Speaker 1: And all of a sudden boom. As soon as she shot,
Speaker 1: I jumped up and one of the birds was flying off,
Speaker 1: and the other one had his head up and he
Speaker 1: was just turning his head one eyeball turn another, one
Speaker 1: eyeball turn another, just trying to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: And I started screaming, reload, reload, reload, because she's shooting
Speaker 1: this old single shot shotgun and she ain't got but
Speaker 1: one shot. And she's looking at me like, oh no,
Speaker 1: what in the world did I do. We've found ourselves
Speaker 1: on the rising tide of spring turkey hunting. It's time.
Speaker 1: It's early April, and surely every gobbler in America is
Speaker 1: sounded off in the pre dawn darkness, doing the limbs, strutting,
Speaker 1: drum tight rope walk dance every morning, pitching down with
Speaker 1: the business of love on their mind. The biology of
Speaker 1: turkey breeding is complex yet simple. We understand more than
Speaker 1: we ever have, but much is still a mystery. It's
Speaker 1: fundamental in its purpose pro creation. But to a human
Speaker 1: the spring turkey woods can be poetic, even symbolic. A proud,
Speaker 1: beautiful bird strutting his iridescent feathers to the ladies literally
Speaker 1: puffed up, presenting his best self to the world, hoping
Speaker 1: to be appealing, maybe start a family. Isn't that the
Speaker 1: story of mankind? A gobble is an excited, hopeful sound
Speaker 1: fitting for the spring. And I do not know whether
Speaker 1: the sound of a gobble was made for the spring
Speaker 1: or if the spring was made for it, but goblin
Speaker 1: turkeys create a rare intoxication for many. It's exhilarating to call,
Speaker 1: get a response, and watch a turkey work in the
Speaker 1: shotgun range, and to partake of this ancient ritual. The
Speaker 1: turkey hunter has the opportunity to step into the world
Speaker 1: he does not fully understand, and participate in it for
Speaker 1: short windows of time. It's a rare experience. On this episode,
Speaker 1: we've got eight storytellers, one of which is North Carolina
Speaker 1: novelist David Joy. Jim ron Quest also tells us a
Speaker 1: Missouri turkey utton story, and we've got a couple of
Speaker 1: great Mississippi stories again. But also we've got some old
Speaker 1: favorite storytellers and Gary Believer, Nukeam, Brent Reeves, and Andy Brown.
Speaker 1: I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this second
Speaker 1: Turkey Stories episode. God, they're just so purty you know,
Speaker 1: some's coming up and kind of backled it through that
Speaker 1: tail fan. It's just so per I could see it
Speaker 1: like it was yesterday and this has probably been gosh
Speaker 1: nang forty years ago. Holy smoke, that just kind of
Speaker 1: did the math in my head. That's that's been a minute.
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land.
Speaker 1: Presented by f HF Gear American Maid, purpose built hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as
Speaker 1: the place as we explore. Just this week, I killed
Speaker 1: a gobbler in Mississippi while hunting with two sure enough
Speaker 1: bona fide turkey hunters. You'll meet them next week on
Speaker 1: the bear Grease Render. We all three witnessed the same
Speaker 1: event from slightly different angles, and after the turkey was
Speaker 1: done flopping, we all had three different but very true stories.
Speaker 1: What we all agreed on was the durned thing had
Speaker 1: an eleven and a half inch beard. I ain't even
Speaker 1: lying hearing the interpretation of the event of life through
Speaker 1: the eyes of another is extremely important. It's like using
Speaker 1: triangulation and navigation to find an exact location. He saw this,
Speaker 1: the other person saw that, and I know for sure
Speaker 1: what I saw. And you take all that and do
Speaker 1: some mental trigonometry, and you can come away with the
Speaker 1: clearer picture of life on this planet. I'm not just
Speaker 1: talking about Turkey stories either, but really the importance of
Speaker 1: stories in our human existence. Stories are entertaining fun, and
Speaker 1: we learned stuff. But I believe this sense of entertainment, intrigue,
Speaker 1: or interest in listening to stories gives us a biological reward.
Speaker 1: The enjoyment of a story functionally like what actually makes
Speaker 1: you like it is a dopamine release in the brain,
Speaker 1: causing us to feel happiness and satisfaction. Something deep in
Speaker 1: our DNA is scripted to reward us for listening. Think
Speaker 1: about that and to nerd out, just to touch more,
Speaker 1: just hang on, boys, and further convinced us of how
Speaker 1: we're all addicted to stories. Netflix, sitcoms, the news podcasts, YouTube,
Speaker 1: it's all stories. Human life could almost be broken into
Speaker 1: two categories, the stuff we do ourselves and then the
Speaker 1: stories we're told about what others are doing. The good news, though,
Speaker 1: is that this podcast we're about to listen to has
Speaker 1: some very important stories, Turkey stories, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: invite you to sit back, relax, pay attention, and listen
Speaker 1: for distant gobbles and drumming. These are good stories, like
Speaker 1: a big gobbler pitching down from the limb our first
Speaker 1: storyteller is none other than my dad, Gary Believer knewcom
Speaker 1: It's one of those unique hunts when things work out precisely,
Speaker 1: and I mean precisely as he predicted, and he has
Speaker 1: two very unusual guests witness the hunt. Here's Gary. Years
Speaker 1: ago and I don't know how many years ago, I
Speaker 1: went to a kind of a new spot. We all
Speaker 1: knew about it, but very few people hunted in there.
Speaker 1: And you parked right on the side of the highway
Speaker 1: and you walk up an old road, keep getting high
Speaker 1: and higher up on this mountain, one of the highest
Speaker 1: places in that part of the county. And I got
Speaker 1: up in there and sure enough got a bird working,
Speaker 1: and I had my bow and I sit down. I
Speaker 1: was on the bird. Things were going good, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, somebody starts calling, and you know, I
Speaker 1: got my bow, so I put a lot of time
Speaker 1: into this. I found a place I could sit where
Speaker 1: you know, I had a shot if he came in.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of work put into it. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this guy below me starts calling. And
Speaker 1: the way this road is laid out, you can hear
Speaker 1: birds from way off, you know, I mean, the road's
Speaker 1: going up, everything down in this little canyon type deal,
Speaker 1: you can hear birds. So I'm working the bird. He
Speaker 1: starts calling, bird leaves. Never heard the bird again. Go
Speaker 1: back to the truck, and here he's parked probably five
Speaker 1: feet from my truck, parked right beside it, and he
Speaker 1: came up the same road. So anyway, I wasn't too
Speaker 1: happy about that, but I mean, you know, it just happens.
Speaker 1: He might might have never thought anything about it. So
Speaker 1: I looked his truck over and got his license number.
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna do anything about it. I just kind
Speaker 1: of like to know who he was. And I found him,
Speaker 1: found out where he worked, and I never said anything
Speaker 1: to him, because I mean, you know, maybe I've done
Speaker 1: somebody like that. I don't know. I surely hadn't. But
Speaker 1: so anyway, in the process, I find the strutting zone
Speaker 1: and it's probably where I was setting up. You know.
Speaker 1: Once the bird was gone, I just got up and
Speaker 1: started walking around, and I go, holy smokes, this is
Speaker 1: a major deal right here. So I go home and
Speaker 1: have lunch and puddle around for a while, and I
Speaker 1: tell Judy, I said, I'm gonna walk back up there.
