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 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eater's podcast network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two the teacher the
Speaker 1: value of a turkey hunting mentor. Lots of folks got
Speaker 1: spring turkey hunting on the mine right now, and so
Speaker 1: do I. This week, I'm talking about what I consider
Speaker 1: to be the most valuable item in anyone's bag of
Speaker 1: turkey hunting tricks. It ain't a call, it ain't camo,
Speaker 1: it ain't even a gun or shells. It's a mentor
Speaker 1: someone that can show the new hunter the basics to
Speaker 1: get started, or answer the questions of a seasoned vet
Speaker 1: who keeps getting the old razzle dazzle put on him
Speaker 1: by a particularly tough nut to crack. There's no more
Speaker 1: valuable skill than getting the straight dope on knowing what
Speaker 1: order yours zigging and zagging needs to be. Knowing when
Speaker 1: to do something and especially when not to can be
Speaker 1: the difference between crackers and buy any sausages for supper
Speaker 1: or a sizzling skillet full of pride wild turn Having
Speaker 1: that knowledge starting out is how we're going to beat
Speaker 1: the system. Lots of good eating uneer them feathers. But first,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you a story. One of my
Speaker 1: mentors was mister Leon Garlic, the same mister Leon wound
Speaker 1: up loving black pepper on his eggs. If that don't
Speaker 1: ring a bell, check out a story I told on
Speaker 1: The Bear Grease episode number forty nine. Mister Leon was
Speaker 1: a turkey. He could call turkeys with a green briar
Speaker 1: leaf folded between his lips like a modern day mouthcall.
Speaker 1: And he told me a gobbler could hear you thinking
Speaker 1: and see you change your mind. Now he was talking
Speaker 1: about how good they can see it here, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure he was right. Add that to the fact
Speaker 1: that we're attempting to reverse nature by calling a gobbler
Speaker 1: to the sound of a hen, which is vast acrids
Speaker 1: how it works in the wild. The real script is
Speaker 1: this gobbler's gobble a hen here's it walks to him,
Speaker 1: they go on a date, and next year we get
Speaker 1: more turkeys than the woods. We're doing the opposite. But
Speaker 1: for clarification, at least for Arkansas, our turkey season is
Speaker 1: set to open after the peak breeding cycle, and this
Speaker 1: will maximize the likelihood of increasing the overall population. There's
Speaker 1: the challenge and the reward for making it happen. Good
Speaker 1: things are to be tough. Imagine how boring it would
Speaker 1: be if every time you call to a goblin turkey
Speaker 1: came running in on string. Well, that that may have
Speaker 1: been a bad example. Every time I go hunt, not
Speaker 1: only do I imagine that I expected. However, it rarely happens,
Speaker 1: except for the time I'm fixing to tell you about. Actually,
Speaker 1: this gobbler didn't run in, or walk or even take
Speaker 1: a step. Now, if you're thinking I shot him off
Speaker 1: the roost negative ghostwrider, that's dirty pool and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it. And if you do, you ought to be
Speaker 1: in jail. I was working in the woods back then
Speaker 1: and coming home close to roosting time. One evening I
Speaker 1: drovel by a field on some property that I could hunt,
Speaker 1: and I saw a gobbler strutting with four or five
Speaker 1: hens about two hundred yards away in the edge of
Speaker 1: the woods. I knew they'd be close to there in
Speaker 1: the morning because it was almost dark. So I called
Speaker 1: my older brother Tim and I told him about what
Speaker 1: I had seen. I told him to go hunt there
Speaker 1: the next morning because I had to work. Man, he
Speaker 1: was all fired up. But the longer I thought about
Speaker 1: it that night, the more I regretted telling him where
Speaker 1: that turkey was. So I called my boss and I
Speaker 1: told him that I wasn't feeling good and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be at work the next day. Now he wasn't no dummy.
Speaker 1: He knew what I was up to, and he told
Speaker 1: me that I could be at work the next morning,
Speaker 1: or I could add a job to the list of
Speaker 1: things I was going to be hunting that day. I
Speaker 1: told him that sounded like a plan, and I hung up.
Speaker 1: I didn't care. I was young, single, living on my
Speaker 1: own and surviving on deer meeting taters. I could always
Speaker 1: get a job, but turkey season. Man, that only lasted
Speaker 1: a little while. Then I called to him and uninvited
Speaker 1: him to shoot my turkey. He was not pleasant, and
Speaker 1: I didn't care. It was pitch black dark when I
Speaker 1: slipped up the creek on the edge of that field.
Speaker 1: Once I got even with where I'd seen them turkeys
Speaker 1: the evening before, I belly crawled across an opening and
Speaker 1: set up against a big pine tree facing into the
Speaker 1: woods and where I'd figured he'd roosted. And then I
Speaker 1: waited for daylight. Finally the sky started to lighten up,
Speaker 1: and the redbirds started singing, and that turkey gobbled on
Speaker 1: a limb less than one hundred yards away. And when
Speaker 1: that joker started gobbling, he didn't stop. Finally it got
Speaker 1: light enough that I could see the tree he was in,
Speaker 1: and when I'd catch a glimpse of him every now
Speaker 1: and then when he run his head out to gobble,
Speaker 1: he stayed on that limb till the sun came up,
Speaker 1: gobling like it was his job. And at that particular time,
Speaker 1: he was the only one between us that had one.
Speaker 1: I ain't made a peep. My old box call laid
Speaker 1: in my lap, and I finally picked it up and
Speaker 1: squeaked out three soft yeps that sounded more like a
Speaker 1: dying rabbit stuck in a gum boot than a hen
Speaker 1: turkey looking for love. I laid that call down and
Speaker 1: put that Belgium made Autu five on my knee and waited.
Speaker 1: Now as bad as that call sounded to me, old
Speaker 1: Jasper out there was digging it. He let loose a
Speaker 1: serious at gobbles. It sounded like he'd gone berserk up,
Speaker 1: one after another, five or six in a row. And
Speaker 1: then I heard him leave the roofs clapping his wings
Speaker 1: and hitting limbs and leaves as he flew toward me.
Speaker 1: It sounded like he was chopping wood. Then I saw
Speaker 1: him sailing towards me like a jet. I was following
Speaker 1: him in with that shotgun, just like he was a
Speaker 1: duck coming to the decoys. He hit the ground ten
Speaker 1: steps in front of me in a beam of sunlight
Speaker 1: that looked like he was starting in the show. He
Speaker 1: looked dead in my eyes and gobbled so loud I
Speaker 1: could almost feel his breath, and I cut that joker
Speaker 1: of flip. His feed wasn't through the ground long enough
Speaker 1: to get dirty. When I touched off John Moses brown
Speaker 1: In's greatest invention. I stopped by Tim's house on the
Speaker 1: way to work and showed him. He took my picture
Speaker 1: and I didn't have to quit my job. This story
Speaker 1: was in the reference not so much to calling, but
Speaker 1: to the best tip I'd ever gotten from the greatest
Speaker 1: turkey hunting mentor I've ever had, mister Billy bryn Him's
Speaker 1: dad in law. He told me that being where a
Speaker 1: turkey wanted to be was way better than any call
Speaker 1: you could ever make, and the best calling in the
Speaker 1: world wouldn't get him to a place he didn't want
Speaker 1: to go. Now, lots of times it ain't what you say,
Speaker 1: it's how you say it, and more importantly, where you
Speaker 1: say it from. That turkey had been right where I
Speaker 1: was the evening before, and could possibly have flown up
Speaker 1: on the roost from where he lived that morning. I
Speaker 1: punched him in the mouth and told him out of
Speaker 1: the wood. Mister Bryan's mentorship killed that turkey. I just
Speaker 1: pulled a trick to him. So where are you going
Speaker 1: to find your mister Bryant. Well, you can do like
Speaker 1: I did, and when the turkey hunting mentorship lottery by
Speaker 1: having your older brother marry a girl he literally picked
Speaker 1: out in the nursery. My brother and his wife were
Speaker 1: born in the same hospital three days apart, and spent
Speaker 1: one day together. Tim's first day in the nursery and
Speaker 1: Barber Jean's last when they were both less than a
Speaker 1: week old. He said he spied her across the room
Speaker 1: and that's all it took for him, and that choice
Speaker 1: made us all winners. I got an extra good older
Speaker 1: sister and a bona fide died in the wool turkey
Speaker 1: killing Jedi as a coach and her father. He custom
Speaker 1: made me a box call and a wing bone call,
Speaker 1: and no amount of money could buy I may be
Speaker 1: buried with them. Now. That probably ain't gonna be the
Speaker 1: easiest way for you to get your mentor, so we
Speaker 1: got to figure out how to get you one. First.
