Speaker 1: This turkey is coming. Like no if ans or butts
Speaker 1: about it. This turkey is coming.
Speaker 2: It was one of those.
Speaker 1: With every gobble he was gaining ground. And I'm sitting there, going, man,
Speaker 1: any second we're going to be looking at him. And
Speaker 1: then finally, just like you drawed up in your head,
Speaker 1: out he appeared in full strut. And then came all
Speaker 1: the rest of them, and I mean all the rest
Speaker 1: of them. I do not know how we managed to
Speaker 1: yelp up that many turkeys with only one turkey goblin
Speaker 1: the entire time, because we thought we were dealing with
Speaker 1: a single long beard, but it was not.
Speaker 2: It was a wad long beards, Jake's hens.
Speaker 1: We had every variety, and they were all march in
Speaker 1: our direction. I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: Just like clockwork, the rotations of the Earth and the
Speaker 3: tilting of its access towards the south have once again
Speaker 3: found the North American continent in the early stages of
Speaker 3: the most glorious and redemptive time of the year, the spring.
Speaker 3: Despite the uncertainty in the world of men, natural systems
Speaker 3: hum along with unfailing consistency, and by our good fortune,
Speaker 3: many of us live in places where there are wild turkeys.
Speaker 3: Why everyone in America doesn't hunt a wild turkey, I
Speaker 3: do not know, but I'm glad that they don't.
Speaker 4: But I'm grateful that I do.
Speaker 3: And I'm truly thankful for every gobbling, spitting and drumming
Speaker 3: and strutting turkey that I've ever messed around with. Being
Speaker 3: a turkey hunter is but a small ripple in the
Speaker 3: global affairs of men, but in our minds it stands
Speaker 3: like a granite peak, impossible to avoid. You can't go
Speaker 3: around it or under it, but each spring you've got
Speaker 3: to go through it. This is our Turkey Stories episode.
Speaker 3: It's one of my favorites of the year, and we've
Speaker 3: got a group of turkey storytellers that are as good
Speaker 3: as I've ever heard. And I really doubt that you're
Speaker 3: gonna want to miss this one. And I'll leave you
Speaker 3: with just one hint about the next hour of your life.
Speaker 3: Whatever you do, don't miss med Palmer's story at the end.
Speaker 3: It might be the greatest turkey story ever told.
Speaker 4: My name is Clay Nukem, and this.
Speaker 3: Is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten
Speaker 3: but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places and where
Speaker 3: we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives
Speaker 3: close to the land, presented by FHF gear, American made,
Speaker 3: purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be
Speaker 3: as rugged as the place as we explore. Of all
Speaker 3: the things that we hunt and celebrate through story, turkey
Speaker 3: stories are usually the best. The hunts are dynamic, involving
Speaker 3: moving and sneaking, and ouling and crowing and yelping and
Speaker 3: listening for the vocalizations or lack thereof, of an old gobbler.
Speaker 3: The decisions of the turkey hunter are more often than
Speaker 3: not wrong if the intent is to kill the turkey,
Speaker 3: and the turkeys are usually right.
Speaker 4: But when the hunter.
Speaker 3: Gets it right and he fools that old tom turkey,
Speaker 3: the raw elemental chemical dump of excitement with that side
Speaker 3: of fried wild turkey breast is a scenario without equal.
Speaker 4: But it's time to get onto the stories.
Speaker 3: And our first one is from Mississippi, and the man
Speaker 3: telling the story his name is Mark Sledge, but in
Speaker 3: this hunt, Mark is rooting for the turkey.
Speaker 5: My name is Mark Sledge. I live in Ridgeland, Mississippi,
Speaker 5: and back a few years ago I was a turkey hunting.
Speaker 5: It was late in the season, and I was just prospecting,
Speaker 5: you know, walking and calling, and I stopped. I was
Speaker 5: way on the north side of my property, and I
Speaker 5: stopped and was getting ready to call, and I heard
Speaker 5: someone call, and there was no question in my mind
Speaker 5: it was a person and not a turkey, and a
Speaker 5: gob berer answer. And so I sat there for a
Speaker 5: minute and tried to try to decide what I was
Speaker 5: gonna do. And I said, you know, I bet I
Speaker 5: know where that guy came in here. So I walked
Speaker 5: continued north up to my property line. I got to
Speaker 5: the property line, I was standing there looking at a
Speaker 5: turkey vest where the guy had taken his vest off
Speaker 5: when he crossed the ball bar our fence to come
Speaker 5: on to us. And so I picked up the vest
Speaker 5: and was standing there trying to decide. You know, when
Speaker 5: I found the vest, I knew I was gonna get
Speaker 5: the guy because he was coming back to get the vest.
Speaker 5: But I was trying to decide where I was gonna
Speaker 5: wait on him. And there was a big tree about
Speaker 5: probably fifty yards away, a great, big oak tree, and
Speaker 5: I'm talking about a huge one. And so I walked
Speaker 5: over there to sit down next to the tree, and
Speaker 5: before I got to the tree, he shot. And when
Speaker 5: he shot, I realized the oak tree was in a
Speaker 5: straight line, coming right up the ridge from where he
Speaker 5: had shot. And I knew he's fixing a walk right
Speaker 5: by me. So I just sat down next to the tree,
Speaker 5: and I had, you know, I was turkey hunting, so
Speaker 5: I had cameo gloves and camo face mask, and I
Speaker 5: put everything on, just laid my gun across my lap
Speaker 5: and sat there. And sure enough, man, it wasn't forty
Speaker 5: five seconds I saw him coming through the woods carrying
Speaker 5: the gobbler. He had gotten the gobbler. I sat there
Speaker 5: and I didn't move, and I let him get about
Speaker 5: three feet from me, and I said, boy, ended something,
Speaker 5: how you look and go from being so good to
Speaker 5: so bad in such a short period of time. And
Speaker 5: when I spoke, he like to jumped out of his skin.
Speaker 5: And I stood up and took my face mask off
Speaker 5: and pulled off my right glove, stuck my hand out
Speaker 5: and I said, good morning. My name's Mark Sledge. And
Speaker 5: he said, hey, how you doing. I said no, I said,
Speaker 5: this is the point of the conversation where you tell
Speaker 5: me your name. He said, oh, I'm John Smith. I said,
Speaker 5: come on, man, you got to do better than that.
Speaker 5: You're insulting my intelligence. He said, no, no, that's really
Speaker 5: my name. I said, no, it's not. I said, you
Speaker 5: need to tell me your real name. No, no, I
Speaker 5: promise you that's my real name. And I said it
Speaker 5: is not your real name. I'm not buying that. And
Speaker 5: I said, well, what do you do. He said, well,
Speaker 5: I'm in school, community college. And I said you look
Speaker 5: too old to be in school. I said where do
Speaker 5: you live. He said, well, I kind of live on
Speaker 5: the outside of Benonia. I said, so you live around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: And I said, man, you might as well tell me
Speaker 5: your real name, because I'm going to find out.
