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Speaker 1: predict anything, Yanni? Do you know? Do you remember? How
Speaker 1: do we get in our heads that Missouri's turkeys are
Speaker 1: the hardest turkeys to hunt in the whole wide uh world?
Speaker 1: But partially I don't know all the reasons, but part
Speaker 1: of it is because my friends that I guided with
Speaker 1: from who are from Missouri. I used to always say that, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I started hunting turkeys in Nebraska and started killing
Speaker 1: turkeys in Nebraska, and they would say, yeah, but you
Speaker 1: really haven't hunted a turkey. Yeah, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about these hurricanes down here where we're from. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's that's where it started from me. I think that
Speaker 1: I haven't hunted Nebraska, but my understanding of it and
Speaker 1: the type of turkey that's running around there, uh, I
Speaker 1: could see that that might be true, that Missouri's harder
Speaker 1: than that. But are you guys to me with the
Speaker 1: Missouri's the hard how many states have you hunted turkeys
Speaker 1: in Parker A lot? I don't have to add him up,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that more than a dozen, more
Speaker 1: than a dozen brandon how turkeys in half a dozen
Speaker 1: or so. But I got a theory on why people
Speaker 1: say they're the hardest to kill, and that's because at
Speaker 1: the time in our country, when so many game species
Speaker 1: were being extra pated, the wild turkey was able to
Speaker 1: hold on just in a small amount down here in
Speaker 1: southern Missouri and in the Ozarks. And then in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties when they really started trying to turn things
Speaker 1: around with conservation and started their game survey on turkeys,
Speaker 1: it was a Starker Leopold that was down here working
Speaker 1: on the wild turkey. These turkeys ended up becoming the
Speaker 1: basically the stock that was used to not only repopulate
Speaker 1: other parts of Missouri, but then Missouri turkeys were taken
Speaker 1: to Wisconsin, in Indiana and other Midwestern states. So the
Speaker 1: the whole repopulation of the wild turkey across the eastern
Speaker 1: United States has a lot to do with these turkeys
Speaker 1: that were just unkillable in the other But I feel
Speaker 1: like I've heard though the Missouri is not the only
Speaker 1: holdout that there were. There were holdouts. I've heard that
Speaker 1: about swamps of South Carolina, Alabama, Alabama head holdouts, north
Speaker 1: and south North Carolina in the high country, right South
Speaker 1: Carolina in the lower country. Yeah, that's certainly, you know true.
Speaker 1: Other places there was it was down to nineteen states,
Speaker 1: but they had some numbers some some unknown number and
Speaker 1: maybe it's not specific. I don't know if it's no
Speaker 1: one for sure, but somewhere around that many states and
Speaker 1: most of the states now most of these states are
Speaker 1: probably southeast, and I feel like that's where you most
Speaker 1: commonly here that Yeah, we have the hardest, toughest turkeys.
Speaker 1: It's like Southeast. But I'm buying because they couldn't have
Speaker 1: been that tough in Michigan because they got them all.
Speaker 1: It's like they got them all. And then, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: buy that the toughest turkey because they got the home
Speaker 1: field advantage. No one. They just been here, they know it.
Speaker 1: And it's rugged, remote rural country. A lot of it's
Speaker 1: hard to get into. I mean, it's hard to shoot
Speaker 1: him from the roads in some of these places. You
Speaker 1: gotta get way back in there, and they find little
Speaker 1: pockets where they could hold out. Yeah, how many did
Speaker 1: you answer me? How many states you want to turkeys? In?
Speaker 1: Half dozen or so? In Montana, South Dakota, New York, Indiana, Missouri, Texas.
Speaker 1: You've gotten around fair bit and then uh, Park, you've
Speaker 1: hunted him in a boatload of places. And your old
Speaker 1: man huntsome hard. He does, he does, and he's actually
Speaker 1: got my mom and hunting them hard. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how it happened. But all of a sudden, she's, uh,
Speaker 1: she's chasing him. Man. She started, she has she is,
Speaker 1: she has the disease. You know, she can call better
Speaker 1: than me, and the whole thing. Yeah, she's into it.
Speaker 1: And they start in Florida. Yeah, I'll start in Florida.
Speaker 1: And then in what time you're hunting in Florida, you know,
Speaker 1: Florida in in February, you know, South Florida. The season
Speaker 1: comes in. So they started breeding and nesting in February, February,
Speaker 1: and it is migrated northward. Yeah, yeah, north and west.
Speaker 1: So they'll wind up where by the end of the year,
Speaker 1: down in Mexico or what last year, Yeah, Dad ended
Speaker 1: up in Mexico. Um this year, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the plan is. I know they're they're in Texas or
Speaker 1: they've already been. I don't know. He's got several turkeys
Speaker 1: under his under his belt, and I get the get
Speaker 1: the pictures. Starting in February, you know, we're still snow here,
Speaker 1: and and Dad's already you know, knocking back to spring Turkey.
Speaker 1: So yeah, now we showed up here the other day.
Speaker 1: It was it's kind of like amazing that the difference
Speaker 1: from the conditions. I mean, I was full on pulling
Speaker 1: my fingers in making fists inside my gloves. Parker got
Speaker 1: snowed out opening day. Yeah, and in the northern part
Speaker 1: of the state, we had an inch of snow and
Speaker 1: twenty five winds and you know, as the the snow
Speaker 1: pellets were hitting me in the face, I was questioning
Speaker 1: my sanity. But you know, after waiting for a for
Speaker 1: a year, man, you can't miss it. And now it's
Speaker 1: eighty one degrees. We were stoking the wood stove on
Speaker 1: Monday and now we need the air condition er plugged in.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday, yeah, we got down here to to we say,
Speaker 1: south central Missouri in the old s arcs, that's right,
Speaker 1: and got down here and it looked like man. When
Speaker 1: we showed up here to hunt, it looked like, uh,
Speaker 1: I was not feeling optimistic. It looked like just wintertime.
Speaker 1: And it did like the trees aren't butted out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a just abnormally long winter here.
Speaker 1: Our youth season, um typically we see a harvest of
Speaker 1: about four thousand birds, and this year we only had
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred. It was nineteen degrees on opening morning a
Speaker 1: youth season. I had my my daughter out dressed up,
Speaker 1: you know, like it was a November deer hunt. So
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty horrible conditions and that held
Speaker 1: on until opening day, and the weather really broke yesterday
Speaker 1: and that really like cat heavy duty into the That's
Speaker 1: kind of nice testament to what the weather can do
Speaker 1: to you when your turkey hunt. We hunted up a
Speaker 1: property that's just a private piece of ground. It's overloaded
Speaker 1: with turkeys, and we heard one gobble each day. We
Speaker 1: had five youth hunters on the property and nobody killed
Speaker 1: a bird. And I would have bet going into it
Speaker 1: four out of five, if not five out of five.
Speaker 1: They just weren't moving. They were all flocked up still
Speaker 1: in their winter flocks, and it was just horrible conditions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we showed up here the ore night. It was
Speaker 1: so cold, and I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag. I'm
Speaker 1: just sleeping in mummy bags, sleeping in the old school
Speaker 1: or open top. What are they call those things? Those
Speaker 1: are Butler bags? No relation, but you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: like the type of bags even have a name. It's
Speaker 1: like classic sleeping bag, like a rectangular sleeping bag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Did No, No No matter how thick it is,
Speaker 1: you can still feel the breeze coming into the top
Speaker 1: of the thing. I know people complain about mummy bags,
Speaker 1: but a mummy bag is like a genius invention. You
Speaker 1: could you could fit. I'm not to dog. I don't
Speaker 1: want to dog to have you on your sleep bags.
Speaker 1: I like them. I've been sleeping great. But you could stuff.
Speaker 1: You could fit ten zero degree mummy bags in that
Speaker 1: sleeping bag. Yeah, man, But when you're in a mummy bag,
Speaker 1: your shoulders are all constricted. I get it. For backpacking,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm snuggling with my wife. Man, It's like
Speaker 1: I'm spooning with my wife. But the bag makes me
Speaker 1: feel like I am, and so I sleep better. I
Speaker 1: just like those kind of bags and yeah, and I
Speaker 1: was like taking a breeze in through the top of
Speaker 1: my bag. If you come back, I will have a
Speaker 1: mummy bag. I don't know, I like that one. It
Speaker 1: just I just had hadn't slept in one of those
Speaker 1: for so long. I kind of forgot and it wasn't
Speaker 1: aware that people were still manufacturing them. But I understand it.
Speaker 1: But I'm just to point out how un turkey like
Speaker 1: it wasn't we showed up here because when I hunt turkeys,
Speaker 1: I want to see I'm expecting to come up on
Speaker 1: little water holes and see little tadpoles in them. The
Speaker 1: world coming to life. Yeah, that's part of the majesty
Speaker 1: spring turkey season is you're there for the awakening of
Speaker 1: all things trees and bushes. Everything's budding out, birds are
Speaker 1: building nests the whole. It's like insects are coming up alive.
Speaker 1: I think that made the hunting harder, to the fact
Speaker 1: that the woods are still so wide open. I mean,
Speaker 1: Parker and I were in a situation this morning where
Speaker 1: we just had nowhere to hide. We don't get ahead
Speaker 1: of ourselves too much everybody, I suppose we don't have to.
Speaker 1: But you know, my dad really really appreciates it when
Speaker 1: we do that. For I was gonna get to it,
Speaker 1: but since it's important to you to do it now
Speaker 1: as the whole dealing cards, we will start with me
Speaker 1: and and move this this away. Are you the dealer,
Speaker 1: I'm the dealer. Well, then we went and start with you.
Speaker 1: If we're doing it as we're dealing cards, that's a
Speaker 1: good point. You'd be shot madly. Brandon, I'm Brandon Butler,
Speaker 1: the executive director of the Conservation Federation Missouri. I'm Steve Jones.
Speaker 1: I'm a board member of the Conservation Federation of Missouri.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and uh and also, you guys are always
Speaker 1: talking business. Yeah, I knew you were involved. I don't
Speaker 1: know you were a board member. And uh also a
Speaker 1: board member of Missouri Hunters for Fair Chase, organization that's
Speaker 1: working on chronic wasting disease topics. Can you guys real
Speaker 1: quick spell out long as we're doing the intro stuff, Um,
Speaker 1: can you real quick spell out what the Federation does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're Missouri's largest nonprofit conservation organization. We really work on education,
Speaker 1: advocacy and through partnerships, we have ninety two affiliated organizations
Speaker 1: where the group that can bring together hunters and anglers
Speaker 1: with bird watchers and parks enthusiasts. We kinda we bring
Speaker 1: everybody together to focus on natural resource policy. Um, A
Speaker 1: couple of big issues that we deal with here in
Speaker 1: Missouri is we have a unique constitutional authority for our
Speaker 1: department Council Ovation, and we work to advocate on behalf
Speaker 1: of that, and the dedicated funding that we have through
Speaker 1: a few sales taxes, and then any other friend issues
Speaker 1: that come up, like chronic wasting disease is a big
Speaker 1: one force in the last couple of years. But really
Speaker 1: those those kind of key issues of constitutional authority and
Speaker 1: dedicated funding for the Department of Conservation. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: you know, let's just let's let's talk about this real
Speaker 1: quick right now, because we spend a ton of time
Speaker 1: talking about how wildlife work is funded in the US,
Speaker 1: and we're always pointing out that most fish and game
Speaker 1: agencies draw the bulk of their funding from excise taxes
Speaker 1: on guns and ammunition and other sporting goods, equipment, and
Speaker 1: sales of licenses, tags, and stamps. So basically, hunters and
Speaker 1: anglers fund wildlife conservation at the state level. But Missouri
Speaker 1: went in and put in a little itty bitty teeny
Speaker 1: sales tax like a what of a penny? It's one
Speaker 1: eighth of a cent and it adds up to the
Speaker 1: tune of what hundred and twenty million a year. That's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible, it really is. And people voted this in yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: y six. We also have a secondary sales tax that
Speaker 1: supports park, soil and water, and people have to revote
Speaker 1: on that every ten years. And in Missouri in the
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen election, in November election, when we
Speaker 1: saw our country so divided, we passed that vote to
Speaker 1: self impose the sales tax, a one tenth of a
Speaker 1: cent sales tax, with eighty point one percent of the vote,
Speaker 1: and we passed it in a hundred and fourteen out
Speaker 1: of a hundred and fourteen counties. So we got eighty
Speaker 1: point one percent of Missourians to agree the self tax
Speaker 1: themselves to fund our state parks, healthy soil and clean
Speaker 1: water and the other So we know that of people
Speaker 1: in Missouri hate mother nature. Yeah, that's not bad. It's
Speaker 1: pretty so does that? No? Yeah, And he want to
Speaker 1: introduce yourself the eagle, the eagle, and then also the
Speaker 1: producer and then uh Parker Parker Hall I'm a wildlife
Speaker 1: ball just with the U. S. Park of Agriculture. Well,
Speaker 1: so you're coming at this, professor, you're coming at this
Speaker 1: with your I'm coming at you today as a lonely
Speaker 1: defeated Missouri it was our turkey hunter. Okay, So that's
Speaker 1: that's your angle. That's my angle. Not speaking as a professional,
Speaker 1: just a loser defeat, speaking at a loser who's had
Speaker 1: close calls. Defeat. So we get down here to do
Speaker 1: this and it's like, and I remember that right we
Speaker 1: met up Brandon, I said, do you hear any gobbles?
Speaker 1: And you didn't really answer, but you were just like, man,
Speaker 1: I was nervous. I mean, I'll be honest, you guys
Speaker 1: came a long way to hunt turkeys. It's not like
Speaker 1: you're going on some you know, major expedition. So you're
Speaker 1: traveling all the way down here to hunt turkeys. I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure you had a good hunt and
Speaker 1: the kind of hunt that I think you guys enjoy
Speaker 1: a back country hunt, and show you that even in
Speaker 1: the eastern, you know, or midwestern part of the country,
Speaker 1: we can find places really rule and remote and and
Speaker 1: get miles back in there. But if you can hear
Speaker 1: him Goblin. It's not like you can set up on
Speaker 1: an egg field and glass form. There's you know, you've
Speaker 1: gotta be able to hear him Goblin in these hills
Speaker 1: to be able to locate them and go after them.
