Speaker 1: I could see them spinning full struck, and as I
Speaker 1: raised up and went to shoot them, turkeys is boom
Speaker 1: and everything got dark.
Speaker 2: We've got eight Turkey storytellers stacked like Cordwood on our
Speaker 2: final Turkey Stories episode of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: They hail from.
Speaker 2: Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The Southeastern Conference in Collegiate
Speaker 2: Sports has an interesting tagline stating it just means more
Speaker 2: down here. There are passionate and incredible turkey hunters all
Speaker 2: over this great country. But I've got to say that
Speaker 2: SEC tagline fits turkey hunting like a three piece custom suit.
Speaker 3: It sure means a lot down here.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we've got three wheeler rex people getting shot,
Speaker 2: folks flying around in jets, a turkey walking with a
Speaker 2: forked stick, and even a voodoo gobbler lead out.
Speaker 3: That you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 2: And Hey, I'll be on the Meat Eater Live Tour
Speaker 2: starting in April twenty third, going all the way through
Speaker 2: May fifth. Me and Steve Vanella, Yannis cal all the guys.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be hitting Mesa, Arizona, San Diego, Anaheim, and Sacramento, California.
Speaker 2: Salt Lake City, Utah, Boise, Idaho, Missoula, Montana, Spokane, Washington, Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and Tacoma, Washington. You can buy tickets for those shows now.
Speaker 2: I hope to see you there. And at some point
Speaker 2: we're gonna come to the South.
Speaker 4: So stand by, and I've got my gun like this
Speaker 4: right here, and I go to leaning in about that
Speaker 4: time I just stumped over.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay 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 lived their.
Speaker 3: 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: place as we explore. Just this last week, I was
Speaker 2: in Mississippi turkey hunting with my friend Lake Pickle. We
Speaker 2: were within here in distance of four gobblers at daylight,
Speaker 2: one of them during near in field goal range.
Speaker 3: As a clasp of pine limb in the windless, cold.
Speaker 2: Twilight, they gobbled good on the roost, but as the
Speaker 2: dark forest became like a dimly lit room and gradually
Speaker 2: brightened to the point of being able to discern between
Speaker 2: tree species, They quit almost as if they talked it
Speaker 2: over the evening before. When their dinosaur toes hit the ground,
Speaker 2: they went silent, tight beaked, despite the pleading yelp marks
Speaker 2: that Lake was leaving on their feathers. At nine am,
Speaker 2: we left and we went to a new property and
Speaker 2: made a big loop, yelping from time to time in
Speaker 2: the mid morning, all the while listening. Most of the
Speaker 2: hope for our morning was gone until at ten forty
Speaker 2: five we heard the arrogant gobble of a tom following
Speaker 2: the sharp staccato of a pilated woodpecker. We closed the
Speaker 2: distance with no more than seventy five quick footsteps when
Speaker 2: Lake's posture changed and he stuck out his chest and
Speaker 2: from deep within erupted the most beautiful, spine tingling, four
Speaker 2: note barred owl hoot I've ever heard made. I did
Speaker 2: not know if a barred owl had landed on his shoulder,
Speaker 2: or if on the inside he was one. But after
Speaker 2: the trill of the final note, a gobble erupted so
Speaker 2: close it shook our souls, and we melted to the
Speaker 2: ground like may apples in June. Within seconds, we heard
Speaker 2: drumming and soon I saw his shiny black chest feathers
Speaker 2: and his red head moving towards us. I resolve melted
Speaker 2: like wax as Lake whispered shuit. But what he couldn't
Speaker 2: see is that some limbs, briers, and grass stood between
Speaker 2: us with like separated lovers. He was closing the distance
Speaker 2: after having a near mental breakdown, rotating my shotgun a
Speaker 2: full forty five degrees, I squeezed the trigger as he
Speaker 2: walked away after tucking his wing, and the woods erupted in.
Speaker 3: Flailing wing beats.
Speaker 2: Lake Pickle is not a small man, but he outran
Speaker 2: me to that turkey and snatched him off the pine
Speaker 2: straw like he was recovering a fumble. We'd done it
Speaker 2: in all my outdoor pursuit suits. The feeling of calling
Speaker 2: in killing a spring gobbler is indescribable. And that's why
Speaker 2: this week we're celebrating the wild turkey. We're gonna come
Speaker 2: in hot with our first storyteller. You may have heard
Speaker 2: of him. They call him yacht Yawk, but his name
Speaker 2: is David Ellis and he's from West Point, Mississippi.
Speaker 3: This is about a.
Speaker 2: Wild hunt that he had in Missouri with his good
Speaker 2: buddy po Daddy. Pay attention because this story takes some
Speaker 2: quick twists and turns.
Speaker 3: Here's yat yacht.
Speaker 1: So the most I don't know if people say it
Speaker 1: was scary, the most war out, but me and my
Speaker 1: buddy went up to Missouri. I'd have been up here
Speaker 1: about three times trying to kill him in that national forest.
Speaker 1: And uh, I always wanted to be this guy named
Speaker 1: Eddie Salter. You know, Eddie Salter was the guy that
Speaker 1: you watched on TV. You saw him on the Saturday
Speaker 1: mornings and he had that call sign when he killed
Speaker 1: a turkey and he went over and got picked it up.
Speaker 1: He goes, you know, and that embedded in my head,
Speaker 1: you know, all of all these years, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I said, I want to meet Eddie Salter one day.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, me and my buddy PO Daddy, we
Speaker 1: caught his name's Paul, nicknames PO Daddy. And he wasn't poor.
Speaker 1: He's just really cheap.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: We we get a hotel with one bed to save
Speaker 1: ten dollars, you know. So we went up there and
Speaker 1: I'd have been up there about three times trying to
Speaker 1: kill them. The mountains I call them mountains to me.
Speaker 1: You know, they steep hills. Finally I ended up with
Speaker 1: a guy that had four thousand acres one block of
Speaker 1: lamb and through a friend of a friend, he said,
Speaker 1: just come on, I'm loaded with turkeys. Well the first day, man,
Speaker 1: we got in there, and them hills was just as
Speaker 1: bad as over at them. But they had plenty of birds.
Speaker 1: You would mess up or a bird leave you over here.
Speaker 1: He'd hammer over here when you just go to another one,
Speaker 1: you know. We finally one day we just split up, like, man,
Speaker 1: you got birds over here. I got birds over here.
Speaker 1: But them mountains was just wearing us out, them hills
Speaker 1: and valleys. And they call them ridge runners for a reason.
Speaker 1: They just run up down the ridge were trying to
Speaker 1: run over them.
Speaker 6: You know, we ain't.
Speaker 1: We wasn't smart enough to figure it out, you you know.
Speaker 1: So about three days of more thunderstorms, them more ridges
Speaker 1: was wearing me down. I mean one ridge took us
Speaker 1: five stops to get to the top hug one day.
Speaker 1: And so the last day I told po Dad, I said,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm done with this. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: going back to what I used to do and know
Speaker 1: how I know how to kill turkeys, because you know
Speaker 1: how This is when you hunt with somebody. You just
Speaker 1: play it differently. You don't move like maybe you should
Speaker 1: because you got two people. You don't call like maybe
Speaker 1: you should, or not call like you shouldn't. You just
Speaker 1: play it different. And I told them, I said this
Speaker 1: last day, I said, I'm tired of these thunderstorms. I'm
Speaker 1: tired of these hills. I said, when them turkeys hit
Speaker 1: the ground to day, I said, I ain't gonna have
Speaker 1: these boots on, had to running shoes. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: like you, same boat. I said, when it's go times,
Speaker 1: go time.
Speaker 3: I said.
Speaker 1: When they hit the ridge running, they gonna run down it.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm gonna be on the other side. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pop up. And I said I'm gonna bust him.
Speaker 1: I said, We're going home. He said, we'll go get
Speaker 1: them some So right at daylight, themb old ile started
Speaker 1: getting to going. I said, all right, Poe Daddy, I said,
Speaker 1: you just stay right here. I said, I'll be back
Speaker 1: in just to see. They just kept on as it
Speaker 1: got more and more daylight. At that time, they hit
Speaker 1: the side of that ridge and I hit the other
Speaker 1: side of that ridge, and I was running down there
Speaker 1: with that shotgun, and they were just hammering all the way.
Speaker 1: They knew whe they was going, and I knew where
Speaker 1: they was going, and all they need to do was
Speaker 1: pop on the other side of the ridge. And as
Speaker 1: I run and run and run. As I got to
Speaker 1: the edge of that ridge, they pitched up in flu.
Speaker 1: They ain't pitched up in flu the whole time, They've
Speaker 1: been walking all week, and today they pitched up in flu.
Speaker 1: And I knew the ridge we was on because we
Speaker 1: had stopped five times the day before. And that thing,
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, I ain't giving up. I
Speaker 1: shot down in that valley and I started coming all
Speaker 1: the way up, and they were still hammering on the
Speaker 1: next ridge, and it just kept driving me, driving me,
Speaker 1: and I pulled myself to the top and I got up.
Speaker 1: I could feel the sweat just running off of him.
Speaker 1: I was hot, I had a pull over on, I
Speaker 1: got a hood I'm always wearing a hoodie. I was sweating,
Speaker 1: and they were just over there, just hammering, running away.
Speaker 1: I got on the other side of that ridge and
Speaker 1: I took off, and as I got closer, I could
Speaker 1: see them spinning full struck, and I seen an old
Speaker 1: pine top in that song on was just brown. So
Speaker 1: I slid up under that pine top. I knew I
Speaker 1: was gonna be about forty yards and as I raised
Speaker 1: up and went to shoot them turkeys, it was boom
Speaker 1: and everything got dark, and I knew I didn't pull
Speaker 1: the trigger. I didn't think I did, but I felt blinded.
Speaker 1: I felt the pain. I could feel the sweat, and
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of blood just run down to
Speaker 1: my lip.
Speaker 5: I could taste it.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of nose bleed, so I knew
Speaker 1: what the blood tasted like. And as I sat there, thinking, Lord,
Speaker 1: am I dead? Did I die? And about that time
Speaker 1: I heard out and I took my face mask and
Speaker 1: the pine straws all stubble in my face, and I
Speaker 1: pulled it down and I looked and I said, that
Speaker 1: said it is softer. Edi Sautera doesn't shot me in
Speaker 1: the face. So I laid there and as that guy
Speaker 1: walked over there and he picked up both turkeys. And
Speaker 1: I don't think you could shoot two turkeys in the
Speaker 1: state of missis Missouri at the time, but he did. Now,
Speaker 1: this wasn't Eddy Softer, but that was in my mind
Speaker 1: and enabled it. All I heard was the HOODI and
Speaker 1: as I laid there, I was thinking, was I trustpassing?
Speaker 1: Was I not trustpassing? And as a guy took his
Speaker 1: turkeys off, he picked him up by the heads where
Speaker 1: I'm from, picked him up by the feet, throw the
Speaker 1: movers shoulder, and as he walked off down through the valley,
Speaker 1: I got up and wiped the sweat and rest the
Speaker 1: blood off my face and I leamped back down there
Speaker 1: till my buddy Poe Daddy. It took a little bit,
Speaker 1: and as I got up there my buddy Poe Dad,
Speaker 1: he said, he looked at me, and well, did you
Speaker 1: get him? I said, no, I got shot. That's what
Speaker 1: I got. You ain't say nothing to him, say something
Speaker 1: to him. I didn't know if I was actually trespassing time,
Speaker 1: but all I could think of was if I am truspassing,
Speaker 1: not only did I get shot, I may have to
Speaker 1: pay a thousand dollars for I wanted Finn to get shot.
Speaker 1: I am paying a thousand dollars. I said, we're going home, son.
Speaker 1: But in the end, I was not trustpassing, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't crossed no fences. But in my mind I never
Speaker 1: thought that he was truspassing, so we called. You know,
Speaker 1: I just thought i'd automatically obviously got so zoned in
Speaker 1: on a turkey that I just lost why I was anyway,
Speaker 1: we called landowner and come to find out, we find
Speaker 1: out who actually killed him, and they took the you know,
Speaker 1: denr took care of it. But he was a fellow
Speaker 1: that lived next door to that four thousand acres that
Speaker 1: nobody ever turkey hunted, and verywell could have been you know,
Speaker 1: I could have lost my life. A lot of things
Speaker 1: could have happened. God did not know he shot me.
Speaker 1: So he's probably thirty or forty year yards on the
Speaker 1: other side of those turkeys, and he shot both of them.
Speaker 1: Between the two turkeys and the tree top. Saved me
Speaker 1: from probably losing my eyes.
Speaker 7: Sigh.
Speaker 1: I had about eight good stings in the face, you know,
Speaker 1: where the blood was coming out. So if it would
Speaker 1: have been for him killing both turkeys and that tree top,
Speaker 1: they didn't tell how many I would have took.
Speaker 2: Wow, that was incredibly scary, and David tells it so
Speaker 2: funny it's hard not to chuckle. But the actual trespasser
Speaker 2: did not know at the time that he'd shot David,
Speaker 2: who had permission to be there David did.
Speaker 3: David never heard what.
Speaker 2: Happened to the illegal turkey hunter. That's a wild story,
Speaker 2: and thank god it wasn't more serious for David. I
Speaker 2: bet that was a long ride back to Mississippi with
Speaker 2: no gobbler in the truck. David has a podcast and
Speaker 2: a YouTube channel titled in his signature yacht brand. And
Speaker 2: I've told you before, these Mississippi turkey hunters are just
Speaker 2: made different. Our next storyteller is also made different. It's
Speaker 2: none other than my friend Andy Brown from Western Arkansas.
Speaker 3: He needs no introduction. He's a Bear Grease regular.
Speaker 2: I'd never heard this story, but it involves a coat
Speaker 2: and tie and a major mishap at the moment of truth.
Speaker 3: Here's Andy.
Speaker 5: Anyway, Wayne, One time he calls me and I had
Speaker 5: just went to work with the place I work at now,
Speaker 5: and this was in nineteen ninety. He calls me, he said,
Speaker 5: we'll tell me getting off and I said, I'll be
Speaker 5: off at five o'clock. He said, you want to go
Speaker 5: try to roost a turkey and I said, sure, I'll
Speaker 5: go with you. And I'll never forget this. I had
Speaker 5: a pair of black slacks on white shirt with a
Speaker 5: black tie William. He made us wear ties from Labor
Speaker 5: Day to Memorial Day, so we always had to wear
Speaker 5: a tie. So that's that was our tire, you know.
Speaker 5: Of course I was decked out, you know. And so
Speaker 5: we drive out the board camp and we go in
Speaker 5: there to a spot and cross the creek and pull
Speaker 5: them ountain there. And he had a four wheel drive
Speaker 5: Chevrolet pickup that took us thousands of miles tark getting.
Speaker 5: But anyway, we pull in there and he said, do
Speaker 5: you want my jacket, camouflage jacket. He said, why don't
Speaker 5: you take that sixteen gage? He had another shotgun too.
Speaker 5: I said, wait, ain't gonna need that. I said, I'm
Speaker 5: just going to walk out here east where I could
Speaker 5: hear good. He said, well, I'll go west out here,
Speaker 5: and I said, I'm gonna gout here east. So I
Speaker 5: go out there, and of course by getting down there
Speaker 5: after five o'clock the sun's starting to go down then.
Speaker 5: But I had those slacks on and I didn't want
Speaker 5: to sit down on the ground and those slacks. And
Speaker 5: I looked and there was a little piece of plyboard.
Speaker 5: I guess a storm had blowed in there, about sixteen
Speaker 5: inches wide. And I took that plyboard, and I just
Speaker 5: set it down by a tree there and sit down
Speaker 5: on it. I did wear his camouflage jacket, but I
Speaker 5: didn't take the gun. So I had black pants, white shirt,
Speaker 5: camouflage jacket. The black I didn't have it button. I
Speaker 5: just sitting there, and you know, so I sit there
Speaker 5: and sit there, and of course you know, if you're
Speaker 5: gobbler turkeys lots of times will not gobble till you
Speaker 5: think it's too late to gobble. And that's when day
Speaker 5: of gobble. It's it's after the twilight everything, when you
Speaker 5: think that it's they're not going to do it. But anyway,
Speaker 5: I was sitting there and it's starting to get dark.
Speaker 5: All of a sudden I heard him coming, and I knew,
Speaker 5: there's there's no doubt when I know you've heard this,
Speaker 5: But when a gobbler turkey is on a mission, it
Speaker 5: sounds just like a person walking. It's just crunch, crunch,
Speaker 5: And I could hear him coming from a long ways.
Speaker 5: It was dry, and I look, here come my big grascal,
Speaker 5: right right to me. And he just walks up there
Speaker 5: at about twenty steps of me. He just walks up
Speaker 5: the mountain there, right up on top about thirty yards
Speaker 5: from me, flies up a tree right on top and
Speaker 5: there I sat. So I had to wait till it
Speaker 5: got completely dark. So when I drug back into the
Speaker 5: truck and said where you in, I said, well, I
Speaker 5: told you about the story, I said, but man, in
Speaker 5: the morning, I said, we gonna get this dude, because
Speaker 5: he's gonna go back just exactly like he come in there.
Speaker 5: You know, he's put his hens to bed. And I said,
Speaker 5: he's gonna go back the other way. So the next morning,
Speaker 5: we get up extremely early. We go in park, we
Speaker 5: go around the south side of the mountain, hit an
Speaker 5: old road, get over on the north side. We're gonna
Speaker 5: we're gonna get set up, you know. And so we
Speaker 5: walk a little ways, and walk a litle ways, and
Speaker 5: we look at it and I said, this don't I said,
Speaker 5: let's go a little further. So we we go a
Speaker 5: little further and we get out there and and I'm
Speaker 5: out there, got my pocket knife and I'm cutting I'm
Speaker 5: cutting limbs, building the blinds, you know, and get in
Speaker 5: where we can hide, you know. And I get all
Speaker 5: that fixed and I sit out there way he's right
Speaker 5: there with it. It starts a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 5: we could have tuck a nap, it was so early.
Speaker 5: But anyway, it starts getting daylight, and I look out
Speaker 5: there and I thought, what is that right up? I
Speaker 5: can see something light covered and I look out there
Speaker 5: and there's that piece of plyboard where I mean, we
Speaker 5: are setting under that turkey, you know, And I thought, oh, no,
Speaker 5: about that time he gobbles just blows her hats off
Speaker 5: right there. And when we did, he just pitches off
Speaker 5: on the south side of the mountain. He didn't pitch
Speaker 5: back off the way he'd come in and went right
Speaker 5: east there he went gobbling, and he went right back
Speaker 5: around there to what we call Bible gap. Anyway, I
Speaker 5: told man, I said, come on, let's let's go try
Speaker 5: to kill that dude. We go back around, we come
Speaker 5: into the gap, and the time we get into the gap,
Speaker 5: he's kind of off on the south side off that on.
Speaker 5: It's pretty opening there. He's down there with some hens. Anyway,
Speaker 5: we got in there and got stashed and I put
Speaker 5: in on him and he went to goblin. I mean
Speaker 5: that he was doing it. And I looked off down
Speaker 5: there and here he come. Now he just here, he came,
Speaker 5: just kept it coming, kept it coming. And I could
Speaker 5: have killed him at thirty yards right in front of me,
Speaker 5: but he was getting to my left and just right
Speaker 5: there there was a game trail come up a lake,
Speaker 5: and I don't know why I didn't shoot him down there,
Speaker 5: but anyway, I'm just gonna let him keep it coming.
Speaker 5: You know, he'd come right on up he hit that
Speaker 5: game trail. This is the way it works. There was
Speaker 5: one another one in big bull pines there and all
Speaker 5: he's got to do when he walked in behind that
Speaker 5: pine tree, I just moved my gun to the left
Speaker 5: of it. I had to. I was facing this way,
Speaker 5: but I had to turn my gun and there's nothing.
Speaker 5: It's just like this this floor here on both sides.
Speaker 5: There's not even a huckleberry bush. I mean, he's in
Speaker 5: behind the tree at fifteen yards. All he's got to
Speaker 5: do is just and he just walks right in. You know,
Speaker 5: he's in a walk in about that. When he gets
Speaker 5: behind that tree, it just stops. It's called patience. The
Speaker 5: guy should have. You should have a little patience because
Speaker 5: there's really no way this turkey can get away hardly,
Speaker 5: you know. But I'm kind of you know, my body
Speaker 5: is this way and I've got my gun like this
Speaker 5: right here, and I go to leaning to see if
Speaker 5: I get, you know, leaning over like that. And about
Speaker 5: that time I just tumped over. I just stumped over,
Speaker 5: and that old turkey running his head up there. Of
Speaker 5: course I'm laying on the ground like cat. And but
Speaker 5: the problem was I shot him too low, I mean,
Speaker 5: and I chup up and I run to get him.
Speaker 5: In course, he got his legs under me and got
Speaker 5: his wings on him, and he flew right out through
Speaker 5: a little old notch in the mountain. And as far
Speaker 5: as I know, he's still going.
Speaker 2: Now, that was a good story, Andy, and I figure
Speaker 2: that turkey is still flying. A fella could take a
Speaker 2: few notes on how to kill a turkey from Andy Brown,
Speaker 2: but also on how to tell a turkey story. The
Speaker 2: perfect story is just the right mix of details, humor, passion,
Speaker 2: and know how. Thanks Andy. Our next storyteller hails from
Speaker 2: the Smoky Mountains of southern Appalachia and Green County, Tennessee.
Speaker 2: His name is Clifford Loying. The first turkey you ever
Speaker 2: killed in the nineteen seventies was the first turkey ever
Speaker 2: checked in Green County. He calls this the story worry
Speaker 2: a big Red, a big red, and hain't a turkey.
Speaker 8: Clifford Lowing, I live here basically all my life, except
Speaker 8: in the military for a while, and work construction for
Speaker 8: a couple of years out west around Colorado and around.
Speaker 8: I'll tell you one about the big Red. My nephew
Speaker 8: had got a big red handas three wheeler. I rode
Speaker 8: it around my house or in the yard a time
Speaker 8: or two, so all I ever wrote it. And I
Speaker 8: was working construction at the time, worked at Dold of
Speaker 8: Jarvis up for I was working for Seeing's email right,
Speaker 8: working construction and talking to a boy and he said,
Speaker 8: you've been turkey hunting rode it lately?
Speaker 7: And I said no, I said, hadn't been up here
Speaker 7: in years.
Speaker 8: He said, we've been trying to kill one up told
Speaker 8: me where he was at and I said, that's the
Speaker 8: area where I kill my first turkey. He said, we
Speaker 8: can't call him in, said he would get to Goblin
Speaker 8: and what they was doing. If he wouldn't come to
Speaker 8: they try to get closer, and he just go away
Speaker 8: from him and they'd following.
Speaker 7: Then we're smart toms. They'll take you round and round,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 8: So I would work and got off early at evening,
Speaker 8: I called my brother because I didn't have a four
Speaker 8: wheel drive to get back in there at the time.
Speaker 8: And I called him. I said, this, my boy, Brendan's
Speaker 8: big red you go pancreck Turkey Hunty. He said, yeah,
Speaker 8: come and get it, So I said, evening hunt. So
Speaker 8: I reloaded up in the back of the truck, took
Speaker 8: it over and dampt it out and started up in there.
Speaker 8: There's a little road that runs up the back bottom
Speaker 8: of the mountain there. It's kind of steep getting up
Speaker 8: to it, and like I said, I didn't know much
Speaker 8: about that big grid. So I started up there, and
Speaker 8: like riding a motorcycle in the mountains, if it starts
Speaker 8: rearing up, what do you do? You throw your feet down.
Speaker 8: I learned the hard way you don't throw your feet
Speaker 8: down on one of big rids. Of cause when I
Speaker 8: got stopped, the wheels was about in behind my knees there,
Speaker 8: and like I said, didn't have no referse on it.
Speaker 8: And I'm sitting there on that steep bank. I said,
Speaker 8: I'm in trouble here. Couldn't get off of it. I
Speaker 8: finally got it killed, couldn't get it pushed forward enough
Speaker 8: and finally got it.
Speaker 7: Took me about five minutes. I said, I'm in trouble
Speaker 7: here if nobody's over here. Finally got it off of me,
Speaker 7: old on it flipped over.
Speaker 8: It didn't flip over it, but it run up my
Speaker 8: back legs the wheels when it reared up, I throw
Speaker 8: my legs down and the rear tars is right there
Speaker 8: and they come up in my back of my legs
Speaker 8: and had it had me pinned. Oh wow, And I'm
Speaker 8: sitting on that steep hill pinned with my leg yeah.
Speaker 8: My knees were on the ground, almost on the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 8: And I'm pinned where. I can't keep dothing about it.
Speaker 8: And I worked there for a walk. Finally got out
Speaker 8: of it, luckily, and I eased on up that road
Speaker 8: and I had my shotgun didn't have back in them days.
Speaker 8: I just had a rope tied to it and opened
Speaker 8: my shoulder. Eased up through there. And there's a place
Speaker 8: or two there was a limb hanging. I'd have to
Speaker 8: get around that. And I got up there and feel
Speaker 8: where i'd kill my first turkey. Stopped, got off of
Speaker 8: it and walked around there for the wall, looking for sign.
Speaker 8: And it's probably about the air before dark. So I
Speaker 8: got call out. I used mouth call. I got it
Speaker 8: down in a cackle, real loud. Over on the next ridge,
Speaker 8: I said, well, so I got across this hollow and
Speaker 8: I don't want to get this done all before dark
Speaker 8: or not. I stood. I couldn't stand it no longer.
Speaker 8: I took off, got over and eased up there and
Speaker 8: found a pretty place to sit down and had a
Speaker 8: little level flat in it, and went up the ridge.
Speaker 7: I called and gobbled right up on the ridge above me.
Speaker 8: He just he gobbled every time I call, he gobbled
Speaker 8: up here, and then he come back down here. I said,
Speaker 8: he's not coming down, and it's getting on down. And
Speaker 8: I'd like the tape, said old Rob Keck said, if
Speaker 8: you got one to hang up, just turn your head
Speaker 8: and call time to and spit it out and just
Speaker 8: don't call them more.
Speaker 7: So I did, and he gobbled. Well.
Speaker 8: I just sat there seemed like forever, and I seen
Speaker 8: a black spot moving on the ridge above me. He'd
Speaker 8: stop and start turning around and around, strutting. I guess
Speaker 8: that's the best hunt I ever had. He'd take a
Speaker 8: few more feet, gobble, turn around and around. I wouldn't
Speaker 8: I've done my calls. Laying on the ground, I just
Speaker 8: sat there and watched him and watched him. It seemed
Speaker 8: like I took forever for that bird to get to me.
Speaker 8: And I let him get about fifteen twenty yards. He
Speaker 8: just go around around circle, drum spitting, drum gobble.
Speaker 7: I was tore all the pieces. I don't say.
Speaker 8: I kept send my shotgun shake, you know, I said,
Speaker 8: I'm finally have to shoot him. So I shot him,
Speaker 8: got him, got back to the three wheeler. It was
Speaker 8: almost dark, I mean, it was getting on down there.
Speaker 8: So I tied him on the three wheeler and tied
Speaker 8: my shotgun back across my shoulder and took off down
Speaker 8: through there, and it was getting pretty black. But then
Speaker 8: and I didn't remember the tree hanging across the trail,
Speaker 8: and my shotgun hooked it. The next thing I knowed,
Speaker 8: I was eating the ground and the three wheelers going
Speaker 8: down through the woods with my turkey. So I survived
Speaker 8: that one, got it and got on out there. That's
Speaker 8: more careful getting on out of there after that, Just
Speaker 8: as the last time I rode Big Red to the mountains.
Speaker 3: That was a good story, Clifford.
Speaker 2: It's a wonder any outdoorsman survived the nineteen eighties, as
Speaker 2: much of the backwoods travel was done on Honda Big
Speaker 2: Red three wheelers. From the very beginning, they were known
Speaker 2: as widow makers and death traps. Gary Believer Nukomb never
Speaker 2: had a Big Red, but he had a Kawasaki one
Speaker 2: ten three wheeler, which was just as dangerous, just not
Speaker 2: as iconic of a machine. That actually bought me a
Speaker 2: little two stroke Yamaha try Zinger three wheeler when I
Speaker 2: was four years old. I still remember tumping that thing
Speaker 2: over a time or two and once hitting a barbed
Speaker 2: wire fence. It's a wonder any of us are still alive.
Speaker 2: If turkey's had three legs, they'd be easy to kill.
Speaker 2: You could just tip them over on an incline. Our
Speaker 2: next story is probably going to surprise you. The mode
Speaker 2: of transportation isn't a three wheeler, an old four by
Speaker 2: four pickup, or a mule. It's rather a jet. This
Speaker 2: is Slade Johnson of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He's a very serious
Speaker 2: turkey hunter with a very unique forty five hours of
Speaker 2: turkey hunting to tell us about. And you're gonna need
Speaker 2: to know that a turkey hunting grand Slam is killing
Speaker 2: the four subspecies of turkeys in the United States, an
Speaker 2: osceola only in Florida, an Eastern turkey in the eastern
Speaker 2: deciduous forest, a Merriam in the western US, and the
Speaker 2: Rio Grande in the Southwest.
Speaker 3: Here's slave.
Speaker 9: I grew up turkey hunting. That was, like I said,
Speaker 9: that was my passion, passed down my grandfather and dad
Speaker 9: since before I could walk. It's my favorite thing to
Speaker 9: do out of all the turkey and I try not
Speaker 9: to miss a day of turkey hunting in the spring.
Speaker 9: But out of all the turkey hunt I've done, probably
Speaker 9: the most, my favorite trip was I guess it was
Speaker 9: three years ago.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 9: One of the investors in my company's Big Outdoorsman. He's
Speaker 9: a pilot, and we were he likes to just do challenging,
Speaker 9: crazy things, and so we had found out that we
Speaker 9: were just curious, like, hey, what wonder what the quickest
Speaker 9: time anybody's ever completed the Grand Slam, And so we
Speaker 9: looked it up and it was actually a friend of
Speaker 9: ours was one of the guys that did it, and
Speaker 9: they'd done it in forty six hour, Somewhere between forty
Speaker 9: six and forty seven hours.
Speaker 6: And we're like, oh, we can beat that, or.
Speaker 9: Thinking we could at least, you know, And so we're
Speaker 9: starting to put this big strategy together of like all right,
Speaker 9: let's uh, let's make this a fundraiser for the NWTF.
Speaker 9: Let's let's use you know, swap trips with guys through
Speaker 9: trips for trade.
Speaker 6: John would fly his plane.
Speaker 9: He's a pilot, like I said, so that would make
Speaker 9: things a lot more efficient to get to each of
Speaker 9: the birds. And but our goal was we're going to
Speaker 9: do this in under thirty six hours, and so we
Speaker 9: were thinking, you know, that'd be really two full days
Speaker 9: of daylight of hunting. And then we found out that
Speaker 9: the guys had done it before started to claw on
Speaker 9: the first gun shot, so then the story you see
Speaker 9: that that made a difference. So we decided, all right,
Speaker 9: as soon as we harvest the first bird, the clock starts,
Speaker 9: when we harvest the last, when it stops, we'll see
Speaker 9: if we can break this forty six hour world record.
Speaker 9: So anyways, we started in Alabama, thought that was going
Speaker 9: to be a layup because that's his personal farm cover
Speaker 9: up and birds very low pressure.
Speaker 6: And it took us till like.
Speaker 9: Nine thirty in the morning, to get it done at
Speaker 9: that farm, which we were like, oh man, this is
Speaker 9: killing our time. We really thought we needed to kill
Speaker 9: off the lamb this morning, so we killed that bird.
Speaker 9: We'd run over to the plane take off, landing near
Speaker 9: Orlando in Florida, we hop in a rental car. There
Speaker 9: we drive to this farm, which is a trip for
Speaker 9: trade gal on a swap and no pressure on this
Speaker 9: farm too, hoping that we could get it done, and
Speaker 9: those birds again thought it was going to be a
Speaker 9: lay up and they whooped us. We got all the
Speaker 9: way down to the last probably I guess it was
Speaker 9: probably the last five minutes of shooting light, and we're like,
Speaker 9: it's done. We're not gonna be able to do this
Speaker 9: if we don't harvest this bird this evening, And like
Speaker 9: an answered prayer, these two longbeards come out, not answering calls,
Speaker 9: not gobbling, they just come walking out into the field
Speaker 9: and John was able to get it done there.
Speaker 6: So we're high five and we're all fired up.
Speaker 9: So again back to the airport, we fly overnight to Kansas.
Speaker 9: Buddy Casey's there a credible turkey hunter. He had got
Speaker 9: permission on a farm for us to hunt a rio
Speaker 9: there in Kansas and had roosted them, which so many
Speaker 9: people involved with this it was incredible to see. And
Speaker 9: so that morning, right there, they're set up on this tree.
Speaker 9: They know where he's roosted, about to get you know,
Speaker 9: daybreaks about to happen, and they look over and two
Speaker 9: guys are poaching coming in from the road. Somebody dropped
Speaker 9: them off and they're walking in between under the trees
Speaker 9: the turkeys are roosted in.
Speaker 6: So they're at this dilemma.
Speaker 9: Too of like do we stop the poachers and confront
Speaker 9: them do we just like hope they don't screw it
Speaker 9: up this hunt because we're on the clock.
Speaker 6: We want to screw up the hunt.
Speaker 1: It's now or never.
Speaker 9: This only birds we've got on this farm. And so
Speaker 9: they were like, we'll worry with them after hopefully they
Speaker 9: keep walking. So we don't even know where they ended
Speaker 9: up going. But the birds woke up answered, you know,
Speaker 9: God went on the limb, pitched right down. Just picture
Speaker 9: perfect hunt. So now we're on cloud nine. We're you know,
Speaker 9: this is daybreak of the second day in Kansas, you know,
Speaker 9: six fifteen, whatever the time he is, we're we've already
Speaker 9: killed the rio. So back to the plane. We're in
Speaker 9: South Dakota by like eleven, and so we land in
Speaker 9: the bad lands. Shaan's up there are awesome, dude. They
Speaker 9: got a big Indian reservation property that we could hunt.
Speaker 9: And by the time we land and walk in there,
Speaker 9: he's like, I saw a group of verds in this field.
Speaker 9: You know, we should be on them within an hour.
Speaker 9: So we had our first set up there in South Dakota.
Speaker 9: The clock was at twenty seven hours in and so
Speaker 9: that would have obviously been an incredible just time for
Speaker 9: doing that the challenge, but then.
Speaker 6: They just gave us the runner around. We had.
Speaker 9: We hunted all day, we had six different opportunities on birds,
Speaker 9: we had missus, we had ran out of you know,
Speaker 9: lost shells, just everything you can imagine, just thinking we
Speaker 9: could not get it done on the Miriam.
Speaker 6: And so we're getting down to the.
Speaker 9: End of the day and we realize this is we're
Speaker 9: not gonna be able to do it.
Speaker 6: So we're defeated. We are like whooke.
Speaker 9: We're sitting at dinner that night just like heads in
Speaker 9: our hands, you know, just like Collie, we put all
Speaker 9: this effort into trying to do this, and we didn't
Speaker 9: do it, and we're doing the math and we're like, wait,
Speaker 9: since we didn't kill till nine to fifteen in Alabama,
Speaker 9: that gives us thirty minutes of daylight to still be
Speaker 9: under the world record the next day. But we had
Speaker 9: a rainstorm coming in, so we're like, there's a little hope,
Speaker 9: but like it's probably not going to happen. And so
Speaker 9: sure enough, the rainstorm ended that morning right before daybreak,
Speaker 9: and it was the most perfect timet. We're sitting up
Speaker 9: setting up on the edge of this field. I bet
Speaker 9: you there was twenty plus long Beer's goblin in the
Speaker 9: trees around us, like just pure big group. Miriam fat
Speaker 9: and bird pitches down. I'm calling on this one and
Speaker 9: John's up in front of me to shoot, and he
Speaker 9: just we can't get him to break the distance. He's
Speaker 9: just strutting out in the field at the distance and
Speaker 9: we're like counting the seconds.
Speaker 6: We need you to come over here.
Speaker 9: Anyways, Finally he broke and came in close enough to
Speaker 9: get the shot. John made a great shot. We picked
Speaker 9: him up and we ended up harvest Needburg. When we
Speaker 9: stopped the time, it was I think forty five hours
Speaker 9: in fifty two minutes.
Speaker 6: So we had eight minutes left uspare to like.
Speaker 9: For the world record, so that was That's probably one
Speaker 9: of the most meaningful hunts I've had.
Speaker 6: You know, it was a lot of people involved.
Speaker 9: You got to see every subspecies of turkeys in the US,
Speaker 9: so that was a lot of fun. And then ultimately
Speaker 9: the as I Mentioneder of the fundraiser side, I think
Speaker 9: there was like twenty five or twenty six thousand dollars
Speaker 9: worth of money of people donating that we're watching this
Speaker 9: this live on Instagram and everything donating money to be
Speaker 9: in the raffle that we were able to donate to NWTF.
Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting a jet when Slade started telling me
Speaker 2: this story. That's pretty wild. I'll be impressed when somebody
Speaker 2: makes a turkey slam only using a Honda Big Red
Speaker 2: three wheeler as their mode of transportation. Slade runs a
Speaker 2: business called Trips for Trade where they connect people looking
Speaker 2: to trade hunts with other people across the country. It's
Speaker 2: a pretty neat business. Our next storyteller is my friend
Speaker 2: Dale Craig from Western Arkansas. Dale told one of the
Speaker 2: best deer stories ever told on this podcast about calling
Speaker 2: in a buck with a rolling apple do you all
Speaker 2: remember that one. He's a veteran woodsman and a mountain hunter.
Speaker 2: Here's Dale with a short story about a gobbler putting
Speaker 2: the voodoo on him and his buddy Travis.
Speaker 10: One thing, men, Travis got into one time side he's
Speaker 10: going to work the turkeys over, you know, kill us one.
Speaker 10: And we've been all over the country. It was right
Speaker 10: just two or three days for the season was over with,
Speaker 10: and uh, I pull up here to the house. I
Speaker 10: hear this turkey goblin over here just east of my house.
Speaker 10: He's right at dark. I called Travis up. I said hey,
Speaker 10: I said, I just roosted a turkey. He said where at?
Speaker 10: I said right here, I'm right standing right here in
Speaker 10: the yard. And I said it's over east of the house.
Speaker 10: And we'd been we'd been all over the mountains everywhere
Speaker 10: trying to get We had neither one of us to
Speaker 10: kill the turkey.
Speaker 5: And he said, well, how do.
Speaker 10: We get in there to it?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 10: And I told him where we was going to go
Speaker 10: the next morning. So we met up way for daylight,
Speaker 10: parked and the neighbors have met him. We slipped off
Speaker 10: up there on the edge of that ridge and it
Speaker 10: starting to get light. Called for all this turkey just
Speaker 10: gobbled and just set in, just tearing the woods up.
Speaker 10: And I told Travis, I said, we need to get
Speaker 10: you know, get up here and get get set up.
Speaker 10: I said, that turkey's you'll come in just a little bit.
Speaker 10: So we eased on up on the ridge. He got
Speaker 10: up there and we got set up. Travis. He had called,
Speaker 10: he called for.
Speaker 5: A little bit, and that turkey just gobble.
Speaker 7: Gobble, gobble.
Speaker 10: I tried with my call, just kept a gobble right
Speaker 10: right there in that same place. So we decided he
Speaker 10: had some hens with him, so we kept We just
Speaker 10: start easing that way, being real quiet, and every once
Speaker 10: in a lot of turkey gobble. So we got set
Speaker 10: up again. We called that dude just gobble gobble, gobble
Speaker 10: right there in that same place.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't come, wouldn't come.
Speaker 10: We sit there and listened to that thing forever, and
Speaker 10: I mean every time you called, he just cut you off.
Speaker 10: We decided he was gonna sneak off down there and
Speaker 10: try to put the ambush on him. You know. We
Speaker 10: got slipping off down there and slipping on down the
Speaker 10: ridge air and got off the side of it, and
Speaker 10: then I heard a rooster crow. We looked at one another,
Speaker 10: and then we decided that turkey was in a pen
Speaker 10: down there.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that house was back in there.
Speaker 10: I hadn't been back in that country in years. I
Speaker 10: used to coon on all in there.
Speaker 3: This old gobler.
Speaker 10: We slipped them down there a week. See that old gobler.
Speaker 10: You could see him down there in that pin.
Speaker 5: You could hit that.
Speaker 10: Call that dude, disc gobble, gobble gobble. He's in that
Speaker 10: pen banes with a bunch of chickens. But that I
Speaker 10: didn't even know that house, that house had been when
Speaker 10: it was built or anyway, we was gonna ambush that
Speaker 10: old turkey, and he kind of put the voodoo on us.
Speaker 3: The old pen turkey story.
Speaker 2: Any bona fide turkey hunter should have sniffed that one
Speaker 2: out after Dale's opening the line. But I walked into
Speaker 2: it like an ox to slaughter, or like a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties middle class man walking into a Honda dealership and
Speaker 2: buying a big red. What got me was that it
Speaker 2: was by Dale's house, and I knew that he would
Speaker 2: have known what was going on near his own land.
Speaker 2: I didn't see the turkey coming anyway. Good story, tell
Speaker 2: our next story is from the mountains of East Tennessee,
Speaker 2: told by a man named Kevin Laws. He's a humble
Speaker 2: fellow with a string of turkey spurs durned there long
Speaker 2: enough to wrap around a volkswagon.
Speaker 3: Here's Kevin.
Speaker 11: When I started out turkey uning, It's probably been about
Speaker 11: about twenty five years ago, I guess, because I always
Speaker 11: kept bagels and coon dogs and bear dogs, and I
Speaker 11: used to didn't like nothing if he didn't have a
Speaker 11: dog involved in it. I mean, that's all I've ever
Speaker 11: done is bear hunted and rabbit hunted and con hunting.
Speaker 11: I wasn't interested in no turkey. I finally decided there
Speaker 11: that I would give it a try. In the first year,
Speaker 11: I didn't kill no turkey. And then me and my
Speaker 11: brother went together and he killed a big gobbler earlier
Speaker 11: that morning, and there was another one with it and
Speaker 11: hit run past me, and I killed it and it
Speaker 11: had two beards. That was my first turkey that I'd
Speaker 11: ever killed. After that, I just got the hunting and
Speaker 11: learning as a wind. But there's a lot better turkey
Speaker 11: hunters than I am around here. I mean, there's some
Speaker 11: good turkey hunters in this part of the country. I
Speaker 11: remember one time I had been up in the mountains
Speaker 11: and I had this turkey up and I got the
Speaker 11: calling on it, and I mean he was doing some goblin,
Speaker 11: and my brother was.
Speaker 7: With me that day.
Speaker 11: I finally got him called in and when he come in,
Speaker 11: he come around kindly behind me, and my brother was
Speaker 11: on this other side over here, and so I just
Speaker 11: kind of eased around with my shotgun there and got
Speaker 11: me a good beat on him. And when I shot
Speaker 11: he left out, I missed him. I mean, he was gone, son,
Speaker 11: I missed him. That was about I don't know how
Speaker 11: long I've been hunting, but I still haven't been hunting
Speaker 11: a long time. Then, and we waited two or three
Speaker 11: days and went back and we called him there again,
Speaker 11: and we got him to goblin and he come in
Speaker 11: and then he left back out, went way down through
Speaker 11: the hall of there. Must have been seemed like a
Speaker 11: half a mile. I don't know if it was or not, but.
Speaker 6: It was pretty good peace.
Speaker 11: And I thought, well, he's gone, I mean, you know.
Speaker 11: And this was of evening, and I told my brother,
Speaker 11: I said this, give him one more call and see
Speaker 11: what happens. And so I let out a big cackle
Speaker 11: or I had a mouth call.
Speaker 7: I let out a big cackle.
Speaker 11: Man he gobbled down in there and and a few
Speaker 11: minutes he come on. He was still gobbling. My brother said,
Speaker 11: he's coming, He's coming. So I just sat there and
Speaker 11: waited for him. And he came up here and jumped
Speaker 11: up on a big lagger and stood like he was
Speaker 11: pretty brave, you know whatever. So I blowed him off
Speaker 11: the lagger and he was I was pretty good, pretty
Speaker 11: good hunt right there. And then it wasn't. But a
Speaker 11: few days later it was getting closer to the end
Speaker 11: of season, I guess, and uh. We went back to the
Speaker 11: mountains again there, and my brother was with me again
Speaker 11: there too, And I liked hunting mountains because sometimes you
Speaker 11: can call and they may be there in ten or
Speaker 11: fifteen minutes, and then sometimes it may be two hours.
Speaker 11: And I got a burn. We called and I was
Speaker 11: one gobbled about three ridges over, and we called a
Speaker 11: few more times. My brother's sitting out here on the
Speaker 11: left side of me, and I was watching for the
Speaker 11: turkey come up through here, and I mean it wasn't.
Speaker 7: It wasn't.
Speaker 11: I'd say it was less than ten minutes, and I
Speaker 11: mean he was over like three ridges, and man, he
Speaker 11: was there and all of a sudden, I hear my
Speaker 11: brother shoot, you know, and and he's killed a turkey.
Speaker 11: But it was I mean him some fun hunt tracked there.
Speaker 11: I like him.
Speaker 2: Those were good stories, Kevin. I like those kind of
Speaker 2: hunts too. Our next storyteller is also from East Tennessee,
Speaker 2: near Greenville. His name is Chris Hopson, and he's gonna
Speaker 2: tell us about chasing one the hard way with a
Speaker 2: bow with no blind and no decoys and no hand
Speaker 2: the big red.
Speaker 12: Well, my name is Chris Hobson. I'm from Greenville, Tennessee.
Speaker 12: I guess I got started briefly turkey hunting back when
Speaker 12: I was a kid, when there was hardly any turkeys around,
Speaker 12: you know, But that was just the early stages, and
Speaker 12: didn't get really involved big with it until probably in
Speaker 12: the late eighties, you know, early nineties, of course, when
Speaker 12: I was a kid. I mean, you've very rarely ever
Speaker 12: seen a turkey, you know, and he's like seeing a bobcat,
Speaker 12: you know, you're just really surprised to see one. I've
Speaker 12: had some really good times in the Turkey woods and
Speaker 12: some good success, and there's a lot better turkey hunters
Speaker 12: than I am. I don't really believe in luck, but
Speaker 12: I've I've been fortunate enough to you know, kill my
Speaker 12: share of turkeys. But this one is a I don't know.
Speaker 12: It's right around where I live, at a home. I
Speaker 12: had decided I was just going to dedicate half the
Speaker 12: season to bow hunting turkeys. There was a particular gobbler
Speaker 12: hanging around there around the house, and I picked the
Speaker 12: wrong one to bow hunt after I'd got to chasing him.
Speaker 12: So because he we live on a farm there and
Speaker 12: he would get out in a big pasture field was
Speaker 12: probably it was probably fifteen acres and every morning I'd
Speaker 12: be down there and I'd know exactly where he was
Speaker 12: roosted and.
Speaker 7: Try to set up.
Speaker 12: And when I said I was dedicating half the season
Speaker 12: to bow hunt, I meant with no ground blind or anything.
Speaker 12: I just put a gilly suit on and wanted to
Speaker 12: hunt it, you know, just out of the woods and
Speaker 12: try to blend in. Wasn't usually decoys, and which is
Speaker 12: a very it's very hard to do well. This particular turkey,
Speaker 12: I picked the wrong one to bow hunt because he
Speaker 12: would come out in the when he would come off
Speaker 12: the roost, he would go right in the middle of
Speaker 12: the pasture field and he would stand there for hours,
Speaker 12: just hours, just going back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 12: just strutting.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 12: He'd have a couple of hands with him, but he
Speaker 12: was just he was very stubborn.
Speaker 3: And it took me.
Speaker 12: I probably hunted that turkey for a week and a half,
Speaker 12: just I got really close a few times. But you know,
Speaker 12: bow hunting is it's a game of yards and feet
Speaker 12: most of the time. He finally made a mistake. I
Speaker 12: got up one morning for daylight and he was he
Speaker 12: was roosted in a different spot that morning. He flew
Speaker 12: out in the edge of the pasture field that morning,
Speaker 12: and then he skirred around some of the other fields there,
Speaker 12: and I would just back off and you know, go
Speaker 12: back behind the ridge, you know, get behind him and
Speaker 12: where he could see me, try to sit up in
Speaker 12: front of him.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 12: I tried all different types of cows, you know, diaphragms,
Speaker 12: and wouldn't use any decoys. That's pretty hard to do,
Speaker 12: especially if you got one stubborn like that. There was
Speaker 12: a little pond there, and he went towards the little
Speaker 12: pond and I got there was some little blow down
Speaker 12: trees down there and I got in behind that those
Speaker 12: trees and I just set I had caught him crossing.
Speaker 12: There was a bottom there, and he was coming down
Speaker 12: that bottom sometimes. And you know, late morning, I got
Speaker 12: set up over there on one of those blown down
Speaker 12: tree and a a cedar tree or something there, and
Speaker 12: I just you know, skirted it up behind it and
Speaker 12: he come. I probably shot him at twelve thirteen yards.
Speaker 12: I had to draw before he got there, you know,
Speaker 12: and I had to you know, I had to wait.
Speaker 12: Of course, I had a low pound of bowl because
Speaker 12: it don't take a whole lot of pounds to kill.
Speaker 7: A turkey with a bow.
Speaker 12: But made a really good shot on him. And and
Speaker 12: you know, I tell a lot of people I liked
Speaker 12: to bow hunt them. But there's just something about a shotgun.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 12: It's it's because there's some you know, a turkey's vitals
Speaker 12: are so small, you know, when you're bow hunting turkey,
Speaker 12: I mean it's you know, you've got to be precise
Speaker 12: on your shot placement. And I just hit everything just
Speaker 12: lined up that day to you know, for it to happen.
Speaker 12: You know, I just I'm just a bow hunter at heart.
Speaker 12: I just loved to bow hunt. But I like a
Speaker 12: shotgun hunt them too, you know, I just I don't.
Speaker 12: I don't bow hunt them a whole lot now, but
Speaker 12: because I'm just taking my nephew and my daughter a
Speaker 12: lot now, it's you know, there's a lot of those
Speaker 12: hunts that stands out that's really special to me with
Speaker 12: my daughter and my nephew. I have to give them credit.
Speaker 12: They they hung in there pretty good and killed some
Speaker 12: pretty tough turkeys too.
Speaker 2: Chasing the turkey with a bow without a blind or
Speaker 2: decoys is as difficult a turkey hunt as there is period.
Speaker 2: I've just started to notice that some turkey hunters are
Speaker 2: giving people a hard time for killing turkeys out of blinds.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize we were doing that, like giving people
Speaker 2: a hard time about this. It's no doubt easier when
Speaker 2: you're in a blind, and I don't really have a
Speaker 2: dog in the fight. I've never killed a turkey out
Speaker 2: of a blind, But it's interesting that we're ribbing people
Speaker 2: about a method to take anyway. Just an observation. Good job, Chris,
Speaker 2: thank you for the story. Our next story is being
Speaker 2: told in the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leland, Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Bill Baird is from Indianola and is a long, long
Speaker 2: time turkey man. I'm just gonna let these two stories
Speaker 2: that he's about to tell us unfold on their own
Speaker 2: without much foreshadowing. But I figured the first story should
Speaker 2: be called Before Could Stick.
Speaker 13: My name is Bill Baird. I'm from Indianola, Mississippi. I
Speaker 13: guess if I remember the first turkey jun I went on.
Speaker 13: My father, I was about twelve years old, had a
Speaker 13: sixteen gage browning, and I think the first time that
Speaker 13: we went, he set me off by myself and I
Speaker 13: missed a turkey, and then we went on that afternoon.
Speaker 3: To kill one.
Speaker 13: So that kind of got me started. Kids nowadays start
Speaker 13: hunting when they're five, six, seven years old, but most
Speaker 13: of the older men back in those days, we needed
Speaker 13: to be about twelve years old to be able to
Speaker 13: handle a gun to where we could hunt. So that's
Speaker 13: I guess that's when I started turkey hunting. Well, you know,
Speaker 13: I enjoy all hunting, but I don't know. There's something
Speaker 13: about a turkey. When you fool with a turkey in
Speaker 13: the fall, you see them and they're really dumb, you know,
Speaker 13: they just they'll stand there and look at you on
Speaker 13: side of the road. But when you start hunting a
Speaker 13: bigger old turkey, a four or five three or four
Speaker 13: five year old turkey, he's been through several seasons and
Speaker 13: he's wised up. When you get an old turkey and
Speaker 13: you trick him, you've really done. So you know you
Speaker 13: said something about that earlier, about a favorite hunt. There's
Speaker 13: so many of them that I can remember with one
Speaker 13: particular time that actually, Roy and a friend of ours
Speaker 13: from Mineonola went to Illinois. We'd go to Illinois every year,
Speaker 13: have been doing it for years and hunt with the
Speaker 13: family up there.
Speaker 7: But we could kill two turkeys.
Speaker 13: And I killed one one day and one the next day,
Speaker 13: probably two of my best turkeys. And the first one
Speaker 13: kind of it wasn't mountainous, but it was heels pretty high,
Speaker 13: and the turkeys would kind of roost right off the
Speaker 13: top of the ridges, and I heard one goblin got
Speaker 13: up there that morning. There was a fence, and the
Speaker 13: fence was a line, so I couldn't go on the
Speaker 13: other side of the fence where the turkey was on
Speaker 13: the other side of the fence. So I'd call and
Speaker 13: he'd got and I'd wait, I'd wait and i'd call,
Speaker 13: and he'd gobbled. Finally I just figured out, you know,
Speaker 13: I'm gonna just be silent and make him come look
Speaker 13: for me. Well, I see him coming through the woods
Speaker 13: and he's limpid, and he just walking along, limping like this.
Speaker 13: He kind of got one wing down. I says, I'm
Speaker 13: wrong with that turkey. Well, he got up to the fence,
Speaker 13: and right when he got to the fence, I saw
Speaker 13: him kind of bend down and do something. And he
Speaker 13: came up on the other side of the fence and
Speaker 13: he looked up real tall, and he kept walking on
Speaker 13: towards me, big old beard, old turkey, but he was
Speaker 13: messed up in one foot. We finally got close enough
Speaker 13: and I spoke to him, good morning. Shot him, went
Speaker 13: over there and got him. And under his right wing
Speaker 13: he had a forked stick that he was walking along
Speaker 13: using that stick as a crutch. I don't know what
Speaker 13: I ever did with a stick. I should have kept it, I.
Speaker 3: Guess, Wait a minute, mister Bill, what okay?
Speaker 13: But he was a big old turkey, and he did
Speaker 13: have a gimpt up foot. Now that I told that story,
Speaker 13: and believing or not, how many folks will believe it?
Speaker 13: For a little bit I almost got you there, but
Speaker 13: he was one of the bigger ones. And the next
Speaker 13: morning we went to another ridge. My friend and I
Speaker 13: from any I went to another ridge and the first
Speaker 13: time I messed up my knee. We were walking along
Speaker 13: and I stepped over a log and I tripped and
Speaker 13: I fell. The turkey was gobbling and he was down
Speaker 13: in the bottom, and my friend said, would you just
Speaker 13: stay here, I'm gonna go on and I'll shoot the turkey.
