know, really clawed him in the head of the shotgun. But they do a lot of jumping around, um and a lot of people get injured from those spurs by running up to grab that turkey because I want to grab it by the foot and catch that spur. It'll hook you. Is that a badge of honor and turkey hunters? No, I think that's a badge of stupid turkey hunters, first stand on its neck for a while, is the better thing to do? Yeah, one time my mother's hunting bears. My brother Danny, and we beats our boat and went up and he shot a bear and I was worried about the bullket beach by the tide, and I ran in after the bear, and I thought that I'd come out and he'd be like, man, that was badass. The way he ran in after that bear, and he goes that was foolish. So yeah, I think it's a badge of foolishes. But all this talk is just trying to clarify to Jake's now also a Jake is um, there's two more important things to consider about what makes it Jake and Jake. Jake isn't that big. So what what you waited? You weigh your big turbot Jake? What he weigh out at? Uh, just under fifteen and a half pounds. So the Jake I killed this morning is smaller than that Jake him yet shorter beard like shorter Noubbins. Little atrophy not atrophy doesn't have never grown. It's not that they shrank. Atrophy would make you think his spurs shrank, undeveloped spurs and not a hefty bird. Now the rope drag, I killed pounds four ounces? Why are you shaking your head? I'm not just like a jealous shake it well a little bit, I guess. Yeah. So, although I think I got you on total poundage. Yes, so there is a big size difference. Now here's the important part, and this is what Yan He's gonna speak to. Here's the important part. Jake's are um gullible, so Jake's will gang up with other Jake's and hens don't want to have sex with him, so they're just like they're like, uh, they run around little groups to Jake's three Jake's nine. Jake's run around little groups just dying for like attention from other turkeys. If they go to a big gobbler, like a big rope dragon, he's gonna kick their ass. Hens won't do it with him, and they're just around trying to like fit into the whole scene. And there they come to calls like pretty aggressively. So for all of these reasons um size goal ability, some people will not shoot Jake's. I do not have this problem, but Yanni passed up Jake's and now it's fixing to shoot at Jake, And it goes against one to Yanni's beliefs, which is, don't pass up on the first day what you'd be happy to have on the last day. So now I was thinking about that, because I do say that, but I was also thinking about that. I'm like, okay with going home empty handed. You know what I mean. You don't want to have a little turkey starfry or a little turkey Schnitzel or a little turkey supper. Turkey s got two rope draggers already packaged and wrapped up, and he's been on another states. Yeah, so feeling a little cocky that, but yeah, I'm okay with going home empty handed. So I'm weighing, you know, the experience. I kind of want the show and I want to, you know, interact with that old gobbler and and and and now I've had that, you know, I mean twice with Dog and we've had a couple other sessions, you know, so I've sort of like I'm satiating myself with that, with the experience part of it. And now I'm like, all right, yeah, I get it, but like I shoot Jake's But even though I shoot Jake's. I still in my life have shot more non Jake's and Jake's. Yeah, for sure, you know, because I'm like, I don't know the other day that I haven't even seen that many Jake's. Yeah, Like I'll go out now. This morning I went out and purposefully targeted a big rope dragger. Okay, like I was playing on the rope dragger. I was trying to get him. So it's not like I like put together playing to try to go get a Jake. But later in the morning, I like went out thinking, I'm gonna go find that those Jake's and call him in and get one. So it's not like you deprive yourself of the experience of of of matching wits with a slile Tom who's not actually that old because a two year old turkey is already an old man, a four year old turkey is dead, a three year old turkey is very old. M h. Now this this varies a lot, but I got a turkey bill just this one's telling me seventy of the eggs that get hatched, they get sorry. Of the eggs that get laid get destroyed. Now, now the female will have multiple clutches, so like when she loses a clutch of eggs. This is true with many birds pieces. But if she loses the clutch eggs, she'll go having you know, a second clutch, So she gets a couple of chances. But seventy five about like you know, just the generay to think about this, seventy five percent of the eggs that hit the ground will never hatch. Seventy five percent of the birds that hatch will not see their first year of age seventy five About seventy five percent of the turkeys of this about of Jake's will not become rope draggers because attrition, MHM death. Everything wants to kill turkeys, except Yanni. Everything from the minute they hit the ground. That's why they get paranoid. It's like the minute they hit the ground, just like everybody wants to kill him. I gotta say a clarify something on the Jake's if somebody, okay, can I can I preface this with that that this is coming from the world's worst wildlife observer, the world's the world's worst wildlife observer. Dirt myth will now well, now it's not going to weigh in on Turkey's Jake's psychology. Well, just to clear five, you made it I feel like you made it seem like the Jake's were a guaranteed success, and yesterday we saw I don't feel that way. I guess I shouldn't say we spooked. That's like saying is yesterday we saw a thirteen, right, Yeah, but that also is like that's the thing about Jake's, Like we spooked a bunch of groups of Jake's yesterday because they because they're not shy and they're standing out in the middle of fields in the middle of the day. So it's very hard to walk through agricultural across the agricultural landscape because they're not doing like a little sneaky little rope drag or activities like hiding out in little wood lots, and you know, they're just like out running around willy Nili in the middle of the fields, so they kind of like run into you as much as you run into them. And if you go to call, like you're out trying to locate turkeys, it's a risky maneuver maneuver, but you can locate it by going like a crow and shot goblin where they just respond to a loud noise by goblin, or you can go around and like in and go out and make hand calls. Okay, So the think it is, if it's a big old a big old boss Tom and he hears the hand, he's gonna he's gonna gobble. But then because he's an old sly old dog, he's not gonna come pouring in like you're gonna romance him and play this game. Right, But if you go and you're just trying to locate it time and you make a noise that got the damn, Jake's might over be like on a full tilt towards you, you know, so you do bump Jake. So yeah, it's like they're not it's not. Yeah, you can just go out and necessarily kill him because things happen. Yeah, And that's what I sing is if I were to I haven't turkey hunted yet in my life, but if I were and I saw Jake and I shot it harvest it successfully, I'd be stoked. So yeah, let's yeah, we'll come back Janni from it. And what goes on in his mind? Um uh, dirt, you've never hunted turkeys, I mean I've been on I mean you holding shot to kill Turkey. Do you let's say tomorrow. I was like, Dirt, we didn't we have a surprise for you. We didn't tell you, but you we have. We bought you a turkey take and we're just our whole day focused on Dirt getting the turk. Now, would you hunt for a Jake just one day? No? I mean, okay, no, no, I'm saying, forget this elaborate scenarial. Do you see? Like if you were Turkey, honey, would you be like, I don't give a ship if it's a Jake or not? No, No, I would be it would It depends on the timing. I mean I think the psychology, the thought process would be the same as you guys who are season hunters. Like the first day out of a four day hunt, I would be holding off for the big one, the big show. Yeah, just so you're a you're already into it, you already see it. Yeah, well, I mean the lure of of a of a monster. Yeah for sure. But if I had one day and the first morning, you know, out there sitting for an hour and I saw Jake and that was my only day, I shoot it. Pat, Are you a Jake man? Like when you put the jake breaks on a jake, not usually, I mean, not not till later in the hunt. If I get a chance late in the hunt, I'll I'll shoot him with audience thinking twice. But early on, though, I I like to see that big rope coming through, Let you see the fan, all that kind of fun stuff. And then when you see uh, a gobler pop up and you see the little extra where it's not an even fan, and you know it's a jake. Initially I get bummed that's a jake. But then late in the hunt, I think I'm willing to go home without one. I mean, I don't have a problem doing that, but I think that's why. Really in the hunt, when you start passing them up, you don't. A lot of times you don't get that chance back. You just don't. Now, this is coming from a man who I found out earlier today has a personal pact that if he shoots a buck, he gets it mounted. It's an inviolable pact with himself. He has a lawyer, the doctor, the c p A and the taxidermist. That's right, and you have mounted. And he has thirty white tailed deer mounted in his house. No exaggeration, um, how many did you kill before you got the first one? Stuffed A lot? A lot? So then what year did you be like from now when I'm stuffing them all? My big year was I shot three at that point where the biggest bucks that was shot in my life, like bang bang bang, and went on a hunting um Buffalo Connie Wisconsin, bow and arrow. First morning out, got nice eight point bucked with with split browl times I'm gonna get that buck mounted, but probably about one forty class buck. And I went to Ontario two weeks later shot this big I call him the Cathedral Antler's nice tight thirteen inch spread through to Denis and spread and that was when it was bucks you doing man, and in between I forgot that the other big bucket out was one out in eastern Colorado whereas I I was very after a blizzard had blown through, nasty hunt and the wind was just gusting. But I made a It was a long shot, but I got we had missed a couple of shots, and Mr Musk a couple of shots and we figured out you gotta aim a lot more out in front of that bucket that distance, and shot broke his neck went down so I had these three bucks. I knew I was gonna get them all mounted, and I just made just packed myself. I thought that's um. Up to that point, I one buck on the wall that was had shot that one, and I thought, well, now I got four of them and three or basically not all the tax dermist you know, if now I'm just not going to shoot a buck unless I really want to put him on the wall. And what's uh, what's what's uh Mrs Dirk and like, what's your take? I mean, people do always ask me that because I have a lot of stuff from I have a lot of schools and hides that I never got anything stuff before. But okay, no, well I got rugs right, which is their stuff because they had stuff down them. But I never got anything stuff to hang on the wall. But I have all kinds of ship hanging all over my house, hides and schools and whatnot. But thirty stuff, dear, what do you think about that? I feels like a whole other level of stuffness. I chose wisely, and like all that I'm married wisely. My my wife, I remember one of her comments first first time I got buck monted. We're about thirteen years into our marriage, and I remember I get find it a was buck mounted and she says, I saw as kind of stranged with the editor of Deer and Deer Hunting magazine didn't have any um deer heads in the wall. He's making a statement. Well, no, No, My statement was I was shooting everything that moved early in my hunting life. Anything that had antlers, I shoot it. And then by time I got into mind, I was probably late thirties. By at that time, I start getting little more picky, a little more picky more. And then, like I said, it's a big breakout year where you just to have everything falls into place. And my wife felt, we have a house that has an interior that just kind of fits that that look, you know, it's it's old barnboard. Um is our host's barn board interior on the ceilings. Yes, I would argue that. I would argue that it uh that it's supredictable. It could be because I have a very modern house with a lot of hides