Speaker 1: And they were not talking on Monday. No, it had
Speaker 1: everything going against it. Were the stiff wind, so very cold,
Speaker 1: a stiff wind, and just like that kind of wintry
Speaker 1: nous man like no leaves on the trees, extremely noisy
Speaker 1: to walk around. It was different than any season I've
Speaker 1: ever seen before. And like the turkey is gonna spot
Speaker 1: you from a thousand miles away and you can't you
Speaker 1: can't sneak up on them because the leaves are so
Speaker 1: damned noisy and it's so windy. But then there's no cover,
Speaker 1: like like leaves make it like leaves on the trees
Speaker 1: makes that you can kind of move around a little
Speaker 1: bit without every turkey in the world know when you're there.
Speaker 1: But here, man, it's like when they're gonna know you're
Speaker 1: coming because it's so loud and too, they're gonna know
Speaker 1: you're coming because there's no leaves that we're hunting, just
Speaker 1: big oak forests. There's not a lot of undergrowth at
Speaker 1: any time a year, but usually there is at least
Speaker 1: some some foliage on the saplings, and like you said,
Speaker 1: you can blend into that. But yeah, it's wide open
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, when we left here, well, first we
Speaker 1: had to deal with a straight pitbull. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: a we had a dog, a stray dog try to
Speaker 1: accompany us and dealt with that. And then we got
Speaker 1: out and went up on a big ridge and the
Speaker 1: plan was just to go up and listen and make racket.
Speaker 1: Because when you, like, like in the spring, we're trying
Speaker 1: to do, you're trying to find a male turkey what
Speaker 1: you call tom or call a gobbler. You're trying to
Speaker 1: find a male turkey and make and coax it in
Speaker 1: with the sounds of a female turkey. And you're sort
Speaker 1: of trying to subvert what normally goes on, as well
Speaker 1: as generally understood is generally a tom or a gobbler
Speaker 1: goes out and gobbles and hence come to him. What
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is switch that around and and
Speaker 1: somehow entice him into coming to you. And there's a
Speaker 1: ton of reasons he doesn't want to do this. The
Speaker 1: first step in this spring hunting is just to find
Speaker 1: a gobbler. And you generally find a gobbler by hearing
Speaker 1: his gobble. And there are things you can do to
Speaker 1: make him gobble. Um. Commonly, before it gets light out,
Speaker 1: you do a thing just called they called shock gobbling.
Speaker 1: No one knows, Parker, Do you have no idea, No
Speaker 1: one knows why. But for whatever reason, it's a real
Speaker 1: vulnerability to the species. For whatever reason, in the spring
Speaker 1: of the year and other times a year, two gobbler's
Speaker 1: gobble at loud sudden noises. I have heard gobbler's gobble. Two.
Speaker 1: You guys can add when I get done, or we'll start.
Speaker 1: Let's do it like this. I will start as the dealer.
Speaker 1: I will risk that being shot. I will name a
Speaker 1: thing that I've heard of, gobbler gobble too, and we'll
Speaker 1: just go around the room until we've exhausted. When you
Speaker 1: when you when you tap, when you gotta tap out,
Speaker 1: tap out car horns, when you shoot their buddy thunder
Speaker 1: car doors, rumble strips on the side of the red yes,
Speaker 1: down down, that's good, um, just simply going Hey, reeled
Speaker 1: out the woods, who DoLS crows, jake breaks woodpeckers, a
Speaker 1: sonic boom, dogs barking, no one did they yet? No
Speaker 1: hawk screaming, goose really hawking, Yeah, train horns, redtail hawk.
Speaker 1: The sound that they people who don't know better dub
Speaker 1: over bald eagles. Like when you're watching something there's a
Speaker 1: bald eagle, they play a noise that's the redtail howk
Speaker 1: Yeah so yeah, redtail hawk. And I can tell you,
Speaker 1: I could. I could take you right now and show
Speaker 1: you the tree hours under when it happened four with
Speaker 1: their backfiring king. Yeah. Yeah, um, I might be running
Speaker 1: out man, man, any lot of noise works, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm tapping out. Do you got more? I'm tapping a
Speaker 1: rumble strip. Rumble strips. Yeah. So stuff like that make
Speaker 1: And I've said his full on this show that uh
Speaker 1: I remember some time Will Primos, the great call maker.
Speaker 1: Will Primos was trying to put his finger on why
Speaker 1: Gobbler's gobble to noises and he was He said something
Speaker 1: to the effect of, it's just him saying, this is
Speaker 1: my time of the year. But I've heard him do
Speaker 1: other times a year two. So, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: hunt turkeys and you go out in the dark in
Speaker 1: the morning, you go out and just start raising a
Speaker 1: ruckus uh to try to get one to gobble, and
Speaker 1: people bring I think like a little bit too much
Speaker 1: thought to it because we use you know what I
Speaker 1: didn't add. I've used predator calls. So I just take
Speaker 1: a rabbit squealer predator call and just give it the
Speaker 1: most loud, heinous, sudden squeal that I can out of
Speaker 1: there because it really carries. But some people would say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, but he'll never come in that direction because
Speaker 1: he thinks that something is killing a rabbit over there.
Speaker 1: So people justly try to shot God, but by making
Speaker 1: more benign sounds such as crows. Buddy Eric always used
Speaker 1: the peacock call for some reason, which he felt, uh
Speaker 1: didn't send any message to the turkey because he's never
Speaker 1: heard of peacock before. Um My preferred one as a
Speaker 1: crow call. Would you guys agree with that? Like it's
Speaker 1: bad to be gapping on a Kyle Howler and then
Speaker 1: trying to call it turkey and that turkey go to
Speaker 1: where Kayo was. I think you're giving him too much credit.
Speaker 1: They have I'm not doing that. They have them. There
Speaker 1: are those who believe they have amazing instincts and self
Speaker 1: preservation and census. But I don't think I can credit
Speaker 1: him with that much smarts. But it just makes sense
Speaker 1: to use a sound that you know they're used to hearing,
Speaker 1: like a crow or like a hood owl. Uh. But
Speaker 1: when you're up like like not the first morning was
Speaker 1: dead because it's so windy. But when you're there, there's
Speaker 1: all manner of there's all manner of owls going off
Speaker 1: up there, and they're not getting gobbles. Well, they do
Speaker 1: get gobbles when the bird of goblin. Yeah, But then
Speaker 1: I take my crow and I do I do a
Speaker 1: thing called that. I called that I just yesterday decided
Speaker 1: to dub the Corvett because I take a crow call
Speaker 1: and blow it with the cadence of a pistoe off
Speaker 1: blue jay and I get I mean, yeah, he can
Speaker 1: attest I am. I am a very effective getter of
Speaker 1: shot gobbles, better than I am of calling turkeys like
Speaker 1: I'm kind of I specialize in getting them, specialize and
Speaker 1: get them the shot gobble by just making a very
Speaker 1: unusual sound. It's so grating that johannest will always want
Speaker 1: to ask for time to get away from you before
Speaker 1: I do it that kind of noise. It worked yesterday.
Speaker 1: It just gets him to gobble. Yeah, it's we go
Speaker 1: up in the squealing, asked Wind to go do this
Speaker 1: and nothing happens. Yeah, the first morning, run off the
Speaker 1: pit bull, go up the hill. Nothing. You made a
Speaker 1: joke that it was like Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring, like
Speaker 1: the Silent Spring happening. It was, it was. It was depressing.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been planning this for a few months
Speaker 1: with you, and I'm thinking, you know, we'll go up
Speaker 1: to this spot where I always hear bird's gobble from
Speaker 1: and we'll deploy in teams and you guys will go
Speaker 1: after this bird goblin, will go after this bird goblin.
Speaker 1: And there was nothing. I had nothing, so we went. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was even thinking bad thoughts about you, like this
Speaker 1: guy don't know. This is the most god forsake and
Speaker 1: Ridge I remember. Yeah, we walked a long way and
Speaker 1: you and I never heard of bird gobble that whole day.
Speaker 1: You can hunt till one for turkeys. Yes, yes, I've
Speaker 1: got a quit hunting deer in the middle of day, right, No,
Speaker 1: it's just a turkey thing. Yeah, and there's a there's
Speaker 1: a group of us. In fact, the Federation passed a
Speaker 1: resolution in favor of extending it all day. We've talked
Speaker 1: to the biologist. We see no scientific data, no scientific
Speaker 1: reason not to let it go all day. The fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is it is. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: divided issue between really the old timers and the new
Speaker 1: turkey hunters. And what's the reasoning behind it. Well, I
Speaker 1: really don't know. Scientifically, yes, scientifically, there's no reasoning behind it. Well,
Speaker 1: in the early days of wild turkey research, the theory
Speaker 1: was but of the biologists that the birds needed to
Speaker 1: break to make sure they could get to the roost
Speaker 1: that they wanted to without being disturbed, and that they
Speaker 1: needed that that quiet time to be more successful at mating.
Speaker 1: And and it was a you know, a logical idea
Speaker 1: just turned out to not be true. But by then
Speaker 1: it was already an established tradition, So I can see that.
Speaker 1: I mean the part about I mean, I kind of
Speaker 1: understand the roost part, But I don't think that these
Speaker 1: birds have like here only they have like a lot
Speaker 1: of roost fidelity. I think they pretty freely move around
Speaker 1: roost wherever the hell they want to roost. One thing
Speaker 1: I don't like about it, I mean, not just for
Speaker 1: me personally and people that like the turkey hunt. But
Speaker 1: you know, kids in school, you know, you get out
Speaker 1: of school at three o'clock in the afternoon, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of guys want to go turkey hunt,
Speaker 1: doing the evening turkey hunt, and they can't. So it
Speaker 1: really hinders getting youths out turkey hunting. Yeah, how's that
Speaker 1: even talking about? Why were oh? Because you yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't say that hunted all day, hunted till one huntil
Speaker 1: one all day in Missouri. Turkey terms in Missouri, Turkey
Speaker 1: terms on all day. But meanwhile, meanwhile Yanni was having
Speaker 1: an entirely different experience. Yes, much different from probably most
Speaker 1: folks in Missouri that morning. I don't know, there's probably
Speaker 1: a few other folks that got got what I got,
Speaker 1: but uh, maybe in some corner of the state where
Speaker 1: was a little bit warmer and the wind wasn't blowing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you want me tell my turkey story? Um,
Speaker 1: we we all we took four wheelers up to the
Speaker 1: spot and stopped and then Brandon was like, all right,
Speaker 1: we can go here here He's giving us all the options,
Speaker 1: and Steve and I've never set foot there, so I'm like,
Speaker 1: you make the call. So you guys decided to go
Speaker 1: on down the ridge, and you'd kind of pointed me
Speaker 1: towards two different ridges that I should work and be
Speaker 1: listening off of. So I went down one and quickly
Speaker 1: ran into some private property, and so I decided I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be foxing around the edge all morning,
Speaker 1: so I just turned around. It's like tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of acres of Yeah, I could just go the other direction,
Speaker 1: walk from miles, which is how I like it usually.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so I literally just went over one
Speaker 1: ridge and started walking down a uh what you described
Speaker 1: as a knife ridge. You know it's at times. Steve
Speaker 1: was actually common. Team were back on it today and
Speaker 1: how it's almost like man made feeling because it's so
Speaker 1: steep on either side. It's it's like the Romans made
Speaker 1: of ridge. Did you come up with a real name
Speaker 1: for yet? I called the hour glass when you look
Speaker 1: at the top of map, looks like hour glass. But
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna start calling the levy. It's like a
Speaker 1: man made ridge, like super steep pitch. And then someone
Speaker 1: came in and grated off the top. Yeah, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to walk down at drunk at night. You fall
Speaker 1: off that thing. It's a long way to the bottom,
Speaker 1: but it's like it almost has like a It's like
Speaker 1: you're walking on a levee. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna dig
Speaker 1: in there. Bet. It's it's all people don't realize. But
Speaker 1: it's like this, uh, it's like this archaeological wonder of
Speaker 1: the world that people didn't realize. But anyhow, Mayans used
Speaker 1: to be turkey hunting. Ah, yeah, I don't get but
Speaker 1: a hundred yards down that ridge and in the wind,
Speaker 1: I can just here what might sound like a gobbler,
Speaker 1: And so I go a little bit that feeling for
Speaker 1: a minute, like people might be thinking one during What
Speaker 1: do you mean it might be a gobbler? Oh it's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, you just the sound is is because that's
Speaker 1: all you're trying at that point. You're not even trying
Speaker 1: to look for a turkey, You're just trying to hear one,
Speaker 1: and so your brain is in that mode the same way.
Speaker 1: It's uh in that mode sometimes when you've been glassing
Speaker 1: for hours and you're you're like, oh no, it wasn't dear.
Speaker 1: You know, you're just like looking through the woods all
Speaker 1: day long, and you start to just make up deer sightings, Well,
Speaker 1: the same thing happens in the morning listening for gobblers.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, maybe maybe could have been, and especially
Speaker 1: in the wind, because you know, there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: noise carrying, and uh so, basically it's just very very
Speaker 1: faint in your double if you're listening for will be
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden you'll be with a buddy
Speaker 1: and you both turned to each other because you so
Speaker 1: desperately want to have what you think you might have
Speaker 1: heard verified, And each person has the same feeling. And
Speaker 1: so in the woods you find you often like are
Speaker 1: whipping your head around to look at whoever you're with
Speaker 1: to be like, did he hear that? Because I can't
Speaker 1: tell if I did. Yeah, And then usually what happens
Speaker 1: after that if they both heard it, one guy points
Speaker 1: to the north and they got points to the southeast.