Speaker 1: Want you go with me. It's about I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: half a mile to a mile walk on old road,
Speaker 1: pretty easy walking. I said, we'll get our exercise. I'll
Speaker 1: kill this turkey and get my lab some exercise. We'll
Speaker 1: take Gracie with us. Gracie, you could take her to
Speaker 1: church and just go, Gracie, sit stay. You know, you
Speaker 1: could park at Walmart parking lot and go sit and
Speaker 1: stay in a parking spot and she'd come. She'd be
Speaker 1: there when you got back. So Gracie, Judy and myself
Speaker 1: Juju took off. So we just we just walked up
Speaker 1: that old road. And when we got just to the
Speaker 1: point where I knew that Strutton zone was, I go, Gracie,
Speaker 1: sit and Judy. You know, you guys, get comfortable because
Speaker 1: this could take five minutes. So I ducked down as
Speaker 1: low as I could and started walking with my gun ready,
Speaker 1: and I probably walked thirty yards forty at the most,
Speaker 1: and I squatted down, and soon as I got to
Speaker 1: where I could almost hear him drumming and stuff, well
Speaker 1: I could, I'm sure, you know. I just stood up
Speaker 1: and there he was. You know, I had a thirty
Speaker 1: yard shot, and that sucker he was up there strutting.
Speaker 1: He wasn't goblin, but he was strutting. And so as
Speaker 1: soon as I got to where I could see him,
Speaker 1: I just stood up. He saw me, and I shot him,
Speaker 1: and he was a big bird. You know, he was
Speaker 1: a good bird. He was one of those deals where
Speaker 1: you're pretty sure you can pull this off, but it
Speaker 1: never works the way you wanted to. Something always goes haywire,
Speaker 1: and there's so many things that could go haywire. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a wild bird. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: even think I was all that shocked. I just, for
Speaker 1: some reason, I could just tell by the sign that
Speaker 1: bird he wanted to be there. So we threw him
Speaker 1: over my shoulder. Juju thought I was Superman and walked out.
Speaker 1: I loved the audacity of bringing your wife and a
Speaker 1: Laborador retriever and having them sit less than seventy yards
Speaker 1: from where you think of turkey's gonna be and simply
Speaker 1: walking up and killing it. Dad strutted out of there
Speaker 1: with that jelly head thumping on his thigh, while Jude,
Speaker 1: you and Gracie must have thought he was the best
Speaker 1: turkey hundred in Arkansas. That's a good story. Our next
Speaker 1: story is told inside of the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum
Speaker 1: in Leland, Mississippi, by the curator Billy Johnson. Billy has
Speaker 1: just got back from a hunt, and he's wearing some faded,
Speaker 1: mismatched camo muck boots, and he's sporting a dashing food
Speaker 1: manchew mustache too melt the grin off a possum. He's
Speaker 1: got a story that will take us deep into Mississippi
Speaker 1: turkey hunting history. All right, We're in the Mississippi Wildlife
Speaker 1: Heritage Museum this morning, and it's in a converted hundred
Speaker 1: year old two story hardware store building. And I'm sixty
Speaker 1: eight years old. And when I was seventeen, before there
Speaker 1: were walmarts and all these cabellas and bass pro all
Speaker 1: over the South, hunters and fishermen would go to their
Speaker 1: local hardware stores to buy whatever they needed, clothing, ammunition, guns,
Speaker 1: And I was in here happening to be in here
Speaker 1: one day and a man named EO. Mitchell walked in
Speaker 1: and he sold turkey calls here. Mister Mitchell and his
Speaker 1: turkey hunting friend, Henry Milner, were telegraph operators for the railroad,
Speaker 1: and they became interested in turkey hunting. And there was
Speaker 1: a country store out on Highway fifty one between Vaden
Speaker 1: and Winona, Mississippi, and a widow lady had the store.
Speaker 1: And in that store she had a turkey call that
Speaker 1: came from Montgomery Ward. And mister Milner would go out
Speaker 1: there and play the call, and this and that, and
Speaker 1: his time moved forward. Telephone lines took the place of
Speaker 1: the old telegraph lines. Well, when they took the telegraph
Speaker 1: lines down, they were one hundred year old cedar poles,
Speaker 1: and mister Milner and mister Mitchell they got a lot
Speaker 1: of those old poles, and through the next sixty years
Speaker 1: they made hundreds of turkey calls using the Montgomery Ward
Speaker 1: pattern and using the gold cedar poles. In those days,
Speaker 1: people like mister Mitchell that sold calls would go out
Speaker 1: through the country to different hardware stores and the day
Speaker 1: that I was fortunate enough to run into him. He
Speaker 1: pulled an old polaroid picture out of his pocket, and
Speaker 1: those polaroid pictures had that old black plastic stuff on
Speaker 1: the back, and it was all cracked and gone, and
Speaker 1: it was a picture of a mostly white turkey. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, ask him, I said, well, I got to
Speaker 1: hear this story. Well, come to find out he was
Speaker 1: in start from Mississippi. They had a hardware store and
Speaker 1: they had some chairs sat up. People would come in, old,
Speaker 1: old retired guys would come in and they would whittle,
Speaker 1: shotten their knives and spit the back and tell stories. Well,
Speaker 1: the story was they told him about this white turkey
Speaker 1: that couldn't be killed, and that all of these fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty people had been out there and tried to
Speaker 1: call a turkey up and couldn't call it and couldn't
Speaker 1: be killed. He said, well, if his turkey can't be killed,
Speaker 1: then you fellas probably wouldn't have a problem with me
Speaker 1: hunting it. So one of them took him out there
Speaker 1: and showed him the ridge where the turkey roosted, and
Speaker 1: showed him the bottom where he flew down. So he
Speaker 1: surmised that Colin wasn't a way to kill the turkey.
Speaker 1: So he sat down the next morning in the bottom,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, the old turkey started sounding off. So
Speaker 1: he refrained and waited until flydown time. And once fly
Speaker 1: down time came, he took his cap and he went
Speaker 1: like a hen, flying down. And he waited a minute
Speaker 1: or two, and he got a stick and started scratching
Speaker 1: in the leaves, when lowing behold, a big turkey pitched
Speaker 1: down and landed within twenty yards of it. He killed
Speaker 1: a turkey time. He got the turkey loaded up, got
Speaker 1: back to his truck, got the turkey loaded up, and
Speaker 1: got back to town. The hardware store had opened, and
Speaker 1: those old guys were in there, and he goes in
Speaker 1: there and he said, well, you boys want a firsthand
Speaker 1: look at this turkey. Y'all said, couldn't be killed. Come on.
Speaker 1: I got him out of here in my truck. And
Speaker 1: those guys couldn't believe it, you know, And one of
Speaker 1: them spit his tobacco. He said, mister, I tell you
Speaker 1: what this is. Fifty years ago, he said, I'll give
Speaker 1: you one hundred dollars with a call that you used
Speaker 1: to call this turkey up. He took his cap off
Speaker 1: his head. He said, so, you know, less than thirty
Speaker 1: feet from where he showed leaves the picture of that turkey.
Speaker 1: We now have the turkey mounted here in the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Wildlife Museum. Those old call makers, I mean EO. Mitchell's
Speaker 1: called Ruther Smithsonian. EO. Mitchell's mounted white turkey is in
Speaker 1: the museum, along with several of his famous calls. I
Speaker 1: was really impressed by the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. If
Speaker 1: you're traveling near Greenville or Leland, you ought to stop in.
