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Speaker 1: You're here in turkeys. You're chasing turkeys. They're responsive. I

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Speaker 1: kill birds every spring. Fast forward to when my son

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Speaker 1: was born. By the time he got to be the

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Speaker 1: age of I'm going to become a fanatical turkey hunter

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Speaker 1: like my dad, there just weren't that many turkeys, and

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Speaker 1: there had been ten years before. On this episode, we're

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Speaker 1: going from the creek bottoms to the ridge tops to

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Speaker 1: contrast two eras of turkey hunting. We'll look at goblin

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Speaker 1: turkeys through the lens of legendary turkey hunter Will Premost.

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Speaker 1: I'm interested in examining his passion for spring turkeys, which

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Speaker 1: shaped his life, and how the timing of their resurgence

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Speaker 1: gave him a limb to roost on. But the energy

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Speaker 1: will swing hard when we talk with University of Georgia

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Speaker 1: turkey biologist Dr Mike Chamberlain and hear his message which

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Speaker 1: has been brought to the forefront of the turkey world.

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Speaker 1: We're exploring the fascination and excitement of spring turkey hunting,

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Speaker 1: the passion that drives innovation, and the challenges the wild

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Speaker 1: turkey is facing. What the plan is to help them.

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Speaker 1: We'll even here from my friend and callmaker Jason Phelps.

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Speaker 1: These are all incredible folks, and I doubt you're gonna

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Speaker 1: want to miss this one. This is what books are

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Speaker 1: written about. This is what forms companies, this is what

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Speaker 1: makes friendships. This is what God gave us to have

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Speaker 1: the intensity of what he wants to have in life.

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Speaker 1: That's a turkey right there, man ha ha. My name

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Speaker 1: is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,

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Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight

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Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of

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Speaker 1: a Marykins who lived their lives close to the land.

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Speaker 1: Presented by f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting

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Speaker 1: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as

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Speaker 1: the places we explore. I've always loved turkey hunting. The

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Speaker 1: emerging energy of spring, bringing the hardwood timber back to

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Speaker 1: life is euphoric for the micro windows you're immersed into it.

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Speaker 1: I love the charismatic flowering trees like red buds and dogwoods,

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Speaker 1: and the intricate early growing plants like crested iris and mayapple,

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Speaker 1: all indicators of one thing. As a kid watching VHS

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Speaker 1: videos in the nineteen nineties, I remember Old Harold Knight saying,

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Speaker 1: when the oak leaves are as big as a squirrels ere,

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Speaker 1: the turkeys will be goblin. And there in lies the

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Speaker 1: crown jewel of the spring. The reason we love it

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Speaker 1: goblin turkeys. I love the audio sensation created by unseen gobbles,

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Speaker 1: which enlivens the imagination. The act of turkey hunting is

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Speaker 1: implanting yourself into the ancient and natural system of a

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Speaker 1: spring morning. And maybe what I love most of all

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Speaker 1: is the amount of roving across the landscape you've got

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Speaker 1: to do to find one. This is Dr Mike Chamberlain

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Speaker 1: of the University of Georgia. His passion has ignited a

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Speaker 1: widespread interest in wild turkey biology, as he and others

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Speaker 1: have sounded the alarm of concern specifically for turkeys in

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Speaker 1: the southeastern United States. Let me know if you agree

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Speaker 1: with my sentiment here. Have you ever been heartbroken, Dr

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Speaker 1: chamber I have. I have a life philosophy that I

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Speaker 1: would like to share with you goes way back in

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Speaker 1: Newcomb lineage, and it's that you cannot trust a ground

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Speaker 1: nesting bird. Okay, if you put your heart into a

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Speaker 1: ground nesting bird, you're gonna get burned. Okay, My grandfather,

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Speaker 1: Lewin Knewcom. He died in he was ninety four years old.

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Speaker 1: He was a bird hunter, just the epitome of a

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Speaker 1: Southern bird dog trainer. You know. I was born in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, which would have been about the time

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Speaker 1: that quail, the quail demise came, and I spent my

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Speaker 1: whole life bird hunting with him, and he lamented the

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Speaker 1: loss of quail. My grandfather had this love of this

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Speaker 1: animal and this thing that he did and invest his

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Speaker 1: life in, and the last thirty five years of his life,

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Speaker 1: the bird just wasn't there. And then I grew up

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Speaker 1: and loved turkey hunting. And when I was in high

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Speaker 1: school in Arkansas, we had a good turkey hun I

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Speaker 1: learned to love it, killed turkeys, and then all that

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Speaker 1: just kind of dissipated. And that's when my philosophy came.

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Speaker 1: Do you think this is reasonable if you're from Arkansas? Yes,

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Speaker 1: the same challenges that Arkansas has faced. There are many

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Speaker 1: many agencies facing throughout the species range, not just in

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Speaker 1: the Southeast, but in other parts of the country as well.

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Speaker 1: I've heard it said it's kind of death by a

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Speaker 1: thousand cuts in some ways, there's no smoking gun. It

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Speaker 1: is death by a thousand cuts. Literally. I'm from Arkansas

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Speaker 1: and our turkey populations are currently down six from our

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Speaker 1: population peaks in the early two thousands, so it's easy

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Speaker 1: for me to see our problem. But it has wider

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Speaker 1: implications than just unfilled tags. I'm interested in how wildlife

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Speaker 1: affects the trajectory of people's lives, and this goes way back,

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Speaker 1: even to the very beginning. The Clovis hunters likely built

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Speaker 1: their culture around populations of megafauna like wooly mammoths, fulsome

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Speaker 1: hunters around bison antiquates the plains Indians tribes arose with

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Speaker 1: the buffalo herds. Daniel Boone made a living off bear,

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Speaker 1: deer and fur bears. My grandfather lived in the heyday

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Speaker 1: of southern quail hunting, and the flutter of quail wings

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Speaker 1: dominated his vacant thoughts. Wildlife can have big implications for

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Speaker 1: people who live close to the land. Things beyond our

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Speaker 1: controls shape our lives all the time, and in that statement,

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Speaker 1: I want to make a big picture connection. So stay

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Speaker 1: with me. I am a product of the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 1: I came into that decade age ten and left that

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Speaker 1: decade at age twenty, which is an important period. What

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Speaker 1: I didn't know is that I built my foundational expectations

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Speaker 1: on the peak Turkey numbers of the modern era that

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Speaker 1: some argue weren't sustainable. I wonder if the Clovis hunters

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Speaker 1: felt the same way as wooly mammoths slipped through their fingers,

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Speaker 1: would they have had enough cultural men murray to recognize

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Speaker 1: the decline. I don't know. Interestingly, though, we do, and

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Speaker 1: it's in large part due to outdoor media in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineties that was television during that time. I was

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Speaker 1: influenced by a man named Wilbur Primos from Mississippi. He

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Speaker 1: lived about a hundred and five miles slightly northeast of

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Speaker 1: East Fork, Mississippi, where Jerry Clower lived. Interestingly, Jerry's outdoor

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Speaker 1: experience focused on coons and possums, not game animals like

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Speaker 1: deer in Turkey. Why, you might ask, because they didn't

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Speaker 1: have big game animals are very many of them back

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Speaker 1: in Jerry's early years. However, the Turkey reintroduction efforts of

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies eighties produced the nineteen nineties and you

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Speaker 1: can almost hear the Turkey eggs hatchen. It was an

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Speaker 1: incredible time to be a key hunter. Sain't bad. He's

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Speaker 1: got to come up with a bit to see us dead.

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Speaker 1: This is Mr Will Primos. I hit her at on

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Speaker 1: its chest, I did, dude. All of a sudden, we

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Speaker 1: had loads of turkeys. We had an explosion of turkey

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Speaker 1: call makers being successful and people rising to the top

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Speaker 1: through outdoor media brands. One of those people was an energetic,

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Speaker 1: black headed man with a tightly trim beard name Will Primos.

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Speaker 1: So when did you start turkey hunting? You know, back

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Speaker 1: you grew up with your family, your dad turkey hunter. No, uh,

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Speaker 1: my my uncle's and all the family around me started

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Speaker 1: turkey hunting, and so I would watch them as a

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Speaker 1: young man. I caret up quay Ol hunting with my

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Speaker 1: uncle us. But then the turkey started just coming everywhere

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Speaker 1: there weren't they weren't They were only on the river,

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Speaker 1: way back in the Misssippi River, inside the levee, and

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Speaker 1: that's where most of the people turkey hunting. So finally

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Speaker 1: I got out of college. Things rolling, But I was,

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Speaker 1: I was. You know, the first turkeys you killed, you

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Speaker 1: were deer hunting. Probably weren't you supposed to shoot them?