Speaker 2: He said no, no, I.
Speaker 5: Swear that's my real name. And I said, well, here
Speaker 5: you go. I pulled one of my business cards out
Speaker 5: of my wallet and I gave it to him, and
Speaker 5: I said, that's got my office phone number on it.
Speaker 5: Whenever you decide you want to come, tell me your
Speaker 5: real name and get your turkey vest back, give me
Speaker 5: a call. You can come down to my office and
Speaker 5: we'll sit down and talk about it. And I picked
Speaker 5: up his turkey vest walked off. Of course, I was
Speaker 5: looking back over my shoulder and make sure it wasn't
Speaker 5: dropping down on me while I was walking off. But
Speaker 5: I went back to my camp and immediately rode into
Speaker 5: ben TONI and it took about one stop to find
Speaker 5: out who the guy was. And so I identified him
Speaker 5: and called the neighbor who he had come off of
Speaker 5: and told him what had gone on. And he said, Mark,
Speaker 5: don't you worry. He will never set foot on my
Speaker 5: property again. And I didn't hear from him. That was
Speaker 5: on a Friday, and I figured, you know, i'd probably
Speaker 5: hear from next day or to well. On Monday, a
Speaker 5: woman calls me with the exact last name. I thought, wow,
Speaker 5: this kind of strange, you know that for a guy
Speaker 5: to have his wife call me. So I took the
Speaker 5: call and she identified herself and she said, oh, miss Sledge,
Speaker 5: you have my husband's turkey vest. I said, I sure do.
Speaker 5: I said, I'm sitting in my office looking at it.
Speaker 5: It's on a hat rack in my office, hanging right
Speaker 5: here now. And she said, is there a handmade turkey
Speaker 5: call in the pocket? I said, I have no idea.
Speaker 5: I've never looked to see what's in it. And she said, well,
Speaker 5: I gave. I gave him my handmade turkey call for
Speaker 5: our tenth anniversary, and he said it's He said, it's
Speaker 5: in the pocket of his of his turkey vest, and
Speaker 5: I just want to make sure it's there. And I said, well,
Speaker 5: hang on a minute. I went over there and looked
Speaker 5: and I said, yeah, it's in there, and she said,
Speaker 5: she said okay, great. I said wait a minute. I said,
Speaker 5: why are you calling me and he's not calling me.
Speaker 5: I said, that doesn't really make sense to him. She said, oh.
Speaker 5: He and his dad and his brother got up early
Speaker 5: Saturday morning, and when they were leaving, I asked him
Speaker 5: where his handmade turkey call was and he said, well,
Speaker 5: I don't have it. And he told me I didn't
Speaker 5: have it and told me it was in his vest
Speaker 5: and you had his vest and I said that's right.
Speaker 5: She said, well, can I come get it? I said
Speaker 5: absolutely not. I said he needs to come down here
Speaker 5: and get it when he gets back into town. And
Speaker 5: she said okay. And I said, let me ask you something.
Speaker 5: I said, do you have any kids? She said yeah,
Speaker 5: I have two boys. I said me too. I said
Speaker 5: how are you boys? And they were a little bitty.
Speaker 5: Then I want to say they were three and five
Speaker 5: or something, and I said, think about this. Your husband's
Speaker 5: come sneaking in there, a poaching on us. And I
Speaker 5: got two sons and they loved a turkey hunt, so
Speaker 5: they're out there turkey hunt. They have no idea your
Speaker 5: husband's into her. And one of them accidentally shoots your husband.
Speaker 5: I said, my sons have to grow up with the
Speaker 5: fact that they've killed a man, and your sons are
Speaker 5: going to grow on without a dad. And she said,
Speaker 5: oh my gosh, I don't even thought about that. And
Speaker 5: I twisted the knife a little bit more and I
Speaker 5: had her pumped up where she was gonna waylame he
Speaker 5: got home. So sure enough, about the middle of that week,
Speaker 5: he finally called me and said, uh, missus Sledge, I'd
Speaker 5: like to go get my turkey best. I said, I'd
Speaker 5: like to give it to you. I said, come on
Speaker 5: down here, and uh, and I'll be glad to give
Speaker 5: it to you. So he came to my office and
Speaker 5: I made him sit down in there and we had
Speaker 5: a little chat for a little while, and Uh. At
Speaker 5: the end of the chat, I gave his vest back.
Speaker 5: And I've never seen the guy again, and i've certainly
Speaker 5: never seen him trespass it again. I think I probably
Speaker 5: made a hotist turkey counter.
Speaker 3: That was a good story, but I was surprised that
Speaker 3: Mark didn't get the law involved. I kept waiting for
Speaker 3: the game morning to show up. I wonder if you
Speaker 3: were I respect a man that's willing to take care
Speaker 3: of his own business, and I'd say that that was
Speaker 3: quite merciful, mercy being an admirable human trait. Maybe that
Speaker 3: guy that killed that turkey is listening right now, Thank you, Mark.
Speaker 3: But now we're on to the next one, and it's
Speaker 3: none other than a bear grease legend from western Arkansas,
Speaker 3: Oh Andy Brown. He could tell a story about an
Speaker 3: empty black pot and it would be interesting, but when
Speaker 3: you get him talking about turkeys, it's hard to turn away.
Speaker 3: Most really good turkey hunters that I know, kind of
Speaker 3: in my experience, usually have two or three really great stories.
Speaker 3: Andy seems to have an unlimited supply, and this is
Speaker 3: a story about the best gobbler that Andy ever saw killed.
Speaker 6: My brother in law used to come up from Hope
Speaker 6: and Bill he he really liked a turkey hunt because
Speaker 6: he never got to do any of it. I used
Speaker 6: to go down and hunt with him and Debbie down there,
Speaker 6: and they were avid deer hunters. And I used to
Speaker 6: love to go down there because you'd see more deer
Speaker 6: in one day down there. Back in the eighties eighty
Speaker 6: two probably so let's been forty years ago, but it
Speaker 6: was nothing but soybean fields and cornfields. But anyway, i'd
Speaker 6: go down there and deer hunt with them. And Bill
Speaker 6: got to coming up in Turkey hunting with me. And
Speaker 6: he came up one year and he was always really
Speaker 6: enthused about it because this is something he had never done.
