Speaker 1: I'll get out of the truck and I'll just, you know,
Speaker 1: with my mouth right before I do my first hoot.
Speaker 1: I take that breath in, and that sweet heat pineapple
Speaker 1: deer sausage last night that I ate hits me because
Speaker 1: it's mixed with two cups of coffee, Prime coffee, with
Speaker 1: that creamer sitting over there, that coffee make creamer. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, oh, dear God, this is bad. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to run in these woods because they may
Speaker 1: be a bird, you know, roasted. And I got in there.
Speaker 1: I got in there kind of late because it's already
Speaker 1: blue in the sky, you know, like these birds should
Speaker 1: be got about that time.
Speaker 2: This is our second turkey hunting episode of the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five spring. And there's something that I hadn't told you.
Speaker 2: It's that we saved some of the best turkey stories
Speaker 2: for last. Say you might, as a person top the
Speaker 2: greatest turkey story ever told hat tip into Med Palmer's
Speaker 2: last story on the last episode, and say I to you,
Speaker 2: listen and find out for being bit by a turkey,
Speaker 2: to chunk in a pine knot at a fox, to
Speaker 2: using the panther scream to kill a big gobbler to
Speaker 2: a man wearing only his underwear and a cameo jacket
Speaker 2: to shoot a gobbler. His stories are full of surprises,
Speaker 2: and some of them are even downright embarrassing, but they
Speaker 2: are guaranteed to get you fired up for Turkey season.
Speaker 2: You guys know how this works. We've got eight people
Speaker 2: telling us their best stories. This is one of my
Speaker 2: favorite times of the year, and I really doubt that
Speaker 2: you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: At my time, I start leaning over, a stick goes
Speaker 4: through my underwear and gets hung up in it, and
Speaker 4: now I can't move and I can't and now he
Speaker 4: throws his head up.
Speaker 1: He sees me.
Speaker 4: So I just leaned over, riped my underwear when I did,
Speaker 4: and he jumps up when he does, I should killing.
Speaker 2: My name is Klay Nukem and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: places we explore. The best thing about a good turkey
Speaker 2: story is that you just never know which direction that
Speaker 2: it's going to go, and these stories are going to
Speaker 2: surprise you. It continues to amaze me how many varied
Speaker 2: and sundry things can go wrong from the time a
Speaker 2: turkey starts come when he's in gun range, and how
Speaker 2: many varied in sundry things have to go perfectly right.
Speaker 2: Our first storyteller is new to bear grease, but it
Speaker 2: is a true veteran of the spring.
Speaker 5: This is an old time turkey hunt.
Speaker 2: Don and Sarah Clark, and they're gonna tell us how
Speaker 2: the name Clarkett came about.
Speaker 6: My name is Don Clark. I'm from Sheridan, Arkansas.
Speaker 7: You know Sarah and I make box calls and have
Speaker 7: a lot of people ask us, how did yell come
Speaker 7: up with the name Clarkett custom calls.
Speaker 6: Well, Clarkett is a name.
Speaker 7: That was given to us by some of several of
Speaker 7: our friends here. There were turkey hunters, but back in
Speaker 7: the day, we didn't have a lot of turkeys. This
Speaker 7: is back in the early seventies. There wasn't a lot
Speaker 7: of turkeys around. So if you heard a turkey, you
Speaker 7: better get on him. And because if other people found it,
Speaker 7: you know how that goes, they gonna be in there.
Speaker 7: They're gonna kill it too. But our general rule was,
Speaker 7: you know, you hunted him for three days. If you
Speaker 7: didn't kill him, you got on the phone. You get
Speaker 7: on the phone at night. We would call cousins, we
Speaker 7: call uncles, we call sister in law's brother in laws, whatever,
Speaker 7: and we're gonna go down there, and somebody would go
Speaker 7: in or try to go under the night before and
Speaker 7: roost that turkey. Whether he would be more likely the
Speaker 7: game plan guy and my brother James, he loved to
Speaker 7: call the turkey, but he we had a turkey that
Speaker 7: our good friend Willim McGarty had been hunting for a
Speaker 7: few days and hadn't killed him.
Speaker 6: So he called us. He said, we we need if.
Speaker 7: Y'all would come help us, come help me kill this turkey. So,
Speaker 7: like I said, the phone line lit up at night.
Speaker 7: We got everybody all planned up. We met up the
Speaker 7: next morning at that little church here where Willard had
Speaker 7: been here in a turkey. He was giving everybody, you
Speaker 7: go here, you stay on the west side, you stay
Speaker 7: on just to go about two hundred yards mountaine. We're
Speaker 7: gonna we're gonna get there and we're gonna surround this
Speaker 7: turkey when he gets off the roofs.
Speaker 6: Because you couldn't call him, that's what he said, you
Speaker 6: can't call him, he gonna leave.
Speaker 7: So James Erwin was gonna be the call man, which
Speaker 7: he always got to be the call man. This year
Speaker 7: was Sarah's first turkey hunt. I think her and Becky
Speaker 7: both got to go that morning, and we had cousins there, uncles,
Speaker 7: so we had our little plans there and going down
Speaker 7: the roads. Well, I don't know a lot of you
Speaker 7: guys or maybe like me, but a lot of times
Speaker 7: when you get to the woods in the morning, something
Speaker 7: will hits you and all of a sudden you have
Speaker 7: to go to the restroom. Well I had my pretty
Speaker 7: young wife with me that morning. Anyhow, I told her,
Speaker 7: I said, you stay right here on this road and
Speaker 7: I'm going to slip right out there and take care
Speaker 7: of the business and I'll be back. Well, I go
Speaker 7: out there, start to take care of my business. Well,
Speaker 7: I just took my foot and brooked about three times there,
Speaker 7: just cleaning me out a little spot and set the squat.
Speaker 7: So whenever I squatted, just about the time I got squatted.
Speaker 7: I'd laying my gun on a stump right there in
Speaker 7: front of me, about three or four yards. I heard
Speaker 7: a racket. Now I looked, hear that turkey come running
Speaker 7: just as hard as he could run. He run right
Speaker 7: up her to me and stopped, like, oh my god. Well,
Speaker 7: I'm sating there with my pants all undone, and so
Speaker 7: so I thought, if I can just ease up her,
Speaker 7: just reach over and get that gun real easy, maybe
Speaker 7: I can kill it. So I started that little process.
Speaker 7: About the time I almost had my gun that turkey
Speaker 7: wanted to putting, he jumped up in the air and
Speaker 7: he went to fly.
Speaker 6: Looked like a beep fifty two bomber leaving here. And
Speaker 6: just about that time.
Speaker 7: He flew right over the top of her. And she
Speaker 7: now when she had just started turkey, this was her
Speaker 7: first turkey hunt. She blowed a hole through that turkey's
Speaker 7: breast that you would not believe. But anyhow, I went
Speaker 7: running to her, still holding my grabbing my pants up,
Speaker 7: running to her, got there, got there looking at the turkey,
Speaker 7: and boil with high five and hugging and kissing the pair.
Speaker 6: And I don't like a bunch of the kids.