and schools, and it creates like a tension that I like a lot. Yeah, it's like you know in Quentin Tarantino movies when they'll have a very air udite, Like, he'll have a person right who's very genteel and extremely like his characters be extremely well spoken, very genteel, but then they say the most violent profane thing in the world, and it creates a tension right between the persona and then this thing. So he'll have his characters that have like this like way they speak, and then when they say like really like long drawn out strings of profanities, you sense this sort of right, this push and pull, and so with modern decor and skulls creates like an on a thing that, um, you walk into it, it's almost like you you you stepped into a fight, right guy. He has a log home and he's leary about overdoing it on buckheads and whatnot because it's like, oh, yeah, it's a long home, so a bunch of my house isn't quite quite like that. And I think when I get the tension thing, I think it's cool that my wife, who grew up on the East Coast never knew a hunter till she met me. That's attention. I think that's attention for us. You know that that people walk into house and that's the first thing I always ask hers, did you kill all this? You put up with this? She gets question a lot, how do you how do you put why do you put up with this? And curly curly rules got The only rule she has is no deer heads in our bedroom everywhere else. I hear a lot of guys say that, But I don't understand that either. I don't. I don't understand it. But um, it's I figure. She gives me free rein in the living room on the staircase. The kitchen area like kitchen, the kitchen, but we have an adjoining kitchen and dining room. So dining room has got quite a few white tails around it. And we also have a big wallet in there, and we have a salmon. And in our room, I have a wild pig from Florida that my daughter's shot. That's in um kind of like a big guest room area. And then we have an elkin there that my daughter Leah shot. You ever stuff a turkey? Got two of them to full full body molts. Yeah. One to see the inside of this house, right, it's like walking into a Cabela's. Like, no, no, kids were all home. I have three daughters, Bubba see palace. My daughters used to bring boyfriends home. The boyfriends were more interested in seeing all the dead animals in my house than they were. And if they didn't, they in't show my my daughters enough attention when they were touring the house with you know, I having me showed them around and talk to them about different deer. If they spent too much time with talking to dad, you know, it's kind of it for them. As far as my girls were concerned, they thought they didn't want a boyfriend who wanted to talk to the old man all right about because if the only reason you want to see me is because you want to, you know, talk deer hunting with my dad and they cut them off, you know? Was that the case with all three of them, not Leah, but then the lead always and the date guys that weren't in the hunting. So figure out how many buckheads are hanging in the rumor in right now? Well, there's a lot of racks stuff in here, but actual amounts. For there are slightly fewer buckheads in here that are in Pat Durkin's house. But these are just racks mostly where Doug during style of a tax during where he saw the uh saw skull cap off and screwed to a board. Now, Doug, what's your feeling on shooting Jake's? I shot one so like, but but what's your feeling on it? Because you passed a bunch of Jake's up once. So but we have talked about that once. That was the first time you passed Jake's in your life. No, no, just the other morning. You've passed up other Jake's in your life. Yes, because they're not good enough for you. Uh No, because similar circumman, it's only happened twice before. So it's not like I have this vast experience of turkey on jake passage. But uh we saw the scroup of Jake's that I eventually shot one from come across the field and you know, you looked at it through the through the knox and he goes the one that's by itself kind of on the outside is a bigger one, what do you think? And we talked about it, and they came into the decoys. We still had a gobbler in the tree a hundred yards of the other direction that we thought, if that's right, A big reason that that pass happened to the morning is because no more than a hundred yards away there was a gobbler hammering, and we and he was still in the tree late in the morning, and we figured if he landed on that strip of you know, basically grasp between the woods and these pines that we were set up in, he would for sure look down there and cr decoys and those Jake's Jake's coming in there and start a fight and they're you know, fighting Perrin and making noises and we're like, We're like, it's gonna happen. But I think if we should point out because earlier I was trying to like catalog the things that distinguishes Jake from a from a Tom, like a mature tom. One of them is a mature time can gobble like a good robust gobble that you will like part your hair, right, And Jake has kind of a little like a goofy kind of gobble. Yeah, and a lot of times they don't make any noise. Yeah, this week we haven't heard of Jake gobble yet. I think it might just be too early in the season. You know, they're not just quite feeling like what you're saying. He saw some Jake's gobblin earlier there, You did you tell me that? No, he was telling me that that he was telling me. He was telling me that those Jake's, yeah, not all of them, but that one that one did. Like if a normal gobbler goes gobbl gobbl, gobl gobble, this dude went yeah. So when Yanni says that he could hear off, so okay, the night, explain what happened, how you went out the night before all that. Just just tell people the whole deal like you're trying to do, like you're giving someone. We weren't hunting because it was the night before the season. Here was the night before season. Here in Wisconsin, they have six nine day, seven day, six seven day seasons. We're here for season C and uh we got here the evening before and we had just enough time run out and try to roost a bird rooster, Tom, which means you brought up something. I want to explain that instead of just having turkey season right where people's heavilized as you go hunting turkeys, Wiscotts breaks everything up A B, C, D than what E as it goes. So it's like, you know, you gotta be like you gotta know what week you want to hunt turkeys, A, B and C your heart like A, B, and C sellout D, E, F. Generally you can keep get more tags people like. Generally, like if you're a nonresident of Wisconsin and you send in your application, if you put down C, you'll get the C. If you put down B, you'll get beat out by residents and won't get an award or a tag. Probably if you do eat, you're guaranteed you're virtually guaranteed that you will get a turkey tag to hunt. And people want to go earlier because they think all the you know, rightfully, So a lot more birds are still alive. There are more turkeys alive at the day one of season A than there are the last day of season F by by a long shot. Sometimes it's made fifty in this stay. Yeah, there's fifty thousand more times alive when A starts in their are when F ends, and they haven't been educated by uh, you know, people in the woods making them up. So yeah, so when we're talking about season see, that's what we're talking about. It's like it's like the earliest season that uh that uh one, it's the earliest season that non resident can draw and also it's the earliest season that once tags go on sale, and they sell excess tags. It's the earliest season that you're gonna be able to buy an excess tag for and they sell out quickly. Like we were on the phone, ion see tags, I got one. I was on the phone with Yanni. He's hitting like refresh, and he never got one. They had sold out by that the second tag. So I have two Season CE tags because I got one through the lottery and one through buying excess tags. And Yanni got one through the lottery and was on a phone call and ship and missed the first couple of minutes of the excess tag sale and then they were gone. They're sure, we're That's how I got the second one. Also, um, so if you apply for Season CE in Wisconsin, at least in his own one, you're gonna get a tag. Yeah when you if you apply in December tenth deadline and all of that. So I was just telling listeners. Yeah, and I wonder if if that's the case with UH with season B two. No, No, you won't a non resident won't draw B second year because you get a point. Yeah. But here's how it works is if you if you're willing to not this is gonna be boring a ship for people. But listen, if you're willing to not hunt and you put down first choice, BE no second Choice on your application, then you would get a bonus point. But they pull your bonus point as long as they send you a tag. So I thought I had accumulated bonus points in Wisconsin by applying first choice, be second Choice C they would send me my tag. But I thought since I didn't hit my first choice, I get a point and I call because it's showing that I have no points, and they said no, because you got a tag. So what you have to do is you have to put down BE no second Choice, not get a tag, and then call them buy an excess see your D tag, and then you'll accrue a point to help you get a B. That is way more complicated than it should be. No, it's not. I love this stuff. It's pretty easy. The reason I like all this stuff is because it favors the It favors the serious. I like anything that may sit that last minute jackasses right the last minute, like oh you know, I don't know my boddies are going. I decided like and to keep those people out of the woods, and favors people who are obsessive. I think it's like a good thing. If they made a rule you have to be able to do push ups to get a turkey tacher, Like, okay, sure, why not any bear? I'm joking, but any barrier to entry, And I don't mean physically. That's not fair. I take it that back. That was an awful thing to say. But sending it a little bit of paperwork in a in a stamp, it's not like it's like you're going out to kill a big giant bird. It's like, it's not that bad you gotta do, like sending a form stating your intent to hunt. I just checked that landowner box. That makes it easier, does it? Yeah? I get whatever season I want because you don't land It's like the European system. Do you ever catch a little robin hoods out here and hang them? I got a couple of them sitting here right now. So I run up to the top thirty minutes before dark to roost the teve of season scene, which means that you go out there in the evening and you make some sort of loud, obnoxious sound, usually the call of a barred owl coyote crow slammed the truck door, scream yell um, yeah, yeah, we've shocked him up by going hey, yeah, you could blow on the elk bugle. Kevin Murphy's horn was sure as hell. I have heard bird shot gobble from coyotes, car horns, crows, sonic booms from aircraft, um dogs barking, my brother Matt screaming, uh, coyote yips. I used to take an elk call a bite and blow elk call and just make a heinous, loud, high pitched sound of that and shot gobble him up. Will Primos says that, so says the wider turkey shot got. His answer is it's just them saying this is my time of the year. I like that. Yeah, roosters crowing, pheasant roosters, geese, ducks, shotguns, shots, shotguns, shots, trucks going over rumble strips, but not every time. Every time today when you there were crows making noise all along that ridge. Yeah, but I do what's called the power crow right in my ears ducks. I thought I got a shot, got a lot of him, and he's looking for Morrel's and I ripped out a power crow into his face without getting my heads up. So there you are, Johnnie. Yeah, and you're trying to put one to roost. Yes, and um, I'd like to get all my I like the least calls I can have on me, the better. So one day maybe I'll be able to make a hand sound with my own voice. Can't do that yet. Yeah, I carry one shot gobble thing. I used to carry an owl and a crow, but I just have good luck with my crow. Yeah, I have tokyo because I can it can it can? It reaches out the farthest, you know, I feel like it really reaches out there. But I gave him myer do it for real? Any one thing would be too loud. I'm not claiming to be a good barred owl. The thing I want I want, like I don't at the risk it interrupt in your tail. It doesn't matter. A lot of turkey hunters are like really obsessed about these realistic shot