Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot
Speaker 2: lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a.
Speaker 2: While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This
Speaker 2: Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters
Speaker 2: Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1: The airwaves had off.
Speaker 2: All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tail gate.
Speaker 2: I've got some stories to share. Escaping the bubble and Turkey.
Speaker 2: Number one Turkey season is upon us and I couldn't
Speaker 2: be happier. It's the only hunting season I ever threatened
Speaker 2: to quit a job over, and now it's part of
Speaker 2: my job.
Speaker 1: Sweet mother of Pearl, It's Turkey.
Speaker 2: Week here at Meat Eater, and all week long, it's
Speaker 2: been a virtual Turkey palooza. Steve's podcast and Cal's are
Speaker 2: Turkey themed. I was a guest on a true crime
Speaker 2: special episode hosted by our very.
Speaker 1: Own Jordan Sellers.
Speaker 2: Jordan put this unsolved, intriguing mystery together that I hope
Speaker 2: you adults will listen to. Who knows you may know
Speaker 2: something that could help bring this case to a close.
Speaker 2: They're all on the meat Either podcast channels and not
Speaker 2: hard to find. My friends Gary Stanton and Charlie Moncaster
Speaker 2: of Muscadine Bloodline are talking turkeys over at God's Country.
Speaker 2: Then you've got Spencer's Turkey Tribune, the Render, and yours
Speaker 2: truly was on cutting the distance just yesterday with Dirk
Speaker 2: Durham over at Phelps Game Calls. Turkeys in the morning,
Speaker 2: turkeys in the evening, turkeys at supper time. We're off
Speaker 2: and running. And now I'm gonna tell you a story.
Speaker 2: For eight years in a row, from when he first
Speaker 2: started turkey hunting, my brother Tim would get his limited
Speaker 2: birds at Arkansas. Then you could kill two male turkeys,
Speaker 2: only one of which had to be an adult. In
Speaker 2: other words, you could kill a jake, a juvenile male
Speaker 2: turkey that historically had been reserved for kids in first
Speaker 2: time or inexperienced hunters. It was perfectly legal, but so
Speaker 2: was shooting mallard hens. But just because you could do
Speaker 2: something doesn't mean you should. It was frowned upon and
Speaker 2: seen as not being as much of a challenge as older,
Speaker 2: more weary turkeys. They tasted the same. I know this
Speaker 2: because desperate times have called for desperate measures. And while
Speaker 2: I wouldn't shoot one, now there were times about one
Speaker 2: hundred turkeys or so ago, when I would throw punch
Speaker 2: the occasional Jake towards the end of the season, when
Speaker 2: I hadn't had any luck so far, and see old,
Speaker 2: any port in a storm is good theory. I'm not
Speaker 2: proud of it, but I ashamed of it either. I
Speaker 2: only had two or three places to hunt within driving
Speaker 2: distance of my house. My opportunities were very limited, and
Speaker 2: I had to take advantage of him when I had
Speaker 2: the chance. Tim was the same way when he started out,
Speaker 2: but now he was slipping up on being a ten
Speaker 2: year veteran. Jake's worn't on his hit list, but he
Speaker 2: had a problem. The rest of us were smashing turkeys
Speaker 2: with reckless abandon and he couldn't have hemmed one up
Speaker 2: in a phone booth. It just wasn't working out for him.
Speaker 2: Everything he did backfired on him. On top of that,
Speaker 2: the rest of us could.
Speaker 1: Do no wrong.
Speaker 2: I was tagged out Joe Bryant, Tim's brother in law,
Speaker 2: who I've talked about before on here as being an
Speaker 2: additional brother to all of us. He tagged out Mister
Speaker 2: Bryant chose father, Tim's father in law, and a turkey
Speaker 2: hunting mentor like no other had tagged out, and there
Speaker 2: little Timmy sat with a pocket full of turkey tags
Speaker 2: when the rest of us had none. But did we
Speaker 2: make fun of him or ridicule him? Did we question
Speaker 2: his outdoor abilities and even that of him being a
Speaker 2: real man?
Speaker 1: Of course we did. That's what That's what families do.