Speaker 7: You could have stuck a beer can through that turkey's
Speaker 7: breast where she had shot the whole loaded went through there.
Speaker 7: The turkey had a seven inch period and eleven inch
Speaker 7: period and that that was her first turkey to every kill, well,
Speaker 7: everybody show with the turkey. Of course, back then, whenever
Speaker 7: you killed one, you showed everybody you want to share,
Speaker 7: and you drove around everybody got to hear the story.
Speaker 7: What people would say, well, did you clark it or
Speaker 7: did you call it up? So the Clerket name come
Speaker 7: from all the clerks calling to get together surrounding a
Speaker 7: turkey and killing it, which we did that several times,
Speaker 7: but we'd rather call it up and kill it just outright.
Speaker 7: But you know, back then turkey was a delicacy and
Speaker 7: the clerks were known to kill turkeys.
Speaker 2: Now that's a good story and really a testament to
Speaker 2: the effectiveness of scratching in the leaves and making the
Speaker 2: most of every opportunity, and sometimes opportunity comes when you
Speaker 2: least expect it. This isn't the only wing shot turkey
Speaker 2: that you're going to hear about today, and later we're
Speaker 2: going to hear from Don's wife, Sarah, And it's not
Speaker 2: hard to see that these people have dedicated a big
Speaker 2: chunk of their life to the wild turkey. Our next
Speaker 2: storyteller is a handful. I can't say that I know
Speaker 2: him real well, but I know two things beyond a
Speaker 2: shadow of a doubt. Number one, he's a handful, and
Speaker 2: number two, he lives in the cultural cradle of American
Speaker 2: turkey hunting, Magnolia State in Mississippi.
Speaker 3: His name is.
Speaker 2: Trent Ellis and he's pretty much an internet comedian. This
Speaker 2: story is about a public land gobbler, and all I
Speaker 2: can say is hide the kids, hide your wives. This
Speaker 2: one shows some serious dedication and might make a pale
Speaker 2: skinned person blush.
Speaker 5: And it's oddly connected to Dawn's story. You'll get why.
Speaker 5: And if you don't know him already, meet Trent else.
Speaker 1: My name's Trent Us, and I'm gonna tell y'all about
Speaker 1: a story of my last public bird that I killed here, okay,
Speaker 1: here in Mississippi. So every morning I like to get
Speaker 1: up deer in turkey season, obviously, because you got to
Speaker 1: get in there way before daylight. And I'll come in
Speaker 1: here and I'll turn the coffee pot on, and I
Speaker 1: love to get, you know, from here to the woods.
Speaker 1: I like to drink, you know, the port and thermous
Speaker 1: and I'll probably drink a cup and a have to
Speaker 1: two cups of coffee. So I step out of the
Speaker 1: truck that morning, and I'll get out of the truck
Speaker 1: and I just, you know, with my mouth right before
Speaker 1: I do my first hoot, I take that breath in,
Speaker 1: and that sweet heat pineapple deer sausage last night that
Speaker 1: I ate hits me because it's mixed with two cups
Speaker 1: of coffee, Prime coffee, with that creamer sitting over there.
Speaker 1: That coffee make creamer. And I'm thinking, oh, dear God.
Speaker 8: This is bad.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to run in these woods because
Speaker 1: they may be a bird, you know, roosted. And I
Speaker 1: got in there. I got in there kind of late
Speaker 1: because it's already blue in the sky, you know, like
Speaker 1: he's birds to be God about that time. Well, see
Speaker 1: what I did learn is one guy will really don't
Speaker 1: change nothing for me. But when you hear three of them,
Speaker 1: that stomach ache starts to lessen. Okay, it starts to
Speaker 1: go away. Because I'm talking about that son of a gun.
Speaker 1: He started going over to my left. I know there's
Speaker 1: two birds. I'm pretty sure there's one double goblin. He's hot.
Speaker 1: So I make the decision to hop in that old
Speaker 1: six seven comings, fire that loud diesel up, and move
Speaker 1: another one hundred and fifty yards instead of walking like
Speaker 1: a smart person. Okay, and you know when you have
Speaker 1: to go walking is kind of a that's a question mark,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So I get in that
Speaker 1: truck and I go up about one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: yards and I swing off the road and I part
Speaker 1: and from the time that I left that place to
Speaker 1: the time that I got to the second place, I'm
Speaker 1: prairie dogging, buddy. Let me tell you it's hurt. I
Speaker 1: had a buddy in the Marine Corps said you ain't
Speaker 1: got to go bad enough until you can feel it.
Speaker 1: And feet, and my feet were throbbing, you hear what
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, Like they were. It was just pulsating,
Speaker 1: all right. So I made a decision. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta handle this first, for I get in here after
Speaker 1: these birds, and I get out of the truck and
Speaker 1: I shut my door real quiet and everything, and I'm
Speaker 1: going across and I got my pants, you know, halfway
Speaker 1: down and everything, and I don't have a true. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't go into the woods because these birds are
Speaker 1: I think they're eighty yards from me. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't sell. They don't see the truck. So I grab
Speaker 1: on the front of my truck and I go to
Speaker 1: squat and that's some gun double gobbles like one hundred
Speaker 1: yards away, and it's just like it's just like it
Speaker 1: just went right back up. And I was like, oh crap.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 1: So I made a decision at that point that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna kill this bird. And to make a long story short,
Speaker 1: what I learned was I'm willing to crack my pants
Speaker 1: to kill a bird. Okay, because that's exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: all right. I'm not gonna go into all the details
Speaker 1: and get real, you know, but I ended up shooting
Speaker 1: that bird at sixty steps that day. I won't never forget.
Speaker 1: I had gone through a lot of crap that morning
Speaker 1: to get to this bird. Well, he was walking the
Speaker 1: edge of that slew and he popped up on that
Speaker 1: little rise right there to where I could see him. Well,
Speaker 1: where I was hunting, it was just wide open bottom,
Speaker 1: so he could see a long way and he could
Speaker 1: see whatever's calling right there. Ain't there no more, and uh,
Speaker 1: he come up there, and when he turned, I had
Speaker 1: that old twelve gage stoger. Well I shot, and uh
Speaker 1: to make a crappy situation turn crappier. I knew I
Speaker 1: hit him because as soon as he and he turned
Speaker 1: and I thought he was going the other way, I
Speaker 1: shot and that song and flew up. I nearly beat
Speaker 1: the wad to him, all right. As soon as I shot,
Speaker 1: I got up and went to run, and I made
Speaker 1: about ten steps and I tripped on a route and
Speaker 1: my gun went flying. Nearly made it all the way
Speaker 1: to the bird, and I ate about four inches of
Speaker 1: Mississippi mud.
Speaker 8: Right in my mouth.
Speaker 1: Okay, by this time, he literally he flew up and
Speaker 1: he flew back down and landed, and I got within
Speaker 1: two steps of it, So I said, you know what
Speaker 1: it's worth ten dollars. I threw that twelve gay stoger up,
Speaker 1: and I shot that song gun two steps away, right
Speaker 1: in the head and folded right there. That was the
Speaker 1: literally the best crappiest day I'd ever had in a
Speaker 1: turkey bud's.