gobble sounds. You're right, You're right. I don't think it matters. No, it doesn't matter to the turkeys. You go on YouTube, dudes like exactly like, oh yeah, it a bart owl. It's like they don't. I just want to was that a real shotgun shot or a fake shotgun shot because I might shot gobill. I want to impress my buddies and what I like and Pat can attest to this is today I had a bart owl respond to me. So it's like, great, no, just general woodsmanship. Yeah, great, it's great to know how to do a bar. So I usually do a whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah, something like that's good, it's convincing. And yeah, and I heard bart Owel's answer you. So a couple of birds answer, way off in the distance, and uh. I run down a fence line, maybe a couple hundred yards, and before I can do another call, a bird goes off pretty close, like less than two hundred yards to where I know what ridge, what line of trees he's roughly on. I listened to him for a few minutes and back out of there. Yeah, this is so yeah. You you preface this right by saying this is like turkey hunting one on one, right, like ex how to how to rooster bird? So now you know what tree he's sleeping in in the morning under the cover of darkness, Doug and I slipped in and you can kind of suss out the terrain, yes, and be like if he's roosting there. Where is it? Like, what's this? Probably where is he gonna go in the morning? Right, you can kind of suss it out, Like if you got one roosted up and on one side is this giant thorny hellhole and then the other size this little open meadow area, you'd be like, my guess, chances are better than not that he's gonna not going to the thorny hellhole and want to pitch out and land down where he can actually hit the ground without crash landing. And so it's helpful when you know where he is. And both times we've said I've set up on rooster birds this week, they've pitched down into the hellhole gayon, never to be scene again. And when they have any kind of topography they like to they like to roost near slopes. Yeah, I think I think it's easy for them to get into the tree. You know, they're up on a bench or something and they make a short little pitch out, you know, the ground drops out from underneath them and then they're We watched in Mexico one time, hunting out in the desert. We watched where they were roosting in cotton woods down along was it. I think it was cottonwoods down along like a near a little water hole, and they would climb up the slope and get higher than where they were going to roost and pitch off the slope and then land out in the riparian zone in the cottonwood. And it would be funny because they just would like as part of us getting in the tree, they just do that walk and then shoot out and land in the treetop rather than trying to lift off. Smart critters. So there you are. The next morning. Next morning, Doug and I slip in. We set up three decoys d S d S Dave Smith decoys. We uh had a feeding hand and upright hand and big boss yeah strutter with we're out and we're in Wisconsin where they have the Eastern turkey subspecies. And I have a Merria tail fan on this and I was a little worried, kind of like I'm a little worried if my barret our call sounds good. It was stupid to think that a turkey is gonna be like, hey, that dude's tail feathers are at Animals hate different, right, they hate different, So it's better because they're like I'm especially gonna beat that thing up because it's got a weird colored fan like deer will beat up deer that have a limp. They do not like ship to be different. It's a rigidity to nature. Differences are not celebrated unless it's just strength. Strength is admired, limp is fighting drop time. Do they like it? You don't know if they like it. When I'm aware of is that they don't like weakness, and they don't like deformities. They don't like anything to suggest weakness. Still go after it, you know. Dear turkeys whatever they when a turkey gets shot, gobbler gets shot that the galders beat the crapout them. That's always weird when you hit a turkey and the air turkey's beat it up. But I've seen um doose in in the winter when there somebody has a feedure out in their backyard. This one fun had I've broken like I've broken, distorted neck and it come in and it was always askew. The other deer to always push it off, get it out there, and they're just mean as hell to it. Only the only dare that would have penned that dear any kindness with its own mother they're always a shun it, kick it or albino is at the same treatment. A lot of times they went going near the other deer and get beat up. That's why he sailed vinals by themselves. Yeah, I went to you when I was working on my book about Buffalo. I went out to see this famous white buffalo called white Cloud, and um, white clouds always way away from the herd. And the people are like they run the place. We're like, well that you know the other buffalo. No, he's special, right, and he has special magic. And this one guy that works out there is like, no, he tells me that he goes, No, they beat the ship out of that thing, he goes. It's so just stays off by itself. Now, well, I saw that turkey that I assumed got that big tom down here last week that I assumed got hit by a car just kidding, ship kicked out of it by another one and uh killed it or finished it off, finished it off. And I'm assuming, I mean there was some activity there that looked like there may have been a fight, but um friend came in, UH got it, tagged it, and uh when they cleaned it, it didn't have any you know, like big cut marks in it or anything like it. So we're kind of assuming you get hit by a car. But there it was. I'm driving up and it's thirty yards off the road and the other one is just punching it, pecking it, and then he walked off when I walked out to see what the heck was going on, and then you went and found a dead badger just out doing farm boy activities. Well, yeah, that was the dead animal. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit like you're playing uh rhythm guitar as you tell your story and other people are soloing on top of your story. So there you are. I don't mind that. There you are. You got your d S d S, got my d S d S. I always said, I want to finish on the roosting. Uh thought, is that what it really gives you is it gives you a nice place to start in the morning. You're not like in the darkness blind going on. I hope there's like a gobbler somewhere around here at some point, and you're getting like you have anxiety because like you're like, should we go here? Should we go there? You're like you can walk out calmly a couple of coffee and you and just go right where you're going, knowing that it's probably not gonna work out. Yeah yeah, but it gives you a place to start, and uh sometimes it does. But uh yeah, So we set up our three decoys, and uh, this bird when we got there, he was goblin, goblin, goblin, goblin goblin. I mean it was. He gobbled hundreds of times like he's a rope dragg and uh stayed in the tree and before we had seen any other turkeys, it was probably close to an hour after daylight, right, and when these jakes came out. Yeah, and we didn't spook this tongue because we're just too far away. He just could not see us, He couldn't see our decoys. He's just gobbling away. I mean I was. I inspected every tree down that, you know, rich trying to find it with my binoculars, and just could not see him. So he was just out of sight. And uh, yeah, these j pop up on the horizon, I don't know, a couple hundred yards at least two yards away, and uh I'm calling a little bit here and there, and uh, those jake's you know, you see one get his periscope, his neck Nike nice and high. He looks down to where we are and they just turned and just marched right on in four pack. Well, yeah, I wonder if they were different age because it was like there was three and then there was one, and one had like a you know, we had kind of a where's the the younger ones have like an artist's brush, just a little tiny. Yeah, his was a little wider and yeah, but definitely a right. I mean that it's not a two year old sixteen pounds, So maybe born earlier or hatched earlier, or a good nutrition or power jake, power jake, And he got like maybe he was really good um and a it was throwing out a lot of seventy five percentiles earlier. But when they're a poult, they eat about their diet is about insect matter, plant matter. For a good healthy turkey, a lot of the need to be a lot of growths, a lot of worms out of insects, and then later in adulthood it's flipped a lot less protein, a lot more green. So maybe he's just really maybe he had a little honey hoole grub patch. It was just cleaning house and it makes you wonder if they're from you know, the same brood, or you know all of that. I mean they brothers or they just like freshman boys at the high school dance. You know. Yeah, no, Non, you're a big guy. You're probably bigger than all the other kids. You like that. Jake, Well then let me see your nubbles. So n there you are. You got your d S d s out, big flock of hungry Jake's coming at you. Are you scared? No, We're just we're like, that's what we're there for, right is to see the show. And we got it. I mean it was great. You know, four Jake's come in just bypass those hands didn't even there were two hands, Like they're more interested in beating up a turkey than they are having and they had to walk through the two hands. I do guys like that in high school, right, guys that would be like they would pass up ladies to fight, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like you got your priorities crooked. But we had decided we talked about it as they were coming down, because we're sitting pretty much side by side. Well it's early and that other guy's goblin, so we thought we had the perfect scenario with these decoys coming into our decoys. Yeah, so you feel like we were doubling down. You thought the rope draggon is gonna come out and just start kicking everybody's ass decoys. Yeah, because how could he decoys? Jake's this blood, How could he stand having four Jake's in there fighting pern and cackling and you know, flapping their wings around. I mean that turkey activity. You could certainly hear it where he was. Yeah, that time would be like, whatever is going on down there, I'm gonna go down and settle it. Yeah. They're starters. They're starters and sets instead. They eventually had enough of the decoys and uh, they saw a couple of dudes eventually buy some trees and they're like, yeah, we're gonna piece out of here because you guys are thirty yards away. Yeah. Oh, we had him a couple of times at at feet were on the other side of a pine tree that I was sitting on the other So they got suspicious as they laughed. They did some putting, you know how Jake's They're not like evenhen they're putting away from you, they're kind of like, I'm scared I'm scared, but maybe that was fun. Whish I go back? I don't know, I don't know. And so they kind of fade off, and they just happened to fade right underneath the gobbler, and it sure seemed like as they went there, he finally came out of the tree and then went away from us. Then time goes by, you fellers come back to the farmhouse. Doug had had as he put there day, what would you call a blessing here on the farm? What do you call it? Yeah, yeah, you use the term. Kiefer came over and you said, we had a small blessing or a miracle on the farm today something I don't I don't remember what I said, but yeah, we had a calf and a Kyle birthed a calf. And I was a little concerned about the calf because it was didn't seem to be getting the idea down about how I get something to eat. So we came down, we got a little cup of coffee, little breakfast, and I said, hey, I'll check on that calf. And we walked down there, kind of climbed up on the fence and was looking at the calf, and yeah, he looks way to the north and goes there's some turkey stuff. They call him the lavine Eagle. Well, no, I just call myself. Yeah, not much game gets by this kid. Well, now he'll spot it up. He's the turkey I as far as I'mcoln's the Latvian. So he said, and what do you think? And I'm just like, well, So we came back, got our stuff and pretty much went back to the spot that we had already set up in because we were trying. By the way those birds were moving, it looked like they were going to come pretty much where we had been in the morning, like they had done their whole thing. So some little adventure and we're working the way right back