Speaker 2: We did it until mercifully, mister Brian had decided tim
Speaker 2: and had enough and if we didn't do something to
Speaker 2: help him, he was going to jump off of Celeine
Speaker 2: River Bridge. Everyone usually gathered mid morning at the store
Speaker 2: to grab a cup of coffee or cold drink, visiting
Speaker 2: check the turkey check sheet. And back then there was
Speaker 2: no online checking of turkeys because there was no on line.
Speaker 2: You brought your turkey to a check station which was
Speaker 2: set up in country stores and they took down your name,
Speaker 2: measured the beard and the spurs, and waited and recorded
Speaker 2: all the harvest data for the gaming fish to collect.
Speaker 2: At the end of the season, tim was starting to
Speaker 2: skip our mid morning rendezvous, either going straight home or
Speaker 2: staying all day in the woods. Joe diagnosed his problem
Speaker 2: and told him he was hunting under the bubble, meaning
Speaker 2: he had to do something to break through or nothing
Speaker 2: he would do would work, and he couldn't do it alone.
Speaker 2: It was desperate times and it called for desperate measures.
Speaker 1: He needed help.
Speaker 2: Mister Brian told him one evening, after another fruitless day
Speaker 2: of hunting that he would be taking Tim the next
Speaker 2: morning and he was not to bring a call. He
Speaker 2: would do everything he told him, and just like he
Speaker 2: told him, no deviation, and Tim agreed. Another sleepless night
Speaker 2: followed by meeting mister Brian at his house for the
Speaker 2: short drive to a spot he had picked out for
Speaker 2: Tim to bust through the bubble. He only had to
Speaker 2: do one thing, follow mister Bryan's instructions to the letter
Speaker 2: and shoot the first legal turkey that walked close enough
Speaker 2: to shoot.
Speaker 1: Tim agreed, even though he didn't want to.
Speaker 2: He didn't like not being able to call that that
Speaker 2: was the strongest part of the allure of turkey, to
Speaker 2: begin with. Communicating with a wild animal and luring it
Speaker 2: into range for a shot, which you folks should know,
Speaker 2: if you didn't already, is not.
Speaker 1: The order of how it works in nature.
Speaker 2: Gobbler's gobble and hens come to them, not the other
Speaker 2: way around. They arrived at the spot right on Q
Speaker 2: and also right on Q, mister Bryant's morning coffee had
Speaker 2: worked its cleansing magic and began to rumble around in
Speaker 2: his belly. With the time for that morning richel were
Speaker 2: already figured into the timeline. Off, he trotted for a
Speaker 2: comfortable and private place to let gravity do the rest.
Speaker 2: Tim waited in the pre dawned darkness for a turkey
Speaker 2: to gobble and mister Bryant to return minus what the
Speaker 2: coffee had been stirring up. Tim said upon his return
Speaker 2: he looked happier and more energetic then what they'd been
Speaker 2: waiting on, more than anything else, a turkey gobble. They
Speaker 2: moved off the road and set up a little over
Speaker 2: one hundred yards away from the roosted birds. The gobbles
Speaker 2: were from more than one turkey, and Tim was fired up.
Speaker 2: Mister Brian set him down and sat down a few
Speaker 2: trees behind him. His last instructions before setting up to
Speaker 2: call was don't you call one lick and shoot the
Speaker 2: first legal turkey that walks in. Turkeys hit the ground
Speaker 2: gobbling out in front of where they were set up,
Speaker 2: and they hadn't seen or heard a hen. Mister Brian
Speaker 2: started calling in short order a line of turkeys was
Speaker 2: headed to where they waited.
Speaker 1: Tim said, I knew it was Jake's.
Speaker 2: When I saw him coming, but I was hoping against
Speaker 2: hope that a big turkey was in the line somewhere.
Speaker 2: I don't want to shoot a Jake, but Joe and
Speaker 2: mister Brian both told me if I wanted to get
Speaker 2: out from under this bubble, I had to take the
Speaker 2: first opportunity. One by one, they passed in front of
Speaker 2: him as if they were on a string, come to
Speaker 2: mister Brian's call. The first opportunity was walking point for
Speaker 2: a squad of juvenile delinquids twenty steps away.
Speaker 1: Tim didn't shoot him. He said he was too little.
Speaker 1: That wasn't what mister Bryan told him to do. Told
Speaker 1: him to shoot.
Speaker 2: The first legal turkey that gets close enough. And that
Speaker 2: was the first one that just walked by. Although he
Speaker 2: was only sporting a three inch beard, he was the
Speaker 2: first one. The first three that passed were all carving
Speaker 2: copies of each other. The fourth not much bigger, but
Speaker 2: the fifth one, the fifth one in the conger line
Speaker 2: of seven, had a beard about five inches long. Tim said,
Speaker 2: I picked him out and let him have it right
Speaker 2: in the kisser. Tim walked over and fetched his turkey,
Speaker 2: and mister Brian congratulated him. Tim said, I know he
Speaker 2: was aggravated at me for not she the first one,
Speaker 2: but he didn't have the biggest beard. On the way
Speaker 2: back to the truck, Tim talked about how now the
Speaker 2: bubble should be broken and he ought to be free
Speaker 2: of whatever powers that befell him in the first place,
Speaker 2: that put him under that dismal umbrella of turculus hunts.
Speaker 2: He said, even think our mentor his father in law,
Speaker 2: was so sure it was done since he didn't do
Speaker 2: exactly what he was told, but he never said that
Speaker 2: it was just a feeling the guy. That feeling was
Speaker 2: amplified as they approached the section of woods where they
Speaker 2: had taken off through the woods after hearing the turkeys
Speaker 2: gobble that morning, and Tim stepped in something that wasn't
Speaker 2: meant to be stepped in. Mister brid looked back and laughed,
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess he should have shot that first turkey.
Speaker 1: But now there's a PostScript on this story.
Speaker 2: After Tim washed his boot off in the creek, they
Speaker 2: went to the store to check in his turkey. He
Speaker 2: was glad to hopefully have this whole embarrassing and literal
Speaker 2: mess behind him. Then the lady at the store measured
Speaker 2: that stubby beard and laid his turkey on the scales
Speaker 2: while she recorded his name and the measurement of his cigar.
Speaker 1: Lengked beard.
Speaker 2: Tim said he looked at the scale and saw it
Speaker 2: said that turkey weighed eleven pounds, and he wanted to cry,
Speaker 2: knowing everyone from then after would see that he killed
Speaker 2: water mount into a big chicken. He said, I put
Speaker 2: my I put my finger on that scale officer of
Speaker 2: where she was standing, and got him up to thirteen
Speaker 2: pounds before she took him off. And next week my
Speaker 2: brother killed a big gobbler with one inch spurs, and
Speaker 2: accord to my brother Tim.
Speaker 1: That's just how that happened.
Speaker 2: I get asked all the time what type of hunting
Speaker 2: I like best, and it's always an inner struggle for
Speaker 2: me to answer. Then, after arguing with myself and talking
Speaker 2: about all the different kinds I like, I always wind
Speaker 2: up saying turkey hunting every time. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I can't just say it that way from the beginning.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm throwing shade on duck hunting or squirrel hunting.
Speaker 1: Or coon hunting, but they're all so different that it's
Speaker 1: hard to compare. I'm thinking about it now and second
Speaker 1: guessing myself while I'm saying this, and it's what I'd
Speaker 1: plan to say when I sat down to record it.
Speaker 1: There's so many things to say about coon hunting. I'm
Speaker 1: never alone when I'm doing that, even if nobody's with me,
Speaker 1: because I got my dog wailing. He's my coon hunting
Speaker 1: partner every time I go, regardless of who else is there,
Speaker 1: but turkey hunting man. There's just something about it that
Speaker 1: supersedes any and everything else besides my family. From the
Speaker 1: first time I've ever killed one, I've had an issue
Speaker 1: with him. I talked about it with Derk Durham on
Speaker 1: Phelps Cutting the Distance podcast that came out yesterday. We
Speaker 1: had a good conversation. I'll slip over there and check
Speaker 1: it out when you get a chance. But while we
Speaker 1: were talking, he asked me if I remembered when I
Speaker 1: killed my first turkey, and without hesitation, I said I
Speaker 1: sure do, was April eighteenth, nineteen eighty five, and he
Speaker 1: laughed at how quick my response was.
Speaker 2: I told him a little bit about that hunt. More
Speaker 2: or less the bullet points of how it all went down,
Speaker 2: but I remember every detail of it.
Speaker 1: The year before I.
Speaker 2: Was still hunting for squirrels over there what we called
Speaker 2: the woodlot, and that was a scope of woods on
Speaker 2: the west side of our farm and just south of
Speaker 2: my maternal great grandfather house. I found a turkey feather
Speaker 2: while I was doing my best toend the squirrel population
Speaker 2: and decided right then that there was a turkey hunter
Speaker 2: hidding inside me that was begging to come out. Next spring,
Speaker 2: I went to Carls one stop on the edge of
Speaker 2: town and Warren, out past the Bradley Lumber Mill. It
Speaker 2: was the mecca for all outdoorsmen in the area and
Speaker 2: the only place I knew of that you could buy
Speaker 2: turkey calls without having to order them through the mail.
Speaker 2: I went in there for a box call and left
Speaker 2: with the Lynchest world Champion call and a diaphragm mouth
Speaker 2: call made by a new guy from Mississippi that was
Speaker 2: getting in the call making business. They said his name
Speaker 2: was Will Primos. I should have got mister Will to
Speaker 2: come with him, because I had no idea how to
Speaker 2: use it, and I just stuck with the box the
Speaker 2: five or six times that I went hunting at the Woodlode,
Speaker 2: never seeing or even hearing a turkey that spring. That
Speaker 2: may have been what triggered me obsession, total and utter
Speaker 2: failure from the start. Pretty sure Jesus was trying to
Speaker 2: spare me from all the sleepless nights and weeks that
Speaker 2: would follow by letting me see how most of by
Speaker 2: hunts would wind up walking back to the truck with
Speaker 2: exactly what I had taken in with me and nothing extra.
Speaker 2: The next spring, I was what I liked to refer
Speaker 2: to as being semi enrolled in college. I went when
Speaker 2: it was convenient, like when the fish weren't biting, the
Speaker 2: deer weren't moving, and the ducks weren't flying, and narrowed
Speaker 2: down my attendance to a pretty slim portion of the calendar,
Speaker 2: which coincidentally was in spring. And then I got invited
Speaker 2: to go turkey hunting by a turkey hunter. Anyone who'd
Speaker 2: killed at least one turkey by themselves was a turkey
Speaker 2: hunter in my book, and this guy had killed several.
Speaker 2: We drove thirty miles west from Warren right before daylight.
Speaker 2: We were a quarter of a mile deep in the wood,
Speaker 2: standing at the edge of a three year old clear cut.
Speaker 2: The woods we were waiting on daylight inn were open
Speaker 2: enough to see down through without any trouble. The clear
Speaker 2: cut I was looking at was a different story. A
Speaker 2: rabbit would have had to tote of the hatchet with
Speaker 2: him to get through it. Turkey gobbled and the fellow
Speaker 2: I was hunting with us said, get over there by
Speaker 2: that tree. I'm going to sit back here and call.
Speaker 1: I said, that ain't no turkey, that's someone shaking a box. Call.
Speaker 2: He laughed, and he said, no, it ain't. Sit down
Speaker 2: and be still. He's still on the roofst but he's not.
Speaker 1: That far now.
Speaker 2: It was my first lesson in not guiding the guide.
Speaker 2: This guy had killed multiple turkeys, brought me to his
Speaker 2: hunting spot during the first week of the season, and
Speaker 2: I was telling him what he was hearing was not
Speaker 2: what we were hearing, even though I had never heard
Speaker 2: what we were both hearing. Don't guide the guide. He
Speaker 2: called to him with a box, calling turke. He answered
Speaker 2: him immediately. I looked back at him and he pointed
Speaker 2: down at the ground. I looked down at the ground
Speaker 2: I was laying on like a green plastic Army soldier.
Speaker 2: The absolute worst position I could have taken to shoot
Speaker 2: my first turkey, or any turkey for that matter. I
Speaker 2: didn't know what that meant, but the turkey sounded different.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: What he was trying to tell me was the turkey
Speaker 2: was on the ground. That's why he sounded different. I
Speaker 2: still couldn't believe he didn't know it was someone shaking
Speaker 2: a box call at us. Did I mention the mosquitoes? Oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the mosquitoes. About the time he told me to get
Speaker 2: over there by that tree and sat down, and I
Speaker 2: chose to lay down like Sergeant York. The mosquitoes reached
Speaker 2: their zenith. They were feasting on my prone person with impunity.
Speaker 2: I was wiggling all over the place trying to get
Speaker 2: them off of me, all while the guy behind me
Speaker 2: with a box car whispering for me to be still,
Speaker 2: and the guy shaking the box call out in front
Speaker 2: of him kept getting closer. There's no way that, sir,
Speaker 2: real turkey, and I'm getting to the literal life sucked
Speaker 2: out of me by waiting on another turkey under to
Speaker 2: walk up on us. He gobbled again, just out of sight,
Speaker 2: and I turned back to look at my guide again,
Speaker 2: mouthing the words that ain't no turkey. I can only
Speaker 2: see about a third of his face, right around his
Speaker 2: eyes that were exposed by his mask, but I knew
Speaker 2: exactly what he meant when his eyes seemed to jump
Speaker 2: out of his skull and then narrow it down to slits,
Speaker 2: his eyebrows furring with fury. Whatever, dude, I turned back
Speaker 2: around and shouldered my shotgun and.
Speaker 1: Watch what would be In a few minutes.
Speaker 2: Gobbler Numero Huno stepped out into the opening up the
Speaker 2: little rise. I was arching my back as best I
Speaker 2: could to aim at his head. He was close and
Speaker 2: I was out of position. I was pointed at twelve
Speaker 2: and he was standing at ten. The dude that had
Speaker 2: been shaking a box called at us since before good
Speaker 2: Day had just turned into a real turkey. Hut him
Speaker 2: with what I heard him whispering several times over. Of
Speaker 2: all the structures he had given me that morning, that
Speaker 2: one seemed the most obvious. But I'd already decided to
Speaker 2: do that. I just wasn't able to because I'd laid
Speaker 2: down instead of sitting against a tree.
Speaker 1: A lesson.
Speaker 2: I learned that on day one, and would never ever
Speaker 2: forget after what it like seen forever the turkey stepped
Speaker 2: back towards the way he came, preparing to get out
Speaker 2: of dodge, literally where my shotgun was pointing, and I
Speaker 2: pulled the trigger. He went down like a one egg pudding,
Speaker 2: and I had my first turkey. Thursday was six hours
Speaker 2: and ten minutes old when I held in my hand
Speaker 2: the first wild turkey I'd ever heard gobble. It would
Speaker 2: be the start of something big for me, a seemingly
Speaker 2: uncontroled urge each spring from that day forward to try
Speaker 2: and out with a turkey, a wild animal with eyes
Speaker 2: and here in so fine tuned.
Speaker 1: It's been said they can hear you thinking and see
Speaker 1: you change your mind.
Speaker 2: For forty years, I have never missed a season, and
Speaker 2: now I get.
Speaker 1: To travel and do it as part of my job.
Speaker 1: Who'd have ever thought my life would lead to this.
Speaker 2: I could go turkey hunting just about anywhere there's turkeys
Speaker 2: to be hunted. But now, when the first signs of
Speaker 2: spring starts showing up, I get more excited about the
Speaker 2: people I'm going to see than the turkeys. I'm hoping
Speaker 2: to get from Mississippi to Alabama, Missouri and Arkansas and
Speaker 2: who knows where else. It's the people and families I've
Speaker 2: gotten to know over the last four decades, the ones
Speaker 2: I haven't met yet that mean more than any turkey ever.
Speaker 2: Could they say the quality of your life is measured
Speaker 2: by the quality of your relationships. If that's true, and
Speaker 2: I believe it is, Turkey season has filled my soul
Speaker 2: far beyond it has my freezer. I hope y'all like
Speaker 2: turkey tales, because I'm hoping to have some more stories
Speaker 2: from this year's struggle in the next few weeks if
Speaker 2: I can avoid the bubble. Good Luck to spring, and
Speaker 2: watch where you step until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reive sign it off. Y'all be careful.