Speaker 1: It's full of big white tails, mounts of all kinds,
Speaker 1: lots of waterfowl stuff, unique displays from old call makers,
Speaker 1: several turkey beard collections, and incredible photos. It's a template
Speaker 1: of what every state ought to be doing to document
Speaker 1: their hunting the heritage. Our next storyteller is one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. It's Andy Brown of our Saw. I'd say
Speaker 1: for certain this is a one in a million hunt.
Speaker 1: One time I was having to work and we always
Speaker 1: had a turkey camp in uh in April, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean we had a We had a big time,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't able to get off early enough that
Speaker 1: evening It was the day before season to go rooster Turkey.
Speaker 1: So when I when I get to camp, my my
Speaker 1: buddy Wayne says, I got you at Turkey roosted and
Speaker 1: he said, he gobbled, he stail office even I said round,
Speaker 1: he said, I said, you know where? He said, I
Speaker 1: know right where he's at. He said, well, we'll go
Speaker 1: up right in the morning. So anyway, next morning we
Speaker 1: got up double early. Ridoran pulled the mountain, got right
Speaker 1: in on top and he said, he's just over on
Speaker 1: the south side, right here, And sure enough, just a
Speaker 1: minute he put in and he was just he wasn't
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think he was over seventy five
Speaker 1: yards off the top. But all the gobble he does,
Speaker 1: he gobbled, he got one hundred times on the roost.
Speaker 1: And right there where we were at on the end
Speaker 1: of that mountain, there wasn't nothing. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: open at the end of that right I only end
Speaker 1: it. It It was just opening there, and there wasn't no
Speaker 1: place to getting. You know, I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where I want to get and how to how to
Speaker 1: do all this. So I finally get over on the
Speaker 1: north side about fifty yards that on the north side,
Speaker 1: got in a big old bushtop and in a minute
Speaker 1: I could tell he hit the ground because he you
Speaker 1: know how they do. He couldn't hear him as well.
Speaker 1: I never liked to call a turkey on the roof,
Speaker 1: so they un till they dump off, because you never.
Speaker 1: They'll sit there on you a lots of times. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he hit the ground, and I hammered him. He right
Speaker 1: back at me, and you can tell here he come,
Speaker 1: and he come right up over the top, just like
Speaker 1: he's supposed to. And he got out there and he's
Speaker 1: in full strut, which I don't I just never did
Speaker 1: like shooting way full strut and neither there. But all
Speaker 1: the doing around up there he done, and back and
Speaker 1: forth and back and forth. I couldn't get him to
Speaker 1: come out of strut. I cut at of me. Would
Speaker 1: he just staying strut and just back and forth? And
Speaker 1: I got a little antsy, probably, and I thought, I
Speaker 1: kill you, you know, So anyway I pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1: I shot at eight seventy pump At those days, two
Speaker 1: and three quarter super X number six is you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's all you could get back in the day.
Speaker 1: I couldn't drive at that dude, and he took off
Speaker 1: running and I shot at him again. And this when
Speaker 1: he pitched a fly. There was a big canyon that
Speaker 1: laid west and I'm talking about a quarter and a
Speaker 1: half mile wide, maybe a half a mile wide. And
Speaker 1: I stood there and I watched that turkey sail all
Speaker 1: the way across that canyon, and he sailed over there,
Speaker 1: and he just flew in there on the thing and lit.
Speaker 1: So he gets up. He said, out of the world,
Speaker 1: you miss that dirt? Yes, I said, there a lot
Speaker 1: of air around him, was all I did, you know,
Speaker 1: But I said, I know, I've been out of shape
Speaker 1: and shaking my head. And back in those days, I smoked,
Speaker 1: and so I got me a cigarette out and I
Speaker 1: wasn't shaking my head and saiding there, and we're looking
Speaker 1: across the canyon there, and all of a sudden, that
Speaker 1: turkey he just pitches out like he flew in, and
Speaker 1: he sailed right down that canyon south around down there.
Speaker 1: He flew a quarter and flew right into the side
Speaker 1: of the mountain there and just you know, you just
Speaker 1: hear him flat there. So Wayne says, if you didn't
Speaker 1: hit him, we'll give him about thirty forty five minutes
Speaker 1: the way that and gob will go over and kill him.
Speaker 1: He'll cook put in the gobblin again. So awful mountain
Speaker 1: we went and we went down there and we hit
Speaker 1: a four wheel trail. We went around there and we
Speaker 1: got in there about where we thought he flew in
Speaker 1: and walked up on the side of the mountain there
Speaker 1: dug in and we probably lay there forty five minutes, nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing beautiful more. And I told Wayne, I said, before
Speaker 1: we leave, I said, let's just walk up here on
Speaker 1: the side of the mountain. I said, that turkey. It
Speaker 1: didn't sound quite right where that turkey flew in the
Speaker 1: mountain there. And we walked up there. We didn't walk
Speaker 1: seventy five yards and there late that gobbler dead. I
Speaker 1: never forget it, had red ants on his head where
Speaker 1: the blood was coming. Just hit him a two or
Speaker 1: three shot. But that dude had flown the turkey was.
Speaker 1: He was a half a mile from where from where
Speaker 1: I shot him. We found him dead, laying there just perfect.
Speaker 1: You just don't do that, you know, But we got
Speaker 1: him good three year old, I mean a good That
Speaker 1: is a wild story. What are the chances of finding
Speaker 1: that turkey a half mile from where they shot it
Speaker 1: after watching it fly across the canyon twice. Only Andy
Speaker 1: could have pulled that off. Our next Storyteller is currently
Speaker 1: working as an undercover wildlife agent posing as my dear friend,
Speaker 1: trying to catch me doing crimes that I am completely
Speaker 1: unaware of. He seems to have really dug in because
Speaker 1: he's been at this with me for over a decade.
Speaker 1: He's always available, always ready to hunt, and always has
Speaker 1: an unbelievable alibi and ridiculous backstory when he can't. Brent
Speaker 1: Reeves is a Bargreave's favorite, and he's got a good
Speaker 1: one from the Saline River bottoms of Arkansas with his
Speaker 1: brother Tim. You'll laugh and scratch your head on this one.
Speaker 1: This story takes place in the Saline River bottoms where
Speaker 1: a bunch of my brother Tims and I's adventures started
Speaker 1: and stopped. Turkey season was the one season that we
Speaker 1: didn't hunt together a lot. Probably about sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the time in Turkey season we hunted alone because one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the time that we hunted together there
Speaker 1: was some kind of calamity that ensued. Something happened. On
Speaker 1: this particular time, it was my turn to kill a turkey.
Speaker 1: And we had gone way down in the river bottoms
Speaker 1: before we ever heard the first turkey. We walked in
Speaker 1: way before daylight. We got in there and we waited
Speaker 1: and waiting, waiting, filing turkey gobbles. And he was long
Speaker 1: ways off. I mean, it's about as far as you
Speaker 1: could hear. And we both coursed him pretty good. Knew
Speaker 1: the area well. My family had been hunting this land
Speaker 1: down here for generations. We got there, we took off
Speaker 1: for that turkey. We get about halfway to him, and
Speaker 1: he's goblin. We don't hear anything. We happen to stop
Speaker 1: at this big old deer stand. And at that time
Speaker 1: we didn't have any big tower stands on our where
Speaker 1: we deer hunted. It was all individual stuff, just lean
Speaker 1: up stands, or we'd sit on a bucket or something.