to their If I've come to realize something in ten years of turkey hunting now is that they are creatures of habit loops, creatures of loops, and if unless they're messed with or bombed or whatnot, they're gonna do their loop and come back. And this time you're waiting for him and you put your decoys down. No, we well barely we got there and peeked around the corner and I saw one of them statue stand there like a statue for fifteen minutes to the point where I thought he had us, and he just kind of he look our way, look, you know, just nine degree head turns straight away and then towards us, or ninety degrees to us, towards us, back and forth, back and forth, not moving. I'm thinking, man, we screwed it up, you know, like he saw us, just something in the pines. It ain't gonna last, Belly very well. We'll try it anyway. So Doug gets in a position. I'm watching him. He hasn't spooked yet. I back out, look at him one more time. He hasn't spooked yet. Do a little loop, belly crawl out with strutter again, just him, said him. Belly crawled back and called for I don't know, maybe fifteen twenty minutes, long enough that we were starting to doze off. I was close, Doug was said, maybe he had actually made it. It's the worst kind of sleep, like because you get when you're like, what'sipp We've been sending you a larning for so we got a three forty five in the morning, right, and then when you're out in the evening hunt, you're out there until past eight. It's just like, yeah, your dinner and all that ship, get your gears squared away. It's like get low on sleep and you can't help. When his son comes up and it gets warm, you get nappy feeling. So you're so nappy feeling. But at the same time, the minute you doze off, you like feel like you heard a gobble or something. It's just it's like a very fitful nut and it's like it really puts you in a bad place. Yeah, and there trying to sleep in the turn. I mean, we are in naptime. Well, I hadn't seen anything. Nothing, we didn't know we thought. I figured it was it's gonna have a chance that they had spooked off, is anything. I called for a bit and Austin I hear, I think it's squirrels hopping around, because we've seen a bunch of squirrels. And then I'm hearing I'm like squirrels, you know. But then I'm like, yeah, there's some jakes, like not too far from here. Now there's some noise. Maybe I should just get my gun up and no sooner and I like, I didn't even get my gun to my knee. I was like I had it halfway up to my knee and I look and there's one red head and then another red head. Oh my hope, dogs awake. We were at that point, we were probably thirty yards we were sitting together. We were probably thirty yards apart and that and we had talked about not shooting into the pines because we were both sitting in the pines. We you know, we done the whole We had a safety plan. And I'm looking back in the spot and I see that movement. I can't hear anything, so I didn't hear those that noise, and but it was the same thing on and so I'm trying to get turned to where i can shoot, and I'm thinking, well, I could shoot left handed me because they're really close to me. And it was the fourth one was the one, the biggest one, like we had decided earlier in the day. So yeah, he could have had that bird, but he didn't pull the trigger as quickly as I did. Yeah, I was. I was going to brag that I've only passed up a jake one time, being that morning when we had the gobbler, But then I remember that I must have passed up a jake later that day. So I passed up to Jakes in mind, because they were kind of lining up for you, weren't they. I mean, you could have probably shot two of them with one shot and then you and then you blouch. Do you know what they called Jake breaks? Jake breaks? Jacob Industries makes that Maybe I don't know. They still do plays called Jacob Industries makes that compression break. Me and my brother used to live in a trailer park alongside the Highway ninety in Montana, and holy shit, you get sick of listening to those things, man, because it was on the down slope. People coming down out of you know, around they come down bowls and pass I don't know, blasts awake every night with them freaking things. But it's my brother calls when he shoots Jake, he puts the Jake breaks out. That's not very nice. Um, So you got to Jake, got to Jake Downey went. That was over. We were very excited about it. Now meanwhile, I had gone out. I hadn't gone out and roosted a turkey. I had not. I wasn't as aggressive and as good of a hunter as Yanni was, and I just was trusting that I would find gobblers and I did. I went out to what I referred to as the navel of the Durn farm. You could call it the heart of the Durn farm. But the navel like the center where all activity is centered. I'm gonna use that from now on. That's where the navel of the farm. Dug says. If you hit a deer and you wound a deer and you're once you're trailing it, you will pass through the navel like it's just they just just the navel of the farm, the whole. Yeah, yeah, it really place, you know. So I went down to the navel and I'm sitting there and up above me at a place called known widely as Ranella rich Uh, there are three gobblers like you tell you can tell the roosted up the trees, like when you sit there in the dark, you get a sense of where they all are when they're gobbling, and you can set you don't even hear how they're like a differ trees and there's a cascading effect like one will go like an aggressive one to go. He'll hammer and then his buddies will hammer over him. But the sound like jumps down the ridge because they're like in these different trees. I was like, go go, but it just moves, you know, and then it starts back at the top and moves down. It's like someone like running their fingers down a piano, you know. And then there's this other gobbler just hammering his ass off up and he's this pine area, and they were all too far away for me. Like it's like, I mean, I knew that I could eventually might come through the navel, as all things do, but they were like far away gobbles and they hit the ground. One hit the ground and gobbled for a while. Then he kind of gobbled his way farther away, and the other ones I can never figure out what happened to him. And I worked up at to a place called the Wet Spot, which my brother used to like to think up names for bars, like if he was to buy a bar, what he would name it? And um repeat offender, tight Fit, the wet Spot, and ginger Snapper was four names that he had. You know, he never bought a single bar in his life, but he had four names ready, and one of them was the Wet Spot. And it's weird because I'm during farm maps there's a place called the Wet Spot, and I asked Dug. I'm like, you know the big mud puddle that's always there, and Dougs like, yes, you're referring to the wet spot. So I went up to the wet spot, which was around where the gobbling was occurring, and then I sit down, get camouflaged and rip out a hend, call a couple of yelps, and as turkeys are wants to do, they gobble back the direction I had just come from, which happens because it was a roundabout way of getting there, call call, call dead. They just went to you know, working with hens, one of the things that makes turkeys hard to call in it, Dave, as they when they're up in the roost, they're probably up in the roost of the hands, and I know that there's a lot of hands cutting, like cutting up in the tree with them. Yeah. In fact, I kept thinking there's no gobbles and just hands purn and cutting and carrying on up in the trees. And I thought, there's no way there's no gobble gobblers with those hands. And it wasn't until well in the daybreak when they started goblin. But what what the reason I knew that that was there was because the hens so the reason that gobbler is hard to call in Sometimes in the early mornings he's still with his hands. He's like traveling with the hands and displaying for them. Now as the day goes on, if they're laying, the hens will leave him and go off to lay eggs, and then he might then become very susceptible to calling because now he's got no females around him. So all this talk about getting up and roosting them and all that. The most the turkeys I killed, I started killing turkeys around nine am. I kill a lot of curcus a be nine in noon. It seems like in the morning it either happens right away or not lucky. But you get in a situation where you're set up where he wants to be and he hasn't and the hens calm or whatever, and you get him and that does happen. But kill a lot of turkeys in the late morning. So I was like, never mind these turkeys, Um, I'm just gonna go on a little walk about. And I walk quite a long ways and I get out to anywhere. I'm confused about property ownership, and I don't want to cross the fence because I don't really understand, like what else what? And uh, I rip out a power crow and get old Goppel from a tom down in this the word this section of this big wood lot butts up against a field and and I'm sitting there glass and oh and I glass up two hens feeding around out in the open, set up at try to call the gobbler that I gobbled. He never showed up that night. I went back, What time we go down there, dirt? I went back about three and set up where I was calling into where that one had shot gobl And you were sure the property lines you know too, Yeah, clarified property lines with dug went down there and kind of like crept in there and got set up where I could where I'm calling into this where I feel that that bird shot gobbled out of even though he was hundreds of yards away when I shocked him up. And I get comfortable almost to a nappy degree, and um start calling And how long do we lay there? Three hours? No toy for two hours, calling probably every twenty or thirty minutes, just on a slate, calling a pot call every minutes, calling no response, just dead ass silent. And then at one point I look and coming through the wood lot at full strut, without ever making a sound. There he is the Boston Boy and he comes out and it's like you're not talking abot how Jake's are out in the middle fields all day long raising Holy hell. He's coming out of the woods and gets to the edge of the woods and will not leave that wood patch. He's just in the woods at a full strut. What do you lay at then wind row a wind roll that t bones that wood lot. So I'm looking like through my wind row into the wood lot, and I could see him in there at full strut, I mean, balls out, full strut, will not leave the woods, and my call and I had somehow wound up on my peg, and I was he was looking up like he was like looking where that sound had come from. He knew where that sound had come from. And he's like looking, looking, looking, and I'm feeling around. I eventually find my peg and very slowly, like somehow gotten on top of it. I very slowly get it up and I call a little bit and then he comes out into the field. But he still obstruct when he was at the edge of the woods sixty yards seventy yards, but very obscure heavily obscured. You're just seeing, like as you kind of would spin around in there, You're just seeing, you know, fan head, but not you couldn't take even if he was, if he was forty yards away, it would have been like it's a little too much, too much obstruction, like too much ship to absorb pellets. You're getting You're getting a show at this point. Is that what you're thinking? You're like, man, oh yeah, but no, I'm thinking about that. But I'm also thinking, like, you know, you're thinking about killing the bird, right, he just gonna get the bird. So I call a little bit more and he starts stepping out on the field and then I hear something dude digging around on a quad runner away is away but getting louder, and I've already been hearing him for a long time, like what is that guy doing? Like quad running around? And all of a sudden, I'm like, how could this be happening? All of a sudden, that quad runner starts getting very close around and I'm watching and the turkey's kind of moving out, and I'm like, that's gonna freak that turkey out. The other thing I'm trying to do is now I'm trying to adjust for where the turkey is gonna be, and I'm moving my shotguns. So I don't know what did it. If it was the increasingly loud quad noise or me trying to get my shotgun around, But all of a sudden he drops out of strut. But then I really quickly like reached up and compiled and bouched him. That was a shocker to me too. Just the other two hunts I've been on with you, turkey hunts, it was all about the audio, and then that guy crept in. No never a peep, not a peep. Yeah, But the last time I hunted with you, I glass those We're up in the wood timber and I glassed. I was just looking into the woods with my knockers and called a tail fan. Do you remember that? I glassed up a tail fan seventy five yards through the woods and we hit the deck and started calling. And I don't know how long it took before that thing finally walked over. Long time, never repeat. Right at the end, like he had almost a death gobble. He sensed the end was near all of a sudden and gobbled, yea death gobble that you guys were saying that that's unique somewhat unique to the Easterns, the that they don't gobble as as frequently the reputation of Easterns because they're more pressured the reputations that are they're less vocal than than than the other. So yeah, so wild turkeys, all wild turkeys are wild turkeys. If he has geneticists they didn't really like believe in the taxonomy so much. Some don't. But you have Eastern wild turkeys, which are you know, east of the Mississippi, but there are eastern western Mississippi. But just a way of thinking about this, Easterns lived east of the Mississippi and down halfway down the Florida Peninsula from about Lake Okeechobee south down the Florida Peninsula, you have the Osceola wild turkey. So you have the Eastern wild turkey, which has an enormous range um the Osceola and South Florida. And then you have Rio's like Rio Grands, which used to hang out around areas of Texas, Oklahoma. And you had the Miriams, which you had New Mexico up in the southern Colorado. And then you have the Goulds, which was the sky Island mountain ranges of Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and then the Sierra Madre and other areas of North Mexico. Now, I, unlike my friends here, I am a a turkey Grand slam holder, which means which means, which means that I have harvested all of these turkeys I'm discussing now. What what separates me from a world slam holder is that there is a bird, another type of altogether different, like a different, altogether different species called the oscillated turkey of the tamp Peninsula done in the Guatemalia, Guatemala. I think there's something o Bolivia that's the oscillated turkey. It's like a souped up turkey, cross between a turkey and a peacock, not really, but resemble. I've never I've never tangled with the oscillated. Are all those different types of turkeys those areas I was just given where they're from. Now it's a Now it's a mess because what happened was those are their their native range. That's their native range. So if you live in California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, in the shipload other states, you do not live in native Turkey Country. If you live in Maine, you probably you might not live in Native Turkey Country. At the time of European contact, there were turkeys and thirty nine states. After all, the market hunters got done with them. By like the early nine hundreds, you had turkeys left in nineteen states, and the holdouts in those states lived in the remotest, nastiest, swampiest backwater spots. They were like survivors, holdouts. Then in camp largely the work of I mean, you know, when you say something like this, you're never like someone's gonna get pissed. But largely through the work of the National Wild Turkey Federation in in in coordination with many rod and gun clubs and and state phishing game agencies and all that kinds of like, like the Turkey Federation can't act unilaterally like but they provided money and expertise and know how, and in conjunction with state phishing game agencies, began first putting turkeys back where they belonged, so filling out Native Turkey ground. Then they took it a step further and put turkeys and play introduced. So they did all their reintroductions and got a lot of the puzzle put back the way it was supposed to be, and then kept going and started putting turkeys. But they had never before been hm. So now you have turkey seasons and forty nine states. The only state that doesn't have a turkey season is Alaska, and we have it on pretty good authority that there are some feral turkeys running around the Kenai Peninsula, So someday you might have a turkey season in Alaska. So when they were doing these reintroductions or introductions, they would experiment like I know that they tried Rio's. Know that they tried Miriams, like up around Hell's Canyon and they didn't take, but Rio's took there. So they would do a little bit of messing around and in some areas became like these like hybridization areas, where now it's a total mess. You'll have guys say like I have a farm in Nebraska and on my farm, I have Easterns your Miriams, and it's like they're they're it's just like a big interbreeding mess. There are some morphological traits you can look at and be like, yes, this turkey is you know, has some traits of X. But it's a mess now they're all mixed up. When you hunt the i A corridor, they're along the um what is that river there in Nebraska? Is that this South Platt? Yeah? Yeah, um, you know Austin. Like two birds will get killed and you bring them together and one is the sky of super you know, buffed out white tail fan and the one next to its copper brown. So one of the ways that's a regular Joe Schmo can tell all the subspecies of part is. Some people say they're not actually subspecies, but the different varieties or let's just say subspecies is by looking at the tail, the coloration on the back. Um my theory and I've checked this out with biologists think it's not that bad. Is that the hotter the area, the more dry and hot the area, the more light colored they have on their back. I think it has to do with heat dissipation and heat retention. The same way you don't run black ang is cattle in northern Mexico they die baked to you know where that doesn't hold true, is uh like Texas and Florida. Well no, because look at the ghouls. He's got like more white that he but he's not in Texas and Florida, he's over in but in Texas, Miriams and Rio's have a lighter colored back in the eastern, more intense sun. Well, I feel like is the rio is he lighter colored in the eastern not by much a little bit? All right, Well then if the Florida Okay, so it's not it's not seamless. But Bergman's principle, right, Bergman's principle as if you look at a mammal's range, mammals the as as they go north and latitude. The largest specimens of a species in the mammal world, the largest specimens are at the north end of the range. But some animals fall outside of Bergman's rule, like, for instance, white tails definitely do not, but mule deer fall outside of Bergman's principle. So you can have I could call this the Ranella principle, okay, and it can have an exception, right, Just like when you put mammals on islands, they tend to become diminutive, when you put reptiles on islands, they tend to become larger. And your pipe and smoking. So I have a question about all that, um, please, So you're talking about this big introduction and introduction. So, uh, how long ago did all this work happen? Because I know in this area when I was a kid, Uh, there were not turkeys here in the seventies. And I was gone for a while, and then I came back and this turkey flew in front of me as I was coming down the ridge row, and I thought, you thought the Russians were here? What the hell is that? Yeah, it's a red dawn. And then I left again for five or six years, and I came back and everybody was turkey home. I left Michigan right before turkeys began. Like when I moved away, it was just becoming a thing you could go up by, like new Ago and maybe like draw a turkey tag. And I moved to Montana and it wasn't I wasn't gone a year or two, and all of a sudden, my old man's killing turkeys every spring within a couple of miles of the house. It just bam, it'd be like the turkey. Like the introduction effort. The reintroduction efforts, I think began kind of an earnest in the seventies. Like they got good at it. Because if you want to look at like the history of hell of this happened. They were they were screwing up for a long time where they thought that they could hatch and incubate eggs in captivity. Uh. And so they were putting a lot of money and a lot of effort into trying to pen raise birds and release them. And it took a long time to think in that that does not work. They don't take so in the capturing and and then the rocket propelled capture net hit the scene. And once the rocket propelled capture net hit the scene, and that had to that had to join up with Another thing is you had to have some states doing good enough on turkeys that they were willing to spare them. Right Like our friend Bart George who works on caribou in Idaho and Washington, he'd love to like supplement those herds. But to get the right animal, there aren't a lot anywhere. So you gotta go and be like, hey man, can I get thirty caribou off? And people like dude, I can't spare thirty you know, I can't spare thirty species. I can't spare thirty Just immediately to the north of you give you the bird, to give you the animal you want. So it's a problem. So you had states that were like getting a shipload of birds, and they were getting comfortable with their birds, and then they had to get over this idea that you could just incubate eggs and hatch them in captivity and get them up to like keep her size and them loose because they don't live. They're not they're not paranoid enough. So once they figured out that you go and get captured with rocket rocket nets, you captured real birds and put them on the ground, and then it just took off and they I mean it took off and over the course of a couple of decades they filled the country back up. I'm simple fying it. But yeah, Pat might know about this. For some reason, it is in my head that Wisconsin traded grouse to Missouri for turkeys. Yeah, initially they can't remember what the exact numbers are, but they treated with Missouri got them going. Then they got from smaller states to theo in Wisconsin and they also got um. It was it was pretty cool back in the eighties. They were pushing them up in the central Wisconsin. It's about ten years into the program, and they thought that area where I live around will Packaged Steven's Point, right across the center of the state. They thought that's probably the extent of the native turkey range. They didn't think turkeys would ever go beyond there, like the turkeys had ever. Yeah. Yeah, they thought that's where they had basically pushed up. You know, it's funny you ever look at the line what they think, what they think the where buffalo lived in Wisconsin. Yeah, get cuts like it ascends and like goes. It's a line that goes like at an upward, upward angle, ascending northwest through the middle of Wisconsin. When they draw out where buffalo probably lived in Wisconsin, it probably probably wasn't a whole lot different from the turkey. What they thought open open country and the grasslands. Yea. You know, they came up in that central Wisconsin here that has it's hills aren't like yours, but they're they're hills and it's a lot of oak ridges, and they thought they should do fine here, and they did well. Then the next thing, you know, you know, you can go up for a deer hunt up in Aston Colony, just Salted Lake Superior, and there are decent turkey flocks up there. Because they got because there's eggs. They lived way beyond what any biologist thought was possible as far as extending the range and there, and the biologists maybe thought that because of winter conditions and stuff as opposed to and what allowed them to be there is because of the egg field. Yeah, I think that we rewrote the like there's winners, Like there's things that win from people and things that lose from people. Right, wolves are losers from people, white tail deer, turks, crows, Canada geese, European starlings, snow. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, for sure, um our people are winners and turkeys were big ass winners. Turkey seasons in Hawaii. I saw turkeys in Hawaii. I was hunting a different non native at the time, but ran into that non native hunting up there. Why is the one that that one that you don't have for the world, Why is that counted in with the North American ones in there? Because there's other gotta be other turkeys. What do you mean this guy and other no another countries regions and stuff. Yeah, well yeah, like like no guy ona, like those those birds, wands kwans aren't turkeys dirt, No, But actually I shouldn't go down retract my collections still got that good solid be over there. Though. Yeah, we're start a book series like Dirt on Like they'll be like, not, We're not gonna do dirt photography because that'd be a boring book because he'd be like, here's like you take a picture right every We'd be like, yeah, that's all really good cutting edge information give there. But what I'm interested is dirt on ship that Dirt doesn't pay attention to, so like Dirt pays a lot of attention to photography. And I would never read a book like Dirt on rock climbing, right, because it'd be like, oh, the ship, you need to know about rock climbing, But dirt on ship that he has passively that Dirt has like kind of overheard us talking about. It'd be like drunk history, like Dirt, I want to do Dirt on linguistics and then I'm Dirt. I'm all, my it's a fox spirrel all right? So Doug, uh, what happened with your evening bird? So because here here in our more lessons about turkey, every one of these turkeys tells a different story. So Joanna says, I think we should go back up there, get ourselves a little nap. Who go up there about five o'clock, We'll get ourselves a little nap. And he said, turkeys creatures a habit. We didn't mess up that bird in the morning. That the big tom. Let's go back up there. I'll bet he's gonna come back to that area to roost. You had a feeling because they do not They do not have roost fidelity. It used to be believed. People used to believe they had more fidelity to their roosting area than they do. And I pat, you're not. You had you know what you're talking about. Now that they put little trackers on him, a little track and GPS devices, those sons of bitches unpredictable. Yeah, you'll think like, oh, he's always roost there, but it might be different turkeys and roosting he's off here was they so here? Here was my theory one Janni as he killed the biggest turkey ever killed on this far What three years ago? Was that? Two years ago? Man? That was a big bird. All right, I think it wasn't on a certified scale like okay, but it's not like he was out like judging. It's like it's like, okay, but that was but give him any that doesn't give him any credibility and it doesn't like make me think like, oh, listen to him. It's like, that's the one that happened to show up, like if a dude, no, no, no, no, he hunted that bird and killed it and that was the one spurred monster bird. Okay, So having killed the one s bird monster bird, you knew that you should listen to him. Three other hunters had been hunting him that spring, and I came in and he could not resist anyway. And it was up in that area happened napping with you there you go. So we go up there, and you know, I think, well, I couldn't believe whether that is true or not, but my thought was, well, the conditions are exactly the same this afternoon as they were the afternoon, and he had and he hadn't been muffed with. So let's you know, he says, let's go back up there, and I'm all right. So we go up to those pines and we cut through the middle of them and we sat up within twenty yards where I killed the one in the morning. Yeah, but see we just so now you gotta explained people, because you just said he had muffed with he was off. He was already gone, he was off doing other Turkey activities. So you had been in there shooting and raising Holy Mayhem, but he wasn't there for that. Yeah, So like in the morning, you could go away in the morning from your house and have no idea that anything happened when I came whatever the maleman or the milkman or something, and then you come back later you didn't know any that happened. The pool that you don't own got cleaned, So so there you are. So anyway, we decided to go back to the very similar spot and there you can see the feathers on the ground from the one that I shot in the morning in the mid morning, after the big time had already gone. And uh so we set up fairly far apart again, and then we had the discussion about not shooting under the pine trees again, and uh I sat down, but Johnny said, let's make sure we get an hour of sleep. Now. It's a good time to get a nap because sometimes that will draw him in well in deer hunting, it does, it seems too for me. But anyway, so it's so important, though, I gotta interrupt you your brother. I was hunting with Steve's brother Matt Ronella for Opener in Montana, and he forced a nap upon us in pretty shitty conditions. But when he awoke, he said, man, the world is twice as crisp and clear as it was an hour ago. And that's a very good way to put it, because you just get like, there's certain spring turkey anytime you're hunting, like any hunting you do, that's in proximity to the summer solstice. So now you're into May. Right, It's like the days are too long. If you go caribou hunting in August and you're gonna hunt from the time it gets light to the time it gets dark, you're not gonna not hunt. So you're gonna do that for seven days, twenty four hours a day for seven days. It cannot be done. You have to A turkey hunter has to take a nap if he's pounding it. Now, some states are more humane, like California, they gotta cut off you can just Wisconsin. Yeah, yeah, So that's like a gesture towards humanity. They probably have too many people getting too exhausted and committing crimes and suicides and whatnot. And they realize these people are too tired. So we get up there. You are, there, you are, So we get up there. We have our little little chat and everything, and and I couldn't fall asleep right away, but I noticed that Yanni called a little bit, and then it was just quiet over there. So I kind of pulled some pine needles up and kind of this a little soft thing. And I wasn't just leading up against a tree sleep. And I laid down on the ground and curled up and went to sleep. And uh, when I woke up, the world was crisp and new, and I had pine needles in my mouth. And then I sat up and Yanni, I hear, Yanni. You know a little call over there? Yep, I no way more subtle than that. Yanni's way more subtled than that. That was. That was more like it. Yeah, And oh, Yanni's up. I'd better start paying attention. Little did I know that he had crawled over to talk to me sometime before that, but saw me curled up on the ground and didn't have the heart to wake me up from my nap. So and then we hear a gobble to the south of us and quite a ways away, and he calls and we hear the gobble again, and the gobbles getting closer, and they kept moving across the ridge. I saw them for the first time in the same place we saw the Jake's in the morning, and they got to that point when I say they there were two gobblers, but he picked up a friend. Well, we wondered about that because in the morning we thought there might be two in the tree. Probably yeah and uh. And were they returning to that tree or did they come in because Yanni had called him chick, I don't know, whatever he wants to do, whatever he wants to do, just what they were coming back to that roostery. It influenced their thinking. So we're all set up. Why do you not why did you not even want to respond to that? Well that I that's what Yanni thought, So that was that was the reason for going there. So I'm I'm convinced to that as well. So I see him coming across and it was wasn't there were two hundred yards away, and there wasn't any question that we had two times coming at us, and that they were big birds, and they were one of them was gobbling, and one of them was walking, and every time the one would then one would display and the other one would walk ahead of him, and then he dropped his display and then catch up with him, and then he gobbled, and they were kept doing this thing like not letting ten seconds go by between. Yeah, it's interesting to do that, Like you're saying, you told me that too, that that he would stop and strut in the but but he didn't want his body to get ahead, Like it's like I don't want you pouring the coals to write, Well, I'm doing all the worst hen and I'm back here strutting. So it's like I want to strut, but I don't want to strut so bad that you're like running point and like encountering all kind of adventures and whatnot. Well I'm back here all puffed up, well cooler, and heck to see him come from two yards, like I think it helps. I mean a lot of times with animals you don't want multiples because they're just more eyes, more noses, more chances of getting busted. But when you have two golllers coming in and they're like not only are they like in love and and and sick, for what you're offering them. But then they're like, I gotta beat my buddy there. I'm going over there. I'm going, I'm going. That's what they're going, that's what they're actually saying. So they drop down into this ditch and come up out of there, and you know, it's just so the way they're waddling up up through there, and I'm I'm ready, and I've got a little bit of a screen in front of me, and I'm I'm set, and I'm thinking, well, the way this is going, they're gonna come one behind the other, I'm gonna shoot and possibly killing both. So you know what's going to happen. And they get within about fifty yards and they slowed down, and the sun is kind of in my face, and I have glasses and even though i have the net down, face mask net, face mask net, and I've got I don't have one of those fancy turkey hunting shotguns with the camo on it and stuff. I've just got a you know, farm boy, farm boy eight. And so I'm ready. I mean, I'm not moving, and nothing's happening. And then they still sort of stopped. They got Leary Lear, what do you think, what do you think they were suspicious of? Because you guys had like one of two things. It was either Doug or the decoys. Did you fast? I'm not saying it was Doug. I'm just I don't think it was. They could have been anything else. You feel like you did a fast movement. No, I felt like I was very still. And I mean when I saw him coming, I got my I dug my heel into the ground, got my knee up with the shotgun on it. I was ready for they were gonna walk right into me. I'll say one thing at Turkey hates movement. I don't think I moved, and I had built a little screen I had. I was set up for accusing moving. Yeah, decoys are not fool proof. They can make it nervous. They could have seen something, well, the white tail feathers of some bit and travel here, come all the way out here from Montandard Messadar women. So I arranged it after the fact. But I guessed at that point that to that to be about forty yards, and I thought they're gonna keep coming and I'm gonna wait until they get right in front of me. And they stopped at forty yards and they took this began to take this little turn down into the woods and the first one they were done. They're well, no, because they were doing kind of following the same route that uh, Jake's had earlier of the one that I shot, although I didn't know they had that Jake's had followed that route where they well, it makes sense. They Jakes were down there in the woods when we saw him and around they can. We actually saw the Jakes twice do that same move. So for a second, I thought I should wait because they're going to come out into those decoys right in front of Janni and he's been well, he's the world's most affable man, and I just have this. Uh, it's his turn because I shot one earlier. For a second, there's all that stuff went through my head in one second, then went I thought about him for that split second, disregarded those thoughts. Well, that one he had stuck his head up. So I shot, and he rolled and then he got up and he ran into the was running into the pine. So I shot again, and then I got up and uh made a pretty quick sprint. It was not the word that I would use, but I peeked around the corner and I thought there was an Olympic sprint going on who same bolt was out in front. Doug was right behind him. So I tear down to where that turkey went up into the trees and there it's a pine plantation, so there's rose, you know, and I can see that bird up there. So and now he's further so I raised the shotgun up a little bit further and I shoot again, and I only had three shells in the gun. I tried, well, I mean, I thought you guys were in a gunfight with a neighboring land so okay, I actually grabbed dirt, grabbed shells, started going up there because I was out and likes, we need some help up here. So now I've shot three times. And when I shot at the bird the three times, the third time he disappeared into that into the next strip. But I'm out of my My gun is empty. So I reached the vest and I'm trying to jam