Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 2: I want you to stay a.
Speaker 1: While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This
Speaker 1: Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters
Speaker 1: Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 2: The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 1: All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tail gate.
Speaker 1: I've got some stories to share down in the South
Speaker 1: and up on a mountain. Turkeys in the morning, turkeys
Speaker 1: in the evening, Turkeys at supper time. I got turkeys
Speaker 1: on the brain, and I hope y'all are out getting
Speaker 1: after them your own self. This time of year, I
Speaker 1: can't think about much else, So let's get to it
Speaker 1: with a listener story that I think y'all are really
Speaker 1: going to enjoy, Boy, followed by my favorite kind of turkey,
Speaker 1: story of first timers turkey. This story is from Tobin Mitz.
Speaker 1: Tobin is from the great state of Michigan, home to
Speaker 1: several of my good friends that I work with here
Speaker 1: at Meat Eater. Tobin has a story about accents, and
Speaker 1: since the folks I know from Michigan all have them,
Speaker 1: I figured Tobin's story was worthy of a share. So,
Speaker 1: in Tobin's words, in my voice, here we go. Before
Speaker 1: we get to the hunt. I'd like to set the
Speaker 1: tone with a little backstory. In twenty seventeen, my wife
Speaker 1: and I relocated from Michigan to a little town in
Speaker 1: the mountains of North Georgia called Eli jan Now. She
Speaker 1: had been awarded a new field service position for her
Speaker 1: medical equipment company, and we soon found ourselves hundreds of
Speaker 1: miles from home, family and friends. I worked from home
Speaker 1: most of the time except for when I was traveling,
Speaker 1: and it was a struggle. Even though the people we
Speaker 1: met were very gracious, I still felt very out of place.
Speaker 1: On one occasion, a woman asked me where I was from,
Speaker 1: and I replied, Ella j. She paused for a moment
Speaker 1: and finally responded, now, huh further north. Well, I laughed,
Speaker 1: and I proudly responded, we just moved here from Kalamu Zoo, Michigan,
Speaker 1: birthplace of gifts and guitars and Shakespeare fishing.
Speaker 2: And we both had a good laugh.
Speaker 1: Weeks went by, and I was starting to feel more
Speaker 1: at home. I could make it around town through the
Speaker 1: winding mountain roads without getting lost, and had made a
Speaker 1: few acquaintances that made life more interesting. I was feeling
Speaker 1: particularly good about myself one day and decided to go
Speaker 1: to the local hardware store. Our house had very tall
Speaker 1: ceilings and I needed a way to get to the
Speaker 1: light fixtures to chat. He's the bubbs. I walked inside
Speaker 1: and was promptly greeted by an older, gray haired gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Can I help y'all find something? He inquired? Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: where you keep your ladders? They're right over here. I
Speaker 1: know just what you need. Follow me. The man grinned
Speaker 1: and emotion for me to fall in step behind him.
Speaker 1: I'd never been to the store before, but as we
Speaker 1: passed the ale where the step ladders were neatly displayed,
Speaker 1: I got confused. My guide was very excited to be
Speaker 1: helping me, and we were moving quickly. My mind couldn't
Speaker 1: quite put the clues together fast enough to formulate the
Speaker 1: question that needed to be asked, and we rounded the
Speaker 1: next corner. Before I could speak, he said, here they are, sir,
Speaker 1: right next to the numbers. You got all the ladders
Speaker 1: of the alphabet A through Z.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I was laughing hysterically inside, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: embarrass either one of us. My accent had failed me again,
Speaker 1: and I was mortified. Is there anything else I can
Speaker 1: help you with?
Speaker 2: He asked.
Speaker 1: He was so excited to have helped me that I
Speaker 1: couldn't break his bubble. No, sir, that's fine, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. As he walked away and round at the corner,
Speaker 1: I contemplated what to do next. After some deliberation, I
Speaker 1: did what any self respected Yankee would do in this situation.