Speaker 13: I said, no, no, it's my turn. So we kept going,
Speaker 13: keep going, and I'm hobbling along. Finally we'd get up
Speaker 13: there and we peep over a ridge down there. We
Speaker 13: see the goblet down there with two hens and he's
Speaker 13: just struck. He won't gobbled, he's just struck with those
Speaker 13: two hens, and the hens were dust. We sit down,
Speaker 13: get ready, and we called and I called, and he'd
Speaker 13: look up every now and then he'd gobbled. The more
Speaker 13: we called, we got a turkey coming from behind us,
Speaker 13: and he came up there and my friend ed, said, well,
Speaker 13: let me shoot this, and I said no, and I
Speaker 13: had to literally put my foot on his gun. I said, no,
Speaker 13: we're gonna kill this turkey down here. He's bigger, so
Speaker 13: he was kept trying to slide his gun out, and
Speaker 13: he was messing with me, and I'd called, and finally
Speaker 13: this old gobler came behind us and he started gobling
Speaker 13: just right at us. Well, the old boog turkey down there,
Speaker 13: you know, it got him wise, So here he comes. Anyway,
Speaker 13: he runs up the hill. Long story short, I shoot
Speaker 13: him and my butt and my knee is hurt, so
Speaker 13: I can't run. And my buddy runs down there and
Speaker 13: puts his foot on his head and he says, you,
Speaker 13: lucky sucker, this is the biggest one you'll ever kill.
Speaker 13: And it probably was. I think I don't remember what
Speaker 13: he weighed, but he had an inchy fifteen sixteenth spurs.
Speaker 13: Those two particular hunts that I went on day back
Speaker 13: to back, Like said, I'll always remember that, and I
Speaker 13: always kind of tell that story at the beginning to
Speaker 13: kind of get off on a good wreck.
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 2: When I first met mister Bill, he didn't strike me
Speaker 2: as a comedian, so the forkstick caught me off guard
Speaker 2: for a bit. Then when he had to put his
Speaker 2: foot on his buddy's gun so he wouldn't shoot the
Speaker 2: smaller turkey so they could get the big one. I
Speaker 2: then realized I was dealing with a man of rare
Speaker 2: prowess and wit. Hat tip to mister Bill great stories.
Speaker 2: Our final storyteller, the one wrapping this thing up, is
Speaker 2: once again, my friend Russ Arthur from Cleveland, Tennessee. He
Speaker 2: told the story on the last episode of Finding the
Speaker 2: Journals of his father. On the day of his father's funeral,
Speaker 2: on the first page he opened up to he found
Speaker 2: the story his father had written about Russ's first turkey
Speaker 2: hunt when he was just a boy. It was a
Speaker 2: great story. Well, here's another one about Russ's father.
Speaker 14: We had a special bond with a turkey hunting in
Speaker 14: one which when he did pass, I realized that I
Speaker 14: had something really special and a lot of friends, some
Speaker 14: of which you've met today. That's reminded me through those
Speaker 14: hard times how lucky I was to have that level
Speaker 14: of a bond with a father and it was it
Speaker 14: was truly special. And you know, I know I've got
Speaker 14: a grandson now. Took him when his first turkey hunt
Speaker 14: last year he was seven, carried a little four ten
Speaker 14: and he sat there and I've never been so proud.
Speaker 7: Of my life. We didn't give a turkey.
Speaker 14: But we had a hand come in and she was
Speaker 14: looking for us, and she looked for us for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 14: I mean she was painting and popping and looking and
Speaker 14: just raising all kind of cuss to try to find us.
Speaker 14: And he never blinked, never moved, and as soon as
Speaker 14: she walked off, he took his head in that office
Speaker 14: as puppy. I wished I could have shot it, and
Speaker 14: I thought, you know, hopefully I can pass some of
Speaker 14: this down that got passed down to me. But he
Speaker 14: and I shared a special bond. There was a having
Speaker 14: to understand the mountains, and you understand them, and sometimes
Speaker 14: you can.
Speaker 7: Get really remote in this area.
Speaker 14: And I was about probably five miles from the closest road.
Speaker 7: It was only up in the day.
Speaker 14: It's a pretty day, and I was more or less
Speaker 14: just hiking, scouting and joined the day and I heard
Speaker 14: a turkey gob. I got my map out, make sure
Speaker 14: where it was at. You drop off the wrong drainage,
Speaker 14: you can get in a bad way. Figured out where
Speaker 14: it was at side, held around across the creek, across
Speaker 14: another creek. Pull up on the ridge and I looked
Speaker 14: and I saw this slow rowing little flat and I said,
Speaker 14: if I can make it to that flat, I believe
Speaker 14: that turkey will come to that flat. It was a
Speaker 14: little saddle on both sides, and it appeared to be
Speaker 14: a springhead. Now, I've never been there, been all over
Speaker 14: that place, but never been to this actual place, no
Speaker 14: trail on, no road, and I saw a huge hickory tree.
Speaker 14: If I can make it to that hickory tree, I
Speaker 14: can kill a turkey. So I eased around through there
Speaker 14: and caught up the turkey and killed it and just
Speaker 14: were really tickled, couldn't wait to get out and tell dad.
Speaker 7: Of course, this isn't for cell phones.
Speaker 14: I come out, and I was living fairly close then
Speaker 14: and working for the forest service then, and I called
Speaker 14: him soon as I got home. I said, you're never
Speaker 14: gonna believe where I killed the turkey.
Speaker 7: And he said where?
Speaker 14: And I described it to him, and I said, the
Speaker 14: funny thing about it is, I said, we're going to
Speaker 14: have to go back in there.
Speaker 7: He said why.
Speaker 14: I said, Well, I got so excited that I've got
Speaker 14: this habit. If I'm going to be hunting in the
Speaker 14: back country, and I got a turkey and working, and
Speaker 14: I've got a sling on my gun. I'll take it off.
Speaker 14: I don't want that extra movement in that gun. So
Speaker 14: I had taken my old leather sling off and I
Speaker 14: rolled it up and put it next that tree and
Speaker 14: covered it up. I said, I left my slink. I
Speaker 14: got so excited. I come out of there and walked
Speaker 14: all the way out of there, and I got halfway
Speaker 14: out before I realized I left my sling. So I'm
Speaker 14: gonna have to go back in there next day.
Speaker 5: I had to work.
Speaker 14: The next day, I come home from work, and when
Speaker 14: I come home from work, there on my back door
Speaker 14: was a turkey feather and all it said was call me,
Speaker 14: oh man, my sling was there. So I called Dad
Speaker 14: and I said, what's going on? He said, you'll never
Speaker 14: believe this, but he said, it's such a pretty day.
Speaker 7: He said.
Speaker 14: I thought, I go back in there, try to find
Speaker 14: your sling.
Speaker 7: And he said.
Speaker 14: I kind of went in a different way, and about
Speaker 14: eleven o'clock I heard a turkey and I coursed it
Speaker 14: and I got my map out and I pulled up
Speaker 14: there and I saw this saddle, and I thought if
Speaker 14: I could get to that hickory tree, and he walked
Speaker 14: and he sat down right at the same tree and
Speaker 14: killed that turkey the very next day. I mean, it's
Speaker 14: just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: That truly is an incredible story. Jim and Russ's knowledge
Speaker 2: of the land and how to communicate before we had
Speaker 2: a ax pins on our phone is pretty wild. Great story, Russ.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I hope you've enjoyed these stories, and I know that
Speaker 2: I sure enjoyed meeting all these folks face to face.
Speaker 2: We've really got something to celebrate in the wild. Turkey
Speaker 2: be safe this year, best of luck in the Turkey woods,
Speaker 2: and I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease.
Speaker 2: I'll see all you Western folks on the live tour soon,
Speaker 2: and I really hope to convince these Meteator boys to
Speaker 2: come to the.
Speaker 3: South sometime soon. I hope you have a great Turkey season.