Speaker 6: And I took him out on my mountain, did I
Speaker 6: out west? I always liked out there. When we pulled
Speaker 6: him out for daylight, got into the low Gap and
Speaker 6: the same thing happened that day as happened to me
Speaker 6: and Scott. I sent Bill west and I went east
Speaker 6: and the man, it was fine one and got out
Speaker 6: there and not a pe never heard of Turkey. And
Speaker 6: I told Bill, I said one meet back at the
Speaker 6: gap at ten o'clock. I walked back into the Low Gap,
Speaker 6: probably about nine thirty, and the Bill was already there,
Speaker 6: and I said to Bill, did you hear anything? He said, yeah,
Speaker 6: I had one all over me this morning. I just couldn't.
Speaker 6: He just wouldn't come to me, come in above me.
Speaker 6: He'd went out west and kind of dropped over on
Speaker 6: the north side, and this turkey come right in on
Speaker 6: top of him, and it just wouldn't come off to it.
Speaker 6: And he said, he gobbled good. He said, just all
Speaker 6: the drumming, I could hear him drumming, and he just
Speaker 6: he just wouldn't come. And I said, do you think
Speaker 6: you can take me back out there where he was?
Speaker 6: And he said, yeah, I think I ain't take you
Speaker 6: here right where he was. It's he said, he was
Speaker 6: out there where it kind of drops off. So we
Speaker 6: walk out there two hundred fifty yards and he goes
Speaker 6: out there, knobs out and kind of drops off, and
Speaker 6: he said, I think we were about right here is
Speaker 6: where I was. Got on the north side, and I
Speaker 6: just walked up there and just walked up on the
Speaker 6: south side, and then the called. When I did, he
Speaker 6: just just broke me off.
Speaker 2: This is it.
Speaker 6: This is ten ten o'clock. You know, of course that's
Speaker 6: ever turkey Hunter's dream. You know, you get one to
Speaker 6: answer you at ten o'clock in the morning. And I said,
Speaker 6: come on, So we we just got over on the
Speaker 6: south side, and it just went out there and just
Speaker 6: fell off in kind of a little old Kenyon just
Speaker 6: kind of straight off got set up, and I called him.
Speaker 6: When I did, he just broke me off down there.
Speaker 6: And I looked at it and I said, this, this
Speaker 6: is not this is an't gonna work. I mean, because
Speaker 6: I don't know if he's gonna come up with the
Speaker 6: left of the holler or the right of the holler.
Speaker 6: I said, let's back up on top. So we got
Speaker 6: up and walked back up on top of the mountain there,
Speaker 6: and there's just a big flat and anyway, I really
Speaker 6: put it in as I got aggressive with him then, and
Speaker 6: he was just I mean, he was eating it up.
Speaker 6: Every time I called him, he gobbled. And that's kind
Speaker 6: of way I always did back in those days, early days.
Speaker 6: If they wanted to gobble, I wanted to call up,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 2: And uh.
Speaker 6: Anyway, I tore him up and he come in there
Speaker 6: and Bill was I had Bill set up where I
Speaker 6: just knew he was just going to walk up me
Speaker 6: slap well, said that dude coming up to Bill. He
Speaker 6: just come right around to the left of me. And
Speaker 6: there was a little old blackjack thicket there he got
Speaker 6: right in behind that. He come right up the mountain
Speaker 6: east of me, full strut and got right in on
Speaker 6: top about sixty yards and all the goblining he did.
Speaker 6: Of course I'd shut up then. I hadn't said another
Speaker 6: word to him, and he gobbled and he gobbled and
Speaker 6: gobbled and he gobbled, and directly he just turned and
Speaker 6: he come right back off the mountain like he come.
Speaker 6: And he got off down there. And when he got
Speaker 6: behind that blackjack thicket from me, I called him again,
Speaker 6: and we had a little set in right there, but
Speaker 6: I knew he wasn't going to come. I mean, once
Speaker 6: they do that, your chances of calling a turkey back
Speaker 6: where he'd already been is it's slimmed none. At least
Speaker 6: it's always been that way from me. So he kind
Speaker 6: of got over back off on the south side, about
Speaker 6: fifty yards from me, and I motioned to Bill. I said, Bill,
Speaker 6: come here, and Bill give me one of them. What
Speaker 6: are we doing deals?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: I said, come on, and he said come on.
Speaker 6: I said come on, And so he comes to me,
Speaker 6: he said, what are we doing? I said, we are
Speaker 6: going to move. We just dropped over the north side,
Speaker 6: and when we got over the north side. I said, Bill,
Speaker 6: we're going to move on this turkey. We're going to
Speaker 6: kill this dude, I think. So we just went east.
Speaker 6: When we talked back over the top of the mountain there,
Speaker 6: I said, if this turkey answers me, he's a dead turkey.
Speaker 6: We didn't move seventy five yards, but we got a
Speaker 6: little higher and got over on the top. I called him,
Speaker 6: and shit, he is wore me up, you know. I said,
Speaker 6: he'd better get ready. And it was so funny. I
Speaker 6: was sitting there and I had my cun across my
Speaker 6: lap in old Bill. I mean, it's pretty open there.
Speaker 6: It kind of comes to the prayer makes a little
Speaker 6: old bitch. And there's a there's a pine tree that's
Speaker 6: four foot through right there on top, and I look, here,
Speaker 6: come out on turkey. I mean, he's coming right to
Speaker 6: us and can be close, I mean fifteen steps. And
Speaker 6: when he goes behind that tree, Bill moves his gun.
Speaker 6: And when he comes out, Bill didn't quite wait long enough.
Speaker 6: He did, but he didn't because he shot about two
Speaker 6: inches of that tree all. But he blowed that turkey.
Speaker 6: He just blowed that turkey down. And when that turkey,
Speaker 6: you know how they are heat. Turkey jumped up and
Speaker 6: when he took off, of course, I was in really
Speaker 6: good shape. Then I took off after him, and I
Speaker 6: run that turkey. I had face mask and gloves and stuff.
Speaker 6: Strode all down the side of that mountain. But I
Speaker 6: run him about one hundred yards down the out there,
Speaker 6: and finally he just stopped and put his head down
Speaker 6: and went to clucking. I mean, I caught up with him,
Speaker 6: and anyway, I finished him off. But that turkey was
Speaker 6: the best turkey I've ever seen. He had thirty four
Speaker 6: and a half inches of beard on him, He had
Speaker 6: a ten and a half, a ten, an eight and
Speaker 6: a six, He had an inch and a quarter spurred,
Speaker 6: and weighed twenty one and a half pounds.
Speaker 7: He was a you know.
Speaker 6: And people said, well, it's not a very big turkey.