Speaker 5: I told you that he was a handful.
Speaker 2: You can unplug your kids and your wives ears now
Speaker 2: and next time Trent, why don't you keep stuff like
Speaker 2: that to yourself? I mean, this is going public, like
Speaker 2: people are gonna listen to this. Just kidding, Trent, that
Speaker 2: was funny, funny. You should follow Trent on social media.
Speaker 2: He puts out a ton of funny and oddly clean
Speaker 2: content that I often laugh out loud to. I appreciate
Speaker 2: it when people are funny that aren't vulgar. That's really
Speaker 2: hard to do, and Trent does that. Cheers to Trent Ellis.
Speaker 2: Our next story is told by a man named Johnny
Speaker 2: Johnston from the mountains of eastern Oklahoma. He's a handful two,
Speaker 2: but in a different kind of way. And I don't
Speaker 2: know how to say this without it sounded like I'm
Speaker 2: trying to flatter the man. But he's as hill billy
Speaker 2: as anyone I've ever met, and I mean that in
Speaker 2: the most honorable and noble way. Johnny is a turkey
Speaker 2: hunter's turkey hunter, and he's got two stories that he's
Speaker 2: gonna tell us. The first one involves some bloodshed. It's
Speaker 2: his blood though. This is Johnny Johnston.
Speaker 9: I did some guiding. I got it for being laid
Speaker 9: quite a bit when he was down here hunting and
Speaker 9: for another man that was very military, and he wanted
Speaker 9: me to take his judge turkey hunk. So I agreed.
Speaker 9: He said, now you have to be on your best behavior.
Speaker 9: This is a big time judge. He likes to hunt,
Speaker 9: but he don't joke around. I said, oh, I'll be
Speaker 9: all bun perfect spring Day got out of the truck.
Speaker 9: Turkeys were already goblin here in four or five different
Speaker 9: turkeys gobble. So we went to him like a biteen
Speaker 9: south and we got in there and God perfect where
Speaker 9: he needed to be, had him out where he could shoot.
Speaker 9: And I was doing a calling kind of watching and
Speaker 9: start calling, and three or four gobblers got together and
Speaker 9: they were coming right down our gun burrow and to
Speaker 9: my ride of turkey goble about a half a goble,
Speaker 9: not a full gobble. People say, oh it's a jay.
Speaker 9: I don't go for that, because jakeskin gobble. This like
Speaker 9: a big turkey, and big turkeys if they're gobbling, the
Speaker 9: lord be gobbled out. And they just do about a
Speaker 9: half a gobble. I didn't pay attention to it, though
Speaker 9: I was watching the ward coming.
Speaker 6: He killed one.
Speaker 9: I was gonna try to pick me one now, and
Speaker 9: I saw something and I cut my eyes, and probably
Speaker 9: the biggest turkey I've ever seen it, a huge, big
Speaker 9: gobley walking to my right clothes and I forgot I
Speaker 9: out of Guiden. I just rolled out and give him one,
Speaker 9: and turkeys went everywhere, and the turky he went down
Speaker 9: the mountain. I didn't get a good shot on him
Speaker 9: because they had running time. I shot, and I was
Speaker 9: running after him in that steep country and where it
Speaker 9: dropped off is about a ten foot draw, and I
Speaker 9: was running fast like a drunk, and all fat bank
Speaker 9: all went landed in the rocks and really messed my
Speaker 9: ankle up. Why laying there wondering where my turkey was,
Speaker 9: I heard him kind of making a breathing noise, and
Speaker 9: I crawled up and he was up partly under a
Speaker 9: big white rock, and I got him out and carried
Speaker 9: him back up there where the judge was, and I said,
Speaker 9: look here, jud and I had this turkey by the
Speaker 9: neck and I had him right up in my face
Speaker 9: talking to it. I said, this is Judge Lendra. He's
Speaker 9: a turkey man. He's never seen a Eastern turkey, just
Speaker 9: like you. He's a real grand god. But I've read
Speaker 9: your book. And that turkey went through my hand and
Speaker 9: bit me right on the end of the node. It palked,
Speaker 9: I'm talking bit me and built a big blood blister
Speaker 9: on the end of my node, and I bit him
Speaker 9: on the top of the head. I started chewing on
Speaker 9: his head and asking him how he liked be bit
Speaker 9: and that judge that says, oh my, my my, I've
Speaker 9: never even heard of anything like this, but less seen
Speaker 9: something like it. And from that day on, that judge
Speaker 9: and I were close friends. We did a lot of
Speaker 9: turkey hunt together. I've never seen a real grand turkey,
Speaker 9: but he introduced me to him the next week.
Speaker 5: Now tell me why you bet this turkey?
Speaker 9: Just to reflet He bet me, so I beat him back.
Speaker 2: See, I lie, really, you weren't trying to be funny.
Speaker 2: It just just oh, I just beat him, just bid him.
Speaker 2: He beat me, and I beat him back.
Speaker 8: Now, you said that turkey was big.
Speaker 9: Weigh twenty three pounds, that's big for Eastern turkey, and spurring,
Speaker 9: but had full hooks. Turkey hunters no called the limb
Speaker 9: hanger four or five year old or spurs will hook
Speaker 9: and you just hang them by their spurs on the
Speaker 9: limb had two beards almost twelve inches. Both of them
Speaker 9: look like a turkey hunters call up paint brush, big thick,
Speaker 9: two individual beards.
Speaker 8: What year do you think that would have been?
Speaker 9: Probably nineteen eighty. Pretty cool turkey. And I want to
Speaker 9: add a little bit to this. That judge was an
Speaker 9: excellent box call caller. Best don't believe I'll be heard,
Speaker 9: but he said, let me show you a trick on
Speaker 9: how to brain this turkey and bleeding. I've never seen thathing.
Speaker 9: I've never heard of it, and a lot of people haven't.
Speaker 9: But every turkey I kill a brain and bleed from
Speaker 9: that day forward, to hang them upside down and go
Speaker 9: up their mouth, kind of like cutting the deer's road
Speaker 9: on each side of their lower bill. Mihuld cut and
Speaker 9: then stick your knife right through their brain straight up.
Speaker 6: I thought that was pretty nat Now he hung.
Speaker 5: Them to let them bleed, bleed out just so like
Speaker 5: the meat would be better.
Speaker 9: Right. He said, that makes the mere that they plucked
Speaker 9: their turkeys. They don't skin them. He said that might
Speaker 9: major of pluff. I don't know. I ain't ever pluffed one.
Speaker 9: I skimming, but that is pretty interesting.
Speaker 8: I've never heard anybody say that. They were coming to
Speaker 8: me like a biting.
Speaker 9: Sal Yeah, that's that's serious. That's serious, advanced Gord.
Speaker 2: If I hadn't foreshadowed the turkey bite in the intro,
Speaker 2: I doubt you would have seen it coming. When's the
Speaker 2: last time you heard of somebody getting bit by turkey?