shells into the thing, and you know, you're I was really excited. I mean, he was a big bird, he you know, So I jammed shells in and I'm you know, realizing two things that I think this bird just got away and I may have pulled my hamstring, and so I'm starting to limp a little bit, and I look up the hill and I kind of go back and forth a little bit, looking up the different priine rows, and now I see this bird and he's heading for the the south west corner of the of the pines. He was thinking that, I'm gonna head towards south west corner. He was thinking I'm gonna get out of here. But he was limping two so he was kind of he wasn't He was not at his best, I can tell you that. And so I made my way over a couple of more rows and moved up the hill closer to where he was, and it was almost up that's fourteen acres and he was almost to the top of that fourteen acres. And then when he stepped out, I shot him and blouch and finished him. When I cleaned that bird, I think I hit him all four times, just not very well. Any of those times. Well, the last time I hit him good enough, but but yeah, that was It sounds bad. You know, some people might be thinking, man, chasing after a bird, Yeah, I'm thinking that when it happens, you don't always make the perfect shot, and when a turkey gets back up and starts going, you have to just do whatever it takes. At that point, they don't like, yeah you gotta go, yeah, yeah, go after you listen, if everyone was super concerned about the well being of the turkey, you wouldn't shoot at in the first place. So it's like it's like at that point, yeah, you're gonna like let it run off, crippled up. I also had that one second when I shot, because I've never had one run off before. When he rolled, I had that second, that second him and then ship he's running. Dude, I'll tell you a seasoned turkey hunter's got that second shell it right. Yeah, but like I I catch myself. They go down so dramatically. Did I catch myself now? And then you know, like not doing it. But I've hunted turkeys with a lot of guys. They they shoot and they're racking that second round and they're already up and walking before the turkeys had even hits the ground. The storm net turkey because they've lived through that. You rolled it. And and years ago one of the first turkey hunts I went on, We're hunting on a very steep mountain, side, and I pasted a turkey, called in with a box call shot it. It went down. We're all excited because we're just trying to figure out turkey hunt and actually called into turkey turned back just in time to watch that turkey set its wings and take off, never to be seen again. Well, I racked another show, all right, from now on when I shoot turkey watching the turkey, Well, I mean that's what I did, you know, I mean, that's just hunting, you know everything, right, But yeah, that's how I am. I mean I touched that trigger and aside from making a bad shot and lifting your head off the gun too quickly, but yeah, as soon as I know I've hit him, I mean I'm out of that seat and running towards him. Yeah. I don't get up as quickly as you guys do though, either. I mean, so I kind of got to get to my knee and that up. No, it depends on because of the turkey. Like the jake got shot today, it was close. Oh he didn't have a chance here. Well no, I mean besides that, like I don't need to get up and run over there. Yeah I could from a seated position. He he's got twenty five yards to cover before he's out of range. So if I just right, I don't need to like he can stand up, like he stands up. I have seconds of him, you know well, And so I had that sort of like the second of well, maybe I'll let him go to Ni. I had that second of oh I got him. But when I'm about the next shelling and I'm I'm getting up and it happened that fast where he's going into the tree, you know, he's going into the pintes. He was like, but I had shot him again, as he had a happy and it had a happy end, not for him, for you, for dr No. Doug was so impressed. He said, from now on, if Yanni told him if we're going out naked, Doug would say, hold on a minute. While I stripped out, He's like, when the eagle tells me to do something, I do it. Well, that's that I did say that, and which makes me which makes me a tad You wonder if I want to see it makes me a little jealous. It makes me a little jealous. Um. So the last turcue we have to talk about, and there's a this is an unfinished no matter what we do here, this is an unfinished story because me and Yan, you're heading back out into the woods right quick here, um, so who knows where it's going. But the last turcue we have to talk out. I went out this morning, so all right, Dirt, now I'm gonna try to do this quick. Me and Dirt went out last night to check out a different property down the road owned by a friend, a family friend, not my family friend, Dugs. And we get out there and he's like, you know what I would do is I would go and take a look up there and and have a look sie. And I even kicked around, not grabbing my scatter gun just because we're just gonna go up and try to roost one. No, yeah, I'll grab a shotgun. And we get up to a spot and I rip out a power crow come and like bird gobbls not far away at all. So we kind of moved over a little bit, didn't do a taco and all that ship just got set up because this bird is gonna come. It's that time of day. And I started hand calling and he just starts triple gobblin. He's like shot goblin himself. Yeah, I thought it was just like Goblin is ass off. But he's got a hand with him, and they're coming through the woods just out of range, going down, down, down, down, and I can't figure out he will not peel off that hen And all of a sudden the hand. It's evening, and all of a sudden, the hand flies up into a roof tree. Oh, I was gonna ask you. It's a good reminder. What time did they roost? I'm very interested in that. Yes, s yeah, no, no, the sun was set, but it was so seven thirty or something. Yeah, seven. She flew up in a tree. But here's the thing, I now question what I thought. I mean, absolutely, she flew up in a tree, but I remember being surprised at how low the limb was that she landed on. Remember thinking like, what, what's weird that she's like the roose higher than that? Right? Yeah, well, I think they hoped limbs sometimes, so I caught. They get down and he's gobbling his face off, and he's full strut down in the woods on a steep slope which is not a normal like strung area, and she flies up to a limb a dead snag, and he's on the ground, and I'm thinking that now I'm wonder like is it possible to call a gobbler away from like a hen up in a tree and he just carries out and gobbles and gobbles and gobbles and gobbles and gobbles, and all of a sudden he just goes quiet, and by the time it's dusky, goes quiet. And then I hear a loud branch snap, and I felt, oh, he jumped into his tree. He's up there too, and they're just gonna work their way up into that roost. So we belly crawl out of there, and then we come back in the pre dawned darkness and get set up, not anywhere near them, but like up on the little ridge top where they might go to get set up. Morning comes on, start scratching out a couple of hand calls, and the roost, the roosting birds that were gobblin. We're not gobbling from that tree, So I don't know if we belly crawled out of there, they we bumped them well, But there was other other gobblers. There's four gobblers this morning. Yeah, but no one was gobbling from that tree from that area. But could have they like he said you had mentioned, maybe he actually peeled. That's what I think I think that when now when I look at it, I think she jumped up in that limb, and then there was enough disturbance with us calling him carrying on us belly crawling out of there. I think they still had enough daily. I think they moved. I think they went down to hop into a different roost tree further down the hill, or they were just absolutely dead silent this morning. So we're calling this morning and we're hearing goblin and they finchy. We can tell they kind of flew down, and then all of a sudden, bouch, some guy shoots right by us so that I could hear his bird flopping around on the ground. We left. Come back here and get Doug run around doing farm chore activities. Get him go up the hill, stretch out his hamstrings. He wants to stretch his hamstring. Walk over to a neighboring property, blow a power crow in my ear. Dogs here, Doug shot gobbles, another turkey, shot gobbles. Get all set up, start scratching out some hand calls, and he doesn't show up, but a giant package Jake shows like a bunch of them, and they come running in and wanting to slaughter my decoin I shot one, but it's incomplete story because I wish I had more turkey permits, because I have more ideas than there are tags left. But I'll say it publicly. You can come back. I'd like to have you come back, you know, because I don't want you'd be incomplete in your turkey hunting. Here. Will come back as long as Johnny comes back with you. That's the only condition. Hey, man, you're she only a be Dirt. Yesterday, Dirt, a chipmunk goes run along. Chipmunk goes run along, and there's like there's a squirrel and it hops up a new tree and I'm like, what Dirt's like? And then Dirt spreads his hands out like two ft apart and goes, no, what I saw coming was this long now? And I'm like, but where is it now? Because Dirt, it's five ft from me. Garrett recently had LASI and I'm wondering for some money back. Well his eyes just having adjusted, thank you. He wouldn't he wouldn't give up on it. I'm like, Dirt, that's a chipmunk. He's like, no, it must have been too. He like it must have been a chipmunk and a squirrel come running right now next to you, next to you, just hanging on to that farm wrestling, and he's like, and now only the chipmunk's here and you didn't see what I saw, and like, won't give it up. I gave it up, though fairly quick after that I did. I did try. It was like three tries before you find gis. Well, one more condition would be that that dirt came along with you, or was allowed to come along. Don't don't make it too tricky for me to ever fulfill the situation. I can't just come out here with my kids. Well, yeah, you can come out of here with your kids too. I was described, you know what. I was on the phone my boy this morning he'll be seven in a couple of days here and now was describing to him the kind of He says, was it in the woods or in the field? And I said, well, we're in an area that's sort of mixed wood lots and farmland, and he goes, is it like where we hunted with Doug? And I said it is so, so he remember, And I just like that. He's asking like those are savvy questions. It is, yeah, No, he's he's a hunter. He's gonna be a hunter man. He's real curious about animals. Um, very very curious about animals. Now, Yanni, were gonna go out in the woods. I have a hunt plan. You have your own hunt plan. Yeah, I think we are in agredient. Is that a word, Dirk and do? Is that a word? I think agreement? I like it. There's two kinds of Remember that there's a that there's a descriptive approach to language in a in a in a prescriptive approach to language. So some dictionaries are descriptive in nature that they want to capture. Oh, y'all need just pulled it up what website? I just didn't have the confidence. Yeah, sectionary dot com. Pulled up at a better dictionary to go to Websters pulled up on webster dot com. So y'any just pulled it up on what This is perfect because it tells what I'm saying. Y'alli just pulled it up on what would be known as a descriptive dictionary. So a descriptive dictionaries, like our job is to tell you how to use the language. Our job is to capture how the language is used. A prescriptive dictionary is telling you how to use the language so agreeance. It's like someone might say, I feel that it was a successful There was a successful use of the language. We're not we're not an agreeance. Everyone knew what he was talking about. It worked, he got his point across. That's what language is here for, is to facilitate communication. It's like a right. Like I teach my kids, I'm like, use ain't, just use it. And my wife has a prescriptive approach and she's like, it's just try to shy away from a like don't go out of your like contrary to what your father is telling you. Don't go out of your way to say ain't. But I like to I like that tension in the language of of um good word, choice and ship you were choice all rolled in together because it creates the same tension that you get when you have