Speaker 6: The twenty one and a half pound turkey into Washtaw
Speaker 6: Mountains is a big turkey. But it was the most
Speaker 6: awesome turkey I ever seen. And I told Bill, I said, Bill,
Speaker 6: you'll hunt a lifetime and you will never kill a
Speaker 6: turkey like this. I said, I've hunted these things like
Speaker 6: I was mad at him for twenty five years, and
Speaker 6: I've killed I've killed several with two beards, but I
Speaker 6: ain't never killed a four beard a turkey.
Speaker 3: That's such a good story, and you could learn a
Speaker 3: lot about turkey hunting from that story. Andy is a
Speaker 3: rare combination of a man that's as good a turkey
Speaker 3: hunter as has ever traversed the mountains of western Arkansas.
Speaker 3: And he's the heck of a communicator too, knowing just
Speaker 3: when to include details and humor and internal drama. But
Speaker 3: really it just kind of flows with overt passion, and
Speaker 3: you really can't teach that or copy that. Every step
Speaker 3: of the way, you feel like you're right there with him.
Speaker 3: I've noticed that every region of the country, even down
Speaker 3: to specific families and hunting groups, have peculiar aspects to
Speaker 3: their storytelling. I wonder if you've ever picked up on
Speaker 3: any of.
Speaker 4: Those from Andy.
Speaker 3: My old buddy Steve Ranella did, and after he heard
Speaker 3: Andy tell his story one time, he said to me,
Speaker 3: Andy Brown sure has a constant sense of the cardinal directions.
Speaker 3: I laughed, if you're paying attention, Andy's always saying the
Speaker 3: bird was coming up from the east, or we went
Speaker 3: back to the west, or we were looking to the south,
Speaker 3: where I grew up, which is where Andy lives. Always
Speaker 3: having a sense of where no is was like the
Speaker 3: eleventh commandment, thou shalt always know which direction is north.
Speaker 3: I was never that great at it, but direction is
Speaker 3: always included in Andy's stories, in the stories of his
Speaker 3: son Scott and all their hunting crew. I like it,
Speaker 3: Thank you Andy. The next story is off the Chain.
Speaker 3: It involves an ATM and a man wearing a dog collar.
Speaker 3: I first heard this man tell this story as a
Speaker 3: guest on the Hayden Alabama podcast, and I cackled out loud.
Speaker 4: Like a giggling hen.
Speaker 3: I'd like to introduce you to a very funny but
Speaker 3: precious man, Mississippi pastor Robin Rischer. You get what I
Speaker 3: mean when I say precious, like he's a nice guy.
Speaker 8: I'm Robin Ruscher, and I love turkey. I live in Mississippi,
Speaker 8: but a very short time living in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Speaker 8: I went to seminary down there, and I was a
Speaker 8: fish out of water in a big city as the
Speaker 8: country had come to town, no doubt about that. And
Speaker 8: I got a chance to go turkey hunting. I got
Speaker 8: a permission to hunt some land in South Mississippi. I
Speaker 8: told my wife and to let me go, and she said, yeah,
Speaker 8: you can go. And naturally, when you get in your
Speaker 8: wife's car is gonna be on empty every time. That's
Speaker 8: a law of nature. And the seminary I don't know
Speaker 8: about now, but thirty years ago it was in the
Speaker 8: worst neighborhood in America, one of the worst. I bopped
Speaker 8: out there and got my wife's little car. I was
Speaker 8: gonna go into it because it got good gas mine
Speaker 8: and I had a pretty far piece to go, and
Speaker 8: we were rolling pennies for gas broke and no extra money.
Speaker 8: But I had almost stuff laying on the front seat
Speaker 8: of her car. My gun was laying there, My vest
Speaker 8: with the shells in the pocket was laying there. I
Speaker 8: come out of seminary in this worst neighborhood in America,
Speaker 8: and I kind of goosed it a little bit. When
Speaker 8: I did, my shelves came out of my pocket and
Speaker 8: I noticed still illegal. I know I wanted so to
Speaker 8: do this. I just took the shells in the magazines
Speaker 8: at over age seventy. Now the gun was loaded, but
Speaker 8: it would not fire until you worked the action one time.
Speaker 8: And pump shot guns have a very distinctive sound, and
Speaker 8: it sounds something like if you've ever been on a
Speaker 8: bad end of that sound, you recognize it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 8: I had that gun with bullets in the magazine but
Speaker 8: none in the pipe or none in a barrel. And
Speaker 8: I had to go get some gas because, like I said,
Speaker 8: the car was on empty in the worst neighborhood of America,
Speaker 8: and HTM machines were very different back then. You wanted
Speaker 8: on us wipe it and they take a car away
Speaker 8: from him and then access to your counting. There you were,
Speaker 8: and the criminal knew this. But I one thing about that.
Speaker 8: I just went there to give me twenty dollars to
Speaker 8: get some gas. But in this car. And I walked
Speaker 8: in there, this little HTM. It's about two in the morning,
Speaker 8: but I was gonna go Turkey on the Mississippi is
Speaker 8: about three hour drive. And I pulled in there and
Speaker 8: I saw I saw this guy hiding in the AI
Speaker 8: at bushes. By the time I saw this selling the
Speaker 8: bushes there, he he wasn't wearing nothing but a diaper,
Speaker 8: but he was some kind of ugly. I'm telling you,
Speaker 8: he the uggliest hell I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 8: He was ugly, you g l y he didn't have
Speaker 8: no alibi. He was ugly. M A, m A, how
Speaker 8: you think he got that way his mama? The boy
Speaker 8: was in bad shape. I saw him right after I
Speaker 8: accessed my account. Now looked in front of me, and
Speaker 8: there's a guy with a silver studded four inch dog
Speaker 8: collar on and no shirt, and he was walking towards me.
Speaker 8: I got my rightness, got pink and purple hair, and
Speaker 8: they were all closing in at the rapid rate. And
Speaker 8: they knew what they were doing because they let me
Speaker 8: access my account. Now, I didn't have but eighty six
Speaker 8: dollars in there, but that was eighty six of my dollars,
Speaker 8: and I intended on keeping him. Now, I grabbed the
Speaker 8: abigail there, my old trusty rusty. I shut that shell
Speaker 8: in there, and when that thing went out of eight
Speaker 8: seventy swallowed that copper plated magnum turkey thumping down on walping.
Speaker 8: Mold Joe low old dog collar heard it. He went
Speaker 8: to give him a signal. I don't know if he
Speaker 8: wanted me to blunt, steal or take, but we got
Speaker 8: all the stigna and.
Speaker 2: I sold bad Uga there.
Speaker 8: He was in the bushes there, and he heard it
Speaker 8: Old Pump follow that magnum load too, and they just
Speaker 8: kind of stopped. I got my money.
Speaker 5: I got.
Speaker 8: Out of there and went to the Mississippi and killed turkey
Speaker 8: that morning too. And the more of the stories is,
Speaker 8: they made a decision to take my money. I made
Speaker 8: a commitment to keep it.
Speaker 3: Some of the best turkey hunting stories have little to
Speaker 3: do with actually killing a gobbler. I'd have been scared
Speaker 3: too if i'd have heard Old Trusty Rusty swallow that
Speaker 3: turkey thumping, Dino wopping Mojoe load. And Hey, if you're
Speaker 3: looking for some good country storytelling, go check out the Hayden,
Speaker 3: Alabama podcast.
Speaker 4: They're doing some fun stuff.
Speaker 3: Our next story is from none other than Lake Pickle,
Speaker 3: also from Mississippi, but this story takes place in Old
Speaker 3: Mexico and it's got a shocking ending.
Speaker 4: Here's Lake.
Speaker 1: So it's spring twenty seventeen and I got the opportunity
Speaker 1: to travel down south of the border into Mexico Turkey,
Speaker 1: which is something I'd never been able to do.
Speaker 2: I travel down there with Brad Feris and Troy Ruez.
Speaker 1: I feel the need right now to tell y'all that
Speaker 1: I was there with those two gentlemen, because when I
Speaker 1: get to the point in this story where I talk
Speaker 1: about the actual incident, it is so outrageous and so
Speaker 1: bizarre that, even though I have video evidence that this happened,
Speaker 1: I just want everyone to know that there were also
Speaker 1: two other people there that witness this and can confirm
Speaker 1: that this story is true. But anyway, we travel down there,
Speaker 1: we cross the border, drive for several miles. I think
Speaker 1: we drove for maybe an hour a hour and a half.
Speaker 1: And anyways, we get to this property that we're hunting.
Speaker 1: So the next morning we wake up. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: clear day, and man, did we hear some turkeys, but
Speaker 1: they were in some flo And if you ever dealt
Speaker 1: with big flocks of turkeys, they are really fun to watch.
Speaker 1: They are really fun to listen to. But man, if
Speaker 1: you aren't where they want to be, they can be
Speaker 1: a pain to try to call to you. So we
Speaker 1: spent all morning in turkeys, looking at turkeys, hearing turkeys,
Speaker 1: but we didn't shoot any turkeys. So we go back
Speaker 1: to camp, grab a nap, grab some lunch. We're sitting
Speaker 1: there eating lunch with the landowners, telling them out our morning,
Speaker 1: telling them what we saw, and he says, Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a power line, and every time I'm on that
Speaker 1: power line.
Speaker 2: I see turkeys every time.
Speaker 1: He also mentioned at this same lunch that despite the
Speaker 1: fact that he was not a turkey hunter, he always
Speaker 1: wanted a big, pretty gobbler to mount and put in
Speaker 1: his camp. Remember that that's an important factor of this story.
Speaker 1: So anyways, we head out to this power line. We
Speaker 1: get there and we start walking. Our plan is really
Speaker 1: just to walk until we find something that looks like
Speaker 1: we gets set up calling every once in a while
Speaker 1: along the way. If we hear something, we'll sit down.
Speaker 1: We're just kind of rolling with the punches. We're just
Speaker 1: kind of easing up this power line. I don't remember
Speaker 1: who saw it, but we noticed that there was a
Speaker 1: dead hen turkey just laying kind of right off the
Speaker 1: just right off the side of that power line.
Speaker 7: We look at it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of odd, but we didn't think much about
Speaker 1: it and kept walking. And we walked a couple one
Speaker 1: hundred more yards and there's another dead turkey up under there,
Speaker 1: just off the side of the power line, in the
Speaker 1: same spot. Another hen. We're like, huh, something's to that,
Speaker 1: But again we don't really know and don't make much
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: We just keep walking.
Speaker 1: We end up setting up and start calling, and sure
Speaker 1: enough a turkey answers us. Turkey gobbles at us, and
Speaker 1: this turkey, unlike the ones we got into this morning,
Speaker 1: starts quickly closing the distance, and I'm back filming, running
Speaker 1: the camera. Troy and Brad are up front, and this
Speaker 1: turkey is coming. Like no if ans or butts about it.
Speaker 1: This turkey is coming. It was one of those. With
Speaker 1: every gobble he.
Speaker 2: Was gaining ground.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there, going, man, any second, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking at him. And then finally, just like you
Speaker 1: drawed up in your head, out he appeared in full
Speaker 1: strut and then came all the rest of them, and
Speaker 1: I mean all the rest of them. I do not
Speaker 1: know how we managed to yelp up that many turkeys
Speaker 1: with only one turkey goblin the entire time, because we
Speaker 1: thought we were dealing with a single long beard, but
Speaker 1: it was not.
Speaker 2: It was a wad long beards, Jake's hens.
Speaker 1: We had every variety, and they were all march in
Speaker 1: our direction.
Speaker 2: I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 1: This entire wad of turkeys makes it within twenty steps
Speaker 1: of Brad Troy. But the problem was is there was
Speaker 1: not a second, I mean, not a single moment where
Speaker 1: either of them could have pulled the trigger and only
Speaker 1: killed one turkey. They were so clumped up together that
Speaker 1: I mean, if any of them would have shot, they
Speaker 1: would have killed multiple turkeys, five turkeys even. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was crazy, and obviously we were not trying to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: And it was in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: They stayed there forever, just standing around, strutting, gobling, yelping, looking,
Speaker 1: and it starts getting dark, and these turkeys start getting shifty,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, turkeys start flying up. So
Speaker 1: turkeys start flying and roosting in trees to the left,
Speaker 1: to the right, behind us, in front of us. One
Speaker 1: gobbler picks up and flies out of the middle of
Speaker 1: that power road and lands in a tree almost right
Speaker 1: over Troy, which is just off the right side of
Speaker 1: this power line, and that turkey he starts getting kind
Speaker 1: of shifty up in that tree, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: he decided that limb he had picked was no longer
Speaker 1: good enough for him, and he picks up and flies
Speaker 1: and tries to cross that power line I'm assuming to
Speaker 1: land in a tree on the other side, but we'll
Speaker 1: never know because he's flying and all of a sudden, Zippi,
Speaker 1: there was this loud, popping noise, this bright flash of
Speaker 1: lights and sparks, and that turkey fell out of the
Speaker 1: sky and thudded on the ground, dead as a rock,
Speaker 1: right on the other side of that road. He had
Speaker 1: hit that power line when he tried to fly across
Speaker 1: the road and.
Speaker 2: It killed him.
Speaker 1: I mean, in all reality, it looked like a giant
Speaker 1: mosquito hitting a bug zapper, I mean, just zap and
Speaker 1: lights out.
Speaker 2: That turkey was gone. He did not flop at all.
Speaker 1: I will never forget the look on bradon Troy's faces,
Speaker 1: which I probably had a pretty dumb founded.
Speaker 2: Look on my face too.
Speaker 1: But we got up, walked into the woods, found that turkey,
Speaker 1: and I remember all you could smell was burnt feathers.
Speaker 1: But other than that, the turkey looked to be fine.
Speaker 1: And if I'm lying, I'm dying. That turkey had four
Speaker 1: beards and an inch into quarterspurs. So we put him
Speaker 1: in the back of that buggy and drove him back
Speaker 1: to camp. Told the landowner what happened, and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you said you wanted a big, pretty gobbler at a
Speaker 1: mountain put in your camp. I think we found the
Speaker 1: perfect one.
Speaker 4: I told you that that was a shocking story.
Speaker 3: Thanks Lake. And by the way they got all that
Speaker 3: on video, pretty cool. Our next story is another Mississippi
Speaker 3: turkey hunter. And if you haven't seen a trend in
Speaker 3: this episode, we got a lot of Mississippi boys and
Speaker 3: I'm quite certain that Mississippi is the cultural epicenter of
Speaker 3: turkey hunting. This gentleman's name is David Huffman, but he
Speaker 3: traveled out well asked to turkey hunt, and I'll be
Speaker 3: interested to hear what you think of this story.
Speaker 9: My name is David hoff and I'm from the Jackson,
Speaker 9: Mississippi area. Turkey hunting my entire life. Done a lot
Speaker 9: of traveling turkey hunting. Without giving too much information on
Speaker 9: where we were in the state we were in. But
Speaker 9: there are several Indian reservations across this country that you
Speaker 9: can hunt on. But when you go to hunt on
Speaker 9: an Indian reservation, you have to have a native god right.
Speaker 9: You have to have somebody to walk you around the
Speaker 9: place and show you where to go, what lands you
Speaker 9: can go on, what's tribal.
Speaker 7: What's not trivel.
Speaker 2: So we had enlisted the help of a local.
Speaker 9: Guy where we were going, and he was very well
Speaker 9: recommended in the area. He had been there for a
Speaker 9: long time, very well respected. So me and three buddies
Speaker 9: went out as our first time traveling to the state
Speaker 9: and got there and we you know, we're young, were
Speaker 9: just fresh out of college, had been traveling around for
Speaker 9: a while, and you know, we were sitting pretty high
Speaker 9: on our horses of you know, we were good turkey
Speaker 9: hunters and we knew what we were doing.
Speaker 7: We were going really didn't need a whole lot of help.
Speaker 9: I come from, you know, a family of my brother
Speaker 9: in law is a guide.
Speaker 7: He owns an outfit.
Speaker 9: So I understand that the saying don't guide the guide, right,
Speaker 9: So if a guy tells you to do something, you
Speaker 9: should probably listen because he knows more than what you
Speaker 9: know about that area.
Speaker 7: So we get there.
Speaker 9: And I meet the guide first, and we start riding
Speaker 9: around his truck and he's like, well, do you want
Speaker 9: to go see some turkeys?
Speaker 7: Like, yeah, absolutely, let's go check some out.
Speaker 9: So he pulled to the top of this hill and
Speaker 9: he says, Okay, they're going to be down this bottom
Speaker 9: and he shuts his truck off, and he reaches into
Speaker 9: center console and he pulls out this old cherry bark
Speaker 9: box call and he reaches out and he makes the
Speaker 9: three most god awful yelps you've ever heard in your life,
Speaker 9: just squawks across it.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep, yep, And sure.
Speaker 9: Enough, pull a little they come out of this bottom
Speaker 9: and walk up this hill, right to the top of
Speaker 9: the hill, twenty yards from the truck. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 9: all right, this is going to be pretty easy. You know,
Speaker 9: this ain't gonna be a whole lot of thought to this.
Speaker 9: Just listening to this guy and we'll be just fine.
Speaker 9: So my three buddy they were a day behind me,
Speaker 9: and they show up and I tell them what happened
Speaker 9: that afternoon, and said, look, you just need to listen
Speaker 9: to this guy and help points in the right direction.
Speaker 7: We'll kill our turkeys and we'll get out of here.
Speaker 9: Well, I've got two buddies that are a little bit
Speaker 9: more headstrong than I am, and so they're big, bad
Speaker 9: turkey hunters and they don't need anybody to tell them
Speaker 9: where to go.
Speaker 7: They to be pointing in the right direction.
Speaker 9: So they go off and they always hunt together and
Speaker 9: me and my other buddy always hunt together when we're
Speaker 9: on these trips.
Speaker 7: And so first morning, the guide, his name is Ken.
Speaker 9: He tells our body and says, okay, look, I'm going
Speaker 9: to send you downe to this creek bottom, and when
Speaker 9: you get down in there, the birds are going to
Speaker 9: be chirping, owls are going to be hooting. Let everything
Speaker 9: calm down. You have to let the creek accept you.
Speaker 9: Very native American thing to say. They're very in tune
Speaker 9: with the earth, very in tune with everything around him.
Speaker 9: He said, you have to let the creek accept you
Speaker 9: before you make a call. He said, do not call
Speaker 9: until everything has quieted down. You'll know the crick has
Speaker 9: accepted and then you can start turkey hunting. So he
Speaker 9: tells them, and I can see that they're just scoffing, like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 9: we're not going to listen to this. So they go
Speaker 9: down in there and he takes us to another spot
Speaker 9: and he tells us the same thing. He says, let
Speaker 9: the creek accept you. People, wait till everything calms down.
Speaker 9: Don't make a call until that happens. And so I'm
Speaker 9: walking down to this creek bottom with my buddy, and
Speaker 9: I said now, I said, let's let's just, you know,
Speaker 9: take what he said to Hart and just see what happens.
Speaker 9: And so sure enough, birds are chirping, owls are hooting
Speaker 9: whole nine yards. We don't hear a single bird gobble.
Speaker 9: As soon as everything calms down, I said, okay, they're here,
Speaker 9: and so I yelp, yep, yelp, yelp, And ten minutes later,
Speaker 9: turkey flies down, walks right to our gun barrel.
Speaker 7: We shoot him. Simple is like, h there's something to this.
Speaker 9: So we get back to the truck and calling our buddies,
Speaker 9: and we see them going across a mountain. They're going
Speaker 9: across his hilltop, probably five hundred yards away, chasing turkeys.
Speaker 9: And we get back to the truck and said, Ken said,
Speaker 9: they didn't let the creek accept them, so they should have.
Speaker 7: Killed by now.
Speaker 9: And so we watched them chase turkeys for probably two hours,
Speaker 9: going across these hills and they get back to the
Speaker 9: truck and said, these turkeys will not work with us
Speaker 9: one bit.
Speaker 7: They keep running from us. They're heading the opposite direction.
Speaker 7: We can't get in front of them. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 9: And Ken said, well, did you call before the creek
Speaker 9: accepted you, and they said yes. He said, that's why
Speaker 9: you won't kill a turkey. We'll try again tomorrow. And
Speaker 9: we backed up in the truck and left. And when
Speaker 9: we got back to the house, I said, you guys
Speaker 9: better listen to him. I said, it happened for us
Speaker 9: in five minutes. Said you better let the crik accept
Speaker 9: you tomorrow. And they went down in there. The same
Speaker 9: thing happened. They let the creek accept them. Two turkeys
Speaker 9: walk in ten minutes later and they shoot them, as
Speaker 9: simple as that. So that is a story of if
Speaker 9: you go traveling turkey hunting and you go with somebody
Speaker 9: that knows the area, you better listen to them.
Speaker 7: They know what they're talking about.
Speaker 4: Let the creek accept you.
Speaker 3: Even if you can't doctrinally accept the animistic element of this,
Speaker 3: Gud's suggestion, if you're a woodsman, I think you kind
Speaker 3: of get it. It doesn't always happen, but there comes
Speaker 3: a point in some hunt when you feel like you're
Speaker 3: a part of the natural system, not just a visitor.
Speaker 4: That was a good story, David, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Our last story is told by another Mississippian named Med
Speaker 3: Palmer met as a biologist for the state and best
Speaker 3: I can tell, he's the greatest turkey hunter who has
Speaker 3: ever lived, period, or at least that's the way that
Speaker 3: people that know him talk about him. And he's no
Speaker 3: stranger to bear grease. If you recall, he lost his
Speaker 3: son in a tragic accident on the Mississippi River in
Speaker 3: December of twenty twenty. This story is about Gunner, his
Speaker 3: son's last turkey hunt and an incredible experience Med had
Speaker 3: the following year. Here's the greatest turkey hnna that ever lived,
Speaker 3: Med Palmer.
Speaker 10: My be had Palmer County, Mississippi. The spring of twenty
Speaker 10: twenty was an unusual year of turkey hunt. It was
Speaker 10: it was a year that COVID had started and school
Speaker 10: was out worked They were pretty much telling us to
Speaker 10: work from home. So basically we could turkey hunt every day.
Speaker 10: Me and my son gone him and uh. The limit
Speaker 10: here in Mississippi's three and I limited out about middle
Speaker 10: to the season, and Gunner, like one turkey limited out.
Speaker 10: So we had got down to the last day of
Speaker 10: the season. I had saved that last day for just
Speaker 10: me and him, you know, did enjoy hunting together and
Speaker 10: hopefully he get his last bird. And there was a
Speaker 10: bird he had hunted through the season that had give
Speaker 10: him bits. I asked him, like for so, where you
Speaker 10: want to go? He said, I want to try that
Speaker 10: bird again. So we go in there that morning to
Speaker 10: get on the bird, and the bird was right on
Speaker 10: the property line. I actually flew up on the property
Speaker 10: next to us. We couldn't hunt got with hens, and
Speaker 10: we just couldn't do nothing with you. I said, well
Speaker 10: next year, I said, opening day, I said, we'll be back.
Speaker 10: So we started heading to the house. I told him,
Speaker 10: I said, I got one more spot.
Speaker 5: I said.
Speaker 10: We've been in there twice this year, but it was
Speaker 10: it's an ordeal to get in there.
Speaker 7: It's like a three.
Speaker 10: Mile drive on a little fire land to get in there,
Speaker 10: and then you got to walk by another quarter of
Speaker 10: a mile to get to where the turkeys are. He said,
Speaker 10: we've been in there twice. We hadn't heard any birds.
Speaker 10: And I said, well that partext for spot's got a
Speaker 10: lot of good nesting. I said, late in the season,
Speaker 10: those hens come in there and started nesting. I said,
Speaker 10: the gobblers, you know, they'll follow them, they'll be with them.
Speaker 10: So we get we start going in there that morning
Speaker 10: about nine o'clock we drive in there and get out
Speaker 10: walked and God, I really didn't think we was gonna
Speaker 10: hear anything. He was standing there kind of with his
Speaker 10: head lord, which we was wore out. It had been
Speaker 10: a long season and uh the first year Turkey. God
Speaker 10: was in the distance about three hundred yards, and he
Speaker 10: looked at me and started grinting, and I said, come on.
Speaker 10: So weave in there, got set up and got set
Speaker 10: up on the birds. And I figured it be maybe
Speaker 10: one or two hens that late season. Man, when I yep,
Speaker 10: after we shut up, it was like seven or eight
Speaker 10: hens cutting up. They started taking him away. Well, they
Speaker 10: got about one hundred and fifty yards and hung up,
Speaker 10: and the gobbler hung up the hens I think they
Speaker 10: was yet and trying to pull him, but he didn't
Speaker 10: want to leave. So we pooled with him, back and forth,
Speaker 10: back and forth, probably for another hour or so. Well
Speaker 10: it was twelve o'clock straight up, because I looked at
Speaker 10: my phone. All of a sudden he broke and he
Speaker 10: starts coming. Well, he's coming up a fire lane and
Speaker 10: we couldn't see him because the road made a bend
Speaker 10: about thirty yards in front of us, and I yep,
Speaker 10: and he gobbled right around the bend. I told Gunner, said,
Speaker 10: you better get your gun up. I come around the curves.
Speaker 10: Matter of practice, I see it and I could see
Speaker 10: him coming gun and couldn't seehim at that time. I said, look,
Speaker 10: just let him come. Let's enjoy the show. He rouns
Speaker 10: a bend, he comes in there, Gunner shoots him, so
Speaker 10: he kills him. We took her to death, went down
Speaker 10: to the wire the last day. You know, he got
Speaker 10: it done well. What I didn't know was that was
Speaker 10: Gunner's last turkey hunt that year, December third, twenty twenty.
Speaker 10: Gun it was an accident on Misissippi River. Actually scout
Speaker 10: in the turkeys for a veteran to take take a
Speaker 10: bean duck hunting the next day, and uh and we looked,
Speaker 10: and you know, to this day, we've never found gun
Speaker 10: of ours.
Speaker 2: Buddy.
Speaker 10: The next year, I didn't even know if I was
Speaker 10: gonna turkey hunt or not. I mean, I'd lost my son,
Speaker 10: I lost my hunting buddy. You know, it's real hard.
Speaker 10: And the day before the season, I decided I'm on hunt,
Speaker 10: you know. And actually nobody had called me that year
Speaker 10: to ask to go turkey hunt, which generally bopening week.
Speaker 10: I've got the first twenty Days book, and that year
Speaker 10: nobody had called. Anyway, I beside was gonna go. I
Speaker 10: was gonna go to the last place where Gunner, me
Speaker 10: and him hunting that bird that we didn't kill that
Speaker 10: last day. He was probably the longest walk of my
Speaker 10: life was that first I am turkey hunt without him.
Speaker 10: But anyway, got in there, turkey come in, and I
Speaker 10: killed it. It rocked on that whole season. I had
Speaker 10: an off season. I don't think I called, but like
Speaker 10: ten turkeys that was killed. To be honest with you,
Speaker 10: I had lost my spirit. In the Bible, it talks
Speaker 10: about somebody losing their spirit. So it rocked on into
Speaker 10: the next year and I had some really exceptional hunt
Speaker 10: with some disabled people, but I was still just amling
Speaker 10: a long turkey hunt. You know, I just didn't have
Speaker 10: that fire i'd had before. You know, I had lost
Speaker 10: my way and I don't know how to put it.
Speaker 10: So finally I decided, I said, I'm gonna go in
Speaker 10: there in the morning. We're gonna kill his last turkey.
Speaker 10: Because I couldn't even think about going that next year,
Speaker 10: right after accident, I said I need to do it,
Speaker 10: and need to get it over with. You know, that's
Speaker 10: where I'm going in the morning. I said, it's early
Speaker 10: in the season. I said, I probably won't hear nothing
Speaker 10: because they hadn't moved in there. They're not nesting yet.
Speaker 10: So I get in there that morning. Had to leave
Speaker 10: real early because, like I said, it's a pretty good
Speaker 10: ride in there. I get in there and then I
Speaker 10: walk and I get there probably about ten minutes before
Speaker 10: gobble time. And he gets about time. Birds starts chirping.
Speaker 10: So I hoop and low and behold a turkey gobbles.
Speaker 10: I said, man, he's right in there, close to where
Speaker 10: Gunner was and it's still, you know, dark. So I
Speaker 10: get in there, and the turkey gobbled early. So I
Speaker 10: get in there and get set up by a hundred
Speaker 10: yard from him, like you want to do. Well, this
Speaker 10: starts getting light, and all of a sudden, I look around.
Speaker 10: I said, I am on the very same tree Gunner
Speaker 10: was on when he shot this turkey. And it starts
Speaker 10: getting lighter. Of course, you know, it's emotional, you know,
Speaker 10: because I said, what is the odds a man coming
Speaker 10: in these woods two years later? A turkey goblin? And
Speaker 10: where I need to set up is the exact same
Speaker 10: tree where Gunner was when he killed his last turn.
Speaker 10: And about that time it dawned on me. I said,
Speaker 10: when Gunner shot, I said, he pumped the shot Gunn's
Speaker 10: shooting at twenty gauge eight seventy. I said his shell
Speaker 10: would be to the right. And I looked over and
Speaker 10: about a foot from me there laid that shell. It
Speaker 10: was pine straw when a lead covering half of it,
Speaker 10: but the yellow part of that twenty gate shell was
Speaker 10: sticking up, and it really got emotional them. And you know,
Speaker 10: I'd quit calling because my mind was somewhere else. And
Speaker 10: that turkey keeps gobbling on his own, like, hey, don't
Speaker 10: forget about ma'am, I'm stealing this tree, you know. And
Speaker 10: it gets about time to fly down. You know how
Speaker 10: they always do. Right before they fly down, they'll be
Speaker 10: godden to head off and then they'll go quiet for
Speaker 10: a minute. He had done that. He guy said, he's
Speaker 10: been a fly down. And by the time I heard
Speaker 10: him fly, it kind of glanced him through the wood.
Speaker 10: Well he flew away from me. So why yep, he
Speaker 10: gobbled in there about one hundred fifty two hundred yard. Well,
Speaker 10: yet again he's gone to bother, and then all of
Speaker 10: a sudden, the next time, I yep, he gobbled about
Speaker 10: seventy five yards over the hill. I said, he's coming.
Speaker 10: So I get my gun up and I'm still in
Speaker 10: most you know, all this is going through my head.
Speaker 10: I said, this ain't been in the hat. I said,
Speaker 10: I'm not gonna kill a turkey sitting on the very
Speaker 10: same tree that Gunner killed his last turkey. I see
Speaker 10: the pan pop up over the hill. He comes right down.
Speaker 10: He gets about twenty five yards on the side of
Speaker 10: a ridge, and all of a sudden, you know how
Speaker 10: the dew in the morning, when the sun comes up,
Speaker 10: it makes raised to the trees. It's like God put
Speaker 10: him on stage. All of a sudden, the sun broke
Speaker 10: out and it was raised, the sun just beaming on it.
Speaker 10: It was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen in
Speaker 10: my life. He strutted there for twenty minute till I
Speaker 10: finally decided, you know, I need to do this. It
Speaker 10: was going through my mind. I'm not gonna kill him.
Speaker 10: I'm gonna let him live. And then I said, no,
Speaker 10: if I don't shoot this turkey, Gunner be so mad
Speaker 10: at me. And finally, and you know, I yep, made
Speaker 10: him raise his head and I killed him. But it
Speaker 10: was being I'm saying, a whole lot of turkeys before
Speaker 10: in my life, but that turkey by boy. I could
Speaker 10: literally see every car he had turned different, and I
Speaker 10: could see a different color. And it happened on the
Speaker 10: bey same trade that Gunner killed his last. I mean,
Speaker 10: there's no doubt in my mind that the Good Lord
Speaker 10: and Gunner said I'm okay, And that day I got
Speaker 10: my fire and my spirit back my turkey hunt now
Speaker 10: just like I always did, and I needed that to
Speaker 10: get me back on.
Speaker 3: That may be the greatest turkey story ever told. What
Speaker 3: a privilege that we get to hear it directly from Med.
Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing that story so that we can
Speaker 3: all celebrate Gunner's life.
Speaker 4: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease.
Speaker 3: Please share our podcast with a friend this week and
Speaker 3: be watching for me Eater's Turkey Week, which is coming
Speaker 3: up where Brent and I'll be facing off in another
Speaker 3: turkey calling contest. Now, I want you to know that
Speaker 3: I'll be looking for your vote, but not for any
Speaker 3: reason other that I'm just a better color than Brent,
Speaker 3: and I think we all know that and keep watching
Speaker 3: for First Light's new tree line Turkey Best. Yep, first
Speaker 3: Light as a new Turkey Best. We've been using them
Speaker 3: for a couple of years, the prototypes and truly it's
Speaker 3: a great best.
Speaker 4: Check it out.
Speaker 3: Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.