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever heard of it. If you
Speaker 2: can't tell, Johnny's a character. And how about bleeding the turkey,
Speaker 2: that's new to me. I appreciated that tip. The second
Speaker 2: story is short, and it's about his dear friend who
Speaker 2: he didn't even call his first name. He just calls
Speaker 2: him wild man.
Speaker 9: Eat a superhuman good man. And another little wild man's story.
Speaker 9: We was over and country a little bit east and
Speaker 9: there's a new road and a bunch of big clay
Speaker 9: roots where they'd punched that road in and into that
Speaker 9: pine timber cut off them humongous clay roots, and the
Speaker 9: road might a sharp curve, and the turkeys were in
Speaker 9: that road, I'm sure of. I said, why men, get
Speaker 9: where you shoot that road? And I started calling and
Speaker 9: instead of turkeys ain't supposed to come down real steep hill.
Speaker 9: You've heard all that. The turkey can go anywhere he
Speaker 9: wants to go. He's very mobile wings good leg. This
Speaker 9: was straight off him. Two gobblers slid off that steep bank.
Speaker 9: I watched them. They didn't come the road. And that's
Speaker 9: the way he has set up to shoe. He was
Speaker 9: in a jail. But when I realized it's coming off
Speaker 9: that bank of a too late to tailor and they
Speaker 9: he was leaned up against the clay root and the
Speaker 9: gobbler was on the other side of that clay root.
Speaker 9: That close, priest, don't lank from him. Now the how
Speaker 9: is he ever gonna kill that turkey? But it's gonna run.
Speaker 9: He gainst you. I'm gonna make him fly. I didn't
Speaker 9: have time to explain all this the wallman and I
Speaker 9: screamed like a panther one I had turkey with up.
Speaker 9: Boom he shot straight up and boom he dropped. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I run what I rug got the turkey. Will Man's
Speaker 9: laying against the clay road holding his chail. Hey, he said,
Speaker 9: don't ever do that to me again. Almost have a
Speaker 9: heart attack.
Speaker 8: So you scared him when you yelled.
Speaker 9: I scared him when I screamed.
Speaker 8: That's a good story.
Speaker 9: That's good. That's the kind of turkey stories all I
Speaker 9: tell you.
Speaker 8: That's a good stuff.
Speaker 2: You You've told me two stories where you wanted a
Speaker 2: turkey to fly.
Speaker 9: There's times bending on where you're hunting brush briar. If
Speaker 9: he flies, you can kill him. If he runs, you
Speaker 9: can't catch him. Our turkey will fly, the Rios, the
Speaker 9: mariam they'll mostly run, but Eastern.
Speaker 6: Is very mobile to there.
Speaker 9: It go up and you will go straight up.
Speaker 5: If you listen. Old Johnny'll teach you some stuff.
Speaker 2: And it goes without saying that a turkey hunter's first
Speaker 2: option obviously isn't to shoot a flying turkey. But I
Speaker 2: guarant dog toe you that if you talk to any
Speaker 2: old school turkey hunter that's killed twice as many turkeys
Speaker 2: as he's lived years on this earth, he's probably wingshot
Speaker 2: one before, and you might as well have a strategy
Speaker 2: for when it's the only option that you've got. Thank you,
Speaker 2: mister Johnny, and hat tipped a wild man. We'll probably
Speaker 2: be hearing more from Johnny in the months to come.
Speaker 2: There's more to this story than what you've heard here.
Speaker 2: Our next story is told by Andy Brown of Western Arkansas.
Speaker 2: He needs no introduction and has become a fixture on
Speaker 2: our turkey episodes. This is a short story with lots
Speaker 2: of twists and turns.
Speaker 3: One morning we went out here great and me and
Speaker 3: a friend of mine, Dennis Ferguson. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you ever did us. Me and Dennis went out there
Speaker 3: one morning and I was in great shape. I mean
Speaker 3: I could get around as good as anybody in the woods.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we parked, we went back across the pavement
Speaker 3: and we went we went north, back up the mountain.
Speaker 3: There it started up a long leg and Dennis, we're
Speaker 3: trying to get to the top of the mount and Dennis,
Speaker 3: he just takes off and he just flat. This just
Speaker 3: leaves me and I said, well, I ain't I mean
Speaker 3: it's early. I said, I ain't got to kill myself
Speaker 3: to get the top of the mountain. I'll get up there.
Speaker 3: But I just stopped and leaned up against a tree
Speaker 3: about three forces a way to the top, and I
Speaker 3: was just sitting there, kind of catching my breath, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, just right there a turkey gobbled
Speaker 3: and Clay that turkey he was gobbling so low. I
Speaker 3: don't know that you could have heard him at the road.
Speaker 3: It just, I mean just really low. When he did,
Speaker 3: I just slid down there by that tree with my
Speaker 3: back to it, facing up hill. That turkey gobbled undoubtedly
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty times before daylight. Of course wouldn't
Speaker 3: I wouldn't call him. I mean he was too close
Speaker 3: to call. I mean, he wasn't sixty yards from me there.
Speaker 3: I couldn't see him, but I mean he was just
Speaker 3: right there in the head of a little o haller.
Speaker 3: And so he kept a gobbling, kept a gobbling, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden I could hear something behind me
Speaker 3: coming up that leg, just like me and Dennis had
Speaker 3: walked in. Snip snap, snip snap, snip snap. And I
Speaker 3: look over my shoulder and here comes a gray fox.
Speaker 3: He's coming to that turkey, and I kind of waved
Speaker 3: my arm at him like that, and he just kind
Speaker 3: of looked at me and just stood there. Now, turkey
Speaker 3: just gobble go. I wound up having to get a
Speaker 3: pine limb and throw at that gray fox to run
Speaker 3: him off. Well, I get him run off, he starts
Speaker 3: getting light. Turkey he pitches out just right there, and
Speaker 3: when he did, I called him. He gobbled right back
Speaker 3: at me, and I just got my gun on him.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's just right there. Drummings, just blowing my
Speaker 3: just blowing my ears off. I mean he's close enough.
Speaker 3: I hear him. I hear him suck wins is he's drumming,
Speaker 3: and I've got my gun right here, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I looked right there in their years. I
Speaker 3: don't know how he got there, but he did. I
Speaker 3: mean a big one.
Speaker 6: I mean that I had a rope on it.
Speaker 3: And he's he's not thirty yards from me, but I
Speaker 3: can't I can't move. I mean, he's and so he
Speaker 3: kind of gets around out of my sight there, and
Speaker 3: I called him in all the goblin. He gobbled and
Speaker 3: gobble gobbled, but he was steady going up the mountain
Speaker 3: away from him. Well, I knew I wasn't gonna call
Speaker 3: him back. So he got out there and got the
Speaker 3: kind of head of a big holler. I just pulled
Speaker 3: that leg and went all the way to the top.
Speaker 3: And when you got up on top of it, that
Speaker 3: mountain on the north side of it, it's not twenty
Speaker 3: five yards across. You just it's almost like you step
Speaker 3: on one side, step over on the other, you know.
Speaker 3: But there's a there's a little old brushy gap up
Speaker 3: there and I walked up into that gap, and when
Speaker 3: I got up in the gap, got my breath, I called,
Speaker 3: and he gobbled right out on.