a modern home with with antlers in it. That's interesting. Yeah, it's all about full circle and consistency. Yeah, and I think you do that in your writing also. You know what I think about, Well, yeah, what do I like about my beloved friend Doug, with whom I've passed many an autumn day? It is such a freaking right. You know, I gotta finald I want to do my concluder first. If you like turkeys and you like turkey hunting, and you're curious about turkeys, you should go and join and lend your support to the National Wild Turkey Federation. Yeah. Some people might be like, oh, yeah, but they already did all the work because there's turkeys everywhere. But it's like, it's not like we're in the good old days of turkeys right now. But there's no real reason to think when you look at the EBB and flow. If there's a reason to think that we're going to remain in the good old days of turkeys, there's gonna be disease issues, habitat issues, legal issues right like attacks on the very culture of hunting. Um access issues like do you have a way to get on to land the shirts turkeys everywhere? If there's nowhere to if you can't get on the ground to hunt them, you got a problem. Um I would I always joy I am a member National Ball Turkey Federation. Yeah. I think right now they have a thing going. Uh you already are. Remember they have a thing called turkey Karma going. I think that's for like ten bucks you can buy like a turkey Karma coin and you get to put it on your Instagram account or something, but it's just you know, actually showing you're kicking a little money for turky. Yeah, did that ten box this spring? You know. No, if you're some guy and you've been out hunting turkeys for the last ten years and haven't pitched in a dime like payoff man, because the reason you're hunting turkeys, like most places, and unless you live in the swamps of Alabama or South Carolina or something, you're if you're hunt turkeys right now, you're hunting turkeys because that organization. And damn sure if you're hunting turkeys and one of the many many states and never had turkeys, If you're hunting turkeys and one of the eight states that now has a turkey season the historically had no turkeys, pay up. That's my thought. Doug Well, I agree with that. Uh, but if you hunt or live in the Kasnovia area, don't hunt turkeys. No hunt turkeys, and and support our little local organs, turkeys, turkey busters, all that bunch of good friends who are part of that, and we do all kinds of good stuff in the area trying to help turks out, not just turks, but just kind of helping wildlife and and uh we stock we're buying stock, walllightes and stuff in the in the lake in Kasinovia. UM do good things for the community and support landowners and turkeys. Went. And there are members who belong both the Cast Turkey Busters into the National Wild Turkey Federation. But so if you're in, if you're one of the three people in the Casanova area, I think we've got up to half a dozen members, which actually the town because they're all no there. It's it's a really nice group of people, some from uh just folks who yeah, outside of Casanova. Um and UM, but I know I would join a group called the Casanova Turkey Busters. Well, I just want to say a lot of good friends and and really good uh good times with those guys. And can you give me for instance of what is a thing that the kas Turkey Busters what would be a thing that they've done for turkeys? Uh, food plot installations, um specific to turkeys, you know, corn and sorghum and and that sort of stuff. Um. And encouraging landowners by uh we have a party every summer. Um. But encouraging landowners to allow people to access their property, you know, with permission. And if if that's happening, then we invite him to this party with a nice, really nice party every sun for the local landowners. Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, it is cass Turkey busters people. Yeah, if you're living Reno, join up. Pat Um. I think thirty bucks stuffed on the wall and here's what he has to say, and two turkeys and two animals too, prong horns. Um. The thing I think is coolest about turkey hunting we did it today again, was it's a low tension hunt compared like deer hunting. Deer hunting tends. I don't know who you've been hunting. Yeah, but it's a trick. It's it's a fun thing that hurts me a little bits. I think I never realized how important it was to have a good, good hunting partner with turkey hunting, because I used to always go with my daughter Leah when she was around, from the time she was about ten years old and she couldn't hunt to a time she went off the Navy, which was like twelve years later. I always had this good little partner and she had great she has great hearing, and my hearing is really off. My left ear is not very good, my right ears. Yeah, and so it's really cool to I always have this little guide with me almost and then um, when she went off and left, we left the navy, my interest in turkey hunting just really wasn't all that all that strong. Yeah, and I think I don't. I didn't have that problem with deer hunting or elk hunting. I still love it. I can go by myself all the time not think twice about the like with Yanni last day and a half, it was really cool again beer on someone that has good sharp hearing, good sharp. My eyesight is pretty good. But it was just reminds me how much fun it was to hear that gobble the man. Yeah, I was wondering if your daughter would think that she had a good hunting partner. Um. I actually addressed that in my my father at the bride speech, that she took one for the team. You know, she Lee, It was Lee was great that way she um, she talk about her like she's dead. No, well, when it k she joined the navy, she made she moved away, and no, I shouldn't talk that way. That way, but it has the sentimental side of me that misses that. And I get you. She'll come back for for deer hunting because that's still probably her favorite thing to do. But she she only has so much time left to do things, you know, she has she has to work for a living, and so she didn't gonna come back for the spring hunt. Like yeahest and I were walking on today and think what a wonderful time to be in the woods, and oh my god, it's beautiful around here. Man. Yeah, dude, this is like if I if I had a job like to paint, uh, like butter packages and ship like that, I'll just come out here or like paint Like if someone said, hey, man, paint the painting for the front of a milk jug, I'd come out here and paint this area this time of year beautiful. It's not like when you come here in the snow's blowing sideways and you can't get the you can't get the screen door open. And yeah, but like right now it's like, holy shit, gorgeous. Man. You know, deer hunting it's always just kindless endurance element there. Yes, it's like he's very like these like valleys and all these openings and pastures and like wood lots, and it's just beautiful, big pictures everywhere right now in the trees. If you took away the greenness of the meadows, the canopy is almost as colorful as it is in the fall. I mean there's reds and oranges, all kinds of greens. Dude, this gorgeous around here. Man. It makes where I'm from look like ugly. And I thought, you know, it's a good looking area. But man, in Michigan where from? Yeah, But what you guys have going for you is is the topography you have, like discernible valleys and stuff, the driftless area. So that was Mikelin hot And was it fun to be here again? Well, please come back, dirt. What's your concluder? I want to get out, letting you go last, because I'm punishing you about the chipmunk squirrel. I won't make that mistake again. And I do want a turkey hunt. Now. I don't know if this season, because we're going we're gonna be away for work again, but I do want a turkey hut. And I want to I want to take either a Jake or a Tom Edward. That was your conclude that's yours. You're fired up. Say when we get shoot four days left in Montana, Dirt Man, No, but I was towny, and you guys are gonna ostracize me for this. It's boating season. All the rivers are swelled up and rapid. That's the other reason I'm not letting Dirt go last is last year Dirt like, it's like, it's like elk season. So I give Dirt a rifle, give him a bunch of ammunition. Oh here, go get him Dirt because he had some time off. Two days elk season opens up, and it's not like Dirt couldn't go into the mountains. Dirt goes into the mountains during elk season, into elk country to go ice climb because it was a unique like what like yeah, He's like, oh, it's just once in a lifetime thing where this little icy area. So he's up like walking up to ice climb up in the mountains, passing by him bullshitting with elk hunters. I'm like, how could you do that? I'm spoiled. I gotta do a lot of you know, observation of the beauty of hunting for work. So when I'm off work. We should maybe cut him off on the free teat of milk or of meat that comes out of the meat shoots. Yeah, because Dirt always gets a cut of the meat that pack and help with it. His old ladies being probably killing more stuffs last couple of years, and he had so he's got meat at home. He didn't have to go home. Yea dirts old anyone else shot him shot a buck all by herself in the season called it. What's the weird part about that is that was one of the rare days when Dirt actually went hunting, but he went hunting with other people elsewhere. Well, and I'd hunted with his girlfriend who had never hunted before, is hunting by herself on dirts like off hunting with other guys in another spot, and she kills a buck. Well, I got a buck that same day. But yeah, I should have been here to bring a book with her to figure out how to gut it. Pictures of your book, No, we had We had went together a handful of times that year. You had already gone together. Yeah, and we had a blast. But all right, Yeah, I know what you're concluding through real quick. Another reason to pass on the Jake early in the hunt. Is that Lenny Longbeard k A k A Tommy has a much higher Um? Yeah, Ronnie Rope dragger. Um. We're learning about alliteration the other day with the kids. Anyways, Um, that would be a good book dirt on literation. Like we weighed some birds this week, right, we should have weighed the processed like the take home meat. But you know, Dougs, Jake is a power. Jake comes in fifteen and a half. Both your birds are plus it's a sub. You're talking about ten more pounds on there. The feathers don't weigh that much. It's a lot more meat. Yea tough meat. My brother Danny, I'm just talking my brother. Listen, don't shoot the messenger. My brother Danny uh targets Jake's because he thinks the meat is better. Yeah, go ahead. I think if you prepare it right, and you have a hard time telling personally, but we did that Jake. Meat came off that Jake. Meat came off the smoker and you could just gnaw into that thigh like it was a chicken. So go ahead with your concluding thought. Put that in your concluding thought, that that Jake was brined for twenty four hours, then smoked on low heat for three plus hours. Very well prepared. Might have something to do with the way at eight um. We Uh, my family and I did one breast off of a mature golber the other day, turkey nugget style, and uh, we had leftovers and we were it was the first turkey turkey breast. Yeah, and we were, you know, we were. It was the first turkey nuggets of the year. People were excited. I mean the kids were eating them right out of the fry. And then we sat down had dinner and like I was sick, you know, from eating too many, and we had leftovers. Yeah, just have We only used half a breast for the schnitzel. Yeah, and that was fun. We used one. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, well half. When I said that, I think if it's a turkey dishes schnitzel with pancoat and lemons and then a little potato sell vinegare potato salad, just like potato cell potato sell, because that's what those mugs. And Austin I used to go to an Austrian restaurant and I would get the venus. There's some kind of schnitzel. They schnitzeled every damn thing they got their hands on over there, and it would schnitzel out. I don't know what part where were those boys like the schnitzel eyes. They would schnitzel it and serve with the cell. So that's what I started doing with my turks. And holy mackerel, is that good? It is? Um? All right, Yahny, we gotta go back in the woods. Thanks for listening to never know what happened. Bouch

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