Speaker 1: I bought a package of three inch mailbox letters and
Speaker 1: I headed home. When I wasn't changing light bubbs, I
Speaker 1: like to hike the nearby WMA's looking for good spots
Speaker 1: to try deer hunting or some other type of adventure,
Speaker 1: and thanks to the good folks at own As, I
Speaker 1: found plenty of places to explore. The previous fall, I
Speaker 1: had found a spot that had more turkey sign than
Speaker 1: deer signs, so I decided to break out the old
Speaker 1: turkey vest and give it a whirl. I killed a
Speaker 1: few back home in Michigan, but springtime was usually spent
Speaker 1: fishing more than than hunting, and opening the morning of
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen turkey season found me headed out making
Speaker 1: the forty five minute run to the spot I had marked.
Speaker 1: The previous year, I'd been out of town, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't had much time to do any spring scouting, and
Speaker 1: I figured there was no time like the present, and
Speaker 1: no better way to learn than to get my boots
Speaker 1: on the ground. I parked the truck in the corner
Speaker 1: of a dirt road that transsected the section of the WMA.
Speaker 1: I had passed a few others in parking spots, but
Speaker 1: all in all, there didn't seem to be many hunters
Speaker 1: out this morning. I walked the three quarters of a
Speaker 1: mile back to the clearing in the woods near a
Speaker 1: small pond, and I sat down, and I waited patiently
Speaker 1: for the sun and hopefully Old Tom Turkey to show himself.
Speaker 1: Sunrise came and went, and the woods seemed pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: I ain't heard much at all, and no gobbles for sure.
Speaker 1: I decided to give a few soft yelps on my
Speaker 1: mouth call into my I was answered by a pair
Speaker 1: of toms a few hundred yards away. I called and
Speaker 1: waited and they'd reply, but they seemed to be moving off,
Speaker 1: not directly away, but certainly not coming towards me. It
Speaker 1: seemed like it seemed like they were headed back towards
Speaker 1: my truck. As I listened to their gobbles get further
Speaker 1: away from me and closer to where I figured the
Speaker 1: truck was, I decided to make a move. I headed
Speaker 1: back in that direction as quietly and quickly as I could.
Speaker 1: I tried setting up two more times, and each time
Speaker 1: the birds just passed a hundred yards or so, still
Speaker 1: heading toward the truck I was trying to get ahead
Speaker 1: of him. I wasn't sure what I was going to
Speaker 1: do or if I was able to pull it off,
Speaker 1: but I figured i'd cross that road when I got there.
Speaker 1: And as I crested the next ridge, I could see
Speaker 1: the road. It was the service road for the logging trucks,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to worry about the safety zone
Speaker 1: or any traffic. But there was another problem. Two hundred
Speaker 1: yards to the other side of that road was the
Speaker 1: boundary between public and private land, and I knew then
Speaker 1: those gobblers were headed for a horse pasture to do
Speaker 1: some mid morning strutting out in the sun, so it
Speaker 1: was now or never. I hoped it across that old
Speaker 1: dirt to track and found a small clearing on top
Speaker 1: of the ridge about one hundred yards in. I got
Speaker 1: sat down next to a medium sized oak tree that
Speaker 1: struggled to conceal my shape.
Speaker 2: A few soft clucks on the.
Speaker 1: Red and it was confirmed they were coming and right now.
Speaker 1: Then something happened that caused my stomach to turn sideways,
Speaker 1: and not the usual I'm about to lay the smack
Speaker 1: down on that old tom.
Speaker 2: Turning sideways. Now the turning.
Speaker 1: Sideways you feel when you hear the cracking of a
Speaker 1: limb underneath your feet when you're.
Speaker 2: Climbing a tree.
Speaker 1: I glanced over my shoulder and I could see the
Speaker 1: road back. About one hundred yards down that road.
Speaker 2: Came a red pickup truck.
Speaker 1: The engine had been turned off and the driver was
Speaker 1: coasting the vehicle slowly and silently into another parking spot
Speaker 1: on the other side of the road from where my
Speaker 1: truck had been. Here, Lord, please don't let this guy
Speaker 1: spook these turkeys, I prayed.
Speaker 2: Just a few more seconds.
Speaker 1: Then, as if he was the second and my two
Speaker 1: man turkey team, he reaches outside window and scratched down
Speaker 1: a few yips on his pot collar. When those toms
Speaker 1: heard that, they thundered off with a set of triple
Speaker 1: gobbles that made my hair stand up. And as the
Speaker 1: last of the gobble faded away. The first bird creshed
Speaker 1: the ridge and walked right in front of where I
Speaker 1: was sitting, and bout he met his maker. I hopped
Speaker 1: up to make sure there were no questions as to
Speaker 1: his demise, and I collected my prize and I walked
Speaker 1: one hundred yards or so back to my truck. And
Speaker 1: as I was opening the back, the little red truck
Speaker 1: round the corner and coast to a stop next to mine,
Speaker 1: with his engine running this time, I sure am sorry,
Speaker 1: said the driver. I had no idea you were there.
Speaker 1: I was around the corner and I couldn't see your truck.
Speaker 1: I hope I didn't mess you up. Absolutely not. I
Speaker 1: grinned your timing could not have been any better. I've
Speaker 1: been chasing those birds for two hours, and your calling
Speaker 1: helped bring them in right to my lap. We shook hands,
Speaker 1: and he helped me take a few pictures before we
Speaker 1: went our separate ways. I'm not sure if I could
Speaker 1: have closed that deal without his help. It seems that
Speaker 1: even my Turkey calling comes with a Northern accent. Now,
Speaker 1: as fate would have it, six years or so later,
Speaker 1: life brought me back to my home state of Michigan,
Speaker 1: and that was the only hunt where I was able
Speaker 1: to bring something home in Georgia thanks to a little
Speaker 1: help from an unwary hunting partner who seemed genuinely happy
Speaker 1: that things worked out. And according to that's just how
Speaker 1: that happened. Well, Tobin Mitz, repatriated resident of the Great
Speaker 1: Lake State, I want to thank you for sharing a
Speaker 1: great story and another fine example of Southern hospitality. I
Speaker 1: also want you to know that you're the kind of
Speaker 1: Yankee all of us down south like more than any other,
Speaker 1: the ones that visit and then go back home. I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: not really kidding, not kidding, Stop it, Brent, I'm really kidding.
Speaker 2: He's a not kidd.
Speaker 1: Two years ago, my friend Michael Roseman, my cone hunting
Speaker 1: compadre and CEO of sun Spot Hunting Lights, solicited my
Speaker 1: turkey calling services to allow him to shoot his first
Speaker 1: Turkeykeel hunts in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. And if
Speaker 1: you know anything about me, or have paid attention, even
Speaker 1: remote attention, you'll know that I'm a flat lander by
Speaker 1: grace and by preference. The mountains are pretty to look at. However,
Speaker 1: given a choice, I usually lean toward not galivanting around
Speaker 1: in them. Unfortunately, there's a lot of good hunting in them,
Speaker 1: and bears and turkeys are just two examples. So when
Speaker 1: Mikey invited me, I agreed, because if there's nothing better
Speaker 1: than shooting a turkey myself, it's calling the first one
Speaker 1: up for a friend or a young'in, or in this case,
Speaker 1: a friend that acts like a youngin. Rohnda, Michael's wife
Speaker 1: will back me up on that one.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: After stomping around and following up and down the non
Speaker 1: flat topography of Michael's turkey woods, we finally got in
Speaker 1: front of a gobbler, only to have him cruise through
Speaker 1: and struct mode just out of range of michael shotgun
Speaker 1: to you. Years later, as I sit here reliving that
Speaker 1: hunt while telling the story, I realized I may have aired.
Speaker 2: On the side of caution.
Speaker 1: I actually thought about it when that turkey walked off
Speaker 1: and I stepped it off to where he passed us.
Speaker 1: But being a terrible friend I am, I never fessed
Speaker 1: up until now. Sorry, Mikey, but you should have shot
Speaker 1: that turkey. But hey, who's really a fault here? He
Speaker 1: was the one holding the shotgun. Fast forward to last year,
Speaker 1: we talked about it all year leading up to a
Speaker 1: turkey season, and then about a month before season started,
Speaker 1: I had abandon my old power for work and film
Speaker 1: a hunt out of state, leaving him to fend for himself.
Speaker 1: He's zeroed. But while he was doing that, I was
Speaker 1: off in Turkey Heaven, calling up three turkeys for three
Speaker 1: different folks in an eighteen hour period. Rubbing salt in
Speaker 1: the wound of my old coon hunting buddy and mentor
Speaker 1: who was striking out. We made plans again all summer
Speaker 1: fall in the winter for us to hunt the hills
Speaker 1: and hollers at his camp, and this time I was
Speaker 1: gonna do my dead level best.
Speaker 2: To be there for my old partner.
Speaker 1: Opening the day of Arkansas's twenty twenty five spring season
Speaker 1: had me driving to clay Bows to record a podcast
Speaker 1: while Michael soloed yet again in search of his first turkey.
Speaker 1: Some friend I am to add even more calamity. It
Speaker 1: would be Thursday of the first week before I could
Speaker 1: even go doue to deadlines and other podcast related activity. Now,
Speaker 1: during that time, Michael had gone every day and had
Speaker 1: a lot of luck, but none of it had been good.
Speaker 1: The turkeys just weren't doing much, so, with low expectations
Speaker 1: already simmering in the back of my mind, I crawled
Speaker 1: out of his side by side. It are jumping off
Speaker 1: point on the fourth day of the season, forty five
Speaker 1: minutes before daylight.
Speaker 2: It was hot and.
Speaker 1: Muggy, and mosquitoes buzzed my ears in the mountains. Now
Speaker 1: that's not how that works. That's supposed to be in
Speaker 1: the lowlands. Whatever. This is going to be terrible, but
Speaker 1: who knows. It was my first hunt of the season
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, and I owed it to my friend to try,
Speaker 1: regardless of how futile I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1: We went to a new spot and split up to
Speaker 1: listen on different ridges with the plan of meeting back
Speaker 1: in the middle. We heard one and discussed where we'd
Speaker 1: heard it and come up with a plan of attack
Speaker 1: and how to really put it together to get after
Speaker 1: that turkey. Perfect plan if a turkey gobbles it did not.
Speaker 1: I covered the two hundred yards pretty quietly, walking down
Speaker 1: a dozed road that followed along the top of the
Speaker 1: ridge to where Michael was listening from and hearing nothing
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Michael asked, well, what do you do when you.
Speaker 1: Don't hear anything right off, I said, well, the only
Speaker 1: thing we can do is walk and call a little
Speaker 1: bit here and there and hope the fire one up.
Speaker 1: But man, I'm telling you, I'm not seeing it any
Speaker 1: turkey sign and I didn't, but hey, I wasn't leaving
Speaker 1: any tracks either. But the lack of scratching is what
Speaker 1: had me feeling like we'd gar hold ourselves. We were
Speaker 1: pretty much limited to where we were because our buddy
Speaker 1: Josh was hunting the spot where we'd hunted two years ago,
Speaker 1: which was the only spot I had ever turkey hunted
Speaker 1: with Michael and the one I thought we were going
Speaker 1: to this morning, and when we didn't, I assumed that
Speaker 1: was just another nail in the coffin of this hunt
Speaker 1: that I'd buried really before it had time to get
Speaker 1: started good. We walked and called a couple of times
Speaker 1: and had no response. The area was thick and muggy
Speaker 1: and still, and you really couldn't hear that far away.
Speaker 1: We were a quarter of a mile from where we'd started.
Speaker 1: Michael said, I'm going to owl and just see what happens.
Speaker 1: He did, and what happened was a turkey gobble back
Speaker 1: at him. No more than one hundred and fifty yards away.
Speaker 1: There was no one in the Boston Mountains on April
Speaker 1: the twenty fourth, twenty twenty five, any more surprised to
Speaker 1: hear a turkey gobble than my dad's baby boy. That's
Speaker 1: the great thing about turkey hunting. Expectations can they can
Speaker 1: go from famine to feast in a matter of moments.
Speaker 1: And we were plenty close to call to him, and
Speaker 1: the woods were pretty open, meaning we needed to get
Speaker 1: sat down pretty quick and get ready. This might not
Speaker 1: take long. The biggest red oak I think I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in the hills was right in front of us,
Speaker 1: and I put Michael on the twelve o'clock side facing
Speaker 1: the turkey, and I sat down on the nine o'clock side. Now,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, kids watches used to have hands
Speaker 1: on them that pointed at numbers, and people could call
Speaker 1: out possessions of things they wanted others to see by
Speaker 1: imagining the face of a clock and then referencing the
Speaker 1: numbers as to the direction they were talking about. Something
Speaker 1: straight ahead was at twelve, over to the right was three,
Speaker 1: straight behind us was six, and to the left it
Speaker 1: was nine.
Speaker 2: It was simple and very effective.
Speaker 1: Michael got comfortable and propped a shotgun up on his knee.
Speaker 1: I grabbed my slate and let out the most seductive,
Speaker 1: soft yelps and cluts I may have ever done.
Speaker 2: Not to get any response. I wasn't expecting that.
Speaker 1: But this is turkey hunting, and anyone that's done it
Speaker 1: knows there are a number of things that can happen
Speaker 1: when you call it a goblin turkey, and only one
Speaker 1: of them is good. It's like Vince Lombardi, the Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame football coach of the Green Bay Packers, talking
Speaker 1: about football by passing the football, he said, there's three
Speaker 1: things that can happen when you throw the ball, and
Speaker 1: two of them are bad. Well, the same thing kind
Speaker 1: of applies to throwing calls at turkeys, and in our case,
Speaker 1: nothing happened. As far as we knew, nothing happened because
Speaker 1: he didn't answer, and after ten minutes we didn't see
Speaker 1: him walking up towards us. Now, Michael is known for patience,
Speaker 1: as as a matter of fact, he's famous for not
Speaker 1: having any He ain't coming.
Speaker 2: Out area even whispering shut up. You don't know that.
Speaker 1: But after another fifteen minutes, another series of calls chunked
Speaker 1: in his general direction. I was thinking to myself, he
Speaker 1: ain't coming, But I was trying to keep Mikey in
Speaker 1: the game by not getting discouraged. Patience is a virtue.
Speaker 1: Mikey either he didn't he didn't hear me, or he
Speaker 1: chose to ignore me something that he ain't vaccinated against.
Speaker 1: For sure, if he don't listen to me, there's no
Speaker 1: telling how smart he'd be by now. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: had to come up with a plan. So I told
Speaker 1: him I was going to slip back behind us, away
Speaker 1: from the turkey and see if I could get a
Speaker 1: gobble out of him to kind of see.
Speaker 2: Where he was.
Speaker 1: That joker wouldn't even give us a courtesy gobble. I
Speaker 1: needed to move anyway. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: that have talent. My wife, for instance, has a beautiful
Speaker 1: singing voice. Reed Bargaineer could show Billy Joel a thing
Speaker 1: or two on the piano. Kelsey Morris can out paint
Speaker 1: rem Brandt. And me, my talent is my legs, going
Speaker 1: to sleep and finding sharp rocks with my behind when
Speaker 1: I'm turkey hunting, I challenge anyone. I started to get up,
Speaker 1: but had to wait for the sparkly alchies as they're
Speaker 1: known at our home to leave, and some motor controller
Speaker 1: returned to my right leg. And while I sat there
Speaker 1: waiting for that to happen, I looked back to pick
Speaker 1: out a spot where I was going to call from
Speaker 1: back behind me, and that's where I saw the Jake
Speaker 1: step out into the road seventy five yards away. Don't move,
Speaker 1: Michael Jake at six o'clock, standing in the road.
Speaker 2: He was looking directly at me.
Speaker 1: I hadn't called it over fifteen minutes, but that rascal
Speaker 1: knew exactly where that call had come from. And then
Speaker 1: a gobbler stepped out behind him, Gobbler standing with him
Speaker 1: now Michael. I could only assume Michael was hearing me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure he and I could have reached around
Speaker 1: that tree we were sitting beside.
Speaker 2: It was that big. I was facing away.
Speaker 1: From him and trying not to spook the turkeys that
Speaker 1: were looking directly at at me, so I was talking
Speaker 1: extra quiet. I just kept repeating myself, hoping you'd hear me.
Speaker 1: They started straight forced coming down that road just like
Speaker 1: we had, and stopped at thirty five yards. My shotgun
Speaker 1: was laying in my lap sorry, Michael, but as soon
Speaker 1: as that jogger gives me an opportunity, I'm going to
Speaker 1: karate chop in with this double barrel, because this is
Speaker 1: fixing to get real western.
Speaker 2: Here in just a minute.
Speaker 1: The jake was leading the stroll, and at the last
Speaker 1: moment they angled off to the right, which if they
Speaker 1: kept that same track, would bring them directly in front
Speaker 1: of me. But better yet, they'd passed behind the fallen
Speaker 1: tree and I'd be able to get Michael lined up
Speaker 1: on him. Michael, they're moving around in front. Get your
Speaker 1: gun ready. They're going to be right in front of me.
Speaker 1: I got my finger in my ear and you'll be
Speaker 1: shooting safe. But you got to move right now. I
Speaker 1: could see Michael getting ready out of the corner of
Speaker 1: my eye. He was pointed just right, and I could
Speaker 1: easily see it was gonna be plenty safe for him
Speaker 1: to shoot. The turkeys took forever to come out from
Speaker 1: behind that log, and when they did, they were still
Speaker 1: in the same order that jake first, and then the gobbler.
Speaker 2: Shoot the one on the left, the one on the left. Yes,
Speaker 2: the first one was a jake.
Speaker 1: Shoot the last one. Even though they kept coming, they
Speaker 1: were starting to skirt us a little bit, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure due to the fact that they couldn't see the
Speaker 1: hen that was supposed to be there, that Jake finally
Speaker 1: stopped and clucked a couple times in his body language
Speaker 1: suggested he was about to blow out of there. I
Speaker 1: started purring with my mouth calling. They both stretched their
Speaker 1: next sat looking like they'd just seen behind the curtain
Speaker 1: as to how the magician was doing the trick, and bam,
Speaker 1: Michael turned the lights out at Casa de Gobbler. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty good poke too, but that joker never flopped.
Speaker 1: Michael was standing on his head in a matter of moments,
Speaker 1: but his rush to pin him down was unnecessary. I
Speaker 1: took out my range finder and measured from where I
Speaker 1: stood to where Michael was eyeballing the first wild turkey
Speaker 1: he'd ever sent across the river Jordan fifty one point
Speaker 1: two yards with a four to ten. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: believed it, but I saw it with my old peepers.
Speaker 1: Michael had patterned that shotgun multiple times and knew the
Speaker 1: limitations of what it could and couldn't do. That was
Speaker 1: turkey numero uno for my old buddy, but it probably
Speaker 1: should have been number two. He was token to twelve
Speaker 1: gage two years ago and that Turkey wasn't.
Speaker 2: Near as far as this one.
Speaker 1: Well, now you know, Michael, I'm all from Missouri and
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll have another Turkey story or two to tell
Speaker 1: you what I get back Until next week, this is
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 2: Y'all be careful