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Speaker 1: You know? But really springtime turkey hunting that started sometime

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Speaker 1: in my early twenties, late teens, and just a little

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Speaker 1: fire under me, you know, I just absolutely loved it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: would you tell me if this statement would be degree

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Speaker 1: with this statement that by the late sixties, early seventies,

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Speaker 1: or or you know, some period of time in that time,

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Speaker 1: World War two had happened, Baby boomers were in their prime,

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Speaker 1: they had money, they had free time. I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: when a lot of the American hunting heritage. It didn't

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Speaker 1: start then, but a lot of the things that kind

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Speaker 1: of we have lived off of began then. I mean,

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Speaker 1: just kind of with a revolution and widespread pop culture

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Speaker 1: nature of knowledge about turkey hunting. I definitely think it

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Speaker 1: was after the end of war two. War two almost

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Speaker 1: decimated the wild turkey, and it did so because everybody

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Speaker 1: was going to war, and depression was owned and in

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Speaker 1: the twenties that depression was hard on the Turkey too,

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Speaker 1: and people were humans killing them, humans killing them, filling

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Speaker 1: up a trough with corn and getting the one end

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Speaker 1: of it. And when enough turkeys got the heads and

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Speaker 1: that thing breaking and what have shot gun and feeding

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Speaker 1: the family. I see. So, you know, until game laws

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Speaker 1: came into being and seasons came into being. You know,

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Speaker 1: they really didn't have a chance. You know, we were

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Speaker 1: over harvesting them, we were over killing them, and because

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Speaker 1: people were trying to survive. It's important to grasp that

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Speaker 1: we haven't always had a lot of turkeys. Humans show

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Speaker 1: up on planet Earth and think things are normal, and frankly,

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Speaker 1: we just don't live that long. But a lot of

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Speaker 1: stuff happened before we got here. We can assume that

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Speaker 1: pre European settlement, turkeys were thick in the eastern half

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Speaker 1: of North America. Boone and his bros. Talked about incredible

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Speaker 1: of flocks of turkeys in Kentucky, but the gobblers took

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Speaker 1: a dive in the late eighteen hundreds to the mid

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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, but then in the seventies, eighties and nineteen

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Speaker 1: nineties they resurged in the East and Midwest. Interestingly, today,

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Speaker 1: wild turkey is now thriving in much of the western

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Speaker 1: United States and places that historically never had turkeys. They're

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Speaker 1: pretty much an invasive species, but many believe that the

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Speaker 1: peak of modern turkey numbers in the East was in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. In early two thousands, but now we're

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Speaker 1: seeing a decline in many areas. It's not extremely clear

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Speaker 1: why other than there are a lot of reasons. Here's

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Speaker 1: Dr Chamberlain. What about this idea that populations just flux

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Speaker 1: up and down a lot. Is there any merit to

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Speaker 1: just this is a natural thing that we're seeing. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: And in fact, that's the point of open discussion amongst

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Speaker 1: researchers and managers is we know that when we restored turkeys,

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Speaker 1: we probably overshot the point at which they were going

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Speaker 1: to sustain themselves. In other words, populations were just exploding.

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Speaker 1: When we were moving turkeys all over the place and

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Speaker 1: releasing like the sixties, sixty seventies, eighties, even into the nineties,

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Speaker 1: you were putting turkeys into vacant habitats. There were no

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Speaker 1: turkeys there, Predator communities were different than habitat was better

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Speaker 1: than there, weren't as many human beings then all these

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Speaker 1: things that affect this bird. So populations just skyrocketed and

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Speaker 1: there were literally turkeys everywhere. We are now and what

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Speaker 1: I call a new normal. We are never going to

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Speaker 1: go back to where we were in n which is

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Speaker 1: not going to the peak of my turkey hunting career.

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Speaker 1: I distinctly. Remember, you know, when I was in grad

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Speaker 1: school in the early and mid nineties, I thought that

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Speaker 1: was the best thing ever. There were turkeys everywhere everywhere

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Speaker 1: I hunted. It was just amazing. Everywhere I went, in

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Speaker 1: every state, and I was so poor I couldn't go.

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Speaker 1: I hunted in Mississippi, but every public clanned. I went

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Speaker 1: to the turkeys everywhere. And now I can go back

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Speaker 1: to those same places and they're not there. It's not

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Speaker 1: that they are just in lower abundance. There are places

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Speaker 1: on those properties they're not there. And that is a

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Speaker 1: social problem, a human problem, because until the day I die,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about how good that was, and that was

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Speaker 1: something unnatural, and that is like almost impossible for me

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Speaker 1: to extinguish from my brain, you know. I mean when

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Speaker 1: you think about that, where these people that had this

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Speaker 1: connection to a wild animal that we love to hunt, unnatural,

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Speaker 1: big populations of it. We build this culture around that,

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Speaker 1: we build norms around it, we build stories around it.

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Speaker 1: Of the turkey. I mean, I remember my dad talking about, man,

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Speaker 1: I've heard twelve gobblers from that one spot. I'll never

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Speaker 1: forget that. I'll never forget where he was. And then

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Speaker 1: that all of a sudden is the bar. That's what

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Speaker 1: I tell my kids about. I'm like, man, I remember

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Speaker 1: when your grandpa used to sit on that ridge and

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Speaker 1: here twelve turkeys. Now we maybe here one every couple

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Speaker 1: of years. That's kind of confusing. It's a concern for

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Speaker 1: me too, frankly, because when I was recruited into the

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Speaker 1: spring turkey hunting ranks, there were turkeys everywhere, and I

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Speaker 1: was successful. I could hear birds every morning, and that

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Speaker 1: caused me to become addicted to it. It's like a

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Speaker 1: candy or something. It's a drug, man, It's you know,

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Speaker 1: you're hearing turkeys, you're chasing turkeys. They're responsive. I'd kill

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Speaker 1: birds every spring and and I was just infatuated with it.

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Speaker 1: And I fast forward to when my son was born

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Speaker 1: and there were still a lot of turkeys around. But

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Speaker 1: by the time he got to be the age of

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Speaker 1: I'm going to become a fanatical turkey hunter like my dad.

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Speaker 1: Where we live, there just weren't that many turkeys, and

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Speaker 1: there had been ten years before. And as it turned out,

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Speaker 1: Austin was not a fanatical turkey hunter like I am.

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Speaker 1: He'd do it and he enjoyed it, but he didn't

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Speaker 1: have the opportunities that you and I had to experience that,

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Speaker 1: And so he could not reflect back on a day

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Speaker 1: when you heard ten birds standing in one spot. So

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Speaker 1: what he grew up knowing was that turkey hunting was

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Speaker 1: a lot of times you wouldn't hear anything. And so

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Speaker 1: his competing interest were deer hunts where he would see

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Speaker 1: dear every time he went he was successful, duck hunting,

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00:15:17,560 --> 00:15:20,480
Speaker 1: goose hunting where he was successful, and it pulled his

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Speaker 1: interest away from this turkey hunt. One thing is for sure.

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Speaker 1: Humans gravitate towards success. This has kept us alive as

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Speaker 1: a species. Hunting turkey is most fun when accompanied by

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00:15:34,520 --> 00:15:39,440
Speaker 1: reasonable odds of success, which produces engagement and excitement, which

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Speaker 1: helps produce something else, passion, which then produces something else, innovation.

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Speaker 1: I'm certain this is an ancient chain of events. The

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Speaker 1: resurgence of the wild turkey was an exciting time to

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Speaker 1: be a hunter. I'm on shoot him that minute, you

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Speaker 1: got him? Yeah, okay, true, my old twenty double. Hey,

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Speaker 1: that's that's the man right there. Don't tell you what

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Speaker 1: this is what this passion, this intensity, This is what

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Speaker 1: books are written about. This is what forms cutanies. This

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00:16:40,760 --> 00:16:45,280
Speaker 1: is what makes friendships. This is what God gave us

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Speaker 1: to to have the intensity of what he wanted us

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Speaker 1: to have in life. That's a turkey right there, man,

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Speaker 1: that's in Alabama, Mississippi state line, swamp turkey, that's right.

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Speaker 1: And that would have been the time frame late sixties,

260
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Speaker 1: early seventies when spring turkey hunting being a sport, a

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00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:13,560
Speaker 1: thing that people mastered and perfected and called these birds

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00:17:13,600 --> 00:17:16,240
Speaker 1: not just bushwhacked birds. That's kind of when it came

263
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Speaker 1: alive with calls, and would you agree with us? It

264
00:17:19,040 --> 00:17:21,520
Speaker 1: came alot a lot, but there are some old timers.

265
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:25,040
Speaker 1: The first box call was patented in eighteen nineties seven

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Speaker 1: by a guy named Gibson from Arkansas, and a lady

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Speaker 1: gave me an actual original Gibson which I donated to

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Speaker 1: the Natural Turkey Federation Museum. Designed about like our box calls.

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Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of similarities, but it's a very

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Speaker 1: primitive piece. Tinkers from seven forward learned so much changed

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Speaker 1: the wood. Put a spring under the lid around the

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Speaker 1: screw to balance the lid. But there were was a

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Speaker 1: lot you're you're you're saying about these people that really

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00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:54,520
Speaker 1: it took fire people sitting down, putting their back into

275
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Speaker 1: the tree, and calling up a turkey. In the late

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Speaker 1: sixties seventies, there's a lot of that, but there was

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Speaker 1: a lot of it in the nineteen hunt slight thing

278
00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:04,639
Speaker 1: can't join about in the Ozarks. People who understood it,

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00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:07,280
Speaker 1: people who learned to yelp on a on a piece

280
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Speaker 1: of a leaf, a green leaf. In Alabama, they were

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Speaker 1: experiment with mouth calls. The story that I best I

282
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:17,359
Speaker 1: could figure out A guy from Alabama, from Andalusia, Alabama,

283
00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:19,800
Speaker 1: was in New Orleans and he was walking by a

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Speaker 1: guy who was selling trinkets on the corner, and one

285
00:18:22,080 --> 00:18:24,240
Speaker 1: of the trinkets was a teeny tiny bird call. It

286
00:18:24,280 --> 00:18:26,720
Speaker 1: was a teeny tiny diaphragm as big as your thumbnail,

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00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:28,359
Speaker 1: and the lotok guy would put in his mouth and

288
00:18:28,359 --> 00:18:30,280
Speaker 1: make a little bird sounds. And that guy stopped and

289
00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:32,080
Speaker 1: heard that, and he goes, I think I can make

290
00:18:32,119 --> 00:18:34,960
Speaker 1: a thing yell. So he bought some him and started

291
00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:38,119
Speaker 1: experimenting with it. And later that's supposedly where some of

292
00:18:38,160 --> 00:18:41,720
Speaker 1: the beginnings of the mouth called really came about. Hands

293
00:18:41,760 --> 00:18:49,080
Speaker 1: free passion fuels innovation, whether making a new style of

294
00:18:49,119 --> 00:18:54,680
Speaker 1: stone point or developing projectiles slinging weaponry like adeladdles and bows.

295
00:18:54,720 --> 00:18:58,280
Speaker 1: The primary success of the human species has been using

296
00:18:58,400 --> 00:19:02,240
Speaker 1: natural materials as two rules. As humans had access to

297
00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:06,160
Speaker 1: more tools, materials, and time, people started figuring out ways

298
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:09,439
Speaker 1: to replicate the sound of a hind turkey, which is

299
00:19:09,440 --> 00:19:13,560
Speaker 1: the siren call the Achilles heel of the greatest of

300
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:19,639
Speaker 1: game birds, the gobbler turkey. Jason Phelps is the chief

301
00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:23,800
Speaker 1: call maker and founder of Phelps Game Calls. I want

302
00:19:23,880 --> 00:19:27,080
Speaker 1: to hear him nerd out on the development of the

303
00:19:27,119 --> 00:19:32,399
Speaker 1: box call and the innovation they're in on record to

304
00:19:32,440 --> 00:19:35,960
Speaker 1: the earliest that we know, Henry Gibson had the Gibson

305
00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:40,600
Speaker 1: box call patented back in I believe he held half

306
00:19:40,640 --> 00:19:42,800
Speaker 1: of the patent, and then there was a fella named

307
00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:46,240
Speaker 1: John Body who many speculator he was maybe the financial

308
00:19:46,240 --> 00:19:49,040
Speaker 1: backer as they kind of took this endeavor on. Henry

309
00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:52,679
Speaker 1: Gibson patented the idea, but he didn't patent any of

310
00:19:52,960 --> 00:19:57,320
Speaker 1: the specifications or any of like the important details, and

311
00:19:57,359 --> 00:20:00,440
Speaker 1: so why he patented the idea. It really let everybody

312
00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:03,439
Speaker 1: else go and make calls. It's pretty crazy when you

313
00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:07,400
Speaker 1: look at the original patent drawings of the Henry Gibson call.

314
00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:11,199
Speaker 1: It looks identical to what you would find today in

315
00:20:11,320 --> 00:20:14,959
Speaker 1: today's box called. It has been improved upon, but it's very,

316
00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:17,359
Speaker 1: very similar to what you see as a box call

317
00:20:17,480 --> 00:20:19,679
Speaker 1: today is what they were producing back in you know,

318
00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:24,560
Speaker 1: the the late eighteen hundreds. I can understand how a diaphragm,

319
00:20:24,560 --> 00:20:27,520
Speaker 1: a mouth diaphragm call with a piece of latex on

320
00:20:27,560 --> 00:20:31,600
Speaker 1: it can replicate the sound of a turkey as you

321
00:20:31,640 --> 00:20:35,320
Speaker 1: push air through the soft tissues of your tongue and

322
00:20:35,480 --> 00:20:39,080
Speaker 1: mouth over this latex read and it, you know, it

323
00:20:39,119 --> 00:20:41,679
Speaker 1: sounds like a turkey. What's kind of bizarre when you

324
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:45,679
Speaker 1: think about humans just having this natural material trying to

325
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,280
Speaker 1: imitate a turkey that you would ever dream that you

326
00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:51,320
Speaker 1: could take two pieces of wood and make it sound

327
00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:55,320
Speaker 1: like the soft flesh of a turkey. How do we

328
00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:58,640
Speaker 1: get the sound out of a box call that sounds

329
00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:01,280
Speaker 1: so good? Yeah? And I always kind of wonder the

330
00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:03,520
Speaker 1: same thing, you know, who was the first person and

331
00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:06,080
Speaker 1: how did they come across this? And if if these

332
00:21:06,080 --> 00:21:07,800
Speaker 1: things were never invented, would I be able to like

333
00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:10,240
Speaker 1: think of it or hear that sound? And wood on

334
00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:12,399
Speaker 1: wood makes a little bit of sense because we're, you know,

335
00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:14,000
Speaker 1: in our day to day lives. You know, whether it's

336
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:17,600
Speaker 1: a wood drawer, a cabinet, or framing for a house.

337
00:21:17,720 --> 00:21:21,200
Speaker 1: You know, wood out in nature, I imagine somebody had

338
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:24,359
Speaker 1: taken fairly dry wood of different sizes and and it

339
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:27,560
Speaker 1: replicated the sounds of a turkey, or it was similar

340
00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:29,719
Speaker 1: or close enough where you know, maybe they went back

341
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:32,720
Speaker 1: and rEFInd it, but you know, you advanced today. Kind

342
00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 1: of what we're doing is it's it's all acoustical. We're

343
00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 1: taking very specific woods, typically a harder, heavier wood for

344
00:21:39,680 --> 00:21:43,399
Speaker 1: your paddle, and then you've got maybe a lighter, slightly

345
00:21:43,520 --> 00:21:46,800
Speaker 1: less dense wood for your your base, and by hallowing

346
00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:49,720
Speaker 1: out the center and creating your two walls, what we're

347
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:52,560
Speaker 1: doing is is we run that paddle across one of

348
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:55,320
Speaker 1: the walls. We're forcing it to vibrate. And that's why

349
00:21:55,359 --> 00:21:57,879
Speaker 1: the chalk is used. We need those two calls, that

350
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:00,440
Speaker 1: coefficient of friction to kind of go up. We want

351
00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:02,720
Speaker 1: those two materials to kind of bite against each other.

352
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:04,800
Speaker 1: The reason all of these paddles, you know, all the

353
00:22:04,840 --> 00:22:06,960
Speaker 1: way from Gibson's paddle all the way to what we're

354
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:09,479
Speaker 1: using now have a have a radius on them. And

355
00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:11,560
Speaker 1: what that does is is you're is you're swiping that

356
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:13,520
Speaker 1: paddle across one of the walls of the bottom of

357
00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:16,520
Speaker 1: the box. At one point you imagine you're you're writing

358
00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:19,200
Speaker 1: up on the wall, and then once you're over halfway,

359
00:22:19,280 --> 00:22:21,280
Speaker 1: you're starting to write down the back side of the wall,

360
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:23,919
Speaker 1: and that idea gives us our high note going in.

361
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:26,200
Speaker 1: And then as you start to break down the back side,

362
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:28,320
Speaker 1: you get that break over and you get the second

363
00:22:28,359 --> 00:22:31,159
Speaker 1: part of a hen yell. Jason, I don't know if

364
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:34,480
Speaker 1: this is the right platform to tell them about the

365
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:36,920
Speaker 1: call that you and I are working on together, the

366
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:41,880
Speaker 1: Gary Nucomb black panther scream call that we're making. Now.

367
00:22:41,920 --> 00:22:44,760
Speaker 1: My dad swears that he can tell the difference in

368
00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:47,679
Speaker 1: a black panther and a regular panther by just the

369
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:50,800
Speaker 1: way they scream in the dark. Okay, so there's a difference.

370
00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:54,320
Speaker 1: He has ears that can can dissect the difference we

371
00:22:54,359 --> 00:22:56,600
Speaker 1: can differentiate between the two colors. I'm gonna move that

372
00:22:56,720 --> 00:22:58,679
Speaker 1: to the top of the priority list on calls that

373
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:02,639
Speaker 1: need to be designed. When you think of humans as

374
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 1: natural predators on the landscape, which we've been in North

375
00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 1: America for a minimum of fifteen thousand years, probably longer

376
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 1: our participation in the ancient hunt is no less legitimate

377
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 1: than a bobcat. However, the spark of consciousness, our ability

378
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:22,600
Speaker 1: for self reflection as reasoning predators, our ability to make

379
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,399
Speaker 1: tools has fueled creative strategies like squeaking chalked wood together

380
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 1: to make a turkey sound, which is pretty bizarre. The

381
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:34,639
Speaker 1: only predator that impresses me more in the innovation department

382
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:39,679
Speaker 1: is the great horned owl. Dr Chamberlain exposed this story

383
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:43,400
Speaker 1: to many of us. Weighing in and around three pounds.

384
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 1: These gritty little suckers target goblin turkeys on the limb

385
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 1: and the pre dawned darkness and hit them flying it

386
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,200
Speaker 1: speeds up to forty miles per hour, knocking them out

387
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 1: of trees and breaking their necks. Dad Gummant, those great

388
00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:01,400
Speaker 1: horned owls are some good turkey hunters. Here is Mr

389
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: Will talking about that predatory innovation. I was born into

390
00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:13,719
Speaker 1: a restaurant family. We had five restaurants, so I had

391
00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:16,520
Speaker 1: to keep doing that. As I figured out how to

392
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:20,120
Speaker 1: grow an outdoor hunting primarily a game call and later

393
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 1: many other products how to do that. There was no money,

394
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 1: so I couldn't I couldn't sell enough calls to pay

395
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:28,080
Speaker 1: me and somebody else to help run the place or

396
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,240
Speaker 1: make the calls or whatever. So I didn't quit my

397
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 1: work until nineteen. I started the company in nineteen seventy six,

398
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 1: so I didn't I didn't quit having a full time

399
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: job until nineteen. So how old would you have been

400
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:42,920
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy In nineteen seventy six, I would have been,

401
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 1: what twenty four years old? So you started making turkey

402
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: calls on your four years old? I started selling them,

403
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:50,639
Speaker 1: selling them. Yeah. I made them for me, for others,

404
00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:53,639
Speaker 1: for friends. So a friend of mine, Buck Dearman, he

405
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:56,879
Speaker 1: challenged me to make a mouth call because he loved

406
00:24:56,880 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: these mouth calls, but they would fall apart on him.

407
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 1: And so I said, I don't know to make a

408
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:04,680
Speaker 1: turkey call, and so he says, yes, you do here,

409
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: And so I just took it apart and looked at it.

410
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,160
Speaker 1: This is a diaphragm call. It was a staggered read

411
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: had the reads that totally were separated by about a

412
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 1: sixteenth of an inch. They didn't touch, which created a

413
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: lot of rasp and had some different pluses to them

414
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: that other calls that weren't stack did. And that was

415
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:24,440
Speaker 1: back before anybody ever did that. I mean some people

416
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:26,880
Speaker 1: in in Clarksdale were doing it. Lady by the name

417
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 1: of Eleanor Wrestler and another guy named rosy Dantone were

418
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:32,720
Speaker 1: doing it. Um. They were handmaking them with lead. Usually

419
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 1: had a lead frame, that's what they used back then.

420
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: And they were malleable and you could take a we

421
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 1: call them rubbers back then. I think they call them

422
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:44,199
Speaker 1: condoms and prophylactics. To David, we called them rubbers. And

423
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:46,439
Speaker 1: you couldn't buy them over the counter. You couldn't go

424
00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:49,080
Speaker 1: up to a drug store and buy them. You primarily

425
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 1: had to buy them from a coin operated machine at

426
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 1: the service station. So you buy them and we'd slice

427
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:56,520
Speaker 1: them up and try to if somebody if they were lubricated,

428
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 1: you had to wash them off and figure it out

429
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: and drew them rye and then how to slice them.

430
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: And we finally figured out how to slice them, and

431
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:06,880
Speaker 1: that's done with a paper cutter. Was much more efficient. Anyway.

432
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: I took the call apart for for buck and took

433
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: some shears and cut some Like then, beer cans were

434
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 1: made from ten they weren't aluminum, and you cut the

435
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: de gum thing up and you tried to make a

436
00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: horseshoe out of it and try to how to put

437
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 1: it together and that kind of thing. And I figured

438
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: a way finally use aluminum sheets of aluminum, and I

439
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: had a sledge hammer, and I had a machinist to

440
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 1: make me a die that could punch out the center

441
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,119
Speaker 1: of it. And then the next step was the outside

442
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: of it. And I'd sit on in my car board

443
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 1: on the concrete floor and put the aluminium strip in

444
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: there and take a sledgehammer and hit it. We still

445
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 1: have that tool at the office, that original tool that

446
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 1: I would now so people were doing a similar thing

447
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: like you. Oh yeah, So primarily quite a good boy

448
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 1: was just getting going Ben Lee. I'm not sure he

449
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: even started back when I was hand making him a pins.

450
00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 1: Wood was already around, and Old was a big call

451
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: company at the top, primarily duck calls. But I was

452
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: just oblivious to most of that. I just I didn't

453
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:06,880
Speaker 1: know what. You weren't thinking I'm going to build a company,

454
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And I don't one thinking I was gonna

455
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,920
Speaker 1: build a company. And I wasn't in that world. Natural

456
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:14,959
Speaker 1: Tricky Federation didn't start till seventy five, I think it was,

457
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a way to have like minded people

458
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: come together and trade ideas and whatever. It's kind of

459
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: a cottage industry in different places. But anyway, I finally

460
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: figured out how to make this call for Buck, and

461
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: he loved it, and I perfected a double read, and

462
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: one year I made him all summer long, and I

463
00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: took him to a show that spring and I sold out,

464
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: and I said, holy chross. I went to the sporting

465
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: goods store and I had them all in a glass jar.

466
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 1: People come and pick one out and and pay for it.

467
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:43,719
Speaker 1: I'd get my money. What did you get for a

468
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: turkey call back in those days? Eight dollars? It's not

469
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: much different that now. Well, later on my double went

470
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:54,479
Speaker 1: to nineteen. They were handmade, and I wanted to stop

471
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: the demand, but it seemed like the demand just grew.

472
00:27:57,520 --> 00:27:59,639
Speaker 1: But one day a guy came in there and grabbed

473
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: a car in the sport and good story here in

474
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: town and put it in his mouth. He helped on it,

475
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: didn't like it and put it back in the jar.

476
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: And the guy called me said, you gotta come get

477
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: all these. We don't know which one was in his mouth.

478
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:17,679
Speaker 1: Here's Jason Phelps talking about Mr Will, Jason, You're a

479
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: call maker and have been for a good portion of

480
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,200
Speaker 1: your life. You know when you talk about these kind

481
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: of legendary call makers throughout the years, I mean, it

482
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:31,639
Speaker 1: feels like Will Primos would fit inside of that. And

483
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: I know that call makers build off each other. Even

484
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: when Mr Will tells his story like he didn't do

485
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: this on his own, you know, I mean there were

486
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: people before him. I think you you would fit into

487
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: that lineage of great call makers. What do you have

488
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: to say about somebody like Will? Growing up, I started

489
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 1: out in a rifle hunting family, you know, and so

490
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:55,760
Speaker 1: using calls was never really something that that we were into.

491
00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 1: We didn't need it to hard, you know, kill game

492
00:28:57,760 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: out here and fill the freezers. And so as I

493
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 1: got more into it and wanted to continue to challenge myself, um,

494
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: you know, the Truth series and Will was really kind

495
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: of was everything there. You know, I couldn't wait for

496
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:10,479
Speaker 1: the New Truth Turkey series to come out, and then

497
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: as soon as the Elk series went out, you know,

498
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: I would go out and grab it, and you know

499
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 1: it was really kind of looking up the Will and

500
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: everything he was doing, and then kind of the class

501
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: act that he was. I don't idolize a whole lot

502
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 1: of guys, but he was definitely one of those guys

503
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: I looked up to because you know, he seemed to

504
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 1: be at the top of the game, is innovative as

505
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: it as it got, and then just you know, super

506
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: good guys. So I mean, I growing up the way

507
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: before I ever started making calls, you know, I would say,

508
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 1: you know, Will was one of those guys I looked

509
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: up to, and you know still do. Here's Mr Will

510
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: with more of his story and how it coincided with

511
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: a vast change in Turkey hunting strategy. When I started

512
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: trying to market my calls, I had a dealer here,

513
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: a guy from Pennsylvania came down your hunting bought from

514
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 1: college and took him back. Told a dealer in Pennsylvania's

515
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:00,200
Speaker 1: had a dealer in Pennsylvania, and add a dealer down

516
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: here as my first two dealers. So when I get

517
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 1: time off from the restaurants, I traveled the state of

518
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 1: Mississippi and got call on different sporting goods stores. So

519
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: I went to Greenville, Mississippi, which is in the Delta

520
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: on the Mississippi River north of here, and Clyde McGee.

521
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: I went in there and introduced myself to him. The

522
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: great guy, told him what I was trying to do,

523
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: show him my calls, and I said, here, listen to this.

524
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 1: This was actually during turkey season and I just killed

525
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: a turkey and I had a little recorder and these

526
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 1: aren't these aren't digital. This is the cascess set tape

527
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: recorder and I just put it on the ground, called

528
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 1: the turkey up I think on the I remember correctly.

529
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 1: I cackled at the turkey eleven times and finally got

530
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 1: the turkey up there and didn't take long and killed him.

531
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: I was just hammering him, just shot the turkey. This

532
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: old man was sitting there in the store. I got

533
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: through classes man as an unbelievable hunt. That man said

534
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 1: you called too much and you called to loud and

535
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 1: looked at that man. I said, sir, that turkey's dead.

536
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: So you know, the aggressiveness, cutting and running is what

537
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: it became to be known as started during that time. Yeah,

538
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 1: it's kind of a new a new age turkey, ou see.

539
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,680
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm younger than you, but I very much

540
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: don't know what you mean by the old timer way

541
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: yelping on a box can sitting there. The really, really

542
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: good turkey owners know how to involve both, and the

543
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: best turkey collars are those that have good ears and

544
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 1: can hear what they're saying, just like a musician that

545
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: has good ears and he can hear all the notes

546
00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: and it doesn't miss anything. I'm missing a lot of

547
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:32,960
Speaker 1: high notes now I'll be seventy in three weeks. But

548
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: those that are the best, you can hear what he's doing,

549
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: and he can change what he's doing in his mouth

550
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: to give you the sound that he wants. But back

551
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: to the two styles, You've got to be able to

552
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: do both, to know when the appropriate time, when you

553
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 1: think you know, you never know. You just think you know,

554
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: you think this might be a good opportunity to be quiet,

555
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: to not yelping him for ten minutes or thirty minutes whatever.

556
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: Last year, were you up to the turkey one time

557
00:32:00,480 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: and he gobbled and he showed up two hours later.

558
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: We never said another word. Guy missed him, but you know,

559
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 1: and he didn't gobbleble one more time. But that was

560
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:11,560
Speaker 1: an afternoon. And you've got to feel like you can

561
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: play the game you're living in their world. They don't

562
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: have to go anywhere. They don't have to go to

563
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,880
Speaker 1: the dentist, they don't have to do anything, they have

564
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: no appointments. They're making a living, staying alive, and they

565
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:26,959
Speaker 1: stay alive with their eyes and their ears. Sometimes I

566
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: think they can smell me. Success is an interesting and

567
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 1: complex phenomena. It favors the hard working, the discipline, those

568
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 1: with passion, the focused, but it also favors those who

569
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:45,960
Speaker 1: come along at the right time. It's interesting and not

570
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: hard to see that the resurgence of the wild turkey

571
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: was the fodder of innovation in turkey hunting. I would

572
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: say I would describe you as a contestsur of turkey hunting.

573
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: Guys like you and some other's interpreted the world for

574
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say us through your media, through your work,

575
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: through your connection to the hunting industry. And you know,

576
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: there's some people that just came along at the right time,

577
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: and that's an awesome thing to have happened. And you

578
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: came along at the right time and had a whole

579
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: lot of things going for you. But I would describe

580
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:23,239
Speaker 1: your passion, your ability to articulate what's going on, and

581
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 1: mainly just the passion that comes through just through watching

582
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: videos you've interpreted turkey hunting for for me for sure,

583
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 1: just like this has value. And I know the store

584
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 1: bought answer of why turkey hunting why we love it

585
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: so much? But I want to hear you tell me

586
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: what it is about turkey hunting that is is so

587
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 1: special because it is well, You've said a lot of

588
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: things that I want to go back and talk about.

589
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 1: First off, I appreciate what you're saying. In no way,

590
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: shape or form in myself for any of the team

591
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: set out to create what we did, I didn't realize

592
00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: the effect we were having on so many people. We

593
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: were part of their living room, and we were clean

594
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: about it. We didn't cuss. We we we love the Lord.

595
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: I'm a Christian and I want to portray that and

596
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 1: I want to live that life and I want to

597
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:11,319
Speaker 1: make him proud, and I want to make my mom

598
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: and my daddy proud. My daddy is a World War

599
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: two vette who's still living. He was a navigator in

600
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:21,280
Speaker 1: the Pacific Theater. So those things you said about connecting

601
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: with those people like yourself, so many people have expressed that,

602
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:28,959
Speaker 1: and you're right. Timing is huge, and I challenge everybody

603
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:32,880
Speaker 1: to figure out what might be affecting them. That's timing related.

604
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:37,319
Speaker 1: There's a book called Outliers written by Malcolm Gladwick. He's

605
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: a famous author, and he goes into the depth of

606
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 1: why somebody can be an outlier. I was described by

607
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:46,360
Speaker 1: this person as being an outlier, so he gave me

608
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: the book. Rockefeller not for monetary reasons, but when he

609
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:51,959
Speaker 1: was born he was able to do what he did.

610
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs different people born at a certain

611
00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,040
Speaker 1: time that if they had been born at any other time,

612
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: would not have been able to do what they did.

613
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 1: So because of when I was born, when Buck inspired

614
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: me to make the Turkey calls, there were things available

615
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 1: to me that hadn't been available to somebody years past,

616
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: or that we're gonna be gone. A perfect example is

617
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: the audio cassette tape we rode right in our car.

618
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: This an audio cassette tape. So in nineteen to no

619
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:22,600
Speaker 1: Spring of eighty three I hired a guy to follow

620
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 1: me around in the woods with a big Swedish Nagagar

621
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: recorder two big wheels. He had to open it up

622
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 1: and set the weig wheels on there and had a

623
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: parabolic mite and he recorded me calling the turkey, killing

624
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 1: turkey and running into Turkey. Is that what you showed

625
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:37,720
Speaker 1: the guys that the nod that went on a little

626
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,879
Speaker 1: you did that on a little walkman or something. Yeah, yeah,

627
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So I did that and produced the tape. Well,

628
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 1: that was unbelievable. That was available to me, and I

629
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:47,399
Speaker 1: fought it up to make the cassette tape and then

630
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: to teach people how to use the circuit call. Very organized,

631
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: I can teach as a gift. So I took it

632
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: and organize it. I wrote it, and I taught everybody

633
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 1: how to how to begin to make how to put

634
00:35:57,960 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 1: a mouth call on the mouth, how to begin to

635
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 1: make a say down, how how to begin to put

636
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: it all together. It's all very easy. But at any rate,

637
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: that tape was a huge success. I couldn't keep them

638
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 1: in stop what year was with and so then we

639
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:15,960
Speaker 1: keep going along, and all of a sudden, about eighty

640
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 1: five or eighty six or so, you could go to

641
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: Walmart and for over a thousand dollars you could buy

642
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 1: a video camera and go and video your kids out

643
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:27,719
Speaker 1: in the backyard playing and watch it. Immediately. It was

644
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 1: no longer sending it off to have it developed and

645
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff with an eight millimeter camera

646
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: or whatever. So and that was incredible, and that was incredible.

647
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:38,839
Speaker 1: Here I am trying to figure out how to market promos.

648
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: And I believe the year was nineteen eighty five because

649
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: that was the year the National Wild Turkey Federation had

650
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: their convention in New Orleans. I drove to New Orleans

651
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: how to booth, and the guy next to me and

652
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: with Marvin Kellysworth. He was an architect from Alabama and

653
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 1: he loved turkey in and he bought him one of

654
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: them video cameras. And he yelped up a turkey and

655
00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: at a loading site where they had logging woods and

656
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: the loading side and he was backed up against some

657
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: of them pilot up trash logs, and he yelped up

658
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: this turkey and killed it on tape. And he was

659
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:10,879
Speaker 1: playing that on his TV. And the line was hundreds deep.

660
00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: They couldn't get to me if they really wanted to.

661
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 1: But yet I had a had a built in crowd.

662
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: When he'd have a break, I'd be able to talk

663
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: about my stuff. And so I went, holy r, I'm

664
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 1: going to get me a video camera. I know how

665
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: I know how to market Primos. About the same time

666
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 1: I read a book called Radical Marketing, Unbelievable Stories about

667
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead, about Harley Davidson and how they radically marketed.

668
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: They couldn't just go buy print ads. I didn't have

669
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: any money. How did they do it? So got the

670
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: video cameras, had Boyd Burrow, who worked for me at

671
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:43,240
Speaker 1: the time. We produced the first tape in nineteen eighties

672
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: six and it was called Spring Turkey On with Primos

673
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,240
Speaker 1: and the Southern Boys. What a name and they're horrible,

674
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:51,799
Speaker 1: And we had two hunts on it and had had

675
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: some success. It was VHS. We sold them to sporting

676
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: goods stores for forty four dollars and ninety nine cents

677
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: and they rented him like blockbusts. That's the way it

678
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: was done. The next year I had met Ronnie Kusz strictly.

679
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: He was working in Rex supporting goods in Natchez, down south,

680
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,200
Speaker 1: and he had sent me a recording of some stuff

681
00:38:13,239 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: he had done, not video wise, but otherwise. I drove

682
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: down there and went and sold him some more calls

683
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: he was buying him already, And talked to him and said,

684
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: you're come to work for me. Next thing I know

685
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:23,759
Speaker 1: he quit Rex. I bought him a truck and I said, look,

686
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: I'm in the restaurant business. I can't afford this game

687
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 1: call company. I'm gonna keep working in the restaurant business.

688
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: I might can go hunting, I might not can go hunt,

689
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,960
Speaker 1: But I want you to take anybody that a go friends, family,

690
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 1: anybody that let you hunt on land, public land, doesn't matter.

691
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: Just go hunt. They were to make a couple of

692
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: hunts because recorded twelve incredible hunts, me on some of

693
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:47,719
Speaker 1: them one spring. In one spring, this original video was

694
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: the beginning of a massive success on many levels. It

695
00:38:51,200 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: taught a lot of us how to hunt gobblers. It

696
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 1: brought the excitement of turkey hunting into our houses in

697
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: Our lead interpreter of the experience was Mr Will Primost.

698
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: His passion, excitement, intelligence and authenticity were hard to resist.

699
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: And the rest is history. This golden era of wild

700
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: turkey hunting put a new cultural value on hunting turkeys,

701
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: and as we know, that value creates an incentive for

702
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: people to protect turkeys. Never forget this equation. Hunting creates

703
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: incentive which creates protection. It was also during this time

704
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:33,319
Speaker 1: that the National Wild Turkey Federation came to maturity. It

705
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: was started in nineteen seventy three, but the nineteen nineties

706
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:41,200
Speaker 1: produced vast expansion of the organization which is designed to

707
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: protect turkeys and habitat, and they've done an incredible job.

708
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: As great as it's been talking about the glory days,

709
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 1: let's talk about modern times because the last twenty years

710
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: have seen downturns and turkey populations in many places. And

711
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 1: this isn't all gloom and doom, but because we've still

712
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 1: got a lot of turkeys, and we've still got way

713
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 1: more than we had in some other periods of this country.

714
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:10,800
Speaker 1: But the hunting community is now on red alert. Here's

715
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:16,759
Speaker 1: Dr Chamberlain breaking it down. Describe for me from the

716
00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 1: research that you have about the decline of turkeys in

717
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:23,320
Speaker 1: the Southeast, how do we quantitatively know that? Okay, so basically,

718
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,759
Speaker 1: state agencies in the South, not all, but most of

719
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: them use poults observe per hen in the summer, poults

720
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: being young turkeys, as a proxy for production. For many decades,

721
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:40,280
Speaker 1: we've always thought that three poults per hen on average

722
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: would be a population that's increasing. Two pouls per hen

723
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: would be a population that can just sustain itself, and

724
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: anything less than two pouls per hen is a declining

725
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:54,359
Speaker 1: and this is them raising that pulp to maturity. Yeah,

726
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 1: until they're large, you know, half the size of the

727
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 1: adults in the summer. You don't want to talk about.

728
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: You see a brood flock, if you will, where you've

729
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: got like four or five hens and twenty young turkeys

730
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 1: that were hatched that summer. Now they're twice the size

731
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: of batam rooster or something. So at that point their

732
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:11,800
Speaker 1: survival is and so hen turkey would have a clutch

733
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:14,439
Speaker 1: of ten ten twelve. Yeah, So I mean that's that's

734
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: even calculating her losing sevent her clutch. And that's good.

735
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: We thought it was sustainable. And what you've seen over

736
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: the past twenty years, we've seen declining productivity as measured

737
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: by pulse observed per hen across the southeast, not in

738
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 1: one state, all the states. Can I ask you something

739
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 1: about pults observed just before we go any further. How

740
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 1: do we know that's not anecdotal? Is it just the

741
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 1: best we can do? I guess in some ways, yes,

742
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:43,800
Speaker 1: it is the best we can do, and it's fraught

743
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 1: with biases. It's the same people observing birds in the

744
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,840
Speaker 1: same places every year. It's not distributed to broadly across

745
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: states in the way it should be, but it's about

746
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 1: the best we have at the scale at which agencies

747
00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 1: managed turkeys, which is a state level, you know, or

748
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 1: a geographic region within a state. So what we've seen

749
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:07,959
Speaker 1: are these long term, precipitous declines in production, slow enough

750
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,280
Speaker 1: to where if you looked from one year to the next,

751
00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a deal. But when you

752
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:16,759
Speaker 1: look across twenty years, it's a linear trend down. Boy,

753
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: those are the tough ones. Yes, and it was right

754
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: under our nose. And I say we because I take

755
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 1: partial blame for this. I've been in this game a

756
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 1: long time. I've studied this bird twenty five years, and

757
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying attention to those trends as they were unfolding,

758
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 1: because when you just looked across three or four or

759
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: five years, it wasn't that big of a deal. You know,

760
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: you see noise and data up and down, up and down,

761
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:41,920
Speaker 1: up and down, but but the trend is down. And

762
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, around two thousand and ten,

763
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: myself and my students presented some data to the agencies

764
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:50,719
Speaker 1: using what they had provided us, and it showed these

765
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: dramatic declines and production. At the same time, you've seen

766
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: either increasing harvest, stable harvest, or decreasing harvest, depending on

767
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: the state. So in other words, in some cases we

768
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: were seeing declines in production and increases in harvest. Well,

769
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: the basic math doesn't add up. You know, at some

770
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,160
Speaker 1: point that bubble has to pop. And of course when

771
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: when US turkey hunters here fewer birds, see fewer birds,

772
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: and kill fewer birds. Were concerned. And that's where you

773
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: are right now with much of the Southeast, and it

774
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:25,359
Speaker 1: has agencies trying to identify what's going on and then

775
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: how to address it. Sometimes all the talk about turkey decline,

776
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 1: which is being talked about a lot, can be confusing.

777
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: I hoped to get Dr Chamberlain to narrow it down

778
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: to the top five culprits of turkey decline in the Southeast.