Speaker 1: But so eventually it turns out that it is indeed
Speaker 1: a Turkey goblin, and he's goblin. As I get closer,
Speaker 1: I can hear that he's goblin quite often, and that's
Speaker 1: probably every I don't know, points five to ten seconds,
Speaker 1: and that's what we call hammering, not quite what i'd
Speaker 1: call choking, But he was what they call hammering there
Speaker 1: at the next level. No, that's as good as dudes
Speaker 1: in Georgia to start shooting. And uh, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: tell he was on the ridge across from me. I
Speaker 1: could tell he's below me in elevation, and uh, not
Speaker 1: knowing the country real well, I mean he was on
Speaker 1: the ridge where you guys could locked eyeballs. He was
Speaker 1: like you were on opposing slope, opposing slopes that that
Speaker 1: met in the bottom. Yes, So I decided just to
Speaker 1: bail off the ridge and just take my time and
Speaker 1: work towards the sound that he's making, and uh, just hopefully.
Speaker 1: And the woods are so open that at points I
Speaker 1: could see the other ridge, I could see the ground
Speaker 1: cover on the other ridge, and I was just crossing
Speaker 1: my fingers that I wasn't gonna get busted walking down
Speaker 1: this big, fairly open hillside. So I get to the
Speaker 1: bottom and I figured sometimes when I got towards the bottom,
Speaker 1: he must have flew down around seven am, and um,
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard him for five minutes or so, and
Speaker 1: so I hooted and he answered, and he hadn't moved
Speaker 1: too far, maybe just down to his ridge a little bit,
Speaker 1: just because on a morning like that, they're gonna stay
Speaker 1: in the tree longer. Yeah, possibly, I mean I think
Speaker 1: he came down around seven, is my guess, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean he could have been on the ground longer
Speaker 1: and was just and just kept gobbling. Now I know
Speaker 1: that he was by himself. Would you guys agree that
Speaker 1: bird when it's cold and nasty, they stay in the
Speaker 1: trees longer. I agree sometimes they do. For sure, rainy,
Speaker 1: nasty days, I think they stay in the tree longer.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get uh yeah, sure. And you
Speaker 1: guys have both hunted out West and here, do you
Speaker 1: guys get a feeling that the these birds stay in
Speaker 1: the tree longer? And say, Miriam's I don't have extensive
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that I could comment to that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm the same way. I think. One
Speaker 1: thing that is different than out West though, is, and
Speaker 1: we were talking about this a little bit, is they
Speaker 1: don't always roost in the same areas here. You know,
Speaker 1: just because they roosted in that drainage yesterday, they could
Speaker 1: be you know, quite a ways away. And it seems
Speaker 1: like out west, there's um it's more common for him
Speaker 1: to show up in the same places. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: would I would say a more common, but not like
Speaker 1: fixed you know where I think that it's yeah, it
Speaker 1: feels like more kind of like that. There's like certain
Speaker 1: spots they like and like year in, year out. As
Speaker 1: long as something doesn't happen to that little local population,
Speaker 1: they'll kind of like to use that spot. But when
Speaker 1: you bump them, man, it's not either're gonna they don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think they feel forced to come back there
Speaker 1: that night. It's like a bell curve. I mean that's
Speaker 1: generally true. But I've got a farm in northern Missouri
Speaker 1: and there is one area there always, I mean of
Speaker 1: the time, there's gonna be at least two gobbler's roosted
Speaker 1: exactly in that same spot every night, the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're leaning on it at night, well
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't bump them that hard, but but
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a guaranteed place. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: know that I've ever seen that before other than that
Speaker 1: one location. So it's it's not common. But if they
Speaker 1: find the thing that does everything they want, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll they'll have some level of faithfulness to that location.
Speaker 1: And out west where they don't have many choices A
Speaker 1: lot of times, you know you could we'll find it.
Speaker 1: Yeah in areas which is not a lot of trees. Alright,
Speaker 1: so young there are there. I was. I crossed the
Speaker 1: bottom the little it was a dry creek bed, and
Speaker 1: I climbed up maybe ten yards or so, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm all kind of a big it's been an oak.
Speaker 1: Uh maybe another twenty yards ahead. I'm thinking it would
Speaker 1: be a nice spot to get to because I could
Speaker 1: just start to see kind of up on this the
Speaker 1: ridge it kind of benched out where he was. I
Speaker 1: was thinking I could just start to peek my nose
Speaker 1: up and see on the ridge if I got to there,
Speaker 1: and uh, all my way up there, he gobbles once
Speaker 1: on his own. I'm like, sweet, right, you know, so
Speaker 1: like that's a good sign. Yeah, yeah, it's nice when
Speaker 1: you get a courtesy gobble. That's what I like to
Speaker 1: call those. And you don't have to ask him for
Speaker 1: it with a hood all or it's trike your call.
Speaker 1: He's just like, hey over here, yeah, And uh so
Speaker 1: I make it to that tree and I think he
Speaker 1: actually hammered again, and uh and when I when when
Speaker 1: I heard him. Then I was like, okay, I just
Speaker 1: should just sit down, like I don't need to go
Speaker 1: any farther. This is this is something you and I
Speaker 1: have talked about that there's like a turkey goes from
Speaker 1: being real far a turkey's gobble goes from being kind
Speaker 1: of like you can't really get a grasp of it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of far away in some sort of abstract sense,
Speaker 1: and then you cross like a thin You crossed like
Speaker 1: a thin plane, and all of a sudden, like he's
Speaker 1: right on top of you, do you know, I mean
Speaker 1: like you pass into a moment when you are suddenly
Speaker 1: like in his area. It's just the gobble just sounds
Speaker 1: so different. You could be sitting there listening to a
Speaker 1: gobbling like I quite know where he is, and take
Speaker 1: like a depth and also you'd be like, not, I
Speaker 1: know exactly where he is. More. It's like that they
Speaker 1: become at some distance, they become like you. You hear
Speaker 1: that you hear more quality to the sound than you
Speaker 1: otherwise do. Yeah, It's like at one point it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like a blur of a gobbl sound, and
Speaker 1: then you get just a little bit closer and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you can hear every little uh part
Speaker 1: of that gobble as it kind of breaks, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like something it's like an image coming into focus.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and then all of a sudden, your your
Speaker 1: ears can triangulate and go, yeah, he's over there, roughly
Speaker 1: a hundred yards away, you know, and uh yes, So
Speaker 1: I sat down and uh, I got my head net
Speaker 1: on and uh put a diaphragm in and uh I
Speaker 1: gave him I don't know, five or seven not it's
Speaker 1: pretty soft, and it got no response. You know, it's
Speaker 1: calling behind my hand, trying to throw my call a
Speaker 1: little bit because it was a perfect spot because he
Speaker 1: had to come to about probably sixty to eat even
Speaker 1: see where I was, and then there was a role
Speaker 1: between he and I, and then right behind me I
Speaker 1: had another little little spot. So you can imagine when
Speaker 1: he came over looking, even if he didn't see a hand,
Speaker 1: there's spots with that HND that was calling to him,
Speaker 1: could have been right. So I felt I felt confident
Speaker 1: in this spot, and um so he didn't answer. I
Speaker 1: waited a little bit and then I just up my
Speaker 1: volume a little bit and just gave him three, three
Speaker 1: or four louder notes. Yeah, yeah, and he uh he
Speaker 1: he just jumped right over it. And um and you
Speaker 1: told me that at that point you could hear his feathers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could hear his feathers kind of shake a little
Speaker 1: bit as he gobbled um. So you know at that point, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know se yards And it didn't take long,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of minutes, and I could see his
Speaker 1: head coming and he came right to that edgeway it was,
Speaker 1: and I could see the whole body out of range
Speaker 1: and there he hung up for a little ways. But
Speaker 1: from that range, I already see a blue and white head.
Speaker 1: And correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been I
Speaker 1: was taught that when you see a blue and white head,
Speaker 1: he's kind of in love and you kind of you know,
Speaker 1: you're the deck is stacked in your favor at that point, right,
Speaker 1: much better than seeing a redhead. Oh yeah, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh were you hearing him? You know at that point,
Speaker 1: at that point, he hadn't um strutted, end, I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard him drum er spit. But uh so he's still
Speaker 1: there for like a minute or so, it seemed like
Speaker 1: five is probably a minute, and uh then you just
Speaker 1: started working towards me, and that's when it started. So
Speaker 1: he went into full strut, did some drama and spitting.
Speaker 1: He leaves strut a couple of STI you got a
Speaker 1: nice spit drum, can you do it for us? I
Speaker 1: like this far from right, and man, it is a sound.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before, but it's a sound that
Speaker 1: you have to tell yourself that you're hearing it. I mean,
Speaker 1: when he's right on top of you're sure, you're like
Speaker 1: everybody can hear it, but your ears hearing better because
Speaker 1: there's been a number of times you've heard him drumming
Speaker 1: when I can't hear him drumming, Like it's like it's
Speaker 1: a decibel or something that yeah, between somehow between your
Speaker 1: age and my age goes away. Well, it's like those
Speaker 1: suiti grouse, you know that we chased around and I've
Speaker 1: got um dusky grouse in my yard Montana, and I
Speaker 1: can get five fam maybe more like seven or eight
Speaker 1: feet from this dusky grouse, and I can hear him.
Speaker 1: You can see his yellow patches vibrating as he does this.
Speaker 1: You can hold your phone out and record a video
Speaker 1: and play it back at full volume, and the microphone
Speaker 1: on the phone cannot pick it up. It's a ghost sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. People that film ghosts and whatnot reports similar problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what a turkey, Um the drumming is because
Speaker 1: really at a distance, you rarely actually hear the spit
Speaker 1: right you more here the yeah you know that and
Speaker 1: that can work again, that can work the other way
Speaker 1: to sitting there for hours and going what is he drummond? Here?
Speaker 1: And drummond? I think I hear drummond? Which way is that?
Speaker 1: Is it behind me? Is it on top of me?
Speaker 1: It's it's super hard to course, you know. It's just
Speaker 1: like it's all encompassing. When it's close to all around you,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a neat sound. You feel it more
Speaker 1: than here. And what he's doing is taking his wings
Speaker 1: and like beat his wings on his body. And they'll
Speaker 1: go out and beat their wings on the ground and
Speaker 1: wear off their primaries. Is that the primary? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a turkey in the spring, you'll wear the ends
Speaker 1: off them. Yeah. It would be a nice straight line. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I got the show. That's what you know. I
Speaker 1: call it. Man. He gobbled maybe three or four times
Speaker 1: as he came in and you know, went in and
Speaker 1: out of strut the same thing three or four or
Speaker 1: five times, and uh, it wasn't very long, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing happened in five minute. I killed him at
Speaker 1: seven fifteen, so I kind of had a window once
Speaker 1: at maybe thirty five yards. And at the time, I
Speaker 1: was like very confident because I'm like, yeah, look at
Speaker 1: that blue and white head. And then as soon as
Speaker 1: he gets into some thick shit again and behind the tree,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you dumbass, You're dumbass. You should have shot
Speaker 1: because that it seems like I had seen him before.
Speaker 1: They get behind that tree, and you're thinking he's gonna
Speaker 1: just pop out the other side at thirty and instead
Speaker 1: the next time he pops out, he's at sixty again,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, he decided to go away from you.
Speaker 1: But anyways, this time it worked just how you want,
Speaker 1: and he pops out and he came to twenty yards
Speaker 1: or so, and at that moment, I was sitting against
Speaker 1: the tree. We're just blind calling. I'll sit in there,
Speaker 1: chatter my teeth against a tree and also bouch and
Speaker 1: I'm like, Yanni shot that pit bull because there was
Speaker 1: like no other reason that I could imagine that he
Speaker 1: would be shooting his gun off. I'm like, either Yanna
Speaker 1: got shot by the guy down the landowner guy, or
Speaker 1: the pit bull attacked him and he had to defend
Speaker 1: himself from the pit ball. And I was kind of magic, like,
Speaker 1: what's sort of you know, investigation like how does one
Speaker 1: when you shoot a dog? And self defense? Like what happens?
Speaker 1: You know? Nothing? I think in that case, you just
Speaker 1: let him lay. So we we proceeded to wander all around,
Speaker 1: but we ended up right there. Happened to Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we made a plan to meet Joannie at ten, and
Speaker 1: we just made a big long loop heading for that
Speaker 1: spot because in previous years it's a really good spot.
Speaker 1: And we ended up down there and we had to
Speaker 1: split in time to meet him at ten. When we
Speaker 1: got up there, I'll tell you it was pretty redeeming.
Speaker 1: When you had that bird and we're doing a thing
Speaker 1: called blind like because we're not hearing anything and it's
Speaker 1: not it's just so windy. Then you're kind of like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna give up on the whole idea
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna hear gobbler. And we would just go
Speaker 1: to likely areas little bottoms where you're kind of out
Speaker 1: of the wind. You can get out of the wind
Speaker 1: down the little bottoms, hollers, hollows and um just call
Speaker 1: give it twenty minutes because that can work. That can work.
Speaker 1: They come in silent a lot. Yeah, you'll lay down,
Speaker 1: And the thing is you gotta get like real comfortable
Speaker 1: because you don't know what direction they're gonna come from.
Speaker 1: And you can't be fidgeting around because you could be
Speaker 1: he could be behind you. Never make a noise and
Speaker 1: you fige it around, he's gonna leave and you never
Speaker 1: knew he was there. So what if I'm doing that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, I like to try to get where
Speaker 1: I'm almost like and I don't even think it's a
Speaker 1: bad thing to fall asleep for a minute blind calling,
Speaker 1: because you want to be that comfortable and just call
Speaker 1: every whatever ten minutes. Last year blind calling, I woke up.
Speaker 1: I woke up to see a turkey coming. You know,
Speaker 1: you get that kind of fitful sleep and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, redhead coming through the coming through the brush,
Speaker 1: you know, and heat that bird came in never made
Speaker 1: a peep. Yeah, so uh yeah that was in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: last year. So yeah, we're blind called and then really
Speaker 1: nothing happened. That was the end of the day. We
Speaker 1: went out that night and tried to do what's called
Speaker 1: roost in them, which is now and then like turkey
Speaker 1: gobbling just gets generally throughout the day, it just gets worse.
Speaker 1: Like in the world, calls per second just drop to
Speaker 1: where by about ten in the morning unless it's really
Speaker 1: good's not many calls. Six in the mornings, all kinds
Speaker 1: of calls, and it just gets like worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse and worse and worse. But in some locales
Speaker 1: you'll have a spike at night where there's something about
Speaker 1: them going back to the roost. Do you understand us
Speaker 1: at all from a from a never they never talked
Speaker 1: about this in school, No, I'm sure they did. I
Speaker 1: wasn't paying attention towards night. As they're going back to
Speaker 1: their roost for whatever reason, they sometimes will gobble some more,
Speaker 1: and then they like to Oftentimes they like to gobble
Speaker 1: once they get up in the roost. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of times they'll the turkeyo gobble and of course
Speaker 1: the hands come to him like you explained before, and
Speaker 1: they'll do their thing. They'll kind of hang out and
Speaker 1: breed and knock around together, and you know on up
Speaker 1: in the morning, the hands will go off and kind
Speaker 1: of do their own thing, you know, and they're starting
Speaker 1: to look for a place to nest or wanting to
Speaker 1: feed or whatever. And and often times they leave the gobbler.
Speaker 1: And so sometimes there's there's a spike or you can
Speaker 1: at them to a gobble midday. Then again in the
Speaker 1: afternoon when they're starting to gather back up, the hands
Speaker 1: are kind of backing around. He's feeling his oats again.
Speaker 1: You know, he may he may get a gobbler too.
Speaker 1: And you know, oftentimes it's a shock gobble that that
Speaker 1: happens at night as supposed to them just goblin. They
Speaker 1: do some. But you go out and try to shock
Speaker 1: gobblm um, I think you get more responsores than them
Speaker 1: just naturally gobbling, gobbling a whole lot. Maybe the hunting miriams,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the people don't really accept the
Speaker 1: idea of subspecies of turkeys, but like it's like varieties
Speaker 1: of turkeys, right, there's there's five now what was to say,
Speaker 1: there's five subspecies of turkeys in in in the US. Um,
Speaker 1: the mirrors is a very vocal one. We used to
Speaker 1: drive around sometimes hunting mirrors. We would drive around from
Speaker 1: spot spot spot on on logging roads or whatever and stop,
Speaker 1: turn the car off, honk to horn to find out
Speaker 1: where you're gonna in the morning. But we didn't. We
Speaker 1: haven't heard. No one in our group has heard a
Speaker 1: turkey gobble passed I think nine am on this trip,
Speaker 1: going out two nights in a row, spreading all out
Speaker 1: across the ridges, blowing crow calls, kyo, yips, screech, owls,
Speaker 1: what the hell kind of owl? Bart owl? Not peep,
Speaker 1: crickets not even Yeah, I didn't try a cricket call,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you mean like crickets, like silence. So then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we wake up the next morning
Speaker 1: and you just knew there's gonna be goblin. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the weather switched. Yeah, we're brushing our teeth in the
Speaker 1: driveway and uh heard one gobble in the distance the
Speaker 1: wind no wind. Yeah, oh you hoot owl are called
Speaker 1: I'll call that him, and that's what at him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're stepped out of the porch of your cabin. What
Speaker 1: do you call this thing? Tripped with acres? But when
Speaker 1: you call it a cabin, yeah, so what i'd go
Speaker 1: into my blank. I told my wife, it's a cabin.
Speaker 1: It got a little big for cabin status. So what
Speaker 1: do you say you're going to when you go here
Speaker 1: the cabin? We say our shack. Yeah, because my wife
Speaker 1: says it does it's not a cabin. That's that's called
Speaker 1: a shack. Yeah. Yanni had his electric toothbrush going. We
Speaker 1: had to turn that off and then we could because
Speaker 1: it was, like you said, I thought I heard one
Speaker 1: turned toothbrush off. Did it again? Your toothbrush was impeding
Speaker 1: the ability to listen to gobbles. It was. That's the
Speaker 1: only good argument I've ever heard against letcher toothbrushes. But
Speaker 1: so at the back up, we met up with Yanni
Speaker 1: and we tried all these different spots and I even
Speaker 1: took you down on a gravel bar and I know
Speaker 1: you guys are thinking, there's no way there's that's the
Speaker 1: day we cut that track. Yeah, so that was like
Speaker 1: the highlight of our day. We closed out our day
Speaker 1: on a track. Do We just were like, well, here's
Speaker 1: a track that's right, and we just sat and called
Speaker 1: the track. I even took a picture of the track
Speaker 1: so we'd have some semblance of a trophy from the day.
Speaker 1: But yeah, from the driveway at who dialed and it
Speaker 1: went and uh Parker and I deployed and they ended
Speaker 1: up being four gobblers, probably three gobblers in a jake,
Speaker 1: and uh Parker called one across the river. Talking about
Speaker 1: that for a minute, Well, I think with turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: you're either a hero or zero. It's like you're never
Speaker 1: there's no like mid grade turkey guys. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not like, well I saw, I could have shot a
Speaker 1: couple of gobblers, but he wasn't nice and I had
Speaker 1: a great experience. But like you try as hard as
Speaker 1: you can every time, or I do when I'm turkey hunting. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we got on this turkey. They were goblin goblin acrossing
Speaker 1: hundreds of yards away, right, Well, we slipped up on
Speaker 1: them and we got I don't know, across the river
Speaker 1: and we were just on the other side of the
Speaker 1: river from them. Yeah, they were up they're up on
Speaker 1: a bluff and we're down on the gravel bar. But
Speaker 1: they're not hundreds of yards away the other side of
Speaker 1: the river, the other side of the river above us.
Speaker 1: Worst case scenario. If you're thinking about turkey hunting, you
Speaker 1: want to get you know the same level or above them,
Speaker 1: preferably the same side of the river. You know, those
Speaker 1: types of things. Um, so everything working against us. I
Speaker 1: think we're just so happy to hear Turkey's goblin um
Speaker 1: that it didn't matter. You know, we were right after him,
Speaker 1: so um yeah, they got fired up and they were
Speaker 1: in the roost and we called at him a little
Speaker 1: bit and we got one sure enough. You know, I
Speaker 1: thought he wanted to play ball, and you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of brandon and I kind of shut up quick calling,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, man, things zings across the
Speaker 1: river and lands roost tree left his buddies behind. Arms are, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole it's on a gravel bar just came sailing. Man.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful. You could see his big beard. I said,
Speaker 1: here he comes, yeah, here he calls that like yeah,
Speaker 1: here he comes coming in to take a pass shot
Speaker 1: like geese. Yeah. So he sailed in human and he
Speaker 1: landed on a gravel bar. Made me think that like,
Speaker 1: either there's something wrong with him or it was the
Speaker 1: most masterful, beautiful bit of calling. Something's wrong with the turkey,
Speaker 1: trust me, because like I just don't think of him
Speaker 1: being like I'm gonna fly out of this tree, cross
Speaker 1: the river and land on some rocks. He did, and
Speaker 1: then he probably landed eighty to a hundred yards down
Speaker 1: from us, worked right up and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: little scrub brush down there, and we were tucked into
Speaker 1: some small cedars, and there's another one about twenty yards away,
Speaker 1: and he just took up shop right there on the
Speaker 1: other side of that seedar. So I mean, how far
Speaker 1: thirty yard? No more than thirty year, I would say,
Speaker 1: twe And he's just drumming and drumming goblin, and it's
Speaker 1: going on for it's going on for twenty minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, it's like it just
Speaker 1: it was NonStop action for twenty minutes and then it stopped.
Speaker 1: And the whole time, I'm thinking, Uh, Brandon and I
Speaker 1: were when the turkey sailed across the river. H I said,
Speaker 1: turn and face him, Turn and face him. So we
Speaker 1: were set apart from each other, so we're the way
Speaker 1: we're sitting against the trees, were kind of facing each other, right,
Speaker 1: And so the turkeys behind me at this point just
Speaker 1: tomahawk goblin all of me, you know, and drum you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at Brandon and I'm like, I'm just
Speaker 1: like shoot him, man, you know, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was right behind the bush. But I
Speaker 1: never saw him that whole time, never caught a glimpse
Speaker 1: of them that whole time. Yeah, it's so exciting. So
Speaker 1: then he goes silent, and then he made it to
Speaker 1: this field, which is private property that we can't hunt on.
Speaker 1: So he's got to be in the low water on
Speaker 1: the gravel bar and are in the high water area
Speaker 1: of the gravel bar. So he gets into this field
Speaker 1: and then he starts gobbling again, and man, it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: He's full strut. Every time he gobbles. You can see
Speaker 1: his breath coming out. Detail. Man, man, it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: If I was a painter, I would paint a turkey
Speaker 1: gobblin with his breath coming out as So at that point,
Speaker 1: he's probably sixty yards away and ten yards onto private
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking he's just gonna split across that field.
Speaker 1: But there's one lane like runs back down. It's like,
Speaker 1: whoever that landowner is, It's there, like lane to get
Speaker 1: down to the river, but it's cutting onto public land.
Speaker 1: And when he got to that lane, I said, give
Speaker 1: it to him, and Parker hit him, and he turned
Speaker 1: and came He went down this swelle, yeah, him with
Speaker 1: a call, and he turned and came back. And now
Speaker 1: he's back in the game, goes down this swale, and
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that I didn't see him cut through the
Speaker 1: woods the first time. So I'm thinking he must have
Speaker 1: cut through that swale, and now he's gonna take that
Speaker 1: same route back to the gravel bar and end up
Speaker 1: behind that bush again. But this time he made a
Speaker 1: fatal mistake of going up on top of the lip
Speaker 1: of that swale. And that was the end of it.
Speaker 1: From my perspective, Like I said, we were facing each
Speaker 1: other right um, and so I could I was watching
Speaker 1: the hunt through the perspective of watching Brandon and him,
Speaker 1: uh seeing the turkey, and I can see him looking
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, slight movements of his head
Speaker 1: and his eyes and yeah, and he's going, he's going,
Speaker 1: He's coming, He's gonna come. And I see him his
Speaker 1: his breath starts getting faster, you know, you know the
Speaker 1: excitement of the turkey when he realized as he's coming,
Speaker 1: and he disappears behind the swell, like you said, and
Speaker 1: you see mild panic said into his into his face,
Speaker 1: just like, oh no, oh no, I don't see him now.
Speaker 1: And as soon as he comes up out of the
Speaker 1: swell he's talking about with that white head, I see
Speaker 1: as his eyes get big and then, you know, cheek
Speaker 1: down on the stock. And that was it. When you
Speaker 1: when you when you hold because you're shooting a skull,
Speaker 1: which I've never done. I was just shooting elevated a
Speaker 1: beading though, tell you call it like a vented rib.
Speaker 1: He's basically looked down the damn barrel, right, But I've
Speaker 1: always been tempted with um messing around with various apparati
Speaker 1: even though I don't have you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't take long shots or something, cause I've never
Speaker 1: I've never whipped a shot at one. But when when
Speaker 1: you're aiming at where are you holding on him? Right
Speaker 1: at the base of his neck? There's a cross hair
Speaker 1: and there, and I hold right on the base of
Speaker 1: his neck. And you know, I was on the media
Speaker 1: hunt and out with Dakota and one of the sponsors
Speaker 1: had those scopes, and I had that gun for many years,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, had to put it on there
Speaker 1: to appease the people paying for the trip. I've never
Speaker 1: taken it off in seven or eight years. It just
Speaker 1: works for me. Um. I've got one of those red
Speaker 1: dots on my daughter's turkey gun and she likes it.
Speaker 1: But I mean when I shot that bird, I panicked
Speaker 1: for a second because I didn't see anything. And when
Speaker 1: when I finally realized, it just it never even flopped.
Speaker 1: It just went down that you know. Normally when you
Speaker 1: shoot one, they flop around, and I couldn't see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just where to go. And then
Speaker 1: I looked and there it laid kind of on the
Speaker 1: back side of the base of the neck. Like were
Speaker 1: you saying where there's feathers start or lower than that,
Speaker 1: because see I I aim were like the head and
Speaker 1: the neck joint at that's just below the skull. You're
Speaker 1: probably sailing some pellets over the top of his head.
Speaker 1: I kind of depending on how far away for the
Speaker 1: pace of the neck, about where the feathers start. That's
Speaker 1: where I put the crosshairs. And I know, you know,
Speaker 1: my I got a real tight choke and at thirty
Speaker 1: yards it's about the size of a skillet, you know,
Speaker 1: And if I put it there, I'm not gonna miss him.
Speaker 1: Probably not gonna put too many low, and it seems
Speaker 1: to work when they're far out. I'll aim a little
Speaker 1: higher just because the drop. But I kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I'm hold I hold because I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of guys say that, like dudes that
Speaker 1: miss turkeys are shooting over the top of them because
Speaker 1: they're even for the head. Yeah, and they got a
Speaker 1: tight pattern. It just feels people feel that if you
Speaker 1: were low, he'd be dead because you got him the neck,
Speaker 1: or you at least would have fluffed him. So I
Speaker 1: kind of hold down a little ways. Remember like some
Speaker 1: some Turkey guy saying that the holds on the wattles,
Speaker 1: it was low on the neck. So I started kind
Speaker 1: of doing that kind of isn't the wattles and where
Speaker 1: the base's neck, that's not the same down at the
Speaker 1: where the feathers start feather. Yeah, they kind of hang
Speaker 1: a little. They kind of hang like a beer belly.
Speaker 1: What about over that waistline of his feathers. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: now that I was telling you, I put a new
Speaker 1: bead on my gun, and the beads a little bit
Speaker 1: taller than the beat I hat on there. And so
Speaker 1: if you understand how that works, and you're aiming, it
Speaker 1: causes you to put the the higher bead causes you
Speaker 1: to uh. If you bring that beat down, it caused
Speaker 1: you to shoot a little bit lower and so um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would just aim halfway between his wattles
Speaker 1: and his head. But I mean at thirty yards. I
Speaker 1: don't know that if I'm really getting that precise. But
Speaker 1: the one thing I just make sure of is that
Speaker 1: I can see his head over my site. I don't
Speaker 1: ever cover up his head doing it. I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: about how when I'm trying to do shot placement, shooting
Speaker 1: like a big game animal, I'm not like doing that level.
Speaker 1: But I am thinking. When I have the thought, I
Speaker 1: am thinking, don't shoot over his head. And I especially
Speaker 1: get nervou about it when they're super close, because then
Speaker 1: you gotta patterned size of a baseball. It's gotta be on. Yeah, Rose,
Speaker 1: he's gonna run off. That's not what you're out there for.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, while this whole gravel bar flying out miracle
Speaker 1: turkey thing is going on, we go out, we go
Speaker 1: back up and early remember how y honest staying he
Speaker 1: didn't want to go down and flirt with this private
Speaker 1: property boundary. We get back up in that area and
Speaker 1: sure enough bird gobbling down on that zone. And we
Speaker 1: don't want to do that because then we feel he's
Speaker 1: gonna pitch out of his roost land on the other
Speaker 1: side of the painted trees, and then you just gotta
Speaker 1: sit there, right, We're gonna sit there, not very confident
Speaker 1: in our miracle calling abilities and whether he will we
Speaker 1: call him across the kind of stuff. Man, I hate
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So we just like, never mind
Speaker 1: that turkey, but grudgingly, yeah, continued on down the ridge.
Speaker 1: Go down the ridge here another turkey and kind of
Speaker 1: like stay a little bit like maybe, but he's very
Speaker 1: far off where it's like hard to even begin thinking
Speaker 1: about how you're gonna go about it. So we're kind
Speaker 1: of like, maybe then go little ways and look down
Speaker 1: into this kind of little hell hole, and then we're like,
Speaker 1: that's our turkey. There's several of them, but one of
Speaker 1: them is like, that's the turkey. So we start nosing
Speaker 1: down into the holler. Is it a cultural appropriation for
Speaker 1: me to say holler? It works? So it's not horrible, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: I'd like to be sensitive to that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Because I can switch to holloway. Uh, We've been calling
Speaker 1: creek beds, work our way down to work our way
Speaker 1: down towards the creek bed, and pretty soon we get
Speaker 1: where we enter into that we crossed that plane where
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're like in his zone and
Speaker 1: we get set up and I'm thinking, damn it, we
Speaker 1: got too close. Get set up and call and call
Speaker 1: up a hand who comes up just basically bitching at us,
Speaker 1: like they get it does seem like that. I hope
Speaker 1: one of you guys can enlighten me. But yeah, she
Speaker 1: just comes in there. I thought it was like it
Speaker 1: was like a happy putt, but now I'm thinking it's
Speaker 1: just she's just clucking. But she I guess she's just
Speaker 1: clucking and looking and trying to make that connection. They
Speaker 1: got a thing they do. They got a thing they
Speaker 1: do where it varies, but like when you're calling a gubbler,
Speaker 1: like he's kind of coming at a handle come up
Speaker 1: and kind of cut these half circles around you far
Speaker 1: out like she you know, where they don't. They don't
Speaker 1: come barreling in. They're very like what's going on? What's
Speaker 1: going on? They tend to be like very vocal. We
Speaker 1: had the same thing this morning. Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 1: think we ever saw the whole body of that hand.
Speaker 1: She got to where she could look up onto the
Speaker 1: bench that we had sat up on a little bench
Speaker 1: ridge and looked at look. Look, look, look, walked back
Speaker 1: and forth a little bit. We could see her head
Speaker 1: and neck, and then she just went back over to this,
Speaker 1: you know, swale a little bit and shut up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: point to the point. Yeah. So she she's all piste
Speaker 1: and goes and dips off the side of the hill.
Speaker 1: I just want you can only shoot bearded You're supposed
Speaker 1: to shoot males. But the way they define it as
Speaker 1: you know, a bearded turkey because they have a weird
Speaker 1: beard feather coming out of her chest. Uh. She goes off.
Speaker 1: We kind of forget about her, and a while later
Speaker 1: we realized that the gobbler we were calling to it
Speaker 1: drifted off in the other direction as they're wanting to do,
Speaker 1: and we're staying up to go chase him, and she
Speaker 1: takes off flying from that same spot. So she was
Speaker 1: all piste, went back out of sight and then just
Speaker 1: decided to mellow out and hang out. Chase. We chase
Speaker 1: that gobbler and kind of set up on him, chase him,
Speaker 1: set up on him. And then you hear off to
Speaker 1: the right, we hear a hand calling it ain't a hen.
Speaker 1: Off to the left, I hear owl hooting at getting
Speaker 1: a little late in the morning. There's other people are
Speaker 1: getting other people are growing aware of our holler right
Speaker 1: like people are like, there's a holler that has a
Speaker 1: lot of goblin emanating from it, and people are zero.
Speaker 1: Other dudes, there's zero. That's like public land hunting man.
Speaker 1: Other dudes are zeroing in on this thing. Yanni. I
Speaker 1: didn't hear this, Yanni. Here's two car doors and he
Speaker 1: thinks that those guys left. Yeah, I feel like the
Speaker 1: dudes that are left took off. But the right. As
Speaker 1: we're working this turkey, can hear this guy on the
Speaker 1: right yep yep, yep, yep, yep, yeap. Like coming down
Speaker 1: and the closest we get to the gobbler post roost,
Speaker 1: we get clothes for down in the bottom. It looks beautiful.
Speaker 1: Put out a decoy. He hammers like probably the closest
Speaker 1: gobble we got. I'm very excited. And then he gobbles
Speaker 1: again and he's the same spot. I'm more excited that
Speaker 1: he gobbles again and just get that sinking feeling where
Speaker 1: it's just like unmistakably he's farther away now, which is
Speaker 1: like usually what happens in turkey hunting. And I think
Speaker 1: he gobbled again. It's like, damn it, that was farther
Speaker 1: away for sure. And then about not very far away. No,
Speaker 1: I think I heard the turkey flop. It was that close,
Speaker 1: you know. But jumped out of my skin. And that
Speaker 1: dude that coming on from the right just out turkey
Speaker 1: hunted us, out hunted us. Wasn't his first trip to
Speaker 1: the holler? Yeah he might, Yeah, he might have been
Speaker 1: in there knowing that those turkeys like to leave there
Speaker 1: going up that branch or whatever. Yeah, And then we
Speaker 1: wanted all over Holy Helm. Then prece was one o'clock
Speaker 1: and we came home. So meanwhile we did a tour.
Speaker 1: Parker and I regroup after bringing my bird back to
Speaker 1: the cabin, and we hear one goblin in the same
Speaker 1: holler where Yanni killed his bird. Then we go up
Speaker 1: to the we go up to the meeting spot or
Speaker 1: the calling location, and we thought you guys had deployed
Speaker 1: down after that bird. Im like I used that term deployed.
Speaker 1: We stayed out of there like wandered over made his
Speaker 1: way over. We were on a mission. So we deployed
Speaker 1: down into that, deployed into the hollers. He tells me
Speaker 1: when to deploy. But what a difference a day makes.
Speaker 1: All of my spots redeemed themselves. All the ridges, I said,
Speaker 1: would have birds on them, head birds on them, and
Speaker 1: all the holler's had birds, even killed one off the
Speaker 1: gravel bar. So it's unbelievable how they turned on overnight,
Speaker 1: because like in that like they're gonna breed, and like
Speaker 1: in understanding all these cycles in the natural world, like
Speaker 1: fish spawning and all that, there's sort of like a
Speaker 1: photo there'll be a photo period window, right, there's like
Speaker 1: a length of day that is appropriate, and that window
Speaker 1: depending on what thing we're talking about, what natural phenomenon
Speaker 1: we're talking about, Um, that photo period window, that length
Speaker 1: of day window could be wider, skinny. But within that
Speaker 1: there's all the other all the variables which kind of
Speaker 1: turn it on and turn it off. Right Like you think,
Speaker 1: like steelhead are gonna spawn, Um, it's gonna happen, like
Speaker 1: never happens before this date, never happens later in that day.
Speaker 1: But within that window of time, there's myriad things that
Speaker 1: need to occur, water level, water temperature, all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and it's gonna happen. They're gonna pick their moments.
Speaker 1: And it's like funny with these turkeys that on Monday
Speaker 1: it seems to be well, except for Yannis, it just
Speaker 1: seems to be they're not doing that. Today. The next
Speaker 1: day that slight change, warmer, no air, and they're just
Speaker 1: back to it. And I think yesterday was better than today,
Speaker 1: even though the conditions today were almost the same as yesterday.
Speaker 1: It's like they were just shocked into getting going and
Speaker 1: today they settled back down a little bit. They gobbled early,
Speaker 1: but they stopped earlier today too. So then yesterday, did
Speaker 1: you guys work more birds? We definitely went for a
Speaker 1: long walk. We we had several minor setbacks yesterday, to
Speaker 1: say the least. I don't know if we ever worked
Speaker 1: a bird. We chased a couple others. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we ever worked in another way.
Speaker 1: I had to find working a bird where you're in
Speaker 1: the game. We we never got back in the game.
Speaker 1: An amazing thing, amazing thing that happened yesterday, though, we
Speaker 1: jumped a covey of a quail on the public land
Speaker 1: way in the back, and that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: not in the old days. In the old days, that's
Speaker 1: what people did down I mean, we have so much
Speaker 1: work going on on quail restoration, but in this part
Speaker 1: of the country especially, I had no idea that this
Speaker 1: was a quail country. It's really not. And that was
Speaker 1: historically it was. Yeah, when you had more small farms
Speaker 1: or what. I really don't know what the change has
Speaker 1: been over. I mean, I think you could be really
Speaker 1: rich if you figured out what the problem is. I
Speaker 1: walk around out there, the last thing on my min
Speaker 1: would be that I'll jump a quil. I jumped quil.
Speaker 1: To take me a minute to realize it was a quail,
Speaker 1: because I'd be so not expecting it to happen, really surprised.
Speaker 1: We were deep in the force. It was on a
Speaker 1: power line where we jumped in some brush and there
Speaker 1: was it looked like the right slot if we were
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty miles north of here. But it was cool,
Speaker 1: really cool for sure. How many quail were in the covey?
Speaker 1: What do you think park of ten, yeah, ten of tilve.
Speaker 1: It was a nice little covey. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: quail story real quick. Let's see. Let's here's quail spitting
Speaker 1: drop many many years ago, um, fourteen or fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend at the time was friends with someone who
Speaker 1: was a private chef on a yacht. And this friend
Speaker 1: says to my girlfriend at the time, Hey, do you
Speaker 1: guys want a bag of quail cleaned up quail? And
Speaker 1: uh she said, sure, she goes. You know who gave
Speaker 1: me this quail? George H. W. Bush. M the owner
Speaker 1: of the yachts friends with George h. W. Bush, And
Speaker 1: he came out on the yacht and brought a sack
Speaker 1: of quail that he had shot. So I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I was pretty interesting. So I saved him for a
Speaker 1: long time. I think I'd save him for some kind
Speaker 1: of special occastion. When I did bust him out, not
Speaker 1: one of these quail had not a pellet in any
Speaker 1: of these quail ahead shot. No, here's what someone told.
Speaker 1: Someone told me at these high flute and quail places,
Speaker 1: they're raising them in pens anyway. And he said, when
Speaker 1: you go to these high flute and quail shooting facilities.
Speaker 1: You go out and shoot quail, but then they're all
Speaker 1: shot up and the dog has been chewing on them.
Speaker 1: Who wants to eat that? Right? The thinking goes So
Speaker 1: when you leave, they just go into the pen and
Speaker 1: get you fifteen nice new ones that aren't molested by shot.
Speaker 1: And that's what you bring home that I have. No.
Speaker 1: I had never backed up or verified any of this,
Speaker 1: but this is just what was told to me. Do
Speaker 1: you know who Ray Scott is the bass master? No?
Speaker 1: Remember when bass fishing tournaments started? You know who Ray
Speaker 1: Scott from Michigan? You ever heard of Kevin Van Dan
Speaker 1: He's our next Parker. You gotta know who Ray Scott
Speaker 1: is the bass master? Well States yet Alabama? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he started, He basically started professional bass fishing tournaments. But
Speaker 1: I went down and stayed with him one time and
Speaker 1: I got to my room and it had a plaque
Speaker 1: on the bed that said President George H. W. Bush
Speaker 1: slept here. So that's my George Bush story. He don't
Speaker 1: need a lot of those bass I'm not guessing. I
Speaker 1: don't think. So we got a body. He's a bass
Speaker 1: he's a recreation what do you call like amateur tournament
Speaker 1: bass guy? Caught. Lord knows how many bass in his life.
Speaker 1: One day I'm talking to him in his whole life,
Speaker 1: he'd never eat. We served him his first bass ever,
Speaker 1: a tournament fisherman, certain his first bass ever. He liked it.
Speaker 1: Did not want his wife to find out about it,
Speaker 1: because she'd be wondered what in the world he's been
Speaker 1: out there doing all this time. We have a small
Speaker 1: mouth sandwich tastes that we have to call bass out
Speaker 1: of our pond. If you don't take so many little
Speaker 1: ones out, the big thing they get stunted, grows because
Speaker 1: the ponds on't even support so many ounces of fish,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna take the form of larger big So
Speaker 1: we we a lot of large mouth bass. So back
Speaker 1: to Turkey on. That's my story about h W bush Uh.
Speaker 1: Someday I'm gonna work up I'd like to work up
Speaker 1: a real good punchline for it, which might take some time.
Speaker 1: But so you guys wrap her up. One o'clock. Done deal.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. This morning, step out on the porch. Presumably
Speaker 1: the eagle was not brushing, because yeah, we got we
Speaker 1: got wet. Yeah, I took Jones out on the on
Speaker 1: the porch this time he's a he's a world champion
Speaker 1: hood al collar. That wasn't impress ripping out your owl? Sure,
Speaker 1: I won't make this thing melt if I do. I
Speaker 1: think you might do is maybe well what do you
Speaker 1: think just just just take your mic away from your face? Yeah? Perfect,
Speaker 1: rip out an owl hoot? Oh my goodness, the end?
Speaker 1: How did you work that out practice? Can you just
Speaker 1: do the end for me again? Yeah? That's nice, man,
Speaker 1: It's like you swallow the owl um. So I put
Speaker 1: him to work on the on the porch this morning,
Speaker 1: and I was hoping that those other three would be back,
Speaker 1: and at least two of them were, and he got
Speaker 1: them fired up from the porch. And this time Parker
Speaker 1: and I got on the right side of the river
Speaker 1: and I'll let him take it from there. We got
Speaker 1: on the right side of the river, slipped in there
Speaker 1: still on the roost um. Right as in right versus wrong,
Speaker 1: not left and right. No, he's got it right both ways.
Speaker 1: He means right proper. But he was on river right
Speaker 1: both got it you know, like just a quick thing
Speaker 1: for listeners. River. When you say river right, river left,
Speaker 1: it's from the perspective of someone looking downstream, so you
Speaker 1: could be facing upstream and when you say river right,
Speaker 1: it's on your left, correct, like you're floating down the stream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the river right, the correct side, which happened to be
Speaker 1: that used had to be part of my safety speech
Speaker 1: every day when you're fishing. So the proper side of
Speaker 1: the river, which happened to be river right. Correct. We
Speaker 1: slept up under the cover of darkness. Um, selected two trees.
Speaker 1: Tried to get a tree that's wider than a back
Speaker 1: to break up. Mind. I do, I do think about that,
Speaker 1: um a lot. I know some fellers that have a
Speaker 1: hard time finding a tree. Yeah, on the Redwoods. We
Speaker 1: found one today. Um, well, I found one. Brandons was.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that later. This is a little a
Speaker 1: little skinnier than we liked it. He blames me. I
Speaker 1: blame him for this what happened. I blame the turke. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At any rate, they're goblin goblin nice and you know
Speaker 1: they they're goblins so much that I'm trying to pick
Speaker 1: him out of the tree. We're we're within a hundred yards,
Speaker 1: I think, and you know, I'm looking looking, I can
Speaker 1: hear him. He's goblin, goblin, goblin, goblin, And you know
Speaker 1: we're calling just a little bit back to him, um,
Speaker 1: some soft yelps and any rate, we we kind of
Speaker 1: put the call down and then we're to standoff. You know,
Speaker 1: he's wanting a gobble and I'm not saying anything. Well,
Speaker 1: then I see him pitch out when he pitches out
Speaker 1: to me, and it's the same thing again, yeah right
Speaker 1: to us, right, so, uh, the same thing Yan is
Speaker 1: talking about Yesterday's two little little swells. Right, So he
Speaker 1: pitches down behind he's two swells over, which is maybe
Speaker 1: maybe seventy eight yards and goblin drum and spitting the
Speaker 1: whole thing. This turkey was going and I had my
Speaker 1: gun on my knee, and I hear the turkey and
Speaker 1: every once in a while can see the tips of
Speaker 1: us of his tail fan just over the top. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a done deal. I'm thinking about coming back and
Speaker 1: get something Mr Steve's coffee. The turkey comes in kind
Speaker 1: of follows this finger down right. I can just see
Speaker 1: glimpses and pieces of him. He turns around the swell
Speaker 1: and I say, well, if he gets around that and
Speaker 1: comes starts breaking towards me, it's over. I got him.
Speaker 1: He's committed. He did that. He broke around, took about
Speaker 1: ten steps, and at this point he's maybe fifty five
Speaker 1: or sixty yards coming on a on a string, turned sideways.
Speaker 1: I see his head yards waiting for inside forty. I
Speaker 1: like to shoot him closer to than further. Um. I
Speaker 1: know some of the new loads these days, but you know,
Speaker 1: when I started turkey hunting, it was the twenty gage
Speaker 1: with the two and three quarter inch six, you know.
Speaker 1: So we'll let him come on in. So I like
Speaker 1: him inside forty, I really do. It was too far
Speaker 1: from me. Some guys, maybe I don't. I don't like
Speaker 1: the cripple turkeys or anything, but turkeys. I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: like him to get close. So the turkey's coming. He
Speaker 1: turned sideways. His head's just bright white. He kind of
Speaker 1: comes out of strut, sticks his head straight up in
Speaker 1: the air. All the color leaves his head. He turns
Speaker 1: around and fast walks away. No doubt in my mind,
Speaker 1: he saw us. He walked around the corner, he saw us,
Speaker 1: and he split and that was that. I think he said, Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna check by that big tree. No, dude, he
Speaker 1: saw Brandon back there moving around. I'm telling you, I
Speaker 1: was in the almost asleep mode. I was not moving around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was it. That was it for me today.
Speaker 1: And then I wanted all over the hole. We wanted
Speaker 1: all over Holy hell. Yeah. And the wind picked up today,
Speaker 1: which was a little more frustrating it did. That was
Speaker 1: annoying me, man, Yeah, that was annoying. Yeah. It kind
Speaker 1: of makes it harder to keep going at that eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock hour, Like you could barely hear him if he
Speaker 1: was gobbling at you. So here you are, turkeyless, come
Speaker 1: to the end of your side. It's over. It's over. Uh.
Speaker 1: We got out the turkey in the one spot was
Speaker 1: not there, in the in the borderland the border turkey
Speaker 1: was not there. Went down to the to the Roman
Speaker 1: the dour glass, the Roman Ridge, descended the Roman Ridge,
Speaker 1: and we'd already picked up a gobble by this point. No,
Speaker 1: we had to descend quite a ways until finally, and
Speaker 1: I don't think we shocked him. We're we're kind of
Speaker 1: walking in and just maybe stopped, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden we heard us a double gobble, two birds over
Speaker 1: the top of each other. So I wanted to start
Speaker 1: his goblem before he finish this gobble, his buddy gobble
Speaker 1: over him, which is cool. And then people like to
Speaker 1: talk about a double gobble, which is different. Double guy
Speaker 1: was just a turkey that goes. But these guys were
Speaker 1: gobbling over. When you go to doug During's farm on
Speaker 1: a good day, you'll get the whole ridge where it's
Speaker 1: like someone running their fingers down the piano. But on
Speaker 1: the whole damn riche a bird on one end of
Speaker 1: the ridge, old gobble and it just the gobbles just
Speaker 1: traveled down the ridge. That's fun. We weren't in that
Speaker 1: kind of situation and set up and right away repeat
Speaker 1: from yesterday, called up a hand, come up, make an
Speaker 1: all manner of noises. Um did she yelp? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think she actually every yelped the second the
Speaker 1: second one did a little bit doing a kiki out
Speaker 1: we we we But that's not a key? Is that
Speaker 1: a French kiki? Do you have a name for that?
Speaker 1: When it wasn't like she's doing like a right she yeh,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not but that's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: She was doing this, am I not? Am I right
Speaker 1: or wrong? Yeah? You're right, she heard not that I
Speaker 1: am I call I do it? Yeah, but no that's
Speaker 1: too much like a pigeon. It's just a content clucking,
Speaker 1: purring noise. You' she caught? She she caught lots of cuts, clucked,
Speaker 1: didn't yell, did not she she caught? She did she
Speaker 1: that's not a cut. Boys the premost boys call that
Speaker 1: sound that we heard. They call it woo woo because
Speaker 1: it's just like she's going, Oh, that's what they call that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's like, because the key I'm doing the kiki,
Speaker 1: the KICKI is like a louder, longer kind of noise.
Speaker 1: It's like a hurt It's like a hurting noise I'll
Speaker 1: make to their pulse. Yeah. So she clucked, cut, purred,
Speaker 1: and whood, which I think is interesting. It's all in
Speaker 1: that same content. Interesting part about it. Here's the interesting
Speaker 1: part about it. I like there's a there's there's the
Speaker 1: way turkey's sound mm hmm. Sometimes oftentimes you'll hear you'll
Speaker 1: see a real turkey doing a sequence of notes over
Speaker 1: a period of time that no turkey caller that I
Speaker 1: hang out with replicates. If I sat down in the
Speaker 1: woods with a guy and clugged his six minutes, he
Speaker 1: sat there just making racket like just piling on noise
Speaker 1: upon noise, NonStop. I would be after while I would
Speaker 1: like hit them on the shoulder. But here's a real
Speaker 1: live turkey just go into town. Not only just going
Speaker 1: to town. She just tromping through the woods too, walking
Speaker 1: and calling it cutting like a big arc just raising
Speaker 1: holy hell. And then not long after there was those
Speaker 1: hands we couldn't see in the bottom, just raising hell.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you wanted to really sound like turkeys,
Speaker 1: you get six seven guys just to go sit out
Speaker 1: in the woods and start just doing crazy stuff with
Speaker 1: turkey calls. It's kind of what it sounds like down there,
Speaker 1: I mean, But the difference is they're doing all that
Speaker 1: and it makes sense to them. If you sit down
Speaker 1: and start making like sequences of strange sounds, lord knows
Speaker 1: what message you're setting. I think that that's part of
Speaker 1: being like a little bit judicious, is because um, they're
Speaker 1: feeling something that might not match up with what you're
Speaker 1: laying down, Like they're in kind of a little fight,
Speaker 1: right or whatever, and it just means it makes sense
Speaker 1: to them that they're doing You don't know why they're
Speaker 1: doing it, but then um, try to work our way
Speaker 1: down spook a couple of turkeys. Here's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: I think Yann even knows where they are, and I
Speaker 1: think they're farther away. And we're arguing about this on
Speaker 1: and off, and eventually it proves that Yannie was correct
Speaker 1: because here they jump, they spook and fly off, which
Speaker 1: is a bad sign. I it's a real bad sign.
Speaker 1: We thought it was the end of our morning hunt.
Speaker 1: And I do a kind of like a very like
Speaker 1: having like three scoops of ice cream and all three
Speaker 1: of them is falling off your cone in the man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I do kind of a physical expression of you know,
Speaker 1: like it was like you're a little paler than you were,
Speaker 1: Like you're like that bird that uh Parker was working. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: bunch of in your head. My head went from blue
Speaker 1: to red. So it was just like the right and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, Yeah, he just does like a check
Speaker 1: like I don't know, dude. We do an elk hin
Speaker 1: all the time, because especially the bull might have just
Speaker 1: been over the ridge. He spook half of his cows.
Speaker 1: He just hear his hoose running and so all saying
Speaker 1: you go give him the super sexy and like thrash
Speaker 1: around like someone else is chasing one of his cows.
Speaker 1: And that's something bitch, you know. Oh yeah, then he's
Speaker 1: just like coming to see what all the fuss is about.
Speaker 1: And yeah, because it's thing in animals, man, It's like
Speaker 1: some animals, um hold more. Some animals in a group
Speaker 1: people pay attention to, and some animals in a group
Speaker 1: people don't pay attention to, because you could have it
Speaker 1: be that you're like putting the move on something and
Speaker 1: one will spot you and get nervous and you lost.
Speaker 1: The other ones don't pay any attention to that one.
Speaker 1: He hasn't proven his value. Um other ones. There's an
Speaker 1: animal that gets nervous and everyone gets nervous. Like when
Speaker 1: that animal gets nervous, everyone gets nervous. They did this
Speaker 1: thing with I can't remember verbets their monkey verbet monkeys.
Speaker 1: What is it? Verbet monkeys? I'm not sure. How do
Speaker 1: you can remember the name of this monkey? They went
Speaker 1: into these researchers went into this group of monkeys and
Speaker 1: made an audio recording of one of the monkeys in
Speaker 1: the troop. They made an auto recording of his warning
Speaker 1: call and started playing all of his war started playing
Speaker 1: his warning call to the troop all time, and he
Speaker 1: lost the street read they made it that when he
Speaker 1: made his legit morning, when he made when he did
Speaker 1: do his legit warning, everyone was like, whatever, never cried wolf.
Speaker 1: He cries wolf lost credit, So it could be something
Speaker 1: like that. Whatever it is, Yanni all of a sudden
Speaker 1: yelps again and yeah, right from the same. But they
Speaker 1: were agitated and edgy, and we hit the dirt, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was all over because here he comes
Speaker 1: kind of not like the blue redhead, yeah not instrud,
Speaker 1: not intrud, and a hand striding hand so close to him,
Speaker 1: her heads out over his tail, and he comes around
Speaker 1: this open hillside, and there's a number of things that
Speaker 1: I think might have happened. My guess is he gets
Speaker 1: where he can see and looks on this very open
Speaker 1: hillside and he says to himself, I don't care what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing. There's not a hand. That's two mugs laying
Speaker 1: in the dirt out of hand. I don't think he
Speaker 1: saw us, probably not. I just think he looked and
Speaker 1: he's like, I didn't get to be this old bye,
Speaker 1: which is twenty four months. Probably I didn't get this
Speaker 1: old by doing this. But here's the deal, Yanni screwed
Speaker 1: me out of that turkey because it was a yelp
Speaker 1: from a diaphragm call that got him to gobble and
Speaker 1: got him coming. And he gets there and he gets
Speaker 1: out of you, Yanni, and I'm watching him and he
Speaker 1: gets where he can see the hill, and he started
Speaker 1: getting bored and turned around and like why is he
Speaker 1: not calling? Why is he not calling? Turned out he
Speaker 1: couldn't see that. He thought turkey was just coming, and
Speaker 1: it was all over, Like why call now and mess up?
Speaker 1: You know, everything's already set in motion, Like why do anything? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I've I've had experiences, not many, but I've had
Speaker 1: experiences where it's a direct line of sight with the
Speaker 1: turkey and I didn't have the control to not call anymore.
Speaker 1: I just maybe one to hear him gobble again or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I called and that turkey stopped and was like
Speaker 1: I can see exactly the blade of grass that that
Speaker 1: call came from, and I do not see a HND.
Speaker 1: So usually if I made contact and I see him coming,
Speaker 1: I'm shutting down because like why mess is a good thing?
Speaker 1: Like why I draw extra attention unless you're like a ventriloquist,
Speaker 1: why I would be like, oh, by the way this
Speaker 1: tree right here by this shotgun. Yeah, so he drifts off, okay,
Speaker 1: because there's a part of this I failed up to
Speaker 1: the left is not an owl. I'm like really really,
Speaker 1: and you know that's so it's like you're working a bird,
Speaker 1: but you're also aware of like the coming trouble because
Speaker 1: this bird's goblin. So you know that somebody can hear
Speaker 1: this bird gobblin. He probably thinks that he just discovered whatever,
Speaker 1: no idea what he's walking in on. Probably nicest guy
Speaker 1: in the world. But pretty soon the who who switches
Speaker 1: the yippy yipp yep and he's just coming hard. Man.
Speaker 1: It's like this guy's jogging jogging. We never see him,
Speaker 1: you just hear him, like he's running down into this
Speaker 1: and the turkeys started to move off and he's behind him,
Speaker 1: and for a minute, we I'm feeling, hey man, we
Speaker 1: found this. We would here since four got light out,
Speaker 1: we're here since daybreak. It's not your holler. So he's
Speaker 1: moving along and the turkeys are not moving and he's
Speaker 1: moving behind him, and we think we're gonna game him
Speaker 1: and maybe get out ahead of him. But then we're
Speaker 1: just like racing over turkeys and yeah, the turkey's went
Speaker 1: to his side of the holler, and so we went
Speaker 1: wander around. Found some turkey tracks, found like where a
Speaker 1: turkey had dusted a little bit or some such. Stamped
Speaker 1: up and winged up an area. Found a little pig track,
Speaker 1: found a bigger pig track. Wandered around a bunch more
Speaker 1: uh eight a snack, made a whole bunch of really
Speaker 1: loud locating type calls. Hoping started feeling sorry for myself.
Speaker 1: Come down, oh man, it was getting late in the day.
Speaker 1: I was I was having uh sympathy. Come down to holler,
Speaker 1: hit a creek and start working our way up. Oh
Speaker 1: found a nightcrawler, tore it up with little pieces and
Speaker 1: threw it in the river to watch creek chubs feed
Speaker 1: on it. Um, get down to a creek and you're
Speaker 1: honest and you're both common. Like, man's look good down
Speaker 1: here in the main the lusciest place we've been in
Speaker 1: the last three main stem creek, lots of sunlight, very lush,
Speaker 1: and we start working our way along. Had kind of
Speaker 1: like done, you gotta quit noon, you gotta quit it one.
Speaker 1: And we got a long walk and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I look and like here is abedded down turkey not
Speaker 1: but ten or twelve feet away in a blowdown when
Speaker 1: a hen like a couple of things, when a hen's like,
Speaker 1: you know, nesting, and she actually once she gets all
Speaker 1: of her eggs and there she's gonna incubate him. I
Speaker 1: throw up my shotgun and I'm aiming down the shock
Speaker 1: and I had to sing on the ground, and Yanna says, hen,
Speaker 1: but I I've also seen turkey's laid down to hide,
Speaker 1: and you've seen this park one. The one time I
Speaker 1: saw it, we were coming down a canyon in New
Speaker 1: Mexico and come around a corner and caught a turkey
Speaker 1: out in the middle of a field. And the turkey
Speaker 1: laid down flat on the ground and stretched his neck
Speaker 1: out and just laid down. You got and then got
Speaker 1: nervous and broke Yeah. We he I think he thought
Speaker 1: he had been just slicking up and he had this appeared,
Speaker 1: you know, behind her eyes. And because we I mean
Speaker 1: we were you know, a tight little cannon kanyon and
Speaker 1: it had just you know, broken up, and it's like
Speaker 1: the first time you could look left and look down
Speaker 1: the opening. All you see is a turkey head and
Speaker 1: you know, descending and you could see him laying his
Speaker 1: neck out. Remember seconds before that we found where a
Speaker 1: mountain lion and killed a turkey. Yeah. Um, so he
Speaker 1: betted that he just laid down the hide. That's the
Speaker 1: only I didn't know. I didn't know that was the
Speaker 1: thing that could happen until that day. So I throw
Speaker 1: my shotgun up. Yanni says it's a hand and I
Speaker 1: said something like, I'm just checking making sure it's not
Speaker 1: a jake. I don't know, because I thought, like a jake,
Speaker 1: he's young, he doesn't even know what's going on. Maybe
Speaker 1: he would think it's a good idea to lay down,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it jumps up and it's
Speaker 1: a crippled turkey. Yeah, a crippled gobbler, a crippled long
Speaker 1: beer who can't he's trying to take flight, but he
Speaker 1: can't take flight. So blouched him to a little effect.
Speaker 1: He went off through. I tore off after him, running short,
Speaker 1: shocked my shotgun, pulled the trigger, nothing happened, did a
Speaker 1: regular full long stroke on my shotgun, ran more and
Speaker 1: caught up to himuntain the woods and shot him and
Speaker 1: get up there, and he had he had been injured.
Speaker 1: His wing was suffered to injury, and we did a
Speaker 1: do you say knee crops here? We did a knee
Speaker 1: cropsy on him to no avail. Shattered. The main joint
Speaker 1: in his wing is shattered, like he got hit by
Speaker 1: a twenty two. He got hit by a truck. What
Speaker 1: did you make of the leg? Later? And I want
Speaker 1: to ask you this, all his back leg was all bruised.
Speaker 1: Was he running full steam or was he gimped up?
Speaker 1: Show that promise? He was trying to take flight, so
Speaker 1: he didn't run off like a normal turkey would run.
Speaker 1: He was trying to take light. So he's beating his
Speaker 1: wings to no effect. So he was like putting all
Speaker 1: this energy to trying to get airborne. He wasn't running
Speaker 1: with his wings tucked. She couldn't tell about the leg
Speaker 1: at that point because it was a real man. It
Speaker 1: was not like a graceful departure on his part. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And plus I mean you got a shot on him
Speaker 1: in him within seconds of him getting going. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's noon. You don't hunt at one. It's my
Speaker 1: last day. So one there's sort of like this idea
Speaker 1: that a lot of guys that they found like a
Speaker 1: mortally wounded animal they're gonna kill it anyway, which I've done.
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking, here's my turkey as well, and he's
Speaker 1: obviously messed up. So we go there. But he's not
Speaker 1: emaciated and the wound wasn't an old wound. He I
Speaker 1: don't know, he got shot by another turkey hunter. That's
Speaker 1: the most plausible explanation. Um, but I don't know. Man,
Speaker 1: that windows awful broken up. Who knows anything could have happened. Anything,
Speaker 1: There's a infinite number of things that could happen. But no,
Speaker 1: he's mine. Yep. Now he's going to Seattle, head to
Speaker 1: the fryar longer schnitzelham cooking in a pan. So I
Speaker 1: got two turkey breast flays in one leg. Coming home
Speaker 1: like good deal though here. Now, at first I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like I got a turkey. But you know, all
Speaker 1: the details get in life, like the details get hazy.
Speaker 1: I know, I feel like I just got a turkey,
Speaker 1: Like like when I get home to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: how's missouris you get a burn on me? Oh yeah already?
Speaker 1: Like at first I was, you know, we pull up
Speaker 1: and like did you get one? I like, wow, I'm
Speaker 1: not really, you know, kind of asterisk next to this one,
Speaker 1: but then that like does three hours later? Yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: I got one. Yeah, checks check Missouri off the list.
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, I still feel like I didn't
Speaker 1: get one. Yeah, you didn't know that that much. As
Speaker 1: clear as that you did not get But if you
Speaker 1: didn't asked me on Monday at about ten o'clock, if
Speaker 1: we were gonna go three for four, oh, I already
Speaker 1: had it all put together. People are gonna be like, hey,
Speaker 1: how'd you guys dealing with serious and be like, bro,
Speaker 1: the weather, weather, You've never seen such horrible weather. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say that all before I said no, we
Speaker 1: didn't get any. But now and they'll be like, how
Speaker 1: that you know that birdie got down Missouri? How far
Speaker 1: was that shot? I'll be like, oh, it was close,
Speaker 1: called him in. It was closed those close. He kind
Speaker 1: of turned. He kind of turned right before I got him.
Speaker 1: He drumming and spitting. No, he's doing like came in solid. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: never peep out of him. No, Yeah, I got a turkey,
Speaker 1: Absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. Hey, listen,
Speaker 1: have we not been just out wandering the woods until
Speaker 1: one pm? That wouldn't have happened. So the the hard
Speaker 1: work of that paid off. To keep walking through the woods.
Speaker 1: If you're just walking around like looking for nightcrawlers, keep
Speaker 1: walking in the woods. And then we came home and
Speaker 1: had um came back here and uh Steve Hugh lay
Speaker 1: out the many for us. What we had for lunch, Well,
Speaker 1: we had some venice and chili and uh some of
Speaker 1: Brandon's Uh what kind of catfish was that? It was flathead?
Speaker 1: But it was donated by Mark flash Polar. All Right, dude,
Speaker 1: if I had a name flash Polar, I would fish
Speaker 1: a lot more. And I already fish a lot. He's uh,
Speaker 1: I'd shortened it the flash Pole waterfall biologist. Flathead cats
Speaker 1: man unbelievably good. But I love them so much. But
Speaker 1: like growing up, we'd catch a big flathead and we
Speaker 1: didn't know to trim the fat off. My it's guys,
Speaker 1: that stuff tastes bad. Yeah, catfish fat is not good.
Speaker 1: Why is that? We don't know? Man, it's but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's horrible. Yeah, we made the mistake. When was that
Speaker 1: last fall? Maybe we're doing some uh cooking for television,
Speaker 1: No cook, we're shooting recipes for the cook pot. Is
Speaker 1: that when we had that, I thought we had that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't have any. We were doing a fried catfish thing,
Speaker 1: but we had to buy a piece cast. So someone
Speaker 1: went and bought a big slab of catfish, and we're
Speaker 1: you know, nobody even thought twice to think about trimming
Speaker 1: it more. Obviously it would have just been trimmed fine
Speaker 1: and godly, it is nasty, nasty, nasty the fat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I like the little channels we catch because
Speaker 1: little I mean, you can trim it, but I mean
Speaker 1: the little channels don't get the fat on him. You
Speaker 1: call those fiddlers. I know that people do calm fidders,
Speaker 1: but no, we call them little dinkers. Call them fiddlers
Speaker 1: around here. Yeah, I know, whole fries and fiddlers just
Speaker 1: skin them back. We flame them because we fiddlers, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Kevin Murphy says, because they fiddle with your bait.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a good, that's a good. Yeah, that might
Speaker 1: be it. But yeah, you can just pull back the
Speaker 1: skin and and front, you know, take the head off
Speaker 1: and fry him. Hoole. We flayed dinkers because putting them
Speaker 1: on sandwiches, poll boys with pickles, whole you type roll
Speaker 1: bag at whatever frr catfish make up like a like
Speaker 1: a like a you know, tartar type sauce. Then you
Speaker 1: put red hot on them, pickles on them, let us
Speaker 1: on them. Basically like the kind of sandwich is Aris
Speaker 1: Feedy in Florida with grouper, but we just make them
Speaker 1: with kind of similar, different bun. But the flathoad was
Speaker 1: good Man, and the chili was like real chili. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like Midwest mom chili. It was from scratch. It's it.
Speaker 1: I love that stuff because I love Midwest mom chill.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about, right, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You take the ground up deer meat and put it
Speaker 1: canned tomato products in there, and then you put pinto
Speaker 1: beans in there. Yeah, I like it. I like the
Speaker 1: venice and cut more chunky than than ground and using
Speaker 1: real chilies instead of chili powder, and uh in adobo yep,
Speaker 1: Chipotle's and adobo. We're in there, and uh I love it.
Speaker 1: I have to have another bowl before I leave. I
Speaker 1: like the fried guy like fried catfish, Man Friday, any
Speaker 1: kind of fish because of my upbringing. But in the South,
Speaker 1: you guys eat a lot of that. You guys come, no,
Speaker 1: you say this is not the South. No, this isn't
Speaker 1: the South, saying I thought it was the Midwest. And
Speaker 1: you guys say this isn't the Midwest. From we're at
Speaker 1: where I'm from, you'd be like, yeah, it's a little south.
Speaker 1: It's technically the Midwest. There's twelve states in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: Missouri's the southwest corner the Midwest. I will say the
Speaker 1: Missouri is in the University of missouris now in the SEC,
Speaker 1: the Southeastern Conference. So when I'm running around in the
Speaker 1: Hollard town, when I'm down in the Holler, I am
Speaker 1: a hard time believing that I'm in the Midwest. It's
Speaker 1: a good argument, especially talking to Parker. If I was
Speaker 1: down in the holler with Parker, we're in the South,
Speaker 1: but the the frigid, cold North. That's all I have
Speaker 1: to say about Turkey hunting. Action packed. And I like
Speaker 1: the way you set it up with the shitty first day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna remark on that, man, that's what you know,
Speaker 1: because looking back on it, yeah, it's just the way
Speaker 1: to have it. If you set it up the other way,
Speaker 1: that had been horrible. I did my best to have
Speaker 1: a screaming good first day, then have a shitty last day.
Speaker 1: It would be a bummer. It's unbelievable. What what a
Speaker 1: difference it made though overnight, just one day difference it was.
Speaker 1: It was the way turkey hunting is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I actually thought, maybe I'll find a mushroom. You know,
Speaker 1: this time of year, we're supposed to be waking up
Speaker 1: with a sweatshirt on end in the day, with shorts
Speaker 1: and sandals on, going out mushroom hunting and crappie fishing.
Speaker 1: You know, the trifecta of the Missouri spring is the
Speaker 1: wild turkey, the wild mushroom, and crappy filets. And uh,
Speaker 1: none of those have been happening until yesterday. No, And
Speaker 1: if you come back a week from now, you won't
Speaker 1: even recognize the place will be all leaved out. Well,
Speaker 1: it started to change. Yeah, in the last two days.
Speaker 1: The leaves started budding. Yeah, things are popping up out
Speaker 1: of the ground. His friend was saying, how this time
Speaker 1: you can sit in the woods and almost watch the
Speaker 1: leaves grow. I feel like that happened on the days today,
Speaker 1: you guys, I'm glad you got to see a little
Speaker 1: bit of the red buds. That's such a beautiful tree,
Speaker 1: and they grow here and these in these hills and mountains.
Speaker 1: And I know it's hard for you guys to look
Speaker 1: at these and column mountains, but no, no, I went
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, so the red buds were starting to
Speaker 1: pop a little bit. But like Steve said, a week
Speaker 1: from now when those white dogwoods are in bloom and
Speaker 1: they're mixed in with those red buds which are really
Speaker 1: more of a purple color, and turkeys are goblin, croppies
Speaker 1: are biting, the mushrooms are popping. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: the best. There's a good variety trees here, man, it
Speaker 1: really is. We got like the cedar, which is the
Speaker 1: non native short leaf pine, a lot of oak, hackberry,
Speaker 1: a lot of hickory, hickory sass I know, it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of sassafras trees today. Back at the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, the largest sawmill, not this New century, but
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, the largest sawmill in the world was
Speaker 1: only you know, a couple of counties over from here.
Speaker 1: For the ozarks were pretty much logged bare twice before
Speaker 1: protection started. Um And now we have incredible canopy and
Speaker 1: there's much more management of the forest proper for for
Speaker 1: tree harvest rather than just taking it all and fell
Speaker 1: swoop right. I think originally the short leaf pine was
Speaker 1: more dominant than the oaks, but the oaks came back
Speaker 1: after the There's still a lot of those short leaf
Speaker 1: pines around. When I'm looking to set up, I'm always
Speaker 1: We're always like, let's go ahead of those pines. We're
Speaker 1: setting up to a turkey. It's always like you're like Marker.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got a little stand of them. It's
Speaker 1: my favorite place on the property. Yeah, we're wondering to
Speaker 1: the Ozarks. Is there a place in the Ozarks where
Speaker 1: the relief becomes more severe than what we see here? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the oz are stretched, you know, down into Arkansas,
Speaker 1: over into a little portion of Oklahoma. And I would
Speaker 1: say the most dramatic kind of mountainscape is down in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: the watch Atas and But do they get taller or
Speaker 1: just steeper? I can't really speak to the elevation, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but just the vastness of the entire range.
Speaker 1: The tallest the tallest point in Missouri there was a
Speaker 1: little ways north of here, so they're kind of scattered out. Um,
Speaker 1: what is the highest point in Missouri. It's right by
Speaker 1: Johnson shut into what's it's tom Sack Mountain, tom Sack Mountain,
Speaker 1: which is a heart of the pig country. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know how idea Yeah, easy to find out, uh, Brandon.
Speaker 1: Final thoughts closers, concluders. Just never give up on tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Never give up on tomorrow. Never give up. There could
Speaker 1: always be a crippled up Turkey land. You will never
Speaker 1: see that again in your life, No, I really won't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was a great time. Glad you guys
Speaker 1: came down and um, I'm glad the turkey hunt worked
Speaker 1: out the way it did. It was tough the first
Speaker 1: day and we redeemed ourselves. All worked out in the end. Steve.
Speaker 1: That's it you, Brandon. I'm good, Steve. I just it
Speaker 1: was kind of strange being in turkey camp and not hunting.
Speaker 1: I've never done that before. But I was saving up
Speaker 1: for going up to my farm this weekend, and it
Speaker 1: was just fun to be with you guys. And you
Speaker 1: have a place you'd like to hunt, right, were you
Speaker 1: to kill a turkey here, you couldn't hunt your favorite
Speaker 1: place to hunt, right, And my wife would have said, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have to go up since you already got
Speaker 1: a bird, and I know she really really wants to
Speaker 1: go up, so I didn't. I didn't want to get
Speaker 1: into that situation. So so you just cooked wild game.
Speaker 1: I cooked wild game, and I know right what tree
Speaker 1: my turkey is gonna be in. So yeah, although he
Speaker 1: embarrassed me last year, I'm gonna get even this year.
Speaker 1: Good final. Uh, we appreciate the cooking. That was good.
Speaker 1: We a lot of good food, a lot of Suvie
Speaker 1: cooking this week cranbrule. Suvie hadn't even heard of that yet. Uh,
Speaker 1: we should grab the recipe from you before we leave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you can you real quick walk through the Suvie
Speaker 1: uh medallion's little backstrap steaks? Yeah, that's just you just
Speaker 1: take a loin and butterfly it nice and thick, good
Speaker 1: inchine and a half thick and uh butterfly it and
Speaker 1: just put salt, pepper and garlic potter on it. Can
Speaker 1: you can you? Because my like I hear that, but
Speaker 1: I don't like when we say butterfly. I think we're
Speaker 1: talking about two different things. We would say that to butterfly, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, to butterfly a pike flay will be to
Speaker 1: take that flay in every three eighths of an inch
Speaker 1: cut through, but not all the way through. That's what
Speaker 1: I do. I kind of I kind of bout a
Speaker 1: about a three inch section of the loin. But you're
Speaker 1: saying you're cutting. I understand, Like I'm not saying you're
Speaker 1: I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong,
Speaker 1: but our use of that term would be that um
Speaker 1: to not cut all the way through something. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what I did. They folded out and there was like, oh,
Speaker 1: so you did do that? Yeah? Really, yes, so I
Speaker 1: guess that because that's why. Yeah, but really a deer loins, No,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was like an elk loin when
Speaker 1: I looked at it. Really, that's what you did. You did, butterfly,
Speaker 1: it's the same way. Absolutely, I didn't catch that. You
Speaker 1: sure got like a uniform looking product out of it. Well,
Speaker 1: I take pride in my work. Really congratulation, Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: But so you take him and put him in a
Speaker 1: plash what everyone knows that word means. That's right, open
Speaker 1: it up, salt, pepper and garlic powder and put it
Speaker 1: in a plastic bag and the meats hew thick, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say echine inch and a quarter. Usually I
Speaker 1: tried it between me between an inch in the quarter.
Speaker 1: I'm saying the final meat, the final opened up piece
Speaker 1: of meat. Normally I'll do a two and a half
Speaker 1: to three inch section and then i'll, you know, do
Speaker 1: the one seam in the middle where you cut almost
Speaker 1: all the way through where your butterfly folded folded out
Speaker 1: and make it look pretty. I had no idea that's
Speaker 1: what I was eating. Absolutely, And then I put it
Speaker 1: in the water. I mean, you could take a long
Speaker 1: time explaining what suvied is, but basically, you know, just
Speaker 1: put it in the water, in the bag and put
Speaker 1: the little immersion circulator on and I said it a
Speaker 1: huddy nine degrees for two hours and take it out
Speaker 1: and then finished it with a weed burning torch. I
Speaker 1: did finish it with a wade burning torch. Holy sh it?
Speaker 1: Was that a good steak man? Yeah? Yeah, you reverse,
Speaker 1: because I hear guys torching them or seeing him first
Speaker 1: now and then putting them into Yeah, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I have heard like if I'm doing a brisket, I
Speaker 1: will smoke the brisket first for three hours and then
Speaker 1: I'll finish it in the suvied. I know you're messing
Speaker 1: this up, though, reverse is to see her after because
Speaker 1: in normal cooking. Sorry he did do reverse, and no
Speaker 1: one's gonna tell me about this wrong. I have heard
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, and I just like like a reverse,
Speaker 1: like a reverse suvie, because the commons suvie preparation, I
Speaker 1: think is to you know, in the water first and
Speaker 1: then see her at the end. So it's a good yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not like a very smart way to do
Speaker 1: it because it just gets resocked. Is that a word
Speaker 1: all over again? Yeah? I think about what people. I
Speaker 1: think the uh, the benefit is that the flavor that
Speaker 1: you get from the searing is then in the in
Speaker 1: there in the bag. He took these steaks out on
Speaker 1: the front deck here, from which he hoots up, hoots
Speaker 1: up turkeys, and fired up a wheat like a weed
Speaker 1: burning torch, which like ranchers in West Texas will use
Speaker 1: to burn thorns off prickly pair of cactus so the
Speaker 1: cattle can eat him when there's a drought, and seared
Speaker 1: the steaks beautifully. That's a good steak man. That's his
Speaker 1: white tailed deer. Ye from a holler from We don't
Speaker 1: have hollers in northern Missouri. That's up in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: You're in the Midwest. Yeah, some big corn fed deer
Speaker 1: up there is that? It Uh fine? All closing thought,
Speaker 1: you don't have too much. I just want to say
Speaker 1: thanks to Brandon again for having us. My pleasure sharing
Speaker 1: his place. Good times vacuuming up all them invasive beetles
Speaker 1: for us. Parker's got to get to work on those.
Speaker 1: We gotta figure out how to get rid of these
Speaker 1: Asian beetle and those dudes are tough man. Uh Parker,
Speaker 1: do you have any final things you'd like to add? No,
Speaker 1: thanks guys, it was a good time, and Brandon for
Speaker 1: having us down. And you know I did come up turkeyles,
Speaker 1: but you know we heard a lot of birds in
Speaker 1: in the last two days. It was a good time. Man.
Speaker 1: Finally get back out in the woods. Bring turkey seasons
Speaker 1: upon us. I have full turkey pressure now I have
Speaker 1: not harvested the turkey, so the pressure's building. You have
Speaker 1: more time though, I have a little time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll get after one. Um. My final thought is
Speaker 1: the way oh hunting on public land in the east
Speaker 1: which you hear from all manner guys about how horrible
Speaker 1: public land hunting is in the East, And I would
Speaker 1: have agreed with him at eleven today, Yeah, because you're
Speaker 1: like that, because yeah, we got burned by a couple
Speaker 1: of guys. But then I then I found my special
Speaker 1: uh my special bird. But even besides that, man, it's
Speaker 1: just like it's got, you know, a couple of things. One,
Speaker 1: it's still great hunting people got you know, you got turkey.
Speaker 1: We people got turkeys. We're working turkeys here in turkeys.
Speaker 1: It's a lot better than sitting inside um. But man, like,
Speaker 1: if you can get, if you can get and be successful,
Speaker 1: regularly successful, like consistently successful in the place like this,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be a good turkey hunter anywhere you go.
Speaker 1: Definitely to have the added thing of the race against
Speaker 1: the clock. Knowing that the more that like you're trying
Speaker 1: to make that bird goblin, you're doing everything right. It's
Speaker 1: gonna get that bird goblin. The more you get that
Speaker 1: bird goblin, the more other people are gonna be like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's bird goblin. It's almost like you'd refine a thing
Speaker 1: by which you um, like you'd refine a hunting strategy,
Speaker 1: but which she's like, don't just don't gobble. I just
Speaker 1: do one gobble out of this bird, and then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do I'm gonna figure out some hunting strategy about
Speaker 1: which they just will not gobble. I don't want him excited.
Speaker 1: Does everybody stay calm? And I just want you to
Speaker 1: casually come in as to not notify other hunters that
Speaker 1: you're down here, because the more he's going, you can
Speaker 1: almost just feel him. You can feel the people being
Speaker 1: like you're that. But it's fun. Man, it's a whole
Speaker 1: other challenge. It's a whole other challenge, and it's something
Speaker 1: that's like, yeah, I can see why people get for
Speaker 1: rustrated with it, but I also see why it must
Speaker 1: make some really really good hunters, some turkey masters. Everybody
Speaker 1: should come down here to check out these creeks too. Man,
Speaker 1: there pretty amazing just chomping around the hollers and and
Speaker 1: looking at these creeks. They just come bubbling out of
Speaker 1: the ground. I was really hoping that we'd have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to float. That's partly what this area is known for.
Speaker 1: Our rivers are just second to none, you know. And
Speaker 1: I'm a guy I lived in Montana and Colorado. And
Speaker 1: I'm telling you these ozark rivers, they're just all you know,
Speaker 1: gravel bottom, crystal clear. Their spring creeks. Dude, poland spring
Speaker 1: doesn't get water clear in that shop in the bottle
Speaker 1: at the store. Yeah, it's it's crisp, looks cloudy compared
Speaker 1: to the creeks around here. We've got incredible trout fishing,
Speaker 1: but the small mouth is what is so attractive. You know,
Speaker 1: there's great trout fishing out west, but our small mouth
Speaker 1: fishing here is just world class. That's in my mind,
Speaker 1: a small mouth this is we're gonna wrap her up.
Speaker 1: But I do want to acknowledge that saying something super
Speaker 1: truthful is uh, in my mind, is a small cooler
Speaker 1: in the trout? Go ahead, I agree, And we can
Speaker 1: float them and and and fish out of drift boat
Speaker 1: the same way you would fish for rainbows out west,
Speaker 1: and you're fishing them with you can fish them with
Speaker 1: spinning equipment, but I prefer to fly fish. And so
Speaker 1: it's like you're it's like your trout fishing on a
Speaker 1: crystal clear spring creek, but you're you're fly fishing for
Speaker 1: lunk or smallmouth, and they fight for trout fisherman, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, you know, it's almost like it's almost like
Speaker 1: your fishing Smalley's on a crystal clear ozark stream. But nothing,
Speaker 1: it's harder, Nothing fights harder than a small mouth. I agree.
Speaker 1: I think like that we used to say, like in Michigan,
Speaker 1: everybody's like like pound for pound, I would say with
Speaker 1: freshwater fish, it's hard to find a rival and pound
Speaker 1: for pound fighting ability. There's a small mouth bass, for sure,
Speaker 1: I think the I think they're I think they're at
Speaker 1: least seven times cooler than large mouth. And what would
Speaker 1: be what would take second place in fresh pound for pound,
Speaker 1: no doubt, think of the shape of that thing. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's tough fishing too because of how clear the
Speaker 1: water is. So you you do really good at do
Speaker 1: really good at dawn and dust. So when you're out
Speaker 1: fishing with some poppers or any kind of surface plug,
Speaker 1: throwing a mouse or anything for the small mouth at
Speaker 1: dusk and they just come up and destroy it on
Speaker 1: the surface. Man, it's exhilarating. I could picture that you'd
Speaker 1: have to use some some fine floral carbon line or something. Man,
Speaker 1: with all that light and all that clarity, certainly during
Speaker 1: the daytime. All right, thanks for listening. Oh you know what,
Speaker 1: I gotta work on. The guy emailed in and he
Speaker 1: says I have the worst way to end. It's the
Speaker 1: worst ending for a show he's ever heard. And he says,
Speaker 1: I need to work on a catchphrase. Oh like, who
Speaker 1: is that guy who would say like good night and
Speaker 1: good luck Walter Cronk hit, Yeah, something like that. I
Speaker 1: need to work on something like catch freeze, good hunting,
Speaker 1: you freeloaders, something along the line.