Speaker 1: We need to identify what we need in one. They
Speaker 1: have to be willing to share their hard earned knowledge
Speaker 1: with you, So, if possible, you're gonna need to throw
Speaker 1: something in a kitty too. How about a spot with
Speaker 1: the hass turkeys on it. Turkey hunting spots in the
Speaker 1: South are guarded like a bank vault. There is no
Speaker 1: place or sacred to a turkey hunter than the place
Speaker 1: where the object of his obsessions resides, public or private.
Speaker 1: I would feel easier walking up to a stranger and
Speaker 1: asking him for a kidney. It's a medical fact that
Speaker 1: a human only needs one to live, and most folks
Speaker 1: are born with two. And you never know, someone might
Speaker 1: actually say yes to a kidney donation but ask to
Speaker 1: shoot a hunter's gobblin turkey. You better keep your head
Speaker 1: on a swivel because somebody is liable to try to
Speaker 1: slap some sense into you, and they should. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: but it's not impossible, and here's how you do it.
Speaker 1: Put yourself in that circle. Whether it's at the local
Speaker 1: sporting goods store, a church group, a wild turkey banquet,
Speaker 1: or any gathering where turkey hunting folks might be, look
Speaker 1: for the older fellow that everyone makes a point to
Speaker 1: speak to throughout the gathering. He probably ain't going to
Speaker 1: be dressed like he just come from hunting unless he
Speaker 1: actually did. And you won't find the majority of mentors
Speaker 1: running around in vehicles festooned with outdoor related decals and
Speaker 1: sporting the latest greatest hunting equipment. There ain't nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with any of that, but a mentor is usually at
Speaker 1: a stage in their hunting career where they like what
Speaker 1: they like and they see no reason to change, and
Speaker 1: they have plenty of turkey beers to back up their credentials.
Speaker 1: These folks might even be looking and waiting for someone
Speaker 1: interested enough to ask and be glad to pass that
Speaker 1: knowledge down to them. Now I ain't there yet, so
Speaker 1: don't send me no dms. I'm a one man wolf pack.
Speaker 1: Get your own turkey. Just kidding, not really. Sharing misery
Speaker 1: with a friend will lighten the load, share and joy
Speaker 1: multiplies it. Now, I don't know where I heard that.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I made it up. Even a blind
Speaker 1: hog of find an acre and every now and then,
Speaker 1: and that one may be mine. But to my point,
Speaker 1: a friend will share his turkey spot and acquaintance, not
Speaker 1: so much. I turkey hunt on some land in another
Speaker 1: state that is owned by folks that I'm friends with
Speaker 1: all year long, not just turkey season. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, they're just like my family. Work on associating
Speaker 1: yourself with people that have land like that full well,
Speaker 1: telling them to begin with what your goal is and
Speaker 1: offer something in return. Sometimes a little de Niro will
Speaker 1: make friends of landowners quicker than having to spark them
Speaker 1: at the local coffee shop. And if private land ain't
Speaker 1: an option for you, get them brogans out on the
Speaker 1: public ground and start doing some scouting. Everybody owns it,
Speaker 1: and you have just as much right as anyone else
Speaker 1: to scout and hunt as you see fit, but do
Speaker 1: it with respect for those who were there first, and
Speaker 1: be as accommodating to them as you would like them
Speaker 1: to be to you. Now, I'm a hundred percent sun
Speaker 1: sure I didn't make that one up, but I know
Speaker 1: who did, and it's solid advice and just about everything
Speaker 1: you do. I imagine that the definition of a mentor
Speaker 1: is an experienced and trusted advisor. Now that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: say old man, but experience doesn't usually come from the
Speaker 1: real young ones. My good friend Michael Meeks started turkey
Speaker 1: hunting at my urging when he was in his mid twenties,
Speaker 1: and I'm only five years older than him, but I'd
Speaker 1: started hunting turkeys a long time before that, and I
Speaker 1: served as his mentor. We actually did a lot of
Speaker 1: learning together, and he learned well. Nowadays, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: advisable to run out in front of him with a
Speaker 1: turkey suit on. You'll mess around and that joker will
Speaker 1: make your head look like it caught on fire and
Speaker 1: someone beat it out with a golf shoe. He is
Speaker 1: a turkey killer. So if a mister Brian type mentor
Speaker 1: ain't available, slide on down the chain of command to
Speaker 1: mentor number two one that's been successful in the Turkey
Speaker 1: woods with similar interest to yours. That was mine and
Speaker 1: Michael's relationship. We've grown up together, we're friends. We both