Speaker 1: But this stand was big enough for two people to
Speaker 1: get in, and we were marveling at how much room
Speaker 1: that guy had up there, and we thought, you know,
Speaker 1: if we had one like that, we could sit together
Speaker 1: and make enough racket that we wouldn't kill a deer,
Speaker 1: but we could still be out there hunting and not
Speaker 1: have to worry about skinny one. But while we were
Speaker 1: sitting there marveling at this wonderful tower stand, this guy
Speaker 1: had a turkey gobbled fifty yards from where we were,
Speaker 1: and both of us hit the ground like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: we're caughting the balled open. But there was a thicket
Speaker 1: right behind that deer stand and where that turkey gobble.
Speaker 1: And I yelled twice on a call, and that turkey
Speaker 1: gobbled and came straight to me. And I'm looking through
Speaker 1: this thicket. My brother's sitting right there. We're leaned up
Speaker 1: against each other because we're not we're in the balled open,
Speaker 1: not against a tree nothing. I'm leaning against him, he's
Speaker 1: leaning against me. And I am looking through this thicket
Speaker 1: and I can see a hole, and I can see
Speaker 1: that turkey coming. And when he gets to that twenty
Speaker 1: five yards, I guess to the edge of that thicket,
Speaker 1: I said, I see him boom, and I cut it
Speaker 1: loose and the turkey started flopping, and then the turkey
Speaker 1: started running, and I got up and took off running
Speaker 1: after him, and I got hung up in all them
Speaker 1: briars and stuff, and I was fighting through that thing
Speaker 1: like a buzz saw, and finally got on the other
Speaker 1: side and leaped and jumped on that turkey and caught him,
Speaker 1: and my brother knocked him in the head with a
Speaker 1: pine knot, and we always called that the story of
Speaker 1: the time that I shot a turkey but Tim killed it.
Speaker 1: So we were congratulating each other and talking about this big,
Speaker 1: fantastic hunt that had just happened and how surprised we were.
Speaker 1: And we heard that turkey gall that we had heard originally,
Speaker 1: and he was right where we had said he was,
Speaker 1: and we were about half a mile from him. So
Speaker 1: with one turkey dead, I threw that one over my
Speaker 1: show older and me and my brother take off. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be his time. Were getting within less than a
Speaker 1: quarter of a mile, and the turkey gobbles again, and
Speaker 1: we got up to the edge of this big old flat,
Speaker 1: big old oak flat, and he usually had a lot
Speaker 1: of water in the springtime, but this time it didn't,
Speaker 1: and it was wide open bottom land. There was nothing
Speaker 1: but huge oak trees and grass had grown in there.
Speaker 1: It absolutely looked like a park. And across this way here,
Speaker 1: this thing was probably one hundred and fifty to two
Speaker 1: hundred yards across, and on the other side of that slough,
Speaker 1: just this flat. When we sat down, turkey gobble. He
Speaker 1: was just out of sight. So my where this thing
Speaker 1: was that the land went down like three feet into
Speaker 1: this flat. There was no place for me to hide
Speaker 1: other than there was an old stump right there behind
Speaker 1: where my brother was gonna sit down. I laid down
Speaker 1: beside it, laid that turkey down beside me, and Tim
Speaker 1: went right over the edge of that flat, so he
Speaker 1: had that high bank behind him, and he was six
Speaker 1: feet in front of me. He called to him. The
Speaker 1: turkey answered and immediately popped up on the other side.
Speaker 1: Now he's one hundred and fifty yards away, in full strut.
Speaker 1: He starts walking towards us. Light was shining in there,
Speaker 1: like a spotlight on the stage. It was like this
Speaker 1: turkey was on Broadway, and we had the best seats
Speaker 1: in the ass. And I am right over my brother's
Speaker 1: left shoulder. That turkey take five or six steps, stopped,
Speaker 1: strut and gobble, and he did this till he got
Speaker 1: to eighty yards, and it took him three or four
Speaker 1: minutes to go that far. He was the boss. He
Speaker 1: wasn't worried, he wasn't in a hurry. He was running
Speaker 1: this whole show. And at eighty yards, he stopped and gobbled,
Speaker 1: and when he come out of strut and started to
Speaker 1: take a step, I heard my brother click his safety
Speaker 1: off and I thought, well, that's a little premature. And
Speaker 1: about that time he let that eight seven to go.
Speaker 1: That turkey jumped about fifteen feet off the ground, hit
Speaker 1: the ground, gobbled, turned around and strutted and gobbled the
Speaker 1: plum out of sight. Why my brother did that, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Why he shot at him at eighty yards
Speaker 1: when he was coming to us on a string. I
Speaker 1: mean it was like he was on rail and coming
Speaker 1: straight to us. And why he did that, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He never turned around, he didn't say anything. He took
Speaker 1: a cigarette out of his pocket as he began to
Speaker 1: light it. I said hey, and he held his hand up.
Speaker 1: He never turn around and looked at me. He said,
Speaker 1: give me a minute. So I just set back there,
Speaker 1: reliving everything that was going on while he smoked half
Speaker 1: his cigarette. He wouldn't never smoke the whole thing because
Speaker 1: he said he saw a commercial when he was like
Speaker 1: fifteen years old and Tony Curtis was talking, was advertising
Speaker 1: some kind of cigarettes, and he said, only smoke half
Speaker 1: because the laft half is the part that kills you.
Speaker 1: So my brother, my brother at that time when he smoked,
Speaker 1: he was only smoke half a cigarette, so I knew
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be long and I would get an explanation
Speaker 1: on what had happened. So when he got half of
Speaker 1: that cigarette smoke, I saw him look down beside him
Speaker 1: and there was a crawfish hole there, and he poked
Speaker 1: that lit cigarette down in that hole and covered it up.
Speaker 1: He stood up and he said, let's go. So I
Speaker 1: picked that turkey up and we started walking back to
Speaker 1: the truck. And we were a mile from the truck,
Speaker 1: and we walked half of that distance and nobody had
Speaker 1: said a word. We were walking side by side and
Speaker 1: I was toting that turkey and he was just walking.
Speaker 1: And at half a mile he looked over at me
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you want me to tote that turkey.
Speaker 1: It's bound to be getting heavy. And I took two
Speaker 1: or three steps and I said, now to him, it
Speaker 1: ain't near as heavy as that loads you're toting. And
Speaker 1: he started laughing and I started laughing. And we never
Speaker 1: did figure out why he shot at that turkey when
Speaker 1: it was so far away. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: that turkey is still living. That's just how it happened.
Speaker 1: It ain't near as heavy as the load you're toting.
Speaker 1: That's good, Brent. Our next story is told by Mississippi
Speaker 1: author Robert Hittneil Junior. He wrote a very successful book
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety called The Jakes. It's about a young
Speaker 1: boy growing up in the South and it involves some
Speaker 1: turkey hunting. On the last episode, mister Neill told us
Speaker 1: about the flaming turkey hunter. He'll now tell us about
Speaker 1: his first turkey hunt on the Mississippi River that involves
Speaker 1: some lightning and a skunk. I'm gonna tell you about
Speaker 1: my first turkey that I killed was on Montgomery Island
Speaker 1: sixty five years ago. I was fifteen years old and
Speaker 1: Montgomery is where the White River splits around Montgomery Island
Speaker 1: coming into the Mississippi River. That's where we would go,
Speaker 1: and there was a big hunting club up there by.
Speaker 1: Daddy was in it Oxam, and we had turkeys on
Speaker 1: that island when hard to anybody else had turkeys. We
Speaker 1: got up real early and Montgomery's two islands, but my
Speaker 1: daddy and Curry Holland were going over to the Big
Speaker 1: Island and I wanted to hunt the little island fifteen
Speaker 1: years old, and so they had a longer trip than
Speaker 1: I did. So we left the Kevin and they dropped
Speaker 1: me off into flat black dark, and when they let
Speaker 1: me out of the jeep, you could see lightning flashes
Speaker 1: back in the west. And Curry said, I've always heard
Speaker 1: that turkeys will gobble when it thunders, so you listen
Speaker 1: for that. Said, okay, So I walked on off and
Speaker 1: they took off in the jeep. So went down there
Speaker 1: and God situated, and I like to stick a few
Speaker 1: little Papa branches or something up in front of me,
Speaker 1: break the out line, you know, a base of a
Speaker 1: tree sitting there below a big pecan tree. And the
Speaker 1: lightning got closer, and you started to hear a little
Speaker 1: bit of rumble of thunder, and it's just black dark,
Speaker 1: and I sniffed something that and then a lightning flash
Speaker 1: hit and there was a skunk there was about ten
Speaker 1: steps in front of me that was monking around in
Speaker 1: a little brush pile there. He hadn't released his scent,
Speaker 1: but you can smell a skunk if he's round. So
Speaker 1: I just bed real still and hoped he'd move on off.
Speaker 1: Before it got daylight, and I was going to turkey
Speaker 1: call and all that kind of stuff. And the storm
Speaker 1: got closer, and the lightning flashes came more frequently, and
Speaker 1: I could see the skunk right there in front of me.
Speaker 1: And then the storm got close enough to where all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there was this tremendous clap of thunder
Speaker 1: and lightning, and a turkey gobbled right there in the
Speaker 1: next tree, over another big pecan tree. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: dark except for the lightning flashes. I can't see the turkey,
Speaker 1: but every time it would thunder, he would goble right
Speaker 1: there over me. And there's a skunk right there in
Speaker 1: front of me, between me and the turkey. And so
Speaker 1: as it got a little bit more lighter, still hadn't
Speaker 1: rained yet, the storm still hadn't broken, still lightening and
Speaker 1: still thundering. I can see the turkey, and he's strutting
Speaker 1: on this limb. Nobody's called yet or anything, because it's
Speaker 1: not even light enough to really see well. And the
Speaker 1: turkey's just, you know, pop into a strut and walk
Speaker 1: a few steps on the big limb, and he'd look
Speaker 1: over and the skunk was still right there in front
Speaker 1: of me. I'm shooting a milele thirty one Remington shotgun
Speaker 1: with a thirty two inch full choked barrel on it.
Speaker 1: I got my gun up and the thirty two inch
Speaker 1: barrel is almost over the skunk. He's still rooting around
Speaker 1: in the brush top. And the next time it lightened good,
Speaker 1: the turkey's there, and I boom and shot. The turkey fell.
Speaker 1: I jumped up and jumped over the skunk, and he
Speaker 1: flooded the woods behind where I'd been sitting and missed me.
Speaker 1: And so I got to the turkey. He was dead
Speaker 1: as a hammer. He had like a twelve inch beard,
Speaker 1: huge gobbler, one of the largest I've ever killed. And
Speaker 1: the skunk left deaf, probably, and the turkey was just beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then here came the rain. But I had my
Speaker 1: rain suit rolled up there, and I took the rain
Speaker 1: suit out, shook it out, and I wrapped that beautiful
Speaker 1: gobbler up in my rain suit, and I walked back
Speaker 1: to the cabin three quarters of a mile in the
Speaker 1: pouring rain without a rain suit on. That turkey didn't
Speaker 1: get a feather wet on him. That turkey didn't get
Speaker 1: a feather wet. Now that's a good story, And I
Speaker 1: don't blame a fifteen year old in the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties in the least for shooting a turkey in a
Speaker 1: tree when lightning flashed. Actually, in many states there's no
Speaker 1: law against shooting in the roost as long as it's
Speaker 1: past legal shooting light. And I'm certain with a thunderstorm
Speaker 1: rolling in it made shooting light exceptionally dark. Our next
Speaker 1: storyteller is very well known in the waterfowl world and
Speaker 1: even in the beargrease world because he's been on here
Speaker 1: several times. But he loves turkey hunting about as much
Speaker 1: as he loves Mallard ducks. I've noticed that people only
Speaker 1: say good things about Jimbo ron Quest. Here he goes
Speaker 1: with the Missouri turkey story about him his dad, A
Speaker 1: fine spring morning and another skunk. My dad was my
Speaker 1: favorite turkey hunting buddy for years and years. Grew up
Speaker 1: hunt turkey him with dad. Dad was a really good woodsman.
Speaker 1: That's a picture him right there behind me, and that's
Speaker 1: how he liked to be to carrying the dead turkey
Speaker 1: with his camouflage coverall was on. So we had been
Speaker 1: hunting some we had place up in Zury. We love
Speaker 1: to hunt. Of course, I know, you spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time in the woods in the dark, and you
Speaker 1: get used to seeing things, so you get used to
Speaker 1: your surroundings. I'm sure if you're walking up an old road,
Speaker 1: if there's something that wasn't there yesterday, you probably recognize that. Seeing.
Speaker 1: Dad wouldn't let you wear, you know, no kind of flashlight.
Speaker 1: You might have a little pen light that you'd had
Speaker 1: to shine through your fingers, you know, so you can see.
Speaker 1: So we're easing up this road and just one of
Speaker 1: them perfect April mornings, you know, it's clear, it's cool,
Speaker 1: turkeys hadn't started gobbling yet. And we're going down this
Speaker 1: road and look up there and I see something in
Speaker 1: the road and I'm like, what the heck is that?
Speaker 1: And we step a little bit more in about that time,
Speaker 1: my dad's shoving me out of the way. And DA's
Speaker 1: pretty good sized, felt and at that time I was
Speaker 1: I was a lot rounder than what I am now,
Speaker 1: and he's shoving me out of the way. And back
Speaker 1: that time, I could smell scump and I started laughing
Speaker 1: when I realized that he got sprayed all over his
Speaker 1: left side. And I kind of seen those scump throw
Speaker 1: its tail up and take off to like, oh man,
Speaker 1: And I was laughing and puking and gagging. You. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm dad in this incidence had kind of blocked me,
Speaker 1: so that helped a whole lot, but I still got
Speaker 1: a pretty good dose of it. So backing up, we
Speaker 1: get rid of the scump, but things settled down and
Speaker 1: we hear a turkey goblin. Dad always said you needed
Speaker 1: to be where you wanted to listen from an hour
Speaker 1: before daylight, and we were pretty early, you know, but
Speaker 1: it was get starting to get light, so we had
Speaker 1: to get up crawled under a fence. So he ease
Speaker 1: up there and Dad's holding a fence and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to crawl through it and my best hung at bottom,
Speaker 1: staying of bob ward and I'm hung up and the
Speaker 1: fence made a bunch of racking. I'm like, oh god, name,
Speaker 1: we're gonna focus turkey. What we get to him? Well,
Speaker 1: I kind of give it. He gets me unhooked and
Speaker 1: I grabbed the fence. Dad gets underneath it and we
Speaker 1: ease down there and we finally get set. It's still dark,
Speaker 1: turkeys ain't flew down yet, but they're gobbling dude, So
Speaker 1: we get set. You hear Old Turkey from him. I've
Speaker 1: got to look and I can say it, old white
Speaker 1: headed we chips here now, Bob Old Turkey finally dipped
Speaker 1: at him, just barely on the tree, got him thinking
Speaker 1: our direction. Sucker flew down, and he flew down. He
Speaker 1: kind of hit lit underneath the ridge. There's old old
Speaker 1: dam road right there. I knew he said he hit
Speaker 1: the ground. You can hear him shuffling them leaves and
Speaker 1: drumming gobble hard. Wow. Okay, and I not quite got shakes,
Speaker 1: but I know he's coming. You know, I got my
Speaker 1: gun on my knee. He's up there in full strut
Speaker 1: and just god, they're just so purty. You know. Some's
Speaker 1: coming up and kind of backled it through that tail fan.
Speaker 1: It's just so prey. I can see it like it
Speaker 1: was yesterday, and this has probably been gosh dang, forty
Speaker 1: years ago. Holy smokes. That just kind of did the
Speaker 1: math in my head. That's that's been a minute. Anyway.
Speaker 1: He finally stuck his head up shout it's cool deal.
Speaker 1: He flopped out. Man, We high five not again. Like
Speaker 1: I told you, Dad and I loved hunt together. It
Speaker 1: was a big time so we snatch him up. I've
Speaker 1: told Dad that he smelled like skunk and he skunk bad,
Speaker 1: and he's all right, let's go find another one. So
Speaker 1: we hung that one up in a tree because we
Speaker 1: was going on a pretty good hook up from here.
Speaker 1: They'd like to walk, but we'd heard other turkeys way down,
Speaker 1: so we went and made another set and struck another
Speaker 1: turkey and got set to him and just one, you know,
Speaker 1: mid morning, seven thirty hunts, you know, gott and cant
Speaker 1: yepping at him. Here he comes, and old turkey would
Speaker 1: stop and strut and stop and strut, and you know,
Speaker 1: decos and that, and you just try to get into
Speaker 1: woods and hide somewhere. We're made that God to look
Speaker 1: for the hen. You know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have lost that nowadays. We've gotten used to using
Speaker 1: d coos and hunting fields or pastors. If you think
Speaker 1: about when you set up in the woods, set up
Speaker 1: where that God has got to come look for that
Speaker 1: hen that he just can't see her from wherever he's
Speaker 1: at in open woods. And Dad was good about that.
Speaker 1: So another fantastic hunt, just the kind of morning you
Speaker 1: live for Old Turkey's drumming. It's damn there is. And
Speaker 1: he was just milking it, you know, And I'm aunty.
Speaker 1: Dad choosed to turkey. So we've killed two long berridges
Speaker 1: this morning. So we had we high five and do
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And I'm tolding the turkey because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the kid. So I told the turkey, we go
Speaker 1: find my turkey, go get the truck. We get in
Speaker 1: the truck and we get there. And at that time
Speaker 1: in my life, I tried to keep my truck pretty clean.
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and I had the inside. I'll clean.
Speaker 1: I said, Dad, you can't worry them coveralls up in
Speaker 1: my truck. I can't be having the inside of my
Speaker 1: truck smell like scump. So he throwed him into tool box.
Speaker 1: And at that time, we you know, in Missouri, had
Speaker 1: to go to a check station and physically go take
Speaker 1: the bird and check it in and get somebody. So
Speaker 1: we're thinking, man, have a have a honey bun and
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee or something or coke. Bigod were
Speaker 1: walking this store and this lady worked behind the counter.
Speaker 1: We no more walked in. I mean we didn't look around.
Speaker 1: She didn't say in a hip you do you need
Speaker 1: to check a turkey. She throwed her head up like
Speaker 1: somebody put a spotlight on her. She said, I don't
Speaker 1: know which one of you two got that skunk piss on,
Speaker 1: but get the heck out of my store. So that
Speaker 1: that was. That was one I will always remember. She
Speaker 1: did check the turkeys, but she said, y'all stay outside,
Speaker 1: I'll come out there. And we lost dad in March
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty. And I remember we was laying when
Speaker 1: we was watching turkey hunting videos or something, and he talked,
Speaker 1: he'd always want to talk about that. That's a good story,
Speaker 1: Jimbo love it. Our next storyteller you'll be familiar with
Speaker 1: because it's old Moe Shepherd. I always learned something listening
Speaker 1: to Moe talk about these Ozark pub the land turkeys,
Speaker 1: even if he won't tell me where he hunts. Here's
Speaker 1: mold Well, I've got a pretty good turkey story. And
Speaker 1: all I'll say is perseverance and don't give up. That'll
Speaker 1: kill you more turkeys than a lot of fancy calls
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just stay after him. This story begins
Speaker 1: on an evening in about twenty twelve. I was hunting
Speaker 1: in those dark mountains again on public land I'd hunted
Speaker 1: several days but hadn't had any luck. I mean, i'd
Speaker 1: heard a few birds, but I don't think i'd even
Speaker 1: call one in and gun range. I mean that season
Speaker 1: that you're ended. On a Tuesday. I hunted that weekend.
Speaker 1: It didn't even hear a bird. But I side, well,
Speaker 1: you can't give up. I've got vacation i'm taking. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take the last two days and hunt. Well. I
Speaker 1: get up that Monday morning, the temperatures dropped about forty degrees.
Speaker 1: It's about thirty five degrees, and this is like the
Speaker 1: second or third or fourth day of May, and the
Speaker 1: wind is blowing. Well, I go to a place where
Speaker 1: i'd heard some turkeys back earlier in the season, hunting
Speaker 1: there all morning. Don't hear a thing. It's boy, I've
Speaker 1: wasted my vacation. Birds ain't goblin. I thought, well, i'm
Speaker 1: out here. I'd as well stay after it, so I
Speaker 1: ate me a little lunch. I thought, well, I know
Speaker 1: a place I'm gonna go. I hadn't even been in
Speaker 1: here this year, but I've killed turkeys in here in
Speaker 1: the past. It's a long walk from where you can
Speaker 1: park and get to It's a big, long mountain. It's
Speaker 1: got a big saddle on it, and two knobs on
Speaker 1: each side of that saddle, and it's got finger ridges
Speaker 1: runs off of that each of those knobs. It's a
Speaker 1: great place to turkey hunt. I'm not gonna tell you
Speaker 1: where that's at. That's one of my secrets. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I decided to go up there that afternoon, so I
Speaker 1: took off walking, started walking up a long finger ridge
Speaker 1: to one of those knobs. I thought, we'll all making
Speaker 1: my way up this long ridge through the saddle, up
Speaker 1: on the second knob, and then come back off of
Speaker 1: it on a long ridge, and that'll make a good
Speaker 1: evening hunt. Well, I went all up its long ridge.
Speaker 1: Took me a probably an hour and a half or
Speaker 1: so to get up in there. Up on top of
Speaker 1: that knob. Hadn't heard nothing to wind, still a howling
Speaker 1: and the blowing. So I'm calling a little louder and
Speaker 1: and more frequent than I like to, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to do that when the winds blowing. And well,
Speaker 1: I still didn't hear anything like, well, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: through this saddle. Maybe the wind will be a little
Speaker 1: calmer in that saddle. So I got in that saddle.
Speaker 1: I was wrong about that. The wind was worse than
Speaker 1: the saddle. It was whipping around. There was a knob
Speaker 1: and just whistling. I thought, well, this ain't no good.
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm not gonna get up on that knob.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go around the side that knob and get
Speaker 1: on that finger ridge over where. I made my way
Speaker 1: around over there, called if you tidy, didn't anything. Got
Speaker 1: on that ridge there, and it really look pretty. There
Speaker 1: were some fresh scratchings in there. I thought, these turkey's
Speaker 1: in here, they just ain't say anything. So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna sit down here. So I got situated in there
Speaker 1: against a big old tree and started calling. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I probably sit there thirty forty minutes, and
Speaker 1: I just fixed the get up, and I thought, I
Speaker 1: believe I heard a gobble down. Blow me in the
Speaker 1: hollow right, blow me there. So I settle bit and
Speaker 1: I called again. It's short enough, it was. I heard
Speaker 1: a turkey gobble, so I called in. Didn't hear nothing.
Speaker 1: Called again after five or six minutes, didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe it can't hear me, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's winds a howling. So I don't mere if
Speaker 1: I cut or cackle or this yep loud or what
Speaker 1: I did and ride over the break from me just
Speaker 1: I mean got after it. So I got all excited
Speaker 1: and got ready, and I looked, and here comes two
Speaker 1: big red heads. It was two gobblers, two big my
Speaker 1: tree gobblers. And here in Arkansas we're only allowed one
Speaker 1: per day. Anyway, I just called and messed around and
Speaker 1: final him. One of them got in a good place
Speaker 1: down a rank right shoot and I shot, took him
Speaker 1: down and the other and flew off down the canyon
Speaker 1: just out of sight. This was about probably five five
Speaker 1: thirty in the afternoon. I was tickled to death. I
Speaker 1: went down there and looked at my gobbler and thought, man,
Speaker 1: it paid off to come back in here and hunt,
Speaker 1: even though I hadn't been in there this year, because
Speaker 1: this has already been a good spot for me, and
Speaker 1: took vacation his last next last death season. I got thinking,
Speaker 1: there's one more Dad Turkey season. I thought, why would
Speaker 1: I want to go anywhere else? I'm ass spooked him
Speaker 1: by shooting, But so what I know, there's a gobbler
Speaker 1: and here. If I'm interesting next morning, maybe I can
Speaker 1: get him. So I carried my turkey out, got back
Speaker 1: in my truck, went home, slept what little I could
Speaker 1: during the night, got up the next morning. It was
Speaker 1: same way, cold, wind blowing. I thought that turkey's up there,
Speaker 1: somewhere off that long ridge down and there. Got about
Speaker 1: halfway up to that knob up there, and I hooted,
Speaker 1: and that dude gobble. He was right on top of
Speaker 1: that knob, up bearing all that wind. So I made
Speaker 1: my way up there. Within I wasn't at the same tree,
Speaker 1: but I was probably within thirty forty yards or where
Speaker 1: I killed that one day, evening four and it was
Speaker 1: starting to break light. He'd gobbled several times while I
Speaker 1: was walking up that way. He was still up on
Speaker 1: the hill above me. I thought, I'm gonna set up
Speaker 1: right here, even though if that's the one that was
Speaker 1: here yesterday. And then he thought there was a hen
Speaker 1: up here because they were coming. So I sat down
Speaker 1: there and way a little bit of hurt him gobble again.
Speaker 1: It was getting light. I made a few soft yelps,
Speaker 1: tree ups, and a couple of clucks. He answered me back.
Speaker 1: I just shut up and just got my gun ery
Speaker 1: and set there, and the women was blown, so I
Speaker 1: never heard him fly down. Probably ten minutes. I looked,
Speaker 1: and I've seen a tail fan right out there, right
Speaker 1: above me on the hillside there. I just got ready,
Speaker 1: and he just strutted his way right down about twenty
Speaker 1: five yards from me before I got it open him
Speaker 1: to shoot at him and took him down. Another nice, big,
Speaker 1: old material, longbearded gobbler. And I asked, part of the
Speaker 1: moral that story is that I'd hunted all season, hadn't
Speaker 1: heard many turkeys or anything, but I love the turkey hunt,
Speaker 1: and I decided to take off and hunt those last
Speaker 1: two days. Patience and persistence will bid you a lot
Speaker 1: of turkeys out in those woods. It's hard to be
Speaker 1: the guy that just won't give up. We've all had
Speaker 1: bad years. The fact that the last two days were
Speaker 1: cold and windy and he went anyway is inspirational, because
Speaker 1: that would have been a great excuse not to go.
Speaker 1: Our last storyteller is new to the Bear Grease podcast.
Speaker 1: David Joy is a novelist from western North Carolina. He's
Speaker 1: won a lot of prestigious awards for his books. He's
Speaker 1: written for Gardening, Gun Time Magazine, and New York Times,
Speaker 1: and his novel Where All Light Tends to Go. It's
Speaker 1: being made into a film, and they tell me, listen
Speaker 1: to this. He's got a big following of people in
Speaker 1: Europe as well as here in America. As fancy as
Speaker 1: all that sounds about mister Joy, I bet you'll be
Speaker 1: surprised when you hear him talk. He's one of us.
Speaker 1: He's a turkey hunter. Here's our last story, Meet David Joy.
Speaker 1: So I'm really fortunate in that the woman that I
Speaker 1: fell in love with understands and has somewhat adopted my
Speaker 1: obsession with turkeys. But the difference between us is that
Speaker 1: she works like a real job, and I'm forty years
Speaker 1: old and I really hadn't struck a lick at anything yet.
Speaker 1: So because she works, though, she might get two to
Speaker 1: three days to hunt every year. So this was probably
Speaker 1: her second season, and I had gotten she'd still never
Speaker 1: even taken a shot at a bird. But I'd gotten
Speaker 1: this permission on a buddy of mine's farm. And the
Speaker 1: way that this land lays out, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: you're in a big bowl and at the bottom it's
Speaker 1: probably like twenty five hundred feet somewhere around there, and
Speaker 1: the ridgeline is probably four thousand feet and he owns
Speaker 1: all of it. But the house and the majority of
Speaker 1: the pasture is in the bottom of that. And when
Speaker 1: you sit down there of a morning, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll usually hear four or five turkeys goblin. And the
Speaker 1: way that those turkeys use that landscape is they tend
Speaker 1: to roost high and then they pitch low, and then
Speaker 1: they land in them fields at the bottom, and then
Speaker 1: throughout the day they slowly worked their way back up high.
Speaker 1: And so we were hunting this place. We'd spent all
Speaker 1: morning trying to get on birds and hadn't really gotten
Speaker 1: on anything, and it was just about time that she
Speaker 1: was about to give up and we were gonna call
Speaker 1: it quits. And I thought, well, we'll just kind of
Speaker 1: throw the bag at them and see if we can't
Speaker 1: get something to happen. And a lot of times I
Speaker 1: like to run two calls at once just to try
Speaker 1: to sound like a couple of different hens. But the
Speaker 1: ideas like, you've got these two hens that are big
Speaker 1: and back and forth, and so I'm doing that and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this bird's hams just paah. Both
Speaker 1: of us, you know, just look at each other. And
Speaker 1: it's like a game on and where this bird is.
Speaker 1: I can tell that he's maybe two pastures over. So
Speaker 1: we start looking around on where we might get set
Speaker 1: up and whatnot. Still don't know if the bird's coming
Speaker 1: at this point, but kind of get to an area
Speaker 1: where I know we can set up. I do the
Speaker 1: same calling sequence again and he's just pah, and this
Speaker 1: time he's cut the distance in half, and I can
Speaker 1: tell that he's in that very next pasture. And I
Speaker 1: told her, I said, and I said, this bird's doing everything,
Speaker 1: everything just right. I said. We'll get up here, I said,
Speaker 1: and we'll get set up in this timber. And I
Speaker 1: said that bird should just pop into this pasture and
Speaker 1: he'll work his way up the edge towards us. And
Speaker 1: as turkeys are wont to do, this bird doesn't follow
Speaker 1: the script. You know, we're sitting there and we're set
Speaker 1: up looking down this pasture. The next time this bird gobbles,
Speaker 1: he's above us and we're pinned down like there is
Speaker 1: no getting up, moving nothing, And Ashley's set up below me,
Speaker 1: and I kind of peek over my shoulder and I
Speaker 1: see this bird and he's basically set up a strutson
Speaker 1: up there and he's working back and forth, just bow
Speaker 1: and I called to him and he answers, but he's
Speaker 1: not coming, and I start making hand signals at Ashley
Speaker 1: and I tell her that we need to switch spots,
Speaker 1: and she understands and she gets set up on that
Speaker 1: tree and I start belly crawling down the hill and
Speaker 1: I start just doing some real light hen calling, like
Speaker 1: a like a just a feeding hen, some purrs and
Speaker 1: you know, real light clucks, just wines, whistles, real soft stuff,
Speaker 1: leaf scratching. And the idea I had was that I
Speaker 1: was gonna try to make this bird leave, that I
Speaker 1: was a feeding hen that didn't want nothing to do
Speaker 1: with him, and I was just feeding my way on
Speaker 1: out of there, and so that's what I did. Well,
Speaker 1: the bird's still answering. Next thing, I know that bird's coming,
Speaker 1: and so at that point I'm not I'm kind of
Speaker 1: out in the open, and so I'm laying on my
Speaker 1: stomach and I've just got my face down buried in
Speaker 1: my arms so that I hopefully will just look like
Speaker 1: the ground. And Ashley's up there with their gun pointed
Speaker 1: in the pasture, and I hear this bird answer, and
Speaker 1: I lifted my head, and I'll never forget this. There
Speaker 1: was two gobblers and there may be thirty yards above her,
Speaker 1: coming down this pasture in full strut. Both of their
Speaker 1: heads just drained like our glasses, I mean, just just
Speaker 1: white heads. And I thought, oh my god, they're on
Speaker 1: top of her, and I just dipped my head. And
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole time, I'm thinking she's she's about
Speaker 1: to shoot, she's about to shoot, she's about to shoot,
Speaker 1: and this goes on. It feels like, you know, forever.
Speaker 1: It feels like I'm laying there for an hour, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, as soon as she shot, I
Speaker 1: jumped up and one of the birds was flying off,
Speaker 1: and the other one had his head up and he
Speaker 1: was just turning his head one eyeball turn another, one
Speaker 1: eyeball turn another. I just trying to figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on. And I started screaming, reload, reload, reload, because
Speaker 1: she's shooting this old single shot shotgun and she ain't
Speaker 1: got but one shot. And she's looking at me like,
Speaker 1: oh no, what in the world did I do? And
Speaker 1: next thing you know, that bird putch cackles. He's out
Speaker 1: of there, set some wings and you know, just pair
Speaker 1: of glider on across the mountain. What had happened was
Speaker 1: when that bird come down, she got so excited at
Speaker 1: looking at that turkey that she got off the gun.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, the tendency is you're gonna adjust
Speaker 1: the bead and nine times out of ten you're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot high. It's like men, a buddy was hunting one
Speaker 1: time and I missed and I missed on a bird,
Speaker 1: and I told him, I said, I think I shot high,
Speaker 1: and him, being a lot older and a lot more experienced,
Speaker 1: he told me, he said, David, in all my years,
Speaker 1: I ain't ever seen nobody shoot the feet off one.
Speaker 1: And his point was that you inevitably shoot high. And
Speaker 1: that's what had happened there, was that she got off
Speaker 1: the gun and she shot high. So she's just absolutely
Speaker 1: heartbroken and and it winds up being the last chance
Speaker 1: she gets to hunt that year, and so this literally
Speaker 1: eats her up for like a year, and she's just
Speaker 1: wanting her next shot. Jump forward that next year and
Speaker 1: wearing that very same pasture. Kind of the same situation.
Speaker 1: Didn't get on any birds early. It's starting to get
Speaker 1: mid day, it's almost quit in time, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden one fires up. Just ah, and we're like
Speaker 1: midway in the pasture. The bird is coming, the birds
Speaker 1: coming from the bottom of the pasture up. We don't
Speaker 1: have a setup, we don't have time. And I just
Speaker 1: see this old scraggly locust that's got briars and everything
Speaker 1: all around it, and I thought, I'm gonna put her
Speaker 1: in that. And I went just over the lip in
Speaker 1: this pasture and just I didn't have anywhere to get.
Speaker 1: I just laid down on the ground. We start calling
Speaker 1: to these birds and their answering. I can't see anything
Speaker 1: that's going on down there, you know. I can't see
Speaker 1: the turkeys, I can't see her, I can't see anything.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I heard this boom, and
Speaker 1: once again I jump up and it's the same situation.
Speaker 1: There's a bird taking off, and there's another bird standing
Speaker 1: over there with his head up and he's turning his
Speaker 1: eye looking one way, looking to turn wood, and I'm screaming, reload, reload, reload,
Speaker 1: and Ashley turns around and she looks at me and
Speaker 1: she's just like, what are you talking about. I said,
Speaker 1: you missed, and she said I didn't miss And I
Speaker 1: look and there's a bird fly up and down there.
Speaker 1: And what had happened was there was four birds come
Speaker 1: in and I didn't see none of them, and I
Speaker 1: thought she'd missed again, but she'd finally killed her first turkey.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that story sticks out to me
Speaker 1: is just it was one of the proudest moments I'd
Speaker 1: ever seen in her, and it was because of how
Speaker 1: hard she worked to get it. You know, she'd hunted
Speaker 1: three seasons and you know, two seasons before she got
Speaker 1: her first shot, three seasons before she finally killed her
Speaker 1: first bird, you know. And I just remember that old
Speaker 1: Tom Kelly line where Tom said he said, we pay
Speaker 1: for every turkey we kill, and the coin that we
Speaker 1: pay with is time. That was a good story, David.
Speaker 1: Did she ever forgive you, though, for thinking that she
Speaker 1: missed again? Turkey stories are unique, complex and give it's
Speaker 1: the opportunity to reflect on what actually happens in the
Speaker 1: spring woods. I find a lot of clarity in sharing
Speaker 1: my stories with people. We're living these moments as powerful
Speaker 1: for both the storyteller and the listener. Telling and listening
Speaker 1: to stories isn't a periphery human activity, but it's core
Speaker 1: and having a friend that will attentively listen, empathize, get excited,
Speaker 1: be let down, and relive the moment with you is
Speaker 1: incredibly important. That's why we love people, it's why we
Speaker 1: have friends, it's why we have family, and it's essential
Speaker 1: to having a healthy whole life. I think this year
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on listening more closely to other
Speaker 1: people's stories, and maybe if I do that, they'll listen
Speaker 1: to mine and we'll all be able to triangulate the
Speaker 1: data and we'll be some turkey hunting suckers. Man. I
Speaker 1: hope you all have a great spring turkey season in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Let's do some stuff for turkeys. Let's
Speaker 1: do some control burns, trap some predators, and make some
Speaker 1: timber stand improvements to help those gobblers as we know
Speaker 1: some of them are struggling. Hey, have a great spring.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grides. I
Speaker 1: look forward to talking with all the folks on the
Speaker 1: Render next week.