779
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: Here's what he said. Number one is habitat. If you

780
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: look across the species range, you can find situations where

781
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: there's been not only a loss of habitat, it's just

782
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:58,719
Speaker 1: gone habitat that's capable of supporting farm turning into a walmart. Yes,

783
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: so you've got lost where it's just disappeared. You have

784
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:06,799
Speaker 1: conversion of habitats. So, for instance, the loss of hardwood

785
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: forest and it being replaced with pine dominated forest. Turkeys

786
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: in the east are inextricably linked to hardwood forest. We

787
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 1: also seen declines in habitat quality. So to your point,

788
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 1: this field used to be grazed and kept it in

789
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:25,800
Speaker 1: what's considered good brood habitat, and that farm was sold

790
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 1: and it was planted to pine trees, or it was

791
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: converted to a fruit orchard or whatever. You can come

792
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 1: up with a scenario. So if you look at the

793
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 1: landscape from a thirty thousand foot view, you see that

794
00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: in the past few decades there's less habitat, there's poor

795
00:44:40,680 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: quality habitat, and there's conversion of habitat, and none of

796
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 1: that has benefited the bird. And you can go to

797
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: other areas. You can go out to Rio country, you

798
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:53,280
Speaker 1: can go to Miriam's country. You can find this anywhere

799
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: you go. If you go to South Florida, you see

800
00:44:55,560 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 1: it magnified to the degree with Osceola's because Florida is

801
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:02,120
Speaker 1: such a destination stay for everything. So how tat would

802
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: be that in habitat fragmentation to fragmentation at good point.

803
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:09,359
Speaker 1: By fragmenting habitats with roads and power lines and rights

804
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,760
Speaker 1: of way, we've made habitat that's better for predators than turkeys,

805
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 1: and that very likely is influencing the increased predation rates

806
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:21,840
Speaker 1: that we've seen. Number two is confounded by habitat, and

807
00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 1: that's predation we have seen. If you look across the

808
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 1: United States and North American general, we've seen obvious changes

809
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 1: in the distribution and abundance of predators that would affect turkeys,

810
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:37,799
Speaker 1: the smaller carnivores. You know, you're a raccoon hunter. I

811
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 1: can take you to properties here locally that you would

812
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 1: run your dogs to death trying to treat all the

813
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 1: raccoons on these properties. To a coon hunter, that sounds

814
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: pretty good. Turkey hunter, it sounds terrible. Yeah. Species like

815
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: coyotes that were not even historically present in the Southeast

816
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:55,839
Speaker 1: now are superabundant. There's no fur trade, as you know,

817
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 1: so species like bobcats and raccoons there's no market for

818
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 1: them anymore, or there are not trappers being recruited into

819
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:06,840
Speaker 1: the trapping ranks. So all of that points to these

820
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:10,279
Speaker 1: changes in predator abundance and density and then if you

821
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 1: look at many species that have increased in abundance, and

822
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:18,160
Speaker 1: we know it's such as raptors, owls, hawks that affect

823
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: turkeys as well. Uh species that are prominent nest predators,

824
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:26,279
Speaker 1: like rat snakes that benefit from a thicker, brushier understory

825
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 1: in the forest. All of these things, fragmentation species like

826
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:32,800
Speaker 1: rat snakes, for instance, that hunt the long edges, and

827
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: they're extremely effective along edges, they're not as effective in

828
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:38,760
Speaker 1: the interior of a stand. You put all that together

829
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 1: and in the habitat confounds the predation issues. And so

830
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 1: what we've seen is we are not producing as many

831
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 1: turkeys because the predation rate on the nest is higher

832
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: than it was historically. Twenty years ago, nest that hatched

833
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 1: had a better survival rate than they do now. We

834
00:46:56,600 --> 00:47:00,359
Speaker 1: even the few that hatched in our study populations, most

835
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: of them fail before they're a month old. So the

836
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 1: predation and habitat go hand in hand. Any idea, what

837
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 1: number three is, It's another predator issue, but undoubtedly the

838
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,800
Speaker 1: most sneaky predator of all time. Number one is habitat

839
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 1: related issues. Number two is predation, which is connected to habitat.

840
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: What's number three harvest. We've got a bird that we

841
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,960
Speaker 1: hunt primarily during their breeding season, and we've known for

842
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 1: year decades that harvest matters. It matters when you kill

843
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:33,360
Speaker 1: the birds, and it matters the rate at which you

844
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: harvest them. Research decades ago suggested that you need to

845
00:47:37,719 --> 00:47:40,800
Speaker 1: harvest your birds starting at a certain time, that being

846
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 1: about when nesting starts, and you need to kill a

847
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 1: conservative say thirty percent or less of your tim's in

848
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:50,360
Speaker 1: a population. The problem with all of that is those

849
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: recommendations were predicated on what was happening in the nineteen eighties,

850
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: and we've already talked about since nineteen eighties, we've seen

851
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:01,760
Speaker 1: a dramatic decline in production. We're not making as many birds,

852
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 1: So the paradigm that has guided harvest for this bird

853
00:48:05,680 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 1: is outdated, and science is showing that we're killing a

854
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: lot of males in some of our populations were killing

855
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 1: well over. If that's the case, then it's not sustainable.

856
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 1: Given the production, again predicated under where we know we

857
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: are as a new normal, the harvest thinking, if you will,

858
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 1: the mindset that we've used historically, it's just not going

859
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 1: to work anymore. And that's why so these liberal turkey

860
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,240
Speaker 1: bag limits, Like in some places you can kill five.

861
00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:36,759
Speaker 1: I remember there was a time in Arkansas you'd kill three.

862
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: Now you can kill two. I mean, we're gonna have

863
00:48:39,560 --> 00:48:41,800
Speaker 1: to dial that back in. Yeah, and you see a

864
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:44,879
Speaker 1: lot of agencies that are already doing that. Because I'm

865
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: not trying to advocate for the agencies, but the bottom

866
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: line is, as a turkey hunter, you need to understand

867
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:53,440
Speaker 1: that agencies can only control harvest at a spatial scale

868
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:56,040
Speaker 1: that's commensurate with the bird. In other words, they can

869
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 1: manage their state lands anyway they want, and it's still

870
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:01,279
Speaker 1: only impacts of time, any percentage of the turkeys on

871
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:04,560
Speaker 1: the landscape understood. But when they change harvest frameworks and

872
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:06,840
Speaker 1: they change the number of birds that are being killed,

873
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:09,319
Speaker 1: they can change that at a state level, and that's

874
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: what they're charged with managing. So that's unfortunately harvest is

875
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: often what agencies. What's the biggest level we've got exact?

876
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're talking about we want more turkeys

877
00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:21,239
Speaker 1: on the landscape and we're killing turkeys, the way that

878
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:23,360
Speaker 1: we can have for sure more turkeys on the landscape

879
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: is for us to kill less. Yeah. I'm dying to

880
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: know what number four is what's number four? I see

881
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:35,919
Speaker 1: disease being problematic. The problem with diseases we don't understand

882
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:39,279
Speaker 1: the complexity of disease issues on the landscape because a

883
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: sick bird dies and gets eaten and we don't know

884
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:44,760
Speaker 1: they're there. But what you're seeing, yeah, what you're seeing

885
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:48,360
Speaker 1: now is some emerging disease issues in parts of the

886
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:51,359
Speaker 1: country where we have these viruses and we have things

887
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: that are affecting turkeys, and we don't understand how. We

888
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:56,920
Speaker 1: just know the birds are sick or that they're carrying

889
00:49:56,920 --> 00:50:00,840
Speaker 1: the virus. Some of these viruses do have potential to

890
00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 1: affect reproduction, we just don't understand the magnitude of that effect.

891
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 1: And it's such a hard question to get at at

892
00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 1: a broad scale. And what we're seeing through disease testing

893
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: is you may have a high prevalence of a particular

894
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:17,000
Speaker 1: virus in certain areas and not in other areas. So

895
00:50:17,080 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 1: it's not like a uniform problem, but it could be

896
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:25,439
Speaker 1: really problematic in a local area. What would be number five?

897
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:27,920
Speaker 1: This is your last one. I could almost pick about

898
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: four or five different things, but I'll I'll use a

899
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: little bit different take than I think most people would expect.

900
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: It is us us as turkey hunters. Our mindset, our perspectives,

901
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: are expectations, our willingness to take versus give. We are

902
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:49,440
Speaker 1: going to be the future of this bird. If we

903
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 1: prioritize the fact that we want, that we're willing to

904
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: give more than we take, then there's hope for this

905
00:50:57,280 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: bird because we are the ones that are going to

906
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 1: carry the torch. Who else is going to prioritize turkey

907
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: other than turkey hunters, nobody else exactly. We get caught

908
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,640
Speaker 1: up in our mindset, as we've talked about as often

909
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: about well, this is what I expect. I want to

910
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: kill three birds or two birds, or whatever it is,

911
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,719
Speaker 1: and we get caught up in what we've experienced in

912
00:51:17,760 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 1: the past, how we grew up, this is how we've

913
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 1: always done it. Guys, gals, you gotta forget that we

914
00:51:25,840 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: have to work innovatively and creatively together and recognize that

915
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:33,880
Speaker 1: if we don't prioritize the bird, and we don't work

916
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:39,719
Speaker 1: collaboratively with agencies and landowners, nobody else is We are

917
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,320
Speaker 1: the ones that are going to have to prioritize the bird.

918
00:51:42,719 --> 00:51:45,320
Speaker 1: If we don't do that, it's not going to happen.

919
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 1: So I look at number five as being us. I

920
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: like the question. Dr Chamberlain asked and answered, who is

921
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:59,280
Speaker 1: going to protect turkeys? The only people are the hunters.

922
00:51:59,719 --> 00:52:02,160
Speaker 1: Here is a look at the big picture of North

923
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: American conservation. I'm not entirely sure what this means, but

924
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,399
Speaker 1: I know it's right and it's going to be worth it.

925
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: I think about, Okay, am I going to be satisfied

926
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:16,919
Speaker 1: with one? If I go to this state and only

927
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:20,320
Speaker 1: harvest one, will I be satisfied? And as the older

928
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:23,960
Speaker 1: I've gotten, the more I realize the answers, Yes, yeah,

929
00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:26,400
Speaker 1: twenty five year old turkey hunter has a very different

930
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: mindset than I do. You know. I think what we

931
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 1: were seeing and what we have to prepare for in

932
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: the next fifty years of conservation this country is sacrifice,

933
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 1: sportsman sacrificing for the resource because there's nothing that's getting

934
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:47,200
Speaker 1: easier about wildlife management in this country. I mean, primarily

935
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 1: due to increase of human population and decrease of literal forest, swamps,

936
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:56,360
Speaker 1: habitat grasslands. I mean, and that ain't stopping anytime soon either.

937
00:52:56,719 --> 00:53:00,879
Speaker 1: I mean, we will not be able to regulate humans surviving.

938
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 1: And it was clear is that as sportsman if we

939
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 1: really value this resource, if we really value this lifestyle

940
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: that we have as an American sportsman, We're gonna have

941
00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:12,640
Speaker 1: to suck it up in a lot of places. I mean,

942
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 1: I've just spent a lot of time researching and interviewing

943
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: about the Green Tree reservoir issues in Arkansas with the

944
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 1: duck hunting, and I mean that's pretty much where we're

945
00:53:22,520 --> 00:53:25,200
Speaker 1: at with that. It's like, uh, yeah, this is this

946
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 1: kind of stinks for a lot of people, but we

947
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:30,240
Speaker 1: have to do this to say the resource. So really

948
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: it's kind of like just this is the new normal.

949
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: But that's okay. I mean that. And I'm I'm like

950
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: exactly middle aged. I'm forty two years old, so I'm

951
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: kind of a teeter on youthful lust of like want

952
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:46,480
Speaker 1: to kill a bunch of turkeys, but also the wisdom

953
00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 1: that might come with age. And I'm like, I see

954
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:52,279
Speaker 1: both sides of it. But situations like this are going

955
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:57,320
Speaker 1: to be the norm moving forward. When I go hunting,

956
00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: I want to bring home game. Otherwise we'd call it hiking.

957
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: But here we'll see the reason why Mr Will hunts.

958
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:08,319
Speaker 1: It's kind of a cliche idea, but the answer is

959
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: so compelling and we all know it gets truer and

960
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:17,759
Speaker 1: truer the older we get. So of all the things

961
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: you hunt, and I know that you your experience in

962
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: North America is vast. Where does turkey rank inside of that?

963
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:26,400
Speaker 1: Somebody asked me that the other day and I and

964
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:31,080
Speaker 1: I wrote it down. Oh man, he's got I'm gonna read.

965
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:33,919
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read it to you and answer to what

966
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: do I like to hunt the most? Turkeys or elk

967
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 1: or big mature deer, wild covey is on the rise,

968
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,279
Speaker 1: big bass on top water, or as the green heads

969
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:46,960
Speaker 1: when cup to the decoys. All can be exceptional, But

970
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:49,800
Speaker 1: day in or day out, it is the sunrises and

971
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 1: sunsets I cherish most. So if I had to give

972
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:56,560
Speaker 1: him all up, turkey hunting is not gonna be given up.

973
00:54:56,840 --> 00:55:00,360
Speaker 1: And then second from me after Turkey's gonna be ill. Okay,

974
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:03,120
Speaker 1: So turkey and elk, That's what I'm hearing you said. Yeah,

975
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:07,399
Speaker 1: Now I just had a dug hunt going tomorrow. Yea,

976
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:12,319
Speaker 1: In Big White Tales, I have to it's a it's

977
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: a it's a trap question, I know. I mean, if

978
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:17,880
Speaker 1: you try the same thing, I would stumble around and

979
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 1: be like just matters what every one of those days

980
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:30,560
Speaker 1: has sunrises and sun that's right. In closing, here's Mr

981
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:34,200
Speaker 1: Will talking about two things that have been most important

982
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:38,320
Speaker 1: in his success, and I think we can incorporate these

983
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 1: into our approach of protecting wild turkeys. Passion, don't ever

984
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 1: underestimate anybody with passion never and another thing, realize what

985
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 1: discipline is. Discipline is giving up what you want to

986
00:55:55,719 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 1: day for what you really want most to are be

987
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 1: at weight loss. You gotta not eat that, or you

988
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: gotta exercise. You gotta be disciplined about it to get

989
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:11,960
Speaker 1: what you really want. But remember, discipline is so important

990
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:16,359
Speaker 1: in every step of your life, every step of your life.

991
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:18,359
Speaker 1: From the moment your feet hit the floor in the morning,

992
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: you've given up what you want today what you really

993
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:27,239
Speaker 1: want most tomorrow. After hanging out with Mr Will, it's

994
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:31,399
Speaker 1: clear that passion and discipline are two dominant features of

995
00:56:31,520 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 1: his life. I was personally impacted by being around him,

996
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:38,000
Speaker 1: and since recording this podcast, I was able to hunt

997
00:56:38,040 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 1: three days with him in Mississippi, and I can tell

998
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:43,319
Speaker 1: you the highlight clips of his turkey hunting videos don't

999
00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:47,880
Speaker 1: portray how incredibly disciplined Mr Will is In every area

1000
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:52,840
Speaker 1: of his life, his eating, his exercise, his finances, his reading,

1001
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: his spirituality, his relationships, and I've rarely met someone with

1002
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: such incredible focus. Being around people like him is personally challenging.

1003
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 1: He seems to be a student of life, never ceasing

1004
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:10,800
Speaker 1: in pursuit of forward momentum, but able to enjoy the ride.

1005
00:57:11,480 --> 00:57:14,439
Speaker 1: I think in modern times of Turkey conservation, we can

1006
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 1: take a play for Mr Will just like we did

1007
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties. We're going to need passion

1008
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:23,520
Speaker 1: and lots of it to fuel our energy and love

1009
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: of wild places and beasts. I've made it a spiritual

1010
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 1: discipline to never take for granted seeing a wild turkey

1011
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:33,520
Speaker 1: or a covey of quail or a black bear. If

1012
00:57:33,600 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: my heart doesn't jump, I tell it to jump, and

1013
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 1: it asked how high. And secondly, we'll need discipline as

1014
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:46,320
Speaker 1: we move into a new era of conservation. That discipline

1015
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: will take on different forms for all of us. It

1016
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:52,680
Speaker 1: could be improving the habitat on your fifteen acre track

1017
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 1: of land that into jake Turkey walk, taking a neighbor

1018
00:57:56,840 --> 00:57:59,640
Speaker 1: kid hunting, Or it might be that in the future

1019
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:03,480
Speaker 1: you are the leader of a powerful conservation group in

1020
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: charge of millions of dollars, and you'll need to do

1021
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 1: the right thing for the resource. In closing the gobble

1022
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 1: and red head of the wild Turkey has altered the

1023
00:58:14,240 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: course of my life. His iridescent feathers and swinging beard

1024
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:23,400
Speaker 1: have imprinted me beyond reclamation. And it is my honest

1025
00:58:23,440 --> 00:58:26,640
Speaker 1: prayer that will be backed up with action, like Billy

1026
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: Coleman's prayer was that goblin turkeys will continue to thrive

1027
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:38,680
Speaker 1: in America. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Grease.

1028
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:41,439
Speaker 1: I've got two favors I'd like to ask of you

1029
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 1: this week. Number one, share our podcast this week with

1030
00:58:46,560 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 1: the worst and best turkey hunters you know and be

1031
00:58:49,640 --> 00:58:53,320
Speaker 1: sure to tell them which one they are. And number two,

1032
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 1: take an action step and join become a paying member

1033
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 1: of the National Wild Turkey Federation. Have a great week,

1034
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: and we'll talk on the Render next week with some

1035
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:16,840
Speaker 1: of the crew. M