Speaker 1: liked to hunt, and we enjoyed hunting together, except the
Speaker 1: time I called a turkey in for that fool and
Speaker 1: told him to shoot and he didn't. Now, his version
Speaker 1: of that story is I told him the turkey was
Speaker 1: too far and not to shoot. My version is he's
Speaker 1: an idiot and should have pulled the trigger because I
Speaker 1: was saying shoot. That turkey's bumping twenty five years old
Speaker 1: now probably got a family of his own. It's the
Speaker 1: ones that get away that I can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: I told him to shoot. Anyway, that's your second type
Speaker 1: of mentor. Now, Michael had an advantage because we'd more
Speaker 1: or less grown up together. But I've met lots of
Speaker 1: folks with similar skill set to my own, some even
Speaker 1: while I was out hunting, and then developed a friendship
Speaker 1: with them. Wound up hunting together some and learned as
Speaker 1: much from them as they did for me. But Michael
Speaker 1: still the only one I ever hunted with. It didn't
Speaker 1: shoot when I told him to. I said, shoot, plain
Speaker 1: as day. But it don't bother me much except when
Speaker 1: I think about it now. The third type of mentor
Speaker 1: can't really be listed as a mentor. He's going to
Speaker 1: be more like an accomplice because y'all are going to
Speaker 1: be messing up and learning together, and those are the
Speaker 1: lessons that come easy and leave a scar that you'll
Speaker 1: remember and not do again. It's success through attrition. You
Speaker 1: remember when and where you messed up, and the next
Speaker 1: time that situation presents itself, you don't do that again.
Speaker 1: Like when I told Michael shoot and he didn't. Jerry
Speaker 1: Huston was a mentor of mine as well. He and
Speaker 1: my father were great friends, and I can really never
Speaker 1: remember a time when he and his family weren't in
Speaker 1: my life. We were all close, but Jerry and I
Speaker 1: were the only turkey hunters. Jerry was like a second
Speaker 1: father and a good turkey hunter. His skill was persistence
Speaker 1: and patience. That cat has zero quit and could worry
Speaker 1: a sitting hen off a nest. I've seen him call
Speaker 1: the turkeys when everyone else would have just hung it.
Speaker 1: Up and moved on to greener pastures. But not Jerry.
Speaker 1: It was like he took it personal. There wasn't anything
Speaker 1: off the table. The old adage of yelping three times
Speaker 1: and laying your call down meant nothing to Jerry Goldwayne Houston.
Speaker 1: He added Go to his middle name because he said
Speaker 1: he wanted everybody to know that he was always ready.
Speaker 1: We were hunting down in the Seleiner Roy Bottoms one
Speaker 1: spring and had missed course to Turkey Goblin and walked
Speaker 1: way down away from our truck, only to find him
Speaker 1: gobbling out of sight and across the river over two
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. He was flat more, telling the world
Speaker 1: he knew how to gobble and was lighting the woods
Speaker 1: on fire. Only trouble was there was more water than me,
Speaker 1: Jerry Goldwayne, or that Turkey could drink running between us. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with how Turkey's off raid, allow
Speaker 1: me to give you a brief description. They are dumb
Speaker 1: as a sack of hammers, and I have seen them
Speaker 1: come to a call only to hang up on barriers
Speaker 1: they could easily step over or go around. I had
Speaker 1: one hang up in a cow pasture once that had
Speaker 1: grass growing it no longer than on a ball field,
Speaker 1: and strut and gobble walking back and forth along a
Speaker 1: cow trail that he wouldn't step across. An eight inch
Speaker 1: smooth dirt path that a crawfish could have sprint across,
Speaker 1: had kept a grown turkey from walking close enough for
Speaker 1: me to shoot. I have seen them hang up on
Speaker 1: small fallen logs in the middle of the woods of
Speaker 1: one strand barboire fence, and an endless list of the
Speaker 1: smallest items that kept them from meeting their maker, And
Speaker 1: incomparable to the struggles that they went through to get
Speaker 1: to the point where they hung up, they make me crazy,
Speaker 1: almost as crazy as Michael did when I told him
Speaker 1: plainly to shoot and he didn't. So when we get
Speaker 1: to the edge of the river, we're on a high
Speaker 1: bluff bank and the turkey is on the other side,
Speaker 1: which is a lot lower. We sat down to rest
Speaker 1: after that long disappointment walk to a turkey that we
Speaker 1: didn't have a snowballs chance in the oven to kill him. Remember,
Speaker 1: persisted in patient Jerry. Well after we caught our breath,
Speaker 1: he said, caught in The turkey answered, and Jerry said
Speaker 1: pour it on him and mashed the gas and don't
Speaker 1: mind the brakes and pardon, that's just what I did.
Speaker 1: That turkey lost his mind and his breath and goblin.
Speaker 1: We could hear a hen cutting and cacting them back
Speaker 1: at us from over there, and that fired that God
Speaker 1: threw up the demore. I was wearing a groove, and
Speaker 1: that slight as I was using and doubling up with
Speaker 1: a mouth crawled. At the same time, it sounded like
Speaker 1: a tarzan me was all that wild rector going on
Speaker 1: on both sides of the group. Now, from where we
Speaker 1: were sitting, we could see plumb across the river and
Speaker 1: where that turkey was goblin, but we couldn't see past
Speaker 1: the edge of the brush on the bank of the
Speaker 1: river up into the bottom where he was and where
Speaker 1: all that commotion was taking place. Jerry was sitting in
Speaker 1: front of me with a shotgun in his lap, just
Speaker 1: enjoying and listening to the show. When all of a
Speaker 1: sudden I heard wings and watched as that gobler flew
Speaker 1: across the river, straight toward us, and lit fifty yards
Speaker 1: from where we were sitting. To my surprise, that turkey
Speaker 1: hit the ground, went into full strut, and gobbled like
Speaker 1: a roaring lion. Looking right at us. To my greater surprise,
Speaker 1: Jerry quick drawed that shotgun out of his lap and
Speaker 1: missed the turkey I just called across the saline road
Speaker 1: that was fixing the walk closer. We were both disappointed
Speaker 1: we didn't get him, but we were amazed and grateful
Speaker 1: we had the opportunity. It wasn't like I told him
Speaker 1: to shoot and he didn't. Anyway, Jerry bragged about that
Speaker 1: that everyone all season long about how he'd witnessed the
Speaker 1: greatest calling feet in the history of watching me call
Speaker 1: a gobbler across the river now that hunted. On an
Speaker 1: opening day of the season that year, Jerry and I
Speaker 1: both tagged out, and on the last day, Tim and
Speaker 1: mister Bryan had a tag left and were hunting together
Speaker 1: on a different spot up the river. It started calling
Speaker 1: to a gobbler that eventually walked away from them. While
Speaker 1: they sat there desperately calling and trying to get that
Speaker 1: gobbler's attention, Tim amazingly called up eleven turkey polts that
Speaker 1: had obviously hatched early, and they walked up within inches
Speaker 1: of where they sat calling. There wasn't any cell phones
Speaker 1: back then, but we ran a turkey report grapevine on
Speaker 1: the landline every evening to see what everyone in our
Speaker 1: circle had done that day. I'd already talked to Tim
Speaker 1: and mister Bryant and got the report on them seeing
Speaker 1: the baby turkeys when Jerry called me immediately after hearing
Speaker 1: the same baby turkey story from Tim. And here's how
Speaker 1: that conversation went. Brent, I don't know how many folks
Speaker 1: I've told about you calling that turkey across the river,
Speaker 1: but it's been everyone I can make stand still long
Speaker 1: enough to listen to it since the day it happened.
Speaker 1: It was the greatest exhibition of turkey calling I've ever
Speaker 1: seen or heard of until today. Because today I learned
Speaker 1: that your brother is the greatest turkey caller that will
Speaker 1: ever walk this earth. He will never be whooked. You
Speaker 1: may have called one away from a live hen and
Speaker 1: across the river, but he called a dozen out of
Speaker 1: the shelves. If you're new to turkey hunting, find you
Speaker 1: a mentor make the effort and show folks that can
Speaker 1: show you that you're in with both feet and willing
Speaker 1: to learn. If you're old and grizzled, are just either one,
Speaker 1: find someone to mentor mister Bryant turned ninety years old
Speaker 1: on the twenty ninth day of April. We drove two
Speaker 1: hours to his birthday party. I bet there was close
Speaker 1: to one hundred folks that came in and out of
Speaker 1: that event center. I kept looking around counting the Turkey
Speaker 1: hunters in there. There was a bunch of us in
Speaker 1: that building, but there was only one like him. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. I appreciate so much the wonderful feedback
Speaker 1: that we got from all y'all that have taken the
Speaker 1: time to reach out. If you have a mind too,
Speaker 1: leave us a review on iTunes. I don't know how
Speaker 1: it works, but when y'all do that, and you have
Speaker 1: to get the word out about our little show to
Speaker 1: other folks that might like to hear. Until next week,
Speaker 1: this is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful