Speaker 1: You're here in turkeys. You're chasing turkeys. They're responsive. I
Speaker 1: kill birds every spring. Fast forward to when my son
Speaker 1: was born. By the time he got to be the
Speaker 1: age of I'm going to become a fanatical turkey hunter
Speaker 1: like my dad, there just weren't that many turkeys, and
Speaker 1: there had been ten years before. On this episode, we're
Speaker 1: going from the creek bottoms to the ridge tops to
Speaker 1: contrast two eras of turkey hunting. We'll look at goblin
Speaker 1: turkeys through the lens of legendary turkey hunter Will Premost.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in examining his passion for spring turkeys, which
Speaker 1: shaped his life, and how the timing of their resurgence
Speaker 1: gave him a limb to roost on. But the energy
Speaker 1: will swing hard when we talk with University of Georgia
Speaker 1: turkey biologist Dr Mike Chamberlain and hear his message which
Speaker 1: has been brought to the forefront of the turkey world.
Speaker 1: We're exploring the fascination and excitement of spring turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: the passion that drives innovation, and the challenges the wild
Speaker 1: turkey is facing. What the plan is to help them.
Speaker 1: We'll even here from my friend and callmaker Jason Phelps.
Speaker 1: These are all incredible folks, and I doubt you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to miss this one. This is what books are
Speaker 1: written about. This is what forms companies, this is what
Speaker 1: makes friendships. This is what God gave us to have
Speaker 1: the intensity of what he wants to have in life.
Speaker 1: That's a turkey right there, man ha ha. My name
Speaker 1: is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: a Marykins who lived their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 1: the places we explore. I've always loved turkey hunting. The
Speaker 1: emerging energy of spring, bringing the hardwood timber back to
Speaker 1: life is euphoric for the micro windows you're immersed into it.
Speaker 1: I love the charismatic flowering trees like red buds and dogwoods,
Speaker 1: and the intricate early growing plants like crested iris and mayapple,
Speaker 1: all indicators of one thing. As a kid watching VHS
Speaker 1: videos in the nineteen nineties, I remember Old Harold Knight saying,
Speaker 1: when the oak leaves are as big as a squirrels ere,
Speaker 1: the turkeys will be goblin. And there in lies the
Speaker 1: crown jewel of the spring. The reason we love it
Speaker 1: goblin turkeys. I love the audio sensation created by unseen gobbles,
Speaker 1: which enlivens the imagination. The act of turkey hunting is
Speaker 1: implanting yourself into the ancient and natural system of a
Speaker 1: spring morning. And maybe what I love most of all
Speaker 1: is the amount of roving across the landscape you've got
Speaker 1: to do to find one. This is Dr Mike Chamberlain
Speaker 1: of the University of Georgia. His passion has ignited a
Speaker 1: widespread interest in wild turkey biology, as he and others
Speaker 1: have sounded the alarm of concern specifically for turkeys in
Speaker 1: the southeastern United States. Let me know if you agree
Speaker 1: with my sentiment here. Have you ever been heartbroken, Dr
Speaker 1: chamber I have. I have a life philosophy that I
Speaker 1: would like to share with you goes way back in
Speaker 1: Newcomb lineage, and it's that you cannot trust a ground
Speaker 1: nesting bird. Okay, if you put your heart into a
Speaker 1: ground nesting bird, you're gonna get burned. Okay, My grandfather,
Speaker 1: Lewin Knewcom. He died in he was ninety four years old.
Speaker 1: He was a bird hunter, just the epitome of a
Speaker 1: Southern bird dog trainer. You know. I was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, which would have been about the time
Speaker 1: that quail, the quail demise came, and I spent my
Speaker 1: whole life bird hunting with him, and he lamented the
Speaker 1: loss of quail. My grandfather had this love of this
Speaker 1: animal and this thing that he did and invest his
Speaker 1: life in, and the last thirty five years of his life,
Speaker 1: the bird just wasn't there. And then I grew up
Speaker 1: and loved turkey hunting. And when I was in high
Speaker 1: school in Arkansas, we had a good turkey hun I
Speaker 1: learned to love it, killed turkeys, and then all that
Speaker 1: just kind of dissipated. And that's when my philosophy came.
Speaker 1: Do you think this is reasonable if you're from Arkansas? Yes,
Speaker 1: the same challenges that Arkansas has faced. There are many
Speaker 1: many agencies facing throughout the species range, not just in
Speaker 1: the Southeast, but in other parts of the country as well.
Speaker 1: I've heard it said it's kind of death by a
Speaker 1: thousand cuts in some ways, there's no smoking gun. It
Speaker 1: is death by a thousand cuts. Literally. I'm from Arkansas
Speaker 1: and our turkey populations are currently down six from our
Speaker 1: population peaks in the early two thousands, so it's easy
Speaker 1: for me to see our problem. But it has wider
Speaker 1: implications than just unfilled tags. I'm interested in how wildlife
Speaker 1: affects the trajectory of people's lives, and this goes way back,
Speaker 1: even to the very beginning. The Clovis hunters likely built
Speaker 1: their culture around populations of megafauna like wooly mammoths, fulsome
Speaker 1: hunters around bison antiquates the plains Indians tribes arose with
Speaker 1: the buffalo herds. Daniel Boone made a living off bear,
Speaker 1: deer and fur bears. My grandfather lived in the heyday
Speaker 1: of southern quail hunting, and the flutter of quail wings
Speaker 1: dominated his vacant thoughts. Wildlife can have big implications for
Speaker 1: people who live close to the land. Things beyond our
Speaker 1: controls shape our lives all the time, and in that statement,
Speaker 1: I want to make a big picture connection. So stay
Speaker 1: with me. I am a product of the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: I came into that decade age ten and left that
Speaker 1: decade at age twenty, which is an important period. What
Speaker 1: I didn't know is that I built my foundational expectations
Speaker 1: on the peak Turkey numbers of the modern era that
Speaker 1: some argue weren't sustainable. I wonder if the Clovis hunters
Speaker 1: felt the same way as wooly mammoths slipped through their fingers,
Speaker 1: would they have had enough cultural men murray to recognize
Speaker 1: the decline. I don't know. Interestingly, though, we do, and
Speaker 1: it's in large part due to outdoor media in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties that was television during that time. I was
Speaker 1: influenced by a man named Wilbur Primos from Mississippi. He
Speaker 1: lived about a hundred and five miles slightly northeast of
Speaker 1: East Fork, Mississippi, where Jerry Clower lived. Interestingly, Jerry's outdoor
Speaker 1: experience focused on coons and possums, not game animals like
Speaker 1: deer in Turkey. Why, you might ask, because they didn't
Speaker 1: have big game animals are very many of them back
Speaker 1: in Jerry's early years. However, the Turkey reintroduction efforts of
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies eighties produced the nineteen nineties and you
Speaker 1: can almost hear the Turkey eggs hatchen. It was an
Speaker 1: incredible time to be a key hunter. Sain't bad. He's
Speaker 1: got to come up with a bit to see us dead.
Speaker 1: This is Mr Will Primos. I hit her at on
Speaker 1: its chest, I did, dude. All of a sudden, we
Speaker 1: had loads of turkeys. We had an explosion of turkey
Speaker 1: call makers being successful and people rising to the top
Speaker 1: through outdoor media brands. One of those people was an energetic,
Speaker 1: black headed man with a tightly trim beard name Will Primos.
Speaker 1: So when did you start turkey hunting? You know, back
Speaker 1: you grew up with your family, your dad turkey hunter. No, uh,
Speaker 1: my my uncle's and all the family around me started
Speaker 1: turkey hunting, and so I would watch them as a
Speaker 1: young man. I caret up quay Ol hunting with my
Speaker 1: uncle us. But then the turkey started just coming everywhere
Speaker 1: there weren't they weren't They were only on the river,
Speaker 1: way back in the Misssippi River, inside the levee, and
Speaker 1: that's where most of the people turkey hunting. So finally
Speaker 1: I got out of college. Things rolling, But I was,
Speaker 1: I was. You know, the first turkeys you killed, you
Speaker 1: were deer hunting. Probably weren't you supposed to shoot them?
Speaker 1: You know? But really springtime turkey hunting that started sometime
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, late teens, and just a little
Speaker 1: fire under me, you know, I just absolutely loved it. Okay,
Speaker 1: would you tell me if this statement would be degree
Speaker 1: with this statement that by the late sixties, early seventies,
Speaker 1: or or you know, some period of time in that time,
Speaker 1: World War two had happened, Baby boomers were in their prime,
Speaker 1: they had money, they had free time. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: when a lot of the American hunting heritage. It didn't
Speaker 1: start then, but a lot of the things that kind
Speaker 1: of we have lived off of began then. I mean,
Speaker 1: just kind of with a revolution and widespread pop culture
Speaker 1: nature of knowledge about turkey hunting. I definitely think it
Speaker 1: was after the end of war two. War two almost
Speaker 1: decimated the wild turkey, and it did so because everybody
Speaker 1: was going to war, and depression was owned and in
Speaker 1: the twenties that depression was hard on the Turkey too,
Speaker 1: and people were humans killing them, humans killing them, filling
Speaker 1: up a trough with corn and getting the one end
Speaker 1: of it. And when enough turkeys got the heads and
Speaker 1: that thing breaking and what have shot gun and feeding
Speaker 1: the family. I see. So, you know, until game laws
Speaker 1: came into being and seasons came into being. You know,
Speaker 1: they really didn't have a chance. You know, we were
Speaker 1: over harvesting them, we were over killing them, and because
Speaker 1: people were trying to survive. It's important to grasp that
Speaker 1: we haven't always had a lot of turkeys. Humans show
Speaker 1: up on planet Earth and think things are normal, and frankly,
Speaker 1: we just don't live that long. But a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff happened before we got here. We can assume that
Speaker 1: pre European settlement, turkeys were thick in the eastern half
Speaker 1: of North America. Boone and his bros. Talked about incredible
Speaker 1: of flocks of turkeys in Kentucky, but the gobblers took
Speaker 1: a dive in the late eighteen hundreds to the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, but then in the seventies, eighties and nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties they resurged in the East and Midwest. Interestingly, today,
Speaker 1: wild turkey is now thriving in much of the western
Speaker 1: United States and places that historically never had turkeys. They're
Speaker 1: pretty much an invasive species, but many believe that the
Speaker 1: peak of modern turkey numbers in the East was in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. In early two thousands, but now we're
Speaker 1: seeing a decline in many areas. It's not extremely clear
Speaker 1: why other than there are a lot of reasons. Here's
Speaker 1: Dr Chamberlain. What about this idea that populations just flux
Speaker 1: up and down a lot. Is there any merit to
Speaker 1: just this is a natural thing that we're seeing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And in fact, that's the point of open discussion amongst
Speaker 1: researchers and managers is we know that when we restored turkeys,
Speaker 1: we probably overshot the point at which they were going
Speaker 1: to sustain themselves. In other words, populations were just exploding.
Speaker 1: When we were moving turkeys all over the place and
Speaker 1: releasing like the sixties, sixty seventies, eighties, even into the nineties,
Speaker 1: you were putting turkeys into vacant habitats. There were no
Speaker 1: turkeys there, Predator communities were different than habitat was better
Speaker 1: than there, weren't as many human beings then all these
Speaker 1: things that affect this bird. So populations just skyrocketed and
Speaker 1: there were literally turkeys everywhere. We are now and what
Speaker 1: I call a new normal. We are never going to
Speaker 1: go back to where we were in n which is
Speaker 1: not going to the peak of my turkey hunting career.
Speaker 1: I distinctly. Remember, you know, when I was in grad
Speaker 1: school in the early and mid nineties, I thought that
Speaker 1: was the best thing ever. There were turkeys everywhere everywhere
Speaker 1: I hunted. It was just amazing. Everywhere I went, in
Speaker 1: every state, and I was so poor I couldn't go.
Speaker 1: I hunted in Mississippi, but every public clanned. I went
Speaker 1: to the turkeys everywhere. And now I can go back
Speaker 1: to those same places and they're not there. It's not
Speaker 1: that they are just in lower abundance. There are places
Speaker 1: on those properties they're not there. And that is a
Speaker 1: social problem, a human problem, because until the day I die,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how good that was, and that was
Speaker 1: something unnatural, and that is like almost impossible for me
Speaker 1: to extinguish from my brain, you know. I mean when
Speaker 1: you think about that, where these people that had this
Speaker 1: connection to a wild animal that we love to hunt, unnatural,
Speaker 1: big populations of it. We build this culture around that,
Speaker 1: we build norms around it, we build stories around it.
Speaker 1: Of the turkey. I mean, I remember my dad talking about, man,
Speaker 1: I've heard twelve gobblers from that one spot. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget that. I'll never forget where he was. And then
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden is the bar. That's what
Speaker 1: I tell my kids about. I'm like, man, I remember
Speaker 1: when your grandpa used to sit on that ridge and
Speaker 1: here twelve turkeys. Now we maybe here one every couple
Speaker 1: of years. That's kind of confusing. It's a concern for
Speaker 1: me too, frankly, because when I was recruited into the
Speaker 1: spring turkey hunting ranks, there were turkeys everywhere, and I
Speaker 1: was successful. I could hear birds every morning, and that
Speaker 1: caused me to become addicted to it. It's like a
Speaker 1: candy or something. It's a drug, man, It's you know,
Speaker 1: you're hearing turkeys, you're chasing turkeys. They're responsive. I'd kill
Speaker 1: birds every spring and and I was just infatuated with it.
Speaker 1: And I fast forward to when my son was born
Speaker 1: and there were still a lot of turkeys around. But
Speaker 1: by the time he got to be the age of
Speaker 1: I'm going to become a fanatical turkey hunter like my dad.
Speaker 1: Where we live, there just weren't that many turkeys, and
Speaker 1: there had been ten years before. And as it turned out,
Speaker 1: Austin was not a fanatical turkey hunter like I am.
Speaker 1: He'd do it and he enjoyed it, but he didn't
Speaker 1: have the opportunities that you and I had to experience that,
Speaker 1: And so he could not reflect back on a day
Speaker 1: when you heard ten birds standing in one spot. So
Speaker 1: what he grew up knowing was that turkey hunting was
Speaker 1: a lot of times you wouldn't hear anything. And so
Speaker 1: his competing interest were deer hunts where he would see
Speaker 1: dear every time he went he was successful, duck hunting,
Speaker 1: goose hunting where he was successful, and it pulled his
Speaker 1: interest away from this turkey hunt. One thing is for sure.
Speaker 1: Humans gravitate towards success. This has kept us alive as
Speaker 1: a species. Hunting turkey is most fun when accompanied by
Speaker 1: reasonable odds of success, which produces engagement and excitement, which
Speaker 1: helps produce something else, passion, which then produces something else, innovation.
Speaker 1: I'm certain this is an ancient chain of events. The
Speaker 1: resurgence of the wild turkey was an exciting time to
Speaker 1: be a hunter. I'm on shoot him that minute, you
Speaker 1: got him? Yeah, okay, true, my old twenty double. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's that's the man right there. Don't tell you what
Speaker 1: this is what this passion, this intensity, This is what
Speaker 1: books are written about. This is what forms cutanies. This
Speaker 1: is what makes friendships. This is what God gave us
Speaker 1: to to have the intensity of what he wanted us
Speaker 1: to have in life. That's a turkey right there, man,
Speaker 1: that's in Alabama, Mississippi state line, swamp turkey, that's right.
Speaker 1: And that would have been the time frame late sixties,
Speaker 1: early seventies when spring turkey hunting being a sport, a
Speaker 1: thing that people mastered and perfected and called these birds
Speaker 1: not just bushwhacked birds. That's kind of when it came
Speaker 1: alive with calls, and would you agree with us? It
Speaker 1: came alot a lot, but there are some old timers.
Speaker 1: The first box call was patented in eighteen nineties seven
Speaker 1: by a guy named Gibson from Arkansas, and a lady
Speaker 1: gave me an actual original Gibson which I donated to
Speaker 1: the Natural Turkey Federation Museum. Designed about like our box calls.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of similarities, but it's a very
Speaker 1: primitive piece. Tinkers from seven forward learned so much changed
Speaker 1: the wood. Put a spring under the lid around the
Speaker 1: screw to balance the lid. But there were was a
Speaker 1: lot you're you're you're saying about these people that really
Speaker 1: it took fire people sitting down, putting their back into
Speaker 1: the tree, and calling up a turkey. In the late
Speaker 1: sixties seventies, there's a lot of that, but there was
Speaker 1: a lot of it in the nineteen hunt slight thing
Speaker 1: can't join about in the Ozarks. People who understood it,
Speaker 1: people who learned to yelp on a on a piece
Speaker 1: of a leaf, a green leaf. In Alabama, they were
Speaker 1: experiment with mouth calls. The story that I best I
Speaker 1: could figure out A guy from Alabama, from Andalusia, Alabama,
Speaker 1: was in New Orleans and he was walking by a
Speaker 1: guy who was selling trinkets on the corner, and one
Speaker 1: of the trinkets was a teeny tiny bird call. It
Speaker 1: was a teeny tiny diaphragm as big as your thumbnail,
Speaker 1: and the lotok guy would put in his mouth and
Speaker 1: make a little bird sounds. And that guy stopped and
Speaker 1: heard that, and he goes, I think I can make
Speaker 1: a thing yell. So he bought some him and started
Speaker 1: experimenting with it. And later that's supposedly where some of
Speaker 1: the beginnings of the mouth called really came about. Hands
Speaker 1: free passion fuels innovation, whether making a new style of
Speaker 1: stone point or developing projectiles slinging weaponry like adeladdles and bows.
Speaker 1: The primary success of the human species has been using
Speaker 1: natural materials as two rules. As humans had access to
Speaker 1: more tools, materials, and time, people started figuring out ways
Speaker 1: to replicate the sound of a hind turkey, which is
Speaker 1: the siren call the Achilles heel of the greatest of
Speaker 1: game birds, the gobbler turkey. Jason Phelps is the chief
Speaker 1: call maker and founder of Phelps Game Calls. I want
Speaker 1: to hear him nerd out on the development of the
Speaker 1: box call and the innovation they're in on record to
Speaker 1: the earliest that we know, Henry Gibson had the Gibson
Speaker 1: box call patented back in I believe he held half
Speaker 1: of the patent, and then there was a fella named
Speaker 1: John Body who many speculator he was maybe the financial
Speaker 1: backer as they kind of took this endeavor on. Henry
Speaker 1: Gibson patented the idea, but he didn't patent any of
Speaker 1: the specifications or any of like the important details, and
Speaker 1: so why he patented the idea. It really let everybody
Speaker 1: else go and make calls. It's pretty crazy when you
Speaker 1: look at the original patent drawings of the Henry Gibson call.
Speaker 1: It looks identical to what you would find today in
Speaker 1: today's box called. It has been improved upon, but it's very,
Speaker 1: very similar to what you see as a box call
Speaker 1: today is what they were producing back in you know,
Speaker 1: the the late eighteen hundreds. I can understand how a diaphragm,
Speaker 1: a mouth diaphragm call with a piece of latex on
Speaker 1: it can replicate the sound of a turkey as you
Speaker 1: push air through the soft tissues of your tongue and
Speaker 1: mouth over this latex read and it, you know, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a turkey. What's kind of bizarre when you
Speaker 1: think about humans just having this natural material trying to
Speaker 1: imitate a turkey that you would ever dream that you
Speaker 1: could take two pieces of wood and make it sound
Speaker 1: like the soft flesh of a turkey. How do we
Speaker 1: get the sound out of a box call that sounds
Speaker 1: so good? Yeah? And I always kind of wonder the
Speaker 1: same thing, you know, who was the first person and
Speaker 1: how did they come across this? And if if these
Speaker 1: things were never invented, would I be able to like
Speaker 1: think of it or hear that sound? And wood on
Speaker 1: wood makes a little bit of sense because we're, you know,
Speaker 1: in our day to day lives. You know, whether it's
Speaker 1: a wood drawer, a cabinet, or framing for a house.
Speaker 1: You know, wood out in nature, I imagine somebody had
Speaker 1: taken fairly dry wood of different sizes and and it
Speaker 1: replicated the sounds of a turkey, or it was similar
Speaker 1: or close enough where you know, maybe they went back
Speaker 1: and rEFInd it, but you know, you advanced today. Kind
Speaker 1: of what we're doing is it's it's all acoustical. We're
Speaker 1: taking very specific woods, typically a harder, heavier wood for
Speaker 1: your paddle, and then you've got maybe a lighter, slightly
Speaker 1: less dense wood for your your base, and by hallowing
Speaker 1: out the center and creating your two walls, what we're
Speaker 1: doing is is we run that paddle across one of
Speaker 1: the walls. We're forcing it to vibrate. And that's why
Speaker 1: the chalk is used. We need those two calls, that
Speaker 1: coefficient of friction to kind of go up. We want
Speaker 1: those two materials to kind of bite against each other.
Speaker 1: The reason all of these paddles, you know, all the
Speaker 1: way from Gibson's paddle all the way to what we're
Speaker 1: using now have a have a radius on them. And
Speaker 1: what that does is is you're is you're swiping that
Speaker 1: paddle across one of the walls of the bottom of
Speaker 1: the box. At one point you imagine you're you're writing
Speaker 1: up on the wall, and then once you're over halfway,
Speaker 1: you're starting to write down the back side of the wall,
Speaker 1: and that idea gives us our high note going in.
Speaker 1: And then as you start to break down the back side,
Speaker 1: you get that break over and you get the second
Speaker 1: part of a hen yell. Jason, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is the right platform to tell them about the
Speaker 1: call that you and I are working on together, the
Speaker 1: Gary Nucomb black panther scream call that we're making. Now.
Speaker 1: My dad swears that he can tell the difference in
Speaker 1: a black panther and a regular panther by just the
Speaker 1: way they scream in the dark. Okay, so there's a difference.
Speaker 1: He has ears that can can dissect the difference we
Speaker 1: can differentiate between the two colors. I'm gonna move that
Speaker 1: to the top of the priority list on calls that
Speaker 1: need to be designed. When you think of humans as
Speaker 1: natural predators on the landscape, which we've been in North
Speaker 1: America for a minimum of fifteen thousand years, probably longer
Speaker 1: our participation in the ancient hunt is no less legitimate
Speaker 1: than a bobcat. However, the spark of consciousness, our ability
Speaker 1: for self reflection as reasoning predators, our ability to make
Speaker 1: tools has fueled creative strategies like squeaking chalked wood together
Speaker 1: to make a turkey sound, which is pretty bizarre. The
Speaker 1: only predator that impresses me more in the innovation department
Speaker 1: is the great horned owl. Dr Chamberlain exposed this story
Speaker 1: to many of us. Weighing in and around three pounds.
Speaker 1: These gritty little suckers target goblin turkeys on the limb
Speaker 1: and the pre dawned darkness and hit them flying it
Speaker 1: speeds up to forty miles per hour, knocking them out
Speaker 1: of trees and breaking their necks. Dad Gummant, those great
Speaker 1: horned owls are some good turkey hunters. Here is Mr
Speaker 1: Will talking about that predatory innovation. I was born into
Speaker 1: a restaurant family. We had five restaurants, so I had
Speaker 1: to keep doing that. As I figured out how to
Speaker 1: grow an outdoor hunting primarily a game call and later
Speaker 1: many other products how to do that. There was no money,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't I couldn't sell enough calls to pay
Speaker 1: me and somebody else to help run the place or
Speaker 1: make the calls or whatever. So I didn't quit my
Speaker 1: work until nineteen. I started the company in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: so I didn't I didn't quit having a full time
Speaker 1: job until nineteen. So how old would you have been
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy In nineteen seventy six, I would have been,
Speaker 1: what twenty four years old? So you started making turkey
Speaker 1: calls on your four years old? I started selling them,
Speaker 1: selling them. Yeah. I made them for me, for others,
Speaker 1: for friends. So a friend of mine, Buck Dearman, he
Speaker 1: challenged me to make a mouth call because he loved
Speaker 1: these mouth calls, but they would fall apart on him.
Speaker 1: And so I said, I don't know to make a
Speaker 1: turkey call, and so he says, yes, you do here,
Speaker 1: And so I just took it apart and looked at it.
Speaker 1: This is a diaphragm call. It was a staggered read
Speaker 1: had the reads that totally were separated by about a
Speaker 1: sixteenth of an inch. They didn't touch, which created a
Speaker 1: lot of rasp and had some different pluses to them
Speaker 1: that other calls that weren't stack did. And that was
Speaker 1: back before anybody ever did that. I mean some people
Speaker 1: in in Clarksdale were doing it. Lady by the name
Speaker 1: of Eleanor Wrestler and another guy named rosy Dantone were
Speaker 1: doing it. Um. They were handmaking them with lead. Usually
Speaker 1: had a lead frame, that's what they used back then.
Speaker 1: And they were malleable and you could take a we
Speaker 1: call them rubbers back then. I think they call them
Speaker 1: condoms and prophylactics. To David, we called them rubbers. And
Speaker 1: you couldn't buy them over the counter. You couldn't go
Speaker 1: up to a drug store and buy them. You primarily
Speaker 1: had to buy them from a coin operated machine at
Speaker 1: the service station. So you buy them and we'd slice
Speaker 1: them up and try to if somebody if they were lubricated,
Speaker 1: you had to wash them off and figure it out
Speaker 1: and drew them rye and then how to slice them.
Speaker 1: And we finally figured out how to slice them, and
Speaker 1: that's done with a paper cutter. Was much more efficient. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I took the call apart for for buck and took
Speaker 1: some shears and cut some Like then, beer cans were
Speaker 1: made from ten they weren't aluminum, and you cut the
Speaker 1: de gum thing up and you tried to make a
Speaker 1: horseshoe out of it and try to how to put
Speaker 1: it together and that kind of thing. And I figured
Speaker 1: a way finally use aluminum sheets of aluminum, and I
Speaker 1: had a sledge hammer, and I had a machinist to
Speaker 1: make me a die that could punch out the center
Speaker 1: of it. And then the next step was the outside
Speaker 1: of it. And I'd sit on in my car board
Speaker 1: on the concrete floor and put the aluminium strip in
Speaker 1: there and take a sledgehammer and hit it. We still
Speaker 1: have that tool at the office, that original tool that
Speaker 1: I would now so people were doing a similar thing
Speaker 1: like you. Oh yeah, So primarily quite a good boy
Speaker 1: was just getting going Ben Lee. I'm not sure he
Speaker 1: even started back when I was hand making him a pins.
Speaker 1: Wood was already around, and Old was a big call
Speaker 1: company at the top, primarily duck calls. But I was
Speaker 1: just oblivious to most of that. I just I didn't
Speaker 1: know what. You weren't thinking I'm going to build a company,
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And I don't one thinking I was gonna
Speaker 1: build a company. And I wasn't in that world. Natural
Speaker 1: Tricky Federation didn't start till seventy five, I think it was,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a way to have like minded people
Speaker 1: come together and trade ideas and whatever. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a cottage industry in different places. But anyway, I finally
Speaker 1: figured out how to make this call for Buck, and
Speaker 1: he loved it, and I perfected a double read, and
Speaker 1: one year I made him all summer long, and I
Speaker 1: took him to a show that spring and I sold out,
Speaker 1: and I said, holy chross. I went to the sporting
Speaker 1: goods store and I had them all in a glass jar.
Speaker 1: People come and pick one out and and pay for it.
Speaker 1: I'd get my money. What did you get for a
Speaker 1: turkey call back in those days? Eight dollars? It's not
Speaker 1: much different that now. Well, later on my double went
Speaker 1: to nineteen. They were handmade, and I wanted to stop
Speaker 1: the demand, but it seemed like the demand just grew.
Speaker 1: But one day a guy came in there and grabbed
Speaker 1: a car in the sport and good story here in
Speaker 1: town and put it in his mouth. He helped on it,
Speaker 1: didn't like it and put it back in the jar.
Speaker 1: And the guy called me said, you gotta come get
Speaker 1: all these. We don't know which one was in his mouth.
Speaker 1: Here's Jason Phelps talking about Mr Will, Jason, You're a
Speaker 1: call maker and have been for a good portion of
Speaker 1: your life. You know when you talk about these kind
Speaker 1: of legendary call makers throughout the years, I mean, it
Speaker 1: feels like Will Primos would fit inside of that. And
Speaker 1: I know that call makers build off each other. Even
Speaker 1: when Mr Will tells his story like he didn't do
Speaker 1: this on his own, you know, I mean there were
Speaker 1: people before him. I think you you would fit into
Speaker 1: that lineage of great call makers. What do you have
Speaker 1: to say about somebody like Will? Growing up, I started
Speaker 1: out in a rifle hunting family, you know, and so
Speaker 1: using calls was never really something that that we were into.
Speaker 1: We didn't need it to hard, you know, kill game
Speaker 1: out here and fill the freezers. And so as I
Speaker 1: got more into it and wanted to continue to challenge myself, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Truth series and Will was really kind
Speaker 1: of was everything there. You know, I couldn't wait for
Speaker 1: the New Truth Turkey series to come out, and then
Speaker 1: as soon as the Elk series went out, you know,
Speaker 1: I would go out and grab it, and you know
Speaker 1: it was really kind of looking up the Will and
Speaker 1: everything he was doing, and then kind of the class
Speaker 1: act that he was. I don't idolize a whole lot
Speaker 1: of guys, but he was definitely one of those guys
Speaker 1: I looked up to because you know, he seemed to
Speaker 1: be at the top of the game, is innovative as
Speaker 1: it as it got, and then just you know, super
Speaker 1: good guys. So I mean, I growing up the way
Speaker 1: before I ever started making calls, you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, Will was one of those guys I looked
Speaker 1: up to, and you know still do. Here's Mr Will
Speaker 1: with more of his story and how it coincided with
Speaker 1: a vast change in Turkey hunting strategy. When I started
Speaker 1: trying to market my calls, I had a dealer here,
Speaker 1: a guy from Pennsylvania came down your hunting bought from
Speaker 1: college and took him back. Told a dealer in Pennsylvania's
Speaker 1: had a dealer in Pennsylvania, and add a dealer down
Speaker 1: here as my first two dealers. So when I get
Speaker 1: time off from the restaurants, I traveled the state of
Speaker 1: Mississippi and got call on different sporting goods stores. So
Speaker 1: I went to Greenville, Mississippi, which is in the Delta
Speaker 1: on the Mississippi River north of here, and Clyde McGee.
Speaker 1: I went in there and introduced myself to him. The
Speaker 1: great guy, told him what I was trying to do,
Speaker 1: show him my calls, and I said, here, listen to this.
Speaker 1: This was actually during turkey season and I just killed
Speaker 1: a turkey and I had a little recorder and these
Speaker 1: aren't these aren't digital. This is the cascess set tape
Speaker 1: recorder and I just put it on the ground, called
Speaker 1: the turkey up I think on the I remember correctly.
Speaker 1: I cackled at the turkey eleven times and finally got
Speaker 1: the turkey up there and didn't take long and killed him.
Speaker 1: I was just hammering him, just shot the turkey. This
Speaker 1: old man was sitting there in the store. I got
Speaker 1: through classes man as an unbelievable hunt. That man said
Speaker 1: you called too much and you called to loud and
Speaker 1: looked at that man. I said, sir, that turkey's dead.
Speaker 1: So you know, the aggressiveness, cutting and running is what
Speaker 1: it became to be known as started during that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a new a new age turkey, ou see.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm younger than you, but I very much
Speaker 1: don't know what you mean by the old timer way
Speaker 1: yelping on a box can sitting there. The really, really
Speaker 1: good turkey owners know how to involve both, and the
Speaker 1: best turkey collars are those that have good ears and
Speaker 1: can hear what they're saying, just like a musician that
Speaker 1: has good ears and he can hear all the notes
Speaker 1: and it doesn't miss anything. I'm missing a lot of
Speaker 1: high notes now I'll be seventy in three weeks. But
Speaker 1: those that are the best, you can hear what he's doing,
Speaker 1: and he can change what he's doing in his mouth
Speaker 1: to give you the sound that he wants. But back
Speaker 1: to the two styles, You've got to be able to
Speaker 1: do both, to know when the appropriate time, when you
Speaker 1: think you know, you never know. You just think you know,
Speaker 1: you think this might be a good opportunity to be quiet,
Speaker 1: to not yelping him for ten minutes or thirty minutes whatever.
Speaker 1: Last year, were you up to the turkey one time
Speaker 1: and he gobbled and he showed up two hours later.
Speaker 1: We never said another word. Guy missed him, but you know,
Speaker 1: and he didn't gobbleble one more time. But that was
Speaker 1: an afternoon. And you've got to feel like you can
Speaker 1: play the game you're living in their world. They don't
Speaker 1: have to go anywhere. They don't have to go to
Speaker 1: the dentist, they don't have to do anything, they have
Speaker 1: no appointments. They're making a living, staying alive, and they
Speaker 1: stay alive with their eyes and their ears. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: think they can smell me. Success is an interesting and
Speaker 1: complex phenomena. It favors the hard working, the discipline, those
Speaker 1: with passion, the focused, but it also favors those who
Speaker 1: come along at the right time. It's interesting and not
Speaker 1: hard to see that the resurgence of the wild turkey
Speaker 1: was the fodder of innovation in turkey hunting. I would
Speaker 1: say I would describe you as a contestsur of turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: Guys like you and some other's interpreted the world for
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say us through your media, through your work,
Speaker 1: through your connection to the hunting industry. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's some people that just came along at the right time,
Speaker 1: and that's an awesome thing to have happened. And you
Speaker 1: came along at the right time and had a whole
Speaker 1: lot of things going for you. But I would describe
Speaker 1: your passion, your ability to articulate what's going on, and
Speaker 1: mainly just the passion that comes through just through watching
Speaker 1: videos you've interpreted turkey hunting for for me for sure,
Speaker 1: just like this has value. And I know the store
Speaker 1: bought answer of why turkey hunting why we love it
Speaker 1: so much? But I want to hear you tell me
Speaker 1: what it is about turkey hunting that is is so
Speaker 1: special because it is well, You've said a lot of
Speaker 1: things that I want to go back and talk about.
Speaker 1: First off, I appreciate what you're saying. In no way,
Speaker 1: shape or form in myself for any of the team
Speaker 1: set out to create what we did, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: the effect we were having on so many people. We
Speaker 1: were part of their living room, and we were clean
Speaker 1: about it. We didn't cuss. We we we love the Lord.
Speaker 1: I'm a Christian and I want to portray that and
Speaker 1: I want to live that life and I want to
Speaker 1: make him proud, and I want to make my mom
Speaker 1: and my daddy proud. My daddy is a World War
Speaker 1: two vette who's still living. He was a navigator in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Theater. So those things you said about connecting
Speaker 1: with those people like yourself, so many people have expressed that,
Speaker 1: and you're right. Timing is huge, and I challenge everybody
Speaker 1: to figure out what might be affecting them. That's timing related.
Speaker 1: There's a book called Outliers written by Malcolm Gladwick. He's
Speaker 1: a famous author, and he goes into the depth of
Speaker 1: why somebody can be an outlier. I was described by
Speaker 1: this person as being an outlier, so he gave me
Speaker 1: the book. Rockefeller not for monetary reasons, but when he
Speaker 1: was born he was able to do what he did.
Speaker 1: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs different people born at a certain
Speaker 1: time that if they had been born at any other time,
Speaker 1: would not have been able to do what they did.
Speaker 1: So because of when I was born, when Buck inspired
Speaker 1: me to make the Turkey calls, there were things available
Speaker 1: to me that hadn't been available to somebody years past,
Speaker 1: or that we're gonna be gone. A perfect example is
Speaker 1: the audio cassette tape we rode right in our car.
Speaker 1: This an audio cassette tape. So in nineteen to no
Speaker 1: Spring of eighty three I hired a guy to follow
Speaker 1: me around in the woods with a big Swedish Nagagar
Speaker 1: recorder two big wheels. He had to open it up
Speaker 1: and set the weig wheels on there and had a
Speaker 1: parabolic mite and he recorded me calling the turkey, killing
Speaker 1: turkey and running into Turkey. Is that what you showed
Speaker 1: the guys that the nod that went on a little
Speaker 1: you did that on a little walkman or something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So I did that and produced the tape. Well,
Speaker 1: that was unbelievable. That was available to me, and I
Speaker 1: fought it up to make the cassette tape and then
Speaker 1: to teach people how to use the circuit call. Very organized,
Speaker 1: I can teach as a gift. So I took it
Speaker 1: and organize it. I wrote it, and I taught everybody
Speaker 1: how to how to begin to make how to put
Speaker 1: a mouth call on the mouth, how to begin to
Speaker 1: make a say down, how how to begin to put
Speaker 1: it all together. It's all very easy. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: that tape was a huge success. I couldn't keep them
Speaker 1: in stop what year was with and so then we
Speaker 1: keep going along, and all of a sudden, about eighty
Speaker 1: five or eighty six or so, you could go to
Speaker 1: Walmart and for over a thousand dollars you could buy
Speaker 1: a video camera and go and video your kids out
Speaker 1: in the backyard playing and watch it. Immediately. It was
Speaker 1: no longer sending it off to have it developed and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff with an eight millimeter camera
Speaker 1: or whatever. So and that was incredible, and that was incredible.
Speaker 1: Here I am trying to figure out how to market promos.
Speaker 1: And I believe the year was nineteen eighty five because
Speaker 1: that was the year the National Wild Turkey Federation had
Speaker 1: their convention in New Orleans. I drove to New Orleans
Speaker 1: how to booth, and the guy next to me and
Speaker 1: with Marvin Kellysworth. He was an architect from Alabama and
Speaker 1: he loved turkey in and he bought him one of
Speaker 1: them video cameras. And he yelped up a turkey and
Speaker 1: at a loading site where they had logging woods and
Speaker 1: the loading side and he was backed up against some
Speaker 1: of them pilot up trash logs, and he yelped up
Speaker 1: this turkey and killed it on tape. And he was
Speaker 1: playing that on his TV. And the line was hundreds deep.
Speaker 1: They couldn't get to me if they really wanted to.
Speaker 1: But yet I had a had a built in crowd.
Speaker 1: When he'd have a break, I'd be able to talk
Speaker 1: about my stuff. And so I went, holy r, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get me a video camera. I know how
Speaker 1: I know how to market Primos. About the same time
Speaker 1: I read a book called Radical Marketing, Unbelievable Stories about
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead, about Harley Davidson and how they radically marketed.
Speaker 1: They couldn't just go buy print ads. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any money. How did they do it? So got the
Speaker 1: video cameras, had Boyd Burrow, who worked for me at
Speaker 1: the time. We produced the first tape in nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: six and it was called Spring Turkey On with Primos
Speaker 1: and the Southern Boys. What a name and they're horrible,
Speaker 1: And we had two hunts on it and had had
Speaker 1: some success. It was VHS. We sold them to sporting
Speaker 1: goods stores for forty four dollars and ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: and they rented him like blockbusts. That's the way it
Speaker 1: was done. The next year I had met Ronnie Kusz strictly.
Speaker 1: He was working in Rex supporting goods in Natchez, down south,
Speaker 1: and he had sent me a recording of some stuff
Speaker 1: he had done, not video wise, but otherwise. I drove
Speaker 1: down there and went and sold him some more calls
Speaker 1: he was buying him already, And talked to him and said,
Speaker 1: you're come to work for me. Next thing I know
Speaker 1: he quit Rex. I bought him a truck and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm in the restaurant business. I can't afford this game
Speaker 1: call company. I'm gonna keep working in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1: I might can go hunting, I might not can go hunt,
Speaker 1: But I want you to take anybody that a go friends, family,
Speaker 1: anybody that let you hunt on land, public land, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Just go hunt. They were to make a couple of
Speaker 1: hunts because recorded twelve incredible hunts, me on some of
Speaker 1: them one spring. In one spring, this original video was
Speaker 1: the beginning of a massive success on many levels. It
Speaker 1: taught a lot of us how to hunt gobblers. It
Speaker 1: brought the excitement of turkey hunting into our houses in
Speaker 1: Our lead interpreter of the experience was Mr Will Primost.
Speaker 1: His passion, excitement, intelligence and authenticity were hard to resist.
Speaker 1: And the rest is history. This golden era of wild
Speaker 1: turkey hunting put a new cultural value on hunting turkeys,
Speaker 1: and as we know, that value creates an incentive for
Speaker 1: people to protect turkeys. Never forget this equation. Hunting creates
Speaker 1: incentive which creates protection. It was also during this time
Speaker 1: that the National Wild Turkey Federation came to maturity. It
Speaker 1: was started in nineteen seventy three, but the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: produced vast expansion of the organization which is designed to
Speaker 1: protect turkeys and habitat, and they've done an incredible job.
Speaker 1: As great as it's been talking about the glory days,
Speaker 1: let's talk about modern times because the last twenty years
Speaker 1: have seen downturns and turkey populations in many places. And
Speaker 1: this isn't all gloom and doom, but because we've still
Speaker 1: got a lot of turkeys, and we've still got way
Speaker 1: more than we had in some other periods of this country.
Speaker 1: But the hunting community is now on red alert. Here's
Speaker 1: Dr Chamberlain breaking it down. Describe for me from the
Speaker 1: research that you have about the decline of turkeys in
Speaker 1: the Southeast, how do we quantitatively know that? Okay, so basically,
Speaker 1: state agencies in the South, not all, but most of
Speaker 1: them use poults observe per hen in the summer, poults
Speaker 1: being young turkeys, as a proxy for production. For many decades,
Speaker 1: we've always thought that three poults per hen on average
Speaker 1: would be a population that's increasing. Two pouls per hen
Speaker 1: would be a population that can just sustain itself, and
Speaker 1: anything less than two pouls per hen is a declining
Speaker 1: and this is them raising that pulp to maturity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: until they're large, you know, half the size of the
Speaker 1: adults in the summer. You don't want to talk about.
Speaker 1: You see a brood flock, if you will, where you've
Speaker 1: got like four or five hens and twenty young turkeys
Speaker 1: that were hatched that summer. Now they're twice the size
Speaker 1: of batam rooster or something. So at that point their
Speaker 1: survival is and so hen turkey would have a clutch
Speaker 1: of ten ten twelve. Yeah, So I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: even calculating her losing sevent her clutch. And that's good.
Speaker 1: We thought it was sustainable. And what you've seen over
Speaker 1: the past twenty years, we've seen declining productivity as measured
Speaker 1: by pulse observed per hen across the southeast, not in
Speaker 1: one state, all the states. Can I ask you something
Speaker 1: about pults observed just before we go any further. How
Speaker 1: do we know that's not anecdotal? Is it just the
Speaker 1: best we can do? I guess in some ways, yes,
Speaker 1: it is the best we can do, and it's fraught
Speaker 1: with biases. It's the same people observing birds in the
Speaker 1: same places every year. It's not distributed to broadly across
Speaker 1: states in the way it should be, but it's about
Speaker 1: the best we have at the scale at which agencies
Speaker 1: managed turkeys, which is a state level, you know, or
Speaker 1: a geographic region within a state. So what we've seen
Speaker 1: are these long term, precipitous declines in production, slow enough
Speaker 1: to where if you looked from one year to the next,
Speaker 1: it's not that big of a deal. But when you
Speaker 1: look across twenty years, it's a linear trend down. Boy,
Speaker 1: those are the tough ones. Yes, and it was right
Speaker 1: under our nose. And I say we because I take
Speaker 1: partial blame for this. I've been in this game a
Speaker 1: long time. I've studied this bird twenty five years, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying attention to those trends as they were unfolding,
Speaker 1: because when you just looked across three or four or
Speaker 1: five years, it wasn't that big of a deal. You know,
Speaker 1: you see noise and data up and down, up and down,
Speaker 1: up and down, but but the trend is down. And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, around two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: myself and my students presented some data to the agencies
Speaker 1: using what they had provided us, and it showed these
Speaker 1: dramatic declines and production. At the same time, you've seen
Speaker 1: either increasing harvest, stable harvest, or decreasing harvest, depending on
Speaker 1: the state. So in other words, in some cases we
Speaker 1: were seeing declines in production and increases in harvest. Well,
Speaker 1: the basic math doesn't add up. You know, at some
Speaker 1: point that bubble has to pop. And of course when
Speaker 1: when US turkey hunters here fewer birds, see fewer birds,
Speaker 1: and kill fewer birds. Were concerned. And that's where you
Speaker 1: are right now with much of the Southeast, and it
Speaker 1: has agencies trying to identify what's going on and then
Speaker 1: how to address it. Sometimes all the talk about turkey decline,
Speaker 1: which is being talked about a lot, can be confusing.
Speaker 1: I hoped to get Dr Chamberlain to narrow it down
Speaker 1: to the top five culprits of turkey decline in the Southeast.
Speaker 1: Here's what he said. Number one is habitat. If you
Speaker 1: look across the species range, you can find situations where
Speaker 1: there's been not only a loss of habitat, it's just
Speaker 1: gone habitat that's capable of supporting farm turning into a walmart. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you've got lost where it's just disappeared. You have
Speaker 1: conversion of habitats. So, for instance, the loss of hardwood
Speaker 1: forest and it being replaced with pine dominated forest. Turkeys
Speaker 1: in the east are inextricably linked to hardwood forest. We
Speaker 1: also seen declines in habitat quality. So to your point,
Speaker 1: this field used to be grazed and kept it in
Speaker 1: what's considered good brood habitat, and that farm was sold
Speaker 1: and it was planted to pine trees, or it was
Speaker 1: converted to a fruit orchard or whatever. You can come
Speaker 1: up with a scenario. So if you look at the
Speaker 1: landscape from a thirty thousand foot view, you see that
Speaker 1: in the past few decades there's less habitat, there's poor
Speaker 1: quality habitat, and there's conversion of habitat, and none of
Speaker 1: that has benefited the bird. And you can go to
Speaker 1: other areas. You can go out to Rio country, you
Speaker 1: can go to Miriam's country. You can find this anywhere
Speaker 1: you go. If you go to South Florida, you see
Speaker 1: it magnified to the degree with Osceola's because Florida is
Speaker 1: such a destination stay for everything. So how tat would
Speaker 1: be that in habitat fragmentation to fragmentation at good point.
Speaker 1: By fragmenting habitats with roads and power lines and rights
Speaker 1: of way, we've made habitat that's better for predators than turkeys,
Speaker 1: and that very likely is influencing the increased predation rates
Speaker 1: that we've seen. Number two is confounded by habitat, and
Speaker 1: that's predation we have seen. If you look across the
Speaker 1: United States and North American general, we've seen obvious changes
Speaker 1: in the distribution and abundance of predators that would affect turkeys,
Speaker 1: the smaller carnivores. You know, you're a raccoon hunter. I
Speaker 1: can take you to properties here locally that you would
Speaker 1: run your dogs to death trying to treat all the
Speaker 1: raccoons on these properties. To a coon hunter, that sounds
Speaker 1: pretty good. Turkey hunter, it sounds terrible. Yeah. Species like
Speaker 1: coyotes that were not even historically present in the Southeast
Speaker 1: now are superabundant. There's no fur trade, as you know,
Speaker 1: so species like bobcats and raccoons there's no market for
Speaker 1: them anymore, or there are not trappers being recruited into
Speaker 1: the trapping ranks. So all of that points to these
Speaker 1: changes in predator abundance and density and then if you
Speaker 1: look at many species that have increased in abundance, and
Speaker 1: we know it's such as raptors, owls, hawks that affect
Speaker 1: turkeys as well. Uh species that are prominent nest predators,
Speaker 1: like rat snakes that benefit from a thicker, brushier understory
Speaker 1: in the forest. All of these things, fragmentation species like
Speaker 1: rat snakes, for instance, that hunt the long edges, and
Speaker 1: they're extremely effective along edges, they're not as effective in
Speaker 1: the interior of a stand. You put all that together
Speaker 1: and in the habitat confounds the predation issues. And so
Speaker 1: what we've seen is we are not producing as many
Speaker 1: turkeys because the predation rate on the nest is higher
Speaker 1: than it was historically. Twenty years ago, nest that hatched
Speaker 1: had a better survival rate than they do now. We
Speaker 1: even the few that hatched in our study populations, most
Speaker 1: of them fail before they're a month old. So the
Speaker 1: predation and habitat go hand in hand. Any idea, what
Speaker 1: number three is, It's another predator issue, but undoubtedly the
Speaker 1: most sneaky predator of all time. Number one is habitat
Speaker 1: related issues. Number two is predation, which is connected to habitat.
Speaker 1: What's number three harvest. We've got a bird that we
Speaker 1: hunt primarily during their breeding season, and we've known for
Speaker 1: year decades that harvest matters. It matters when you kill
Speaker 1: the birds, and it matters the rate at which you
Speaker 1: harvest them. Research decades ago suggested that you need to
Speaker 1: harvest your birds starting at a certain time, that being
Speaker 1: about when nesting starts, and you need to kill a
Speaker 1: conservative say thirty percent or less of your tim's in
Speaker 1: a population. The problem with all of that is those
Speaker 1: recommendations were predicated on what was happening in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and we've already talked about since nineteen eighties, we've seen
Speaker 1: a dramatic decline in production. We're not making as many birds,
Speaker 1: So the paradigm that has guided harvest for this bird
Speaker 1: is outdated, and science is showing that we're killing a
Speaker 1: lot of males in some of our populations were killing
Speaker 1: well over. If that's the case, then it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1: Given the production, again predicated under where we know we
Speaker 1: are as a new normal, the harvest thinking, if you will,
Speaker 1: the mindset that we've used historically, it's just not going
Speaker 1: to work anymore. And that's why so these liberal turkey
Speaker 1: bag limits, Like in some places you can kill five.
Speaker 1: I remember there was a time in Arkansas you'd kill three.
Speaker 1: Now you can kill two. I mean, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to dial that back in. Yeah, and you see a
Speaker 1: lot of agencies that are already doing that. Because I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to advocate for the agencies, but the bottom
Speaker 1: line is, as a turkey hunter, you need to understand
Speaker 1: that agencies can only control harvest at a spatial scale
Speaker 1: that's commensurate with the bird. In other words, they can
Speaker 1: manage their state lands anyway they want, and it's still
Speaker 1: only impacts of time, any percentage of the turkeys on
Speaker 1: the landscape understood. But when they change harvest frameworks and
Speaker 1: they change the number of birds that are being killed,
Speaker 1: they can change that at a state level, and that's
Speaker 1: what they're charged with managing. So that's unfortunately harvest is
Speaker 1: often what agencies. What's the biggest level we've got exact?
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're talking about we want more turkeys
Speaker 1: on the landscape and we're killing turkeys, the way that
Speaker 1: we can have for sure more turkeys on the landscape
Speaker 1: is for us to kill less. Yeah. I'm dying to
Speaker 1: know what number four is what's number four? I see
Speaker 1: disease being problematic. The problem with diseases we don't understand
Speaker 1: the complexity of disease issues on the landscape because a
Speaker 1: sick bird dies and gets eaten and we don't know
Speaker 1: they're there. But what you're seeing, yeah, what you're seeing
Speaker 1: now is some emerging disease issues in parts of the
Speaker 1: country where we have these viruses and we have things
Speaker 1: that are affecting turkeys, and we don't understand how. We
Speaker 1: just know the birds are sick or that they're carrying
Speaker 1: the virus. Some of these viruses do have potential to
Speaker 1: affect reproduction, we just don't understand the magnitude of that effect.
Speaker 1: And it's such a hard question to get at at
Speaker 1: a broad scale. And what we're seeing through disease testing
Speaker 1: is you may have a high prevalence of a particular
Speaker 1: virus in certain areas and not in other areas. So
Speaker 1: it's not like a uniform problem, but it could be
Speaker 1: really problematic in a local area. What would be number five?
Speaker 1: This is your last one. I could almost pick about
Speaker 1: four or five different things, but I'll I'll use a
Speaker 1: little bit different take than I think most people would expect.
Speaker 1: It is us us as turkey hunters. Our mindset, our perspectives,
Speaker 1: are expectations, our willingness to take versus give. We are
Speaker 1: going to be the future of this bird. If we
Speaker 1: prioritize the fact that we want, that we're willing to
Speaker 1: give more than we take, then there's hope for this
Speaker 1: bird because we are the ones that are going to
Speaker 1: carry the torch. Who else is going to prioritize turkey
Speaker 1: other than turkey hunters, nobody else exactly. We get caught
Speaker 1: up in our mindset, as we've talked about as often
Speaker 1: about well, this is what I expect. I want to
Speaker 1: kill three birds or two birds, or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and we get caught up in what we've experienced in
Speaker 1: the past, how we grew up, this is how we've
Speaker 1: always done it. Guys, gals, you gotta forget that we
Speaker 1: have to work innovatively and creatively together and recognize that
Speaker 1: if we don't prioritize the bird, and we don't work
Speaker 1: collaboratively with agencies and landowners, nobody else is We are
Speaker 1: the ones that are going to have to prioritize the bird.
Speaker 1: If we don't do that, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So I look at number five as being us. I
Speaker 1: like the question. Dr Chamberlain asked and answered, who is
Speaker 1: going to protect turkeys? The only people are the hunters.
Speaker 1: Here is a look at the big picture of North
Speaker 1: American conservation. I'm not entirely sure what this means, but
Speaker 1: I know it's right and it's going to be worth it.
Speaker 1: I think about, Okay, am I going to be satisfied
Speaker 1: with one? If I go to this state and only
Speaker 1: harvest one, will I be satisfied? And as the older
Speaker 1: I've gotten, the more I realize the answers, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty five year old turkey hunter has a very different
Speaker 1: mindset than I do. You know. I think what we
Speaker 1: were seeing and what we have to prepare for in
Speaker 1: the next fifty years of conservation this country is sacrifice,
Speaker 1: sportsman sacrificing for the resource because there's nothing that's getting
Speaker 1: easier about wildlife management in this country. I mean, primarily
Speaker 1: due to increase of human population and decrease of literal forest, swamps,
Speaker 1: habitat grasslands. I mean, and that ain't stopping anytime soon either.
Speaker 1: I mean, we will not be able to regulate humans surviving.
Speaker 1: And it was clear is that as sportsman if we
Speaker 1: really value this resource, if we really value this lifestyle
Speaker 1: that we have as an American sportsman, We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to suck it up in a lot of places. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've just spent a lot of time researching and interviewing
Speaker 1: about the Green Tree reservoir issues in Arkansas with the
Speaker 1: duck hunting, and I mean that's pretty much where we're
Speaker 1: at with that. It's like, uh, yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: kind of stinks for a lot of people, but we
Speaker 1: have to do this to say the resource. So really
Speaker 1: it's kind of like just this is the new normal.
Speaker 1: But that's okay. I mean that. And I'm I'm like
Speaker 1: exactly middle aged. I'm forty two years old, so I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a teeter on youthful lust of like want
Speaker 1: to kill a bunch of turkeys, but also the wisdom
Speaker 1: that might come with age. And I'm like, I see
Speaker 1: both sides of it. But situations like this are going
Speaker 1: to be the norm moving forward. When I go hunting,
Speaker 1: I want to bring home game. Otherwise we'd call it hiking.
Speaker 1: But here we'll see the reason why Mr Will hunts.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a cliche idea, but the answer is
Speaker 1: so compelling and we all know it gets truer and
Speaker 1: truer the older we get. So of all the things
Speaker 1: you hunt, and I know that you your experience in
Speaker 1: North America is vast. Where does turkey rank inside of that?
Speaker 1: Somebody asked me that the other day and I and
Speaker 1: I wrote it down. Oh man, he's got I'm gonna read.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read it to you and answer to what
Speaker 1: do I like to hunt the most? Turkeys or elk
Speaker 1: or big mature deer, wild covey is on the rise,
Speaker 1: big bass on top water, or as the green heads
Speaker 1: when cup to the decoys. All can be exceptional, But
Speaker 1: day in or day out, it is the sunrises and
Speaker 1: sunsets I cherish most. So if I had to give
Speaker 1: him all up, turkey hunting is not gonna be given up.
Speaker 1: And then second from me after Turkey's gonna be ill. Okay,
Speaker 1: So turkey and elk, That's what I'm hearing you said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I just had a dug hunt going tomorrow. Yea,
Speaker 1: In Big White Tales, I have to it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a trap question, I know. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you try the same thing, I would stumble around and
Speaker 1: be like just matters what every one of those days
Speaker 1: has sunrises and sun that's right. In closing, here's Mr
Speaker 1: Will talking about two things that have been most important
Speaker 1: in his success, and I think we can incorporate these
Speaker 1: into our approach of protecting wild turkeys. Passion, don't ever
Speaker 1: underestimate anybody with passion never and another thing, realize what
Speaker 1: discipline is. Discipline is giving up what you want to
Speaker 1: day for what you really want most to are be
Speaker 1: at weight loss. You gotta not eat that, or you
Speaker 1: gotta exercise. You gotta be disciplined about it to get
Speaker 1: what you really want. But remember, discipline is so important
Speaker 1: in every step of your life, every step of your life.
Speaker 1: From the moment your feet hit the floor in the morning,
Speaker 1: you've given up what you want today what you really
Speaker 1: want most tomorrow. After hanging out with Mr Will, it's
Speaker 1: clear that passion and discipline are two dominant features of
Speaker 1: his life. I was personally impacted by being around him,
Speaker 1: and since recording this podcast, I was able to hunt
Speaker 1: three days with him in Mississippi, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you the highlight clips of his turkey hunting videos don't
Speaker 1: portray how incredibly disciplined Mr Will is In every area
Speaker 1: of his life, his eating, his exercise, his finances, his reading,
Speaker 1: his spirituality, his relationships, and I've rarely met someone with
Speaker 1: such incredible focus. Being around people like him is personally challenging.
Speaker 1: He seems to be a student of life, never ceasing
Speaker 1: in pursuit of forward momentum, but able to enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1: I think in modern times of Turkey conservation, we can
Speaker 1: take a play for Mr Will just like we did
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties. We're going to need passion
Speaker 1: and lots of it to fuel our energy and love
Speaker 1: of wild places and beasts. I've made it a spiritual
Speaker 1: discipline to never take for granted seeing a wild turkey
Speaker 1: or a covey of quail or a black bear. If
Speaker 1: my heart doesn't jump, I tell it to jump, and
Speaker 1: it asked how high. And secondly, we'll need discipline as
Speaker 1: we move into a new era of conservation. That discipline
Speaker 1: will take on different forms for all of us. It
Speaker 1: could be improving the habitat on your fifteen acre track
Speaker 1: of land that into jake Turkey walk, taking a neighbor
Speaker 1: kid hunting, Or it might be that in the future
Speaker 1: you are the leader of a powerful conservation group in
Speaker 1: charge of millions of dollars, and you'll need to do
Speaker 1: the right thing for the resource. In closing the gobble
Speaker 1: and red head of the wild Turkey has altered the
Speaker 1: course of my life. His iridescent feathers and swinging beard
Speaker 1: have imprinted me beyond reclamation. And it is my honest
Speaker 1: prayer that will be backed up with action, like Billy
Speaker 1: Coleman's prayer was that goblin turkeys will continue to thrive
Speaker 1: in America. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Grease.
Speaker 1: I've got two favors I'd like to ask of you
Speaker 1: this week. Number one, share our podcast this week with
Speaker 1: the worst and best turkey hunters you know and be
Speaker 1: sure to tell them which one they are. And number two,
Speaker 1: take an action step and join become a paying member
Speaker 1: of the National Wild Turkey Federation. Have a great week,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk on the Render next week with some
Speaker 1: of the crew. M