Speaker 6: The knob just just east.
Speaker 3: Of me, right there, and I slip out there, and
Speaker 3: there's never forget this. There was a cedar tree and
Speaker 3: I just walked up in that cedar tree and got
Speaker 3: kind of stash there, and I called a turkey gobble,
Speaker 3: real big ground. And I look out there and it's
Speaker 3: still early, but I can see a redhead. I can
Speaker 3: just see it out there, you know, And I said,
Speaker 3: that's good enough. Right there, I just raised up through
Speaker 3: that cedar tree and pulled the trigger. And what I
Speaker 3: did is a turkey fluent went south off the mountain there,
Speaker 3: and that one was flopping. And of course I'm patting
Speaker 3: myself on the shoulder. And I walked out there and
Speaker 3: I'd killed a big old jake. Didn't even kill the
Speaker 3: big god right, killed a big old jake. Because I
Speaker 3: was really disappointed that now.
Speaker 8: I don't know if I'm ever gonna run you out of.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 2: Takes a lot of things going right to kill a
Speaker 2: long bearded gobbler. And just to clarify, back in the day,
Speaker 2: killing a jake was legal in Arkansas, so beard checking
Speaker 2: wasn't a necessity like it is today because you can't
Speaker 2: choose Jase today. But that was a good story, Andy,
Speaker 2: We appreciate it. But now we're in for a real
Speaker 2: treat because our next story is told by none other
Speaker 2: than Med Palmer from Capia County, Mississippi. And if you
Speaker 2: just heard the way that people that know Med talked
Speaker 2: about him, you think he was ten feet tall and
Speaker 2: his daddy was a gobbler turkey and his mama was
Speaker 2: a red fox. But in this story, we'll see that
Speaker 2: Med is just a mortal turkey hunter, not superhuman, and
Speaker 2: he puts on and takes off his pants just like
Speaker 2: the rest of us.
Speaker 4: My name's may Had Palmer on Papya County, Mississippi. We
Speaker 4: started traveling turkey hunting several years ago, going to other states,
Speaker 4: you know, and joined Pretty Country and we've been going
Speaker 4: out west for a couple of years. And it was
Speaker 4: me and my brother, my nephew. So we get back
Speaker 4: same place my nephew and my brother had tagged down.
Speaker 4: It was almost the same scenario. Was a year before
Speaker 4: we was going down to the last day we were
Speaker 4: gonna leave. That day and I had to pay on
Speaker 4: my tag, and we had.
Speaker 8: Tried a couple of spots. We got on a bird.
Speaker 4: He got henned up and I told him, I said,
Speaker 4: let's go back down to that spot where my gun's naw.
Speaker 4: I said, I bet that bird's still there. And they
Speaker 4: started laughing and my brother said, look, I didn't tag down.
Speaker 4: I'm not climbing that mountain again like I did last year.
Speaker 4: My nephew said, I'm with you. Said if he gobbles,
Speaker 4: I'll go with you. So we get there and I yep,
Speaker 4: and a hen yep, and I said, I said he's there.
Speaker 4: And they were sitting in the truck. I told my
Speaker 4: nephew said, come here.
Speaker 6: He said, what is it.
Speaker 4: I said, A hen, just yep. I said that God
Speaker 4: was there. He said you here, and I said, oh,
Speaker 4: he's with that hen now Yet again he didn't God.
Speaker 4: I told him he's got a slate. It's just you know,
Speaker 4: some calls just had that tongue on Turkey's love. I said,
Speaker 4: get your slate and call I said, cut on, and
Speaker 4: he cut that turkey gob My brother went, oh my god.
Speaker 4: He said, I'm gonna have to go with you. It
Speaker 4: was the same place that that turkey was last year.
Speaker 4: So up the mountain we go, and it's freezing cold,
Speaker 4: and I get on top of a peak on that
Speaker 4: mountain and it's a steep drop off down to the
Speaker 4: river bottoms where the turkeys in this big bottom. But
Speaker 4: it's got I don't know if it's button whillers or
Speaker 4: what those bushes are, but they don't look they high
Speaker 4: till you get in them. And as I opened pockets
Speaker 4: out there with that turkey was flying down getting in
Speaker 4: my open pockets with the hens is what he's doing.
Speaker 4: So we get on tope of the mountain. I yep,
Speaker 4: the turkey gobb but I said, well, he's still on
Speaker 4: the roof. I said, we got time to get to
Speaker 4: that bottom, and so we start going. We get up
Speaker 4: to the next peak, which is probably three hundred yards.
Speaker 4: I reached from my snuff can. It's not in my pocket.
Speaker 4: I had lost my call. I've had that snuf can.
Speaker 4: I made it when I was eleven years old. I said,
Speaker 4: we got to find that call. They said, what I said,
Speaker 4: I don't lost my call. I said, you're joking.
Speaker 8: I said no.
Speaker 4: So we walked back and trail ourselves through that grass.
Speaker 4: We'd walked in. You could to the deck, grass were dead.
Speaker 4: Get to where I'd call where I knew I had it.
Speaker 4: We ain't found it, and I was just sick. I said,
Speaker 4: oh my Lord, I said, went one lost this kind,
Speaker 4: I said, I have called every turkey I ever called
Speaker 4: my life.
Speaker 8: With this call.
Speaker 4: We start coming back. Me and my nephew are walking
Speaker 4: side by side. My brother gets tired and he sits
Speaker 4: on a rock and then he whistles. I turned around.
Speaker 4: It was under his feet when he sat down on rock.
Speaker 4: I could have hugged his neck when he anyway, so
Speaker 4: we get the call. I yep, the turkey's donet flown
Speaker 4: down by now after all this ordeal. So he God
Speaker 4: was more to our right in that bottom, I said,
Speaker 4: I said, he's swinging around that bottom. Well, we went
Speaker 4: down the mountain, got in a swag across the little ditch,
Speaker 4: and when I come up, they grabbed me. Said there
Speaker 4: he is right there, and I said, I don't see it.
Speaker 4: Well I could see him because I was lower than that.
Speaker 4: The God was about thirty yards had done come up
Speaker 4: on a little noe right there, come upside of that mountain. Well,
Speaker 4: I didn't realize what that call weather could do to
Speaker 4: little batteries. When I throwed up, I barely could see
Speaker 4: the bead on that God. Well, I shoot a turkey roll. Well,
Speaker 4: I didn't have but two shells in my gun. I
Speaker 4: don't know why I didn't put three that day, but
Speaker 4: I didn't. Well, he takes off my pump and now
Speaker 4: the dot's completely gone, so I'm having to shoot the
Speaker 4: thing like I do.
Speaker 5: Dub at him, and my.
Speaker 4: Nephew said, shoot him again. I said, I'm out of shell.
Speaker 4: So he takes off running. Well, the turkey's flopping going
Speaker 4: upside of the mount. Well, I take off well around
Speaker 4: the bend and they get to the peak of the
Speaker 4: mountain and my nephew's gaining on the turkey and it's
Speaker 4: opening up. There's a big, huge drop off and it
Speaker 4: goes across this big bottom which is probably three hundred yards,
Speaker 4: and then there's the river, and the river it's rolling
Speaker 4: and it's probably two hundred and fifty yards across at
Speaker 4: least that. When he gets right to the ledge, my
Speaker 4: nephew dives at the turkey and almost caught it by
Speaker 4: the tail. And that turkey lunges makes one lunch. He
Speaker 4: don't flout, but he sails off the top of that
Speaker 4: mountain and he's selling across. He goes across at bottom
Speaker 4: several hundred yards, goes across that river several hundred yards.
Speaker 4: Me and my nephew just stand there and I'm sick.
Speaker 4: He's probably twenty five or thirty yards off the ground,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, he folds like you a
Speaker 4: shot dub. He just folds up and drops for dead.
Speaker 4: My nephew looked at me, he said that he just
Speaker 4: fall I said, lock a rock. I said, give me
Speaker 4: your binoclears. I wouldn't take my office spot. I get
Speaker 4: his binoclears and I look through there and he just
Speaker 4: laying there, wings spread out, head flop down, graveyard dead.
Speaker 4: And we had washed him from I said, we need
Speaker 4: to watch him. And I gotta get a good pinpoint
Speaker 4: because I don't know how in the world I'm gonna
Speaker 4: get over and get to him. I said, I got
Speaker 4: a dead turkey. I got to get to him. I
Speaker 4: can't leave him there. And I told my nephew, I said,
Speaker 4: I wish we had that air mak well. I was
Speaker 4: take an air mattress. I said, I wish we had that
Speaker 4: air mattress. From the motel. He said it's in the truck.
Speaker 4: So we decided, well, that's what gonna do. I said,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna use that air mattress. We got to find
Speaker 4: a paddle so weed them all around, and we found
Speaker 4: a little ottle piece of wood. It was probably about
Speaker 4: three inches wide and it was broke off the top.
Speaker 4: I said, it's almost like a boat paddle. That's good enough.
Speaker 4: I said, it won't be much, but that don't get
Speaker 4: me across. I said, y'all toke the air mattress down there.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go on and start taking clothes off because
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to.
Speaker 8: You know, it was shallow.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to push this thing through that shallow
Speaker 4: to get out there. So they got it down there.
Speaker 4: So I'm in my underwear, I got a jacket on
Speaker 4: with my boots in the back, and I start pushing
Speaker 4: this big old thing across and the wind blowing like crazy,
Speaker 4: and it's trying to blow this thing and anyway. I
Speaker 4: finally get to where it gets up above my knees.
Speaker 4: I said, I got to get on this thing now.
Speaker 4: And I could see the channel.
Speaker 8: It was dark.
Speaker 4: I said, there's the channel, and this things rolling. So
Speaker 4: I jump up on there. And when I do, when
Speaker 4: I tell you, I took off. I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be at the Mississippi River and a couple of hours
Speaker 4: away out I start paddling with that little stick and
Speaker 4: the wind blowing. Well, it started shooting me to the bank.
Speaker 4: It worked out great. So I got over there, got
Speaker 4: out of it. Now I'm in my underwear. I ain't
Speaker 4: got no pants. And then it dawned on me. I said,
Speaker 4: what is this gonna look like if ILL come up
Speaker 4: on another hunter me in my underwear? I said, well,
Speaker 4: it is what it is. You know. I got to
Speaker 4: go try to get this turkey. So I had marked
Speaker 4: me a big tree behind what the turkey was. So
Speaker 4: I got about forty yards in that tree. I said,
Speaker 4: all right, that turkey's gonna be right out here to
Speaker 4: the left. And I got about thirty yards where that
Speaker 4: turkey supposed to be. And he jumps up, and he
Speaker 4: jumped up like a rocket, like wasn't nothing wrong, and
Speaker 4: he takes off. Well, I shoot him and roll it,
Speaker 4: and then he cuts and goes in the woods and
Speaker 4: he flops down in the middle of it with his
Speaker 4: head and I said, all right, I gotta get this
Speaker 4: tree between me and him because he can't run again,
Speaker 4: because I'm gonna lose it.
Speaker 8: And I start crawling.
Speaker 4: Well about the time I crawled up there, I got
Speaker 4: probably about fifteen yards from him. I was gonna lean
Speaker 4: out behind that tree, shoot him in head, finish him off. Well,
Speaker 4: it was some limbs there. Well, all by time I
Speaker 4: start leaning over, a stick goes through my underwear and
Speaker 4: gets hung up in it. And now I can't move
Speaker 4: and I can't and now he throws his head up.
Speaker 1: He sees me.
Speaker 4: So I just leaned over, riped my underwear when I did,
Speaker 4: and he jumps up. When he does, I shoot him
Speaker 4: and kill him. So anyway, a turkey hunter do what
Speaker 4: it takes.
Speaker 8: I reckon.
Speaker 4: That's probably one of the most unusual hunts I ever
Speaker 4: had in my life.
Speaker 2: That's a good story mad and shows the links that
Speaker 2: the turkey hunter will go to get his bird. Our
Speaker 2: next story is told by a turkey hunting author. She's
Speaker 2: written a book. Her name is Sarah Clark. This is
Speaker 2: Don Clark's wife from the first story, the one who
Speaker 2: shot that gobbler out of the air when her husband
Speaker 2: was scratching a big circle in the leaves. You know,
Speaker 2: she wrote this book called Clarkett True Turkey Tales, and
Speaker 2: this is one of her favorite stories.
Speaker 5: I'd like to introduce you to Miss Sarah Clark.
Speaker 10: This is Sarah Clark, and I'm from Sheridan, Arkansas, and
Speaker 10: I'm gonna tell you a story that happened. I'll probably
Speaker 10: about twenty ten. I'd been hunting a long time with
Speaker 10: my husband. He taught me all the tricks to turkey hunting.
Speaker 10: In fact, i'd gotten to where I understood where I
Speaker 10: needed to go, how I needed to handle a turkey,
Speaker 10: and just kind of got kind of arrogant, I guess
Speaker 10: about it. But anyway, I started hunting on my own
Speaker 10: a lot, and my sister in law came to me
Speaker 10: one time talking about how she would love to hunt.
Speaker 10: She never hunted turkey, and so we decided to make
Speaker 10: a hunt and we went.
Speaker 6: We were We hunted a.
Speaker 10: Lot and washing tall mountains. I knew all the crooks
Speaker 10: and grannies, I knew where the roads end.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 10: We just hunted it so much that I became I
Speaker 10: knew where I was going. Anyways, she didn't so and
Speaker 10: she didn't call, and I did. So we partnered up
Speaker 10: as a team and I got to where We went
Speaker 10: a lot times together. We had our little rituals that
Speaker 10: we did. She took care of the organizing and I
Speaker 10: did the guiding. But she had made sure we had
Speaker 10: toilet paper, we had something to snack on if it
Speaker 10: was a long day anyway, So we decided to go
Speaker 10: early one morning and before daylight we got there. Instead
Speaker 10: of staying at the truck, which she wanted to do,
Speaker 10: I said, let's just go down a little ways and
Speaker 10: go down that curve and get the truck out of
Speaker 10: our site. So we eased down that road. Of course
Speaker 10: I was in the lead, and we got right to
Speaker 10: a curve and got out of sight and said, as
Speaker 10: we just got around that curve, all of a sudden, gosh,
Speaker 10: we looked at each other and both said a dirty word.
Speaker 10: And then we decided she was just shaking her head,
Speaker 10: and I said, well, let's just let's stay here right here.
Speaker 10: It's okay. There's probably more than one. And about that time,
Speaker 10: fly fly, fright flop, another big old turkey flu. We
Speaker 10: could hear it going through the up high in the woods.
Speaker 10: So I said, look, I know what we can do.
Speaker 10: We can drive around and get on the other side
Speaker 10: and we'll get we can get in there close to him. Well,
Speaker 10: we got around there to the place where I thought,
Speaker 10: and I said, it's not that far, and so here
Speaker 10: we go. And we had to cross three different little branches,
Speaker 10: and on that third one, she looked at me like,
Speaker 10: good lord, how much further we have to go? And
Speaker 10: I said, just a little bit further, So here we go.
Speaker 10: When we got to a place and I got my
Speaker 10: little uh, well, my mouth called and nothing, nothing answered.
Speaker 10: I said, we get let's go a little bit further,
Speaker 10: and I got out my little slate, a little sweet
Speaker 10: slate call and did a pretty loud call, and the
Speaker 10: turkey just answered real quick, and he's at the top
Speaker 10: of that mountain on the left. Well, so we quickly
Speaker 10: made our plan, and I said, let's get over here
Speaker 10: on the right hand side and pretty close to the
Speaker 10: road and maybe we can call it down. So we
Speaker 10: got a founder tree that we could sit at, and
Speaker 10: she's we've got our partner. Thing is that we find
Speaker 10: a tree and we'd say that's twelve o'clock. So if
Speaker 10: one of us sees the turkey and the other one doesn't,
Speaker 10: we can say kid's coming in at nine o'clock, were
Speaker 10: coming in at three o'clock, and that helps us to
Speaker 10: figure out where we are. I, since I've already killed
Speaker 10: several turkeys, she had not killed the one yet, and
Speaker 10: so I put her face in the road and I
Speaker 10: got over to her side parallel with my legs parallel
Speaker 10: to the road and anyway. So the turkey was steadily gobbling.
Speaker 10: It was steadily coming to us. It's coming down the
Speaker 10: hill the mountain, and I said, now, please let it come.
Speaker 10: It's got all ways to come. I said, just keep
Speaker 10: letting it come, Just keep letting it come. Will it
Speaker 10: come on? And it was getting close to the creek,
Speaker 10: and about that time, on my right eye, I saw
Speaker 10: a whitehead coming. I said, wait a minute, ladies, wait
Speaker 10: a minute, there's another one coming. It's a big old
Speaker 10: gobbler coming down the same mountain, but coming at angling
Speaker 10: a different way. I said, maybe we can double and
Speaker 10: so and I said, you you still got your eye
Speaker 10: on that turkey.
Speaker 6: He said, yeah, I got I can see it.
Speaker 10: And she had that gun aimed at that circuit. She said, well,
Speaker 10: let's crossing the creek. And finally I was able to
Speaker 10: start seeing her turkey, and it started crossing the creek
Speaker 10: and then here come mine. I said, now, wait, wait,
Speaker 10: let it get across the creek. So it crossed the
Speaker 10: creek and it was working on up in there, and
Speaker 10: finally mine got to the creek and she said, galls
Speaker 10: shoot now, and I said, wait, let mine get across
Speaker 10: the creek, because I knew it would be a long
Speaker 10: shot for me too. And mine got to where I could.
Speaker 10: I thought, okay, I can shoot now. I said, are
Speaker 10: you are able to shoot? And she said yeah yeah,
Speaker 10: And I said I'll count to three. So I said,
Speaker 10: on the count of three, shoot and so I said one, two, boom.
Speaker 10: She shot, and then I boom, and then she shot again, boom,
Speaker 10: and hers took flight. What happened, and of course we
Speaker 10: both took off running. She knew that to get into
Speaker 10: her turkey. I took off run and got to my
Speaker 10: turkey and put my foot on its head, and she
Speaker 10: was over there and she had body slammed that turkey
Speaker 10: on the second shot she hit it, and she was
Speaker 10: laying on that turkey. I mean all her whole body
Speaker 10: was covering that turkey. Anyway, the woods, you just if
Speaker 10: the turkey hunter had been around there, there's no way
Speaker 10: they would have kept on nothing because it was like
Speaker 10: the cry of the Tara doc though.
Speaker 8: We were just.
Speaker 10: Hollering and screaming and laughing and couldn't. And we told
Speaker 10: that story to each other ten times before we left
Speaker 10: the woods. But we both got our turkeys. We doubled
Speaker 10: and that was our first turkey. So it was a
Speaker 10: great day.
Speaker 2: What a privilege it was to hear that story. For
Speaker 2: miss Sarah. It's really hard to pull off a double
Speaker 2: and those two did it in style. Thanks for sharing
Speaker 2: the story, and don't forget about her book Clarket True
Speaker 2: Turkey Tales by Sarah Clark. Our next story is told
Speaker 2: by a young man. He's nineteen years old, and by
Speaker 2: means of the fate of his birth date and the
Speaker 2: state that he lives in, he's never really experienced any
Speaker 2: glory days of turkey hunting. His father took him turkey
Speaker 2: hunting every year since he was six years old, but honestly,
Speaker 2: they didn't get on a lot of birds around their home.
Speaker 2: Though he's killed a few, this lack of birds hasn't
Speaker 2: altered though his trajectory of being well on his way
Speaker 2: to becoming a dinoh Woppin' turkey thumping good turkey hunter.
Speaker 2: This young man's name is Bear John Newcomb, and I'm
Speaker 2: the boy's father. But on this high pressured public land
Speaker 2: turkey hunt, Bear John sure didn't need any.
Speaker 8: Help from me.
Speaker 11: So I'm bar Nukembe And this is a story that
Speaker 11: happened the last So I was hunting a big section
Speaker 11: of public ground.
Speaker 8: There was a lot of pressure, a lot of people.
Speaker 11: But I'd found some turkeys down on the bottom of
Speaker 11: this big holler, and the first three days I was,
Speaker 11: I was on their tails. I was I got close
Speaker 11: a couple of times, and I had them kind of
Speaker 11: honed in. I knew right where they were and what
Speaker 11: they would do every day after they'd come off the roost.
Speaker 8: But I kept running into people.
Speaker 11: I'd be chasing a turkey and then I'd run into
Speaker 11: another person or someone would come in from the other side.
Speaker 11: So there was just a lot of pressure, and they
Speaker 11: just were getting less and less responsive to calling. So
Speaker 11: the fourth day of season comes around and I'd just been,
Speaker 11: you know, living out in the woods at this point,
Speaker 11: and there was a road that led down this mountain
Speaker 11: and it led right to this corner. It was like
Speaker 11: the mountain made a corner and you could you could
Speaker 11: hear off both sides of it, and the left side
Speaker 11: was just full of people because there were roads all
Speaker 11: on the left side, but the right side was just
Speaker 11: a big block of woods. And if they gobble on
Speaker 11: the left side, I was going to be competing with
Speaker 11: a bunch of people. But if it was the right side,
Speaker 11: it was just gonna be being the turkey.
Speaker 8: Sure enough.
Speaker 11: About fifteen minutes before daylight, right as the sun started
Speaker 11: to glow over the mountains, I looked over at the
Speaker 11: top of the Haller and you could see two headlamps
Speaker 11: about five hundred yards apart. You know, they were moving,
Speaker 11: kind of shuffling down the mountain getting to their listening spots.
Speaker 11: And then I looked across the valley and I could
Speaker 11: see another light over there. There were three people all
Speaker 11: in this kind of same area, and then me, So
Speaker 11: there were four people in this area, all hunting the
Speaker 11: same turkeys. Right at first light, a gobbler fired off
Speaker 11: right down at the bottom of the Haller, and that
Speaker 11: was just like the gun going off at a track meet.
Speaker 8: It was like you could just feel people like just.
Speaker 11: Shuffling down the mountain trying to get to this bird,
Speaker 11: but I kind of knew what he was gonna do.
Speaker 11: I'd been on this bird before, and it seemed like
Speaker 11: all three mornings that I hunted him, he would go
Speaker 11: up the mountain about three hundred yards and he would
Speaker 11: meet up with another guy. You know, whenever he was
Speaker 11: on the roost, it was just him, but once he
Speaker 11: got up the mountain, there'd be two gobblers. And so
Speaker 11: as soon as he gobbled, you know, you could just
Speaker 11: I decided to skip the roost and just go straight
Speaker 11: to where I thought he was going to go. And
Speaker 11: so I run down this haller. I mean, I'm just
Speaker 11: like booking it, and you get down to the bottom
Speaker 11: and there's these big bluffs and there's one spot you
Speaker 11: could cross. You know, I'd been running up and down
Speaker 11: this haller all week, so I knew right where to cross.
Speaker 11: And sure enough, I get about where I thought he
Speaker 11: was going to go, and I just hear a gobbler
Speaker 11: up there, And as I get closer, it gets louder,
Speaker 11: and I could tell he was with that other gobbler.
Speaker 8: There were two of.
Speaker 11: Them, So I kind of crept into a reasonable distance
Speaker 11: and then kind of surveyed the situation to see what
Speaker 11: the best plane of action would be. And they were
Speaker 11: up on this bench right above me. I was one
Speaker 11: bench below him, and I thought, okay, I could go
Speaker 11: down that bench and then get up on their bench
Speaker 11: and be even with him, try and call him in.
Speaker 8: But I don't know.
Speaker 11: So, you know, this was right where the other people were,
Speaker 11: and I didn't know, you know, if they were going.
Speaker 8: To respond to the call or not.
Speaker 11: And so I kind of creep in a little closer
Speaker 11: and I look up on the bench that they're on
Speaker 11: and there's a big rock about the size of my
Speaker 11: Ford Ranger just right on the edge of that bench,
Speaker 11: and they sounded like they were just right on the
Speaker 11: other side of it. They were flapping their wings and
Speaker 11: gobbling at each other. They'd just like be gobbling right
Speaker 11: on top of each other. And I thought, well, I
Speaker 11: could just slip up to that rock and they won't
Speaker 11: see me. And so I started to creep up the
Speaker 11: mountain real slow. I jack to shelling. I get right
Speaker 11: to that rock, and you could just hear them. I mean,
Speaker 11: they were. It was as close as I've ever been
Speaker 11: to a goblin turkey. I mean they were just like
Speaker 11: right there. And I kind of creep around the corner
Speaker 11: of this rock, and real slowly I look around and
Speaker 11: I see a flock of turkeys. There's a couple of
Speaker 11: hens there, and there's these two gobblers. And I real quickly,
Speaker 11: you know, jerk my head back, and you know, I
Speaker 11: get my gun up and get ready. And about the
Speaker 11: time I put my gun up, I see a turkey's
Speaker 11: head just walk right out in front of it. I
Speaker 11: mean he could have been five yards. And I look
Speaker 11: and he was a long beard and he was the
Speaker 11: first one that stepped out. And about the time that
Speaker 11: I saw him, he saw me, and he turned to
Speaker 11: start running, and I just put the bead right at
Speaker 11: the base of his neck and folded him. But I
Speaker 11: was just as excited as could be. I remember facetiming
Speaker 11: my dad and showing him the turkey. And this was,
Speaker 11: you know, four days of hunting the same bird. So
Speaker 11: I was pumped. But it kind of goes to show,
Speaker 11: you know, when you're hunting pressured land, you don't always
Speaker 11: have to just call him right in. Sometimes you can
Speaker 11: sneak up to the rock and bushwhack him.
Speaker 8: And anyway got him.
Speaker 5: That was some woodsmanship bear and just being smart.
Speaker 8: That was good.
Speaker 2: He did what you had to do to kill a
Speaker 2: bird that was likely pretty much uncallable. We're gonna close
Speaker 2: with the turkey story combined with a mini sermon by
Speaker 2: Pastor Robin Rischer of Mississippi. The setting is the country church.
Speaker 2: The windows open at the peak of the sprint.
Speaker 12: My name is Robin Rischer, my pastor of a Southern
Speaker 12: Baptist church in Mississippi.
Speaker 6: I pastored several of them.
Speaker 8: I was pastored.
Speaker 12: Stronghold Baptist Church down in Capaya County and had a
Speaker 12: pretty good turkey turkey population around that church. One Easter
Speaker 12: morning we had a sunrise service, a legitimate sunrin nine
Speaker 12: at seven o'clock business and eat donuts. But it was
Speaker 12: dark when we started preaching, and when we quit singing
Speaker 12: and preaching, it was daylight. We had a sunrise service,
Speaker 12: and just as old sun was easing up over that graveyard,
Speaker 12: he did kind of hard looking to us that Jesus
Speaker 12: is alive. He heard me.
Speaker 8: I made like I didn't hear.
Speaker 12: There's some rennicks who here in the bag. And if
Speaker 12: he got your grubbing, they got to walling around back there. They'
Speaker 12: want to go. I said, I'm gonna try him again.
Speaker 12: I said, he's alive, I said God, And for the
Speaker 12: rest of the time we sing and preach and pray
Speaker 12: and worship the Lord God. All money that turkey gobbel
Speaker 12: and nobody ever killed him.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease
Speaker 2: and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Please leave us a
Speaker 2: review on iTunes and text this episode to a buddy
Speaker 2: that needs some turkey inspiration to sprink. Be careful out there,
Speaker 2: Fully identify your target before you pull the trigger. Honor
Speaker 2: the ancient turkey hunter's code of not moving in on
Speaker 2: another man's hunting the area or on a bird that
Speaker 2: he's calling to. Good luck to you the spring. Keep
Speaker 2: the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm