Bear Grease - Ep. 198: Turkey Stories - Spring's Noble Decree (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

This is episode one of the Bear Grease Turkey Stories Series. We’ve gathered six storytellers from Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia. We've got a tale of a man getting shot while hunting, a prankster planting a pair of emu eggs to trick his hunting buddy, and a 21-day hunt for a gobbler called the Blue Yodeler. Our storytellers are best-selling novelist, David Joy, TikTok celebrity, Macy Watkins, Jack Hall, a 92-year old Appalachian mountain hunter, and several others. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. My best turkey hunting stories don't always feature the best calling or the ideal setup or even the desired outcome. They include moments like getting superpowers from electric shop. Okay, maybe that isn't all true, but this is my story and I believe I'll tell it how I want to. There must be DNA in humans coded to anticipate the spring.

And it feels like some might even have DNA wired for telling turkey. stories. The northern hemisphere's South Steppen waltz is a celebration to many types of folks, but to none more than the hunter of the wild turkey. The most noble spring indicator of the wild things that audibly speak is the gobble of the wild turkey, which by all measurable variables able to be assessed by humans. It's become vividly apparent. This gobble is of higher rank than of all nature's declarative trumpets. But then again, maybe the turkey hunters are biased. This is episode one of the Bear Grease Turkey Story series.

We've gathered six storytellers from Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia. We've got a best-selling novelist, a TikTok celebrity, an undercover wildlife agent, a museum curator, a Mississippi gas company man, and a not. 92-year-old Appalachian Mountain Hunter. Turkey stories just hit different in March, and I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. I don't know what it is about that bird that really sticks out in my mind. I guess it's more the friendship than the bird.

It's a testament to that good medicine that is spending time in the outdoors. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. The story of the wild turkey in North America is one of ups and downs. Some of it natural, some of it man-induced. The time of your birth often determines your outlook on the bird as a resource,

and it's the people that use them that have historically valued them the most. Native Americans use their meat, bones, and feathers in practical ways, but also sacrilyze the birds. Early Europeans found the place stacked with an estimated 10 million turkeys and used them as a plentiful life-saving food source, but market hunting in the 1800s would almost extirpate them. wiping them from ecological memory. Their numbers dwindling down to 30,000 birds continent-wide by the 1930s.

But the modern conservation movement has helped restore them to around 7 million birds today. And they've even been introduced into areas in the western U.S. they never inhabited pre-European settlement. Modern turkey numbers in the east peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s, right when I was growing up. However, in the last 20 years, Turkey numbers have declined in many areas in the eastern United States, none more than in my home state of Arkansas.

If there's one thing I've learned from my grandfather, Lewin Newcomb, who spent the last 35 years of his life lamenting the loss of the Bob White Quail, it's that it's not wise to put your hope and passion into a ground-nesting bird. But for some of us, it's a little too late. We love turkeys. Most of the wildlife stories in our times are positive, but of late, we've been in the valley of what we hope is a cycle.

Turkey numbers are on the decline in many areas, but I think it's producing a generation of people that truly value the wild turkey. Scarcity or even perceived scarcity is producing appreciation and action for turkey and turkey habitat, maybe more than ever. Let's get to the stories. Our first storyteller is from Leland, Mississippi, and we're sitting in the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. Billy Johnson is as Mississippi as a cypress knee in muddy water.

This story's about a bird he named the Blue Yodler, but you'll see it's really about a man iconic in Billy's life, a riverman. I'm Billy Johnson and I'm the director of the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leland, Mississippi. I started hunting on a place in the Mississippi River. It's on the Arkansas side of the river. And there was an old black man that had lived on, born on the island, lived on the island. His name was Clay Matthews and he had a single-shot, 12-gauge shotgun with a ball. about a 30 inch barrel and he believed that when the hen got ready to do business with the

gobbler that she wasn't going to yelp but four times and you know most of the time people calling or yelp five times you know that would be the sequence but anyway you know when I was a little kid you know he'd tell me about you know when you deer hunting you want to get behind a tree and look around it when you're turkey hunting you got to get a tree wider than you are and you sit, you know, facing the turkey and all. Anyway, as the years went by, I mean, I turkey hunted a good bit, but I got to where I liked to crappie fish a lot better. One year, we got 13 inches of rain in three days, and the lake came up six or seven

feet and ruined the crop fishing. It's a lot of little places up in the hills of Mississippi that used to have a store and a post office and maybe at one point of school and it just got got down to where there the towns just went away and usually what would happen what happened to start with is wherever it was a spring little where it was water in the hills you know it would it would be little towns would spring up and then his farming became more capital intensive and less labor intensive they just you know shrunk back down and one of those places that we hunt up in Holmes County, Mississippi, it's a place where they had planted all the cotton fields and pines,

and it was some tall hardwood ridges behind the pines. There was a big gobbler that would gobble on one of those big hardwood ridges. He'd get real excited and almost like he was yodeling in the middle of the gobbler. And so I nicknamed him the blue yodler, but you couldn't call. If you tried to call to him, he wouldn't come. I hunted the turkey 21 days, and it was like I stepped into a different world from a crappie fishing point of view to turkey hunting. And I would have to try to guess which way the turkey was going to go that morning and not

called. And a big storm came up one month. morning, he gobbled 267 times. And finally, it was just a deluge. I'm talking about when I started walking out of the woods, my boots got full of water and, you know, this and that. I just didn't know how, you know, when you got a 360-degree area in the woods and you're trying to figure out which way that turkey is going to walk that next morning. Finally, I lucked up in He hooked up with another gobbler, and they hadn't gobbled that morning. And so I started calling, and the other gobbler was answering, and made a complete circle around me.

And, I mean, I didn't have that good a place to hide, and as they would gobble from a little bit farther around, I'd have to kind of try to ease around, ease around. and I finally saw the gobbler coming and killed it. And it was the big gobbler that I'd been hunting, you know, for 21 days. And for the rest of that day until when I went to sleep, I was just on top of the world. And I woke up the next morning time to go turkey hunting. And about 10 minutes after I woke up, it hit me that I didn't have that turkey to hunt anymore. And it was just like a complete loss of what to do about how to try to kill the turkey. Finally killing the turkey and you're on Cloud 9,

and the next morning you realize that it's over. And it just complete, you know, I don't know if it's disappointment, but just sad that it's ended. You know, when a deer or a turkey or a big bass that you lose or whatever takes your mind over, completely takes your mind over. And, you know, all of your thoughts are about that, you know, where you're thinking about it when you're awake and dreaming about it when you're asleep.

And, you know, that's the way I was with that turkey. I think about that old black man, Clay Matthews, a lot. He was the last of those lamp lighters. They had floating lamps, kerosene lamps, that marked the channel in the river. He would row out there and fill the lamps up with carousine and you know this and that

and then it's another guy living on another island south there and north of there. They would have those little areas. But I often think about how simple his life was. You know, he had a garden by his house and had ten around the bottom

and, you know, fenced in where the deer couldn't get in there. And he raised hogs and chickens. and he hunted. You know, he hunted squirrels and turkeys and, you know, his wife fished. And, I mean, they lived off of what the river and the island afforded them.

He would always kill a couple of big gobblers the last week or two of the season, which would be like from the 20th of April to the 1st of May. He knew where some mulberry trees were, and those turkey would come Once the moldberries got ripe, and he knew just to set up in there around those trees. And he knew turkey hunting inside and island.

And he was self-taught. One of my prized possessions, when we opened this wildlife museum in Leland, a guy that used to hunt with us on that island, came in with a paper bag, and he said, here, I've had this long enough. And it was Clay Matthews' turkey call, box call. And whoever made that call had put it together instead of gluing it together, he'd use those little cobbler tacks like somebody working in the shoe shop used. So I mean, it's no telling where he got it or whatever, but after Clay died, you know, he

went in his house and found that old turkey call. So he died in the late 70s. So, I mean, he lived on that island, you know, his whole life. It was a whiskey maker, a real famous bootlecker up there named Perry Martin, and Clay made whiskey for Perry Martin. And it was just kind of the way of life on the river. I know Clay told me that before they had outboard motors, that the three most important things on the river was flour, tobacco, and whiskey.

And then once they had got to using outboard motors in gasoline, so that was the three most important It was the foremost important things, but we had a drugstore and we sold garden seeds and plants and stuff, and my daddy would fly up there in the spring to turkey hunt, and he would bring clay like cabbage plants and sweet potato plants and enough seeds, you know, for his garden and stuff. So between his chickens and his hogs and what he caught, what he shot, what his wife caught, you know, they ate what they had. They used to have what they call blue logs, and they were like Cyprus, mostly. The river would change and the current would change, and those things would shoot up.

He would tie them up on the bank. All of the rivermen that collected those logs for the lumber companies had their own knot. In other words, if the timber buyer came up there, he could look at the knot, holding them together and know who they belong to. That was something that Clay did for money. And the other thing, he trapped bobcats. And, you know, when Spring came and he had all his hides, he had put him on his back, and he would take his boat, go across that White River cut off, walk across Big Island.

And somewhere out in the middle of Big Island was a huge holler tree. He had cooking utensils and stuff in that tree, in a lantern, you know, carousine. and he had spent the night there, and then he had walked the other side of Big Island, and a friend of his had take him across, and he'd go to Arkansas City and sell his furs

and come back. Clay was a man of nature. In other words, he would go out in the fall, and according to high, high off the ground, the Hornets nest were, he would predict whether it was going to be a cold winter or warm winter or whatever. The higher they were,

up in the tree the colder the winter was going to be. If they were low, it was going to be a warm winter. In those days, I mean, we had a fall turkey season, but before they started having that fall turkey season, all of the guys in my dad's generation were big squirrel hunters. And a lot of them, they hunted with 22 rifles. And Clay could clean squirrels like, you wouldn't believe how fast he could clean them and wouldn't be a hair on. But he would, he would rub his hands over those squirrel hides. And according to how much, how thick the hair was, he could predict what the winter, winter was going to be, whether it was going to be cold or not.

So, I mean, he learned what he knew from nature itself, you know, and you think in this day in time with all this instantaneous communication and all this stuff, how rich a life he had. People like Clay Matthews were living in a world that was rapidly changing. It didn't change for him, but the rest of the world around it. In this world we live in now with the internet and Instagram and Twitter and emails and text and all that. It makes me wonder will life ever get to be like it was

with him living on those islands. It's clear that when Billy thinks about turkey hunting, it's filtered through the life of Clay Matthews. The story of the blue yodler had nothing to do with the man, on the surface that is. It happened long after Clay had passed away. But still, Billy can't talk about him

without talking about Clay. What an incredible life he lived. And Billy did a good job of describing how an individual animal at times can overtake you. As frustrating as it can be, the older I get, I realize how unique those times are. It makes me grateful. If you're near Leland, Mississippi, you're going to want to stop by the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. It's truly an incredible place that will impress you. Tell them that I sent you.

I wish every state had one of these, and I wish every state had one of these. Every state had a Billy Johnson, too. He's done an incredible job. Our next storyteller is named Jack Hall. He's from Tennessee. If there ever was a living turkey hunting legend, it's him. And it's not because he had a TV show, wrote a book, or got a turkey slam. In some ways, it's a shame to even introduce you to him in this way.

I asked the man to tell me one of his favorite turkey stories. He really deserves more. Jack is 92 years old. I met him through my friend Russ Arthur, who will hear from at the end. Russ says that Jack was one of the original true mountain turkey hunters in East Tennessee. Jack ran Hall, Chevrolet, and Cleveland, Tennessee. He had the resources to travel and hunt in easier places, but he never did. He loved the mountains.

Here's Jack with some history and a full. funny story. Yeah, so go ahead and just... Okay, well, I'm Jack Hall, and I live in Cleveland, Tennessee, and I was born in 31. I'm 92. I started hunting the mountains when I was about 10 years old, when we moved here. My dad was a big hunter and fisherman, but when he hunted, we did have turkeys here when he was young.

When I started hunting the mountains, it was squirrel hunting. That's all we did. We didn't have a turkey season back then. We'd run those ridges squirrel hunting. What I think of that day, I think, why did we do that? But we love being in the mountains. Then I suppose when I was 25, 30 years old, we started turkey hunting. Oh, for many years, they only had like a two-day-year-old.

hut maybe three times a year and that's all that's all the turkey hunting you did you know I used to hunt a lot with a friend about it worked at Bowwater and his name was Clyde Steiner and one time I decided I'd get one on him I was all the time trying to pull one on him he said his family said he was gullible because I was all the time getting something But anyway, I've walked in this place and he was going to pick me up later, you know. I told him give me about two or three hours and come by and pick me up. So I walked a good way, about two miles in. And what I'd done is I had a friend about it, had a bunch of ebues.

And I asked him he'd give me a couple of ebues, and I bought him from it. And I got a gas mask. And I put those MU eggs in and packed newspapers around it and everything, through it over the shoulder. And I built a nest about that big around, and I put these two imbue eggs in. Before I put the exit, I said it that they could call turkeys for about an hour, you know. So it looked like the desk was used, you know. And then I put those two eggs in, and when I went out, he, I met him.

He said, do you do any good? I said, no, but you would not believe what I felt. And he said, what did you find? He said, I found a nest back there. I don't know what it is. I said, it must have been a dinosaur rag. There's two of them in it. And he kept questioning me about that.

He said, I want to see them. I said, it's about a mile or two back in there. He said, I don't care, let's go. I want to see it. So we took off, walked and walked and walked. who's uphill all the way to it. And when we got there, you'd have to know him to appreciate it because he's funny anyway.

He looked at that age since he walked up. He said, what, in the name of God? And I said, I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. And I got down there and had a stick. And he said, don't move that thing. He said, I don't believe that's an egg. He said, I believe that's a bomb.

I said, believe those are bombs. I said, no. I don't believe her a bomb. Anyway, I had more fun with about to do it at it. We took them back to town, and he had a workshop. We took them out there, and he kept saying, don't touch those things, and I carried him. He said, I still believe they're a bomb.

I said, get me a drill. He fussed about that, and I drilled it. He saw it was a day. And I got to thinking later, I better tell him better that he was older than me. Thought he'd love to have a heart attack. So I called him and told him. But that's when his family told him. I heard him on the telephone at that.

He says, I can't believe. You always believe him. So you fast up to it. Yeah, I told him. I was afraid he'd have a heart attack. Well, I could tell a lot of stories about killing turkeys, but I thought I'd tell one about that. But he just knew they were bobs, you know.

I still would love to turkey in the mountains, but legs just won't let me do it anymore. When's the last turkey you killed? It's been about three years ago, and I have no idea how many I've killed, but I'd always kill one or two a year, you know. But that's all you could kill, you know. I've never traveled much and done in turkey hot and just, just okoy.

Jack Hall, what an incredible guy and what a sense of humor. The old emu-eg trick. And I hadn't even told you that Jack is an expert ballroom dancer too. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did.

And you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Well, I hate to turn the table too quickly and disorient you. But our next storyteller is about 6.5 decades younger than Jack. Macy Watkins is from Gordon, Georgia. She's an artist, a hunter, and a fly fisherman. I think you'll enjoy her story about gaining superpowers from a hunt. And, yep, Macy is our resident turkey hunting TikToker.

I'm doing to the mic. My name's Macy Watkins, and my best turkey hunting stories don't always feature the best calling or the ideal setup, or even the desired outcome. But yet they are plagued with adversity, bloopers and such. They're always colorful, never dull, and sometimes victorious. They include moments like getting superpowers from electric shock. Okay, maybe that isn't all true, but this is my story, and I believe I'll tell it how I want to. More on that later.

So I had a pretty rough season in Tennessee. I was bound and determined to kill a bird there. entered a tournament, just did some other hunting in Tennessee, and just came up with no luck. I hunted multiple locations, just came up shorts like it wasn't meant to be. Until the divine appointment of I met Slade and we got to turkey hunt and doubled up. And that was our first date. So that was the beginning. Finally got one in Tennessee.

So after that, you know, I went back to Georgia. Slade calls and says, let's go back to Tennessee. have somewhere we can hunt. So I said, all right, I'm spontaneous. So I just, I picked up, went back to Alabama, and we drove back up to Tennessee. Hunting with our friend Tyler Sanders. So us three deep in the woods, Slade kills his bird very quickly. So, but my luck, or lack of luck, actually, you know, it wasn't that easy moving forward.

The opportunities to kill did not come easy. hunted another day, had the opportunity to kill some if they would have just taken a few more steps, which I'm sure a lot of turkey hunters have those similar stories. But we were right on a line. Probably had them 10 feet in front of us, and Slade said hold off. We got to do it by the book, and I'm a person of integrity too. I enjoyed doing things the right way. If you're going to do something, it's worth doing right.

So we did not shoot those turkeys. Probably could have shot a few. Yeah, so we held off. So another day passed, did not get Macy her bird. We said we could hunt the next morning. Then we had some heavy rain coming in. So we went out and we were kind of running and gunning. And we parked the truck, started calling.

We immediately heard one fire back. And I was like, oh, snap, that's not that far away. And then we call again. And this turkey was coming in hot and bobbed. He was fired up. We were like, dang, that's closer. So the time was ticking. We were on a clock. Us versus the bird, who's going to get there first? And it was absolutely my last chance. Yeah, so it was probably mid-morning. We had hunted other spots that morning. We actually saw this patch of cedar trees outside of the wood line. I don't even think we actually had time to make it into the woods because that's how fast everything was happening. Everything that happened, everything that happened, From here on out is the funny part. So there was a fence and you know, the guys are a little taller than me so they easily got over it and they wanted to like me to step in their hands and get over the fence. But I was like, no, no, that's too hard.

I'm just jumping. It's not even that high anyways. Well, I backed up. I got a running start and I ate my words but soon after that I also ate dirt and I tripped over the fence. But like I said, their clumsiness and adversity plagues all of my turkey hunts. I'm a very clumsy person. And one thing I always say that it's not a turkey hunt for me until I fall, until I bust it. Doesn't matter how short or long a turkey hunt is, I'm usually going to fall just because, I don't know, maybe that's my trademark.

But the fence caught my rubber light boot. I almost made it. It was just this much. It got me. And I hit the ground, and the guys just start laughing at me. I'm like, y'all, shut up. We got a bird to go kill. Quit messing around.

They were just laughing. I'm like, we were on the clock. Quit laughing. Come on. And we finally got our composure, and we ran over to the patch of cedar trees. I mean, it didn't take long after that. We only had a minute or two once we got set up. Then we just finished the deal. The bird came in and just if I had one word to describe how that turkey looked

was haggard. He was just rode hard and put up wet and actually he was wet because it had started raining pretty good at that point and that's really when I become one with the turkey because at that point after three days of hunting hard and coming up short so tired and getting rained on and my hopes were down became one with the turkey because I was also rode hard and put up wet. So he came in. I guess he was like, so where's this hen I was here and just oblivious to us. They're hiding and I pulled the trigger. I got it done. We had some high fives and when I say I absolutely dirt rolled him. I did. We were on a decline, so made a successful shot, rolled down the hill a little bit and we were

pretty hyped up. It was awesome. What do you do and you kill a journey? So when I kill the I usually just can't believe it. I'm surprised and excited every time. I mean, mouth opens. I usually laugh out of just pure happiness. There's just such joy in it, especially when there's so much adversity. So many things that might go wrong.

Coming up short in Tennessee, with all my hunts there, it just makes the moment sweeter. Lots of high fives, hugs, picking people up, yelling at the same time, I'd say. So Macy finally got her bird. It was an amazing moment. And then we headed out of the woods.

Had my bird over my shoulder. But what stood in the way of getting back to the truck was that dang fence. And the guys got over it. And this is a fence that we had permission to hop, by the way. I just want to point that out. So I got to the fence. I'm like, well, that fence ain't hot. I already touched it when I fell over it.

But I made one step over it with my turkey. and I'll be dainp it didn't shock me. And I screamed so loud. And Slade was in the truck laughing so hard, Tyler, who was trying to help me over, was laughing. And you know, like when people laugh at you, but they're laughing a little harder than you're laughing. So I was a little embarrassed. But anyways, I really feel like that day I gained superpowers. some kind of turkey hunting superpowers from my electric voltage that I got shocked with.

And the thing is, that's not a lie because that was my last bird of the season last year. So time will tell. If you see me out there on a daggum killing spree just having a record year this year, you'll know Macy's got something that the rest of us don't have, and that's because I gained superpowers that day. This story ends in a trout stream in North Carolina. So later that week, I went back home, and I love trout fishing. That's my other passion, turkey hunting trout fishing, or what I was put on earth to do.

I tied a bunch of flies that week, and I took a bunch of feathers from my turkey and tied some pheasant-tail nymphs, which I affectionately called my turkey-tail nymphs. We do a bunch of euro nymphing in North Georgia in the streams. And if you look at my page, you'll see that I catch the occasional. giant trout because I do have access to a few trophy streams, but my passion is going way up in the mountains, way past cell service, and catching wild rainbows, brook trout, which are native to our area, and brown trout. So I almost got my Cherokee slam. That's where I was fishing in Cherokee, North Carolina, not far from my house. I caught every fish that day on flies that I had tied with my

Tennessee bird, which is just an all-encompassing, full-circle moment. I feel like turkey hunting makes me a well-rounded outdoorsman, but also a resourceful and more appreciative angler. Thank you, Ms. Macy, for the story, and we'll see if those big talking superpower predictions come true. It's go time and showtime in the spring woods right now. I'll be paying attention, and I'll be rooting for you. Be prepared to be done.

disoriented even yet again as we move across the state line to the great state of north Carolina to our next storyteller. David Joy is this country as cornbread and if you lined up ten people and were asked to guess which one was an award-winning novelist who just got off a European book tour, I bet you wouldn't pick him, but you'd be wrong if you didn't. You might have predicted that he was a Ridge run and Southern Appalachian turkey hunter by the length of his legs. He's a tall fella and a bona fide turkey hunter. Here's David's story, and it involves a man getting shot.

So I guess one of the things that I like most about turkey hunting is that you have the potential to develop like a partnership with another person that you're hunting with, and in some ways that differs from other pursuits in the outdoors, so, you know, especially like white tail hunting or something where you're, you know, spending a lot of time in a tree by yourself. With turkey hunting, if you can find the right partner, it serves as a tremendous advantage. And I've been very fortunate to develop a relationship with just an incredible sportsman who's probably about 25 years, my senior, but just a hell of a turkey hunter.

I mean, it's killed hundreds of turkeys. and you know through the years I've had I've had the chance to hunt with him a lot and he and I have kind of developed a relationship where he knows what I'm going to do and I know what he's going to do and because of that we have the opportunity to kill a lot of birds that we probably couldn't have killed by ourselves and so really that's become one of the things that I look forward to most every turkey season is just spending time in the woods with him because I know one day I'm not going to have that So, you know, jumped to last year. This was real early in the season because I was hunting in South Carolina just over the line.

And I was up on a mountain. I was hunting by myself. And I'd been on this bird multiple days and it had walked me every day. And it kind of played out the same way this morning. And I sent this buddy of mine a text message, you know, telling him what had happened. And he texted back, I've been shot. and I immediately thought he was joking. You know, I thought he was just making it up.

And, you know, I sent something back, and he said he was at the hospital and that he was going to be fine, but that he had been shot. And where I was on the mountain, it was kind of an odd spot because typically you don't have service in the mountains, but I had very good service there. And so my immediate thought was, okay, he's safe, but I knew he was at the far eastern end of North Carolina, and we live in the mountains of North Carolina.

So my immediate thought was his wife, and it was like, how was his wife going to get down there to the hospital? So eventually, she reached out and said she was fine, she was headed that way, and that was that. So what wound up happening was that another hunter shot this buddy of mine thinking that he was a turkey, and he had just enough time to kind of roll on his side so that he took the majority of the shot into his ribs and his shoulder.

He was shot with long beard, copper-plated number fives. And somehow or another, you know, just by the grace of God, none of it got him in the head. And thank God they were shooting, you know, copper-plated lead instead of tungsten because I think it would have been a different story. I think he'd be dead. So he immediately, you know, is at the hospital.

They're working to get the shot out of him. They put him on antibiotics. He comes home pretty much that next day. But within a week there was a secondary infection that started that luckily another doctor caught and they wind up working on him and get him healed. But that doctor told him that if he hadn't taken care of that secondary infection, it would have killed him. It would have traveled to his brain and it had killed him.

So all of this is going on and turkey hunting. kind of out the window, you know, and I'm devastated for him, but I'm thankful that he's alive. And so my turkey season last year was real funny, you know, but I decided I was going to hunt with an old Winchester Model 12 because that's what he always hunted with. So I hunted all season with an old nickel steel 1928, Winchester Model 1220 gauge. So time goes on through the month of April. I'm, you know, men are not want to share their feelings, so it was always hard to try and, you know, feel him out on where he was mentally.

And so I spent a lot of time talking to his wife. And she kept saying he needs to get back in the woods. And I thought she was right, but at the same time, that's not one of them things you can pressure somebody to do, you know. I mean, he had just been shot and thank God, you know, didn't die. but you know that's an incredibly traumatic experience that was obviously going to linger pretty heavy and so it was this delicate balancing act of not wanting to push him but also knowing that where he needed to be was in the turkey woods and so we started having those conversations and i just kept telling him you know that if it made him more comfortable

i wouldn't carry a gun you know we'll just go in the woods together uh and and you know he didn't really want to do that and you know I'd almost given up on asking him and out of the blue he sends me this message one evening and he said I've got a bird pin down and I said well let's go chase him he said you know he said well meet me at the house the next morning and so I did and we rode out through the mountains it was first day we hunted you know together last season we head out this ridge you know to try and hear if this bird is roosted where he thinks it'll be, and we get out there, and sure enough, that bird starts hammering across the valley before daylight.

And, you know, I know that it's on. I know, you know, Raymond's got him pinned down, and I know for a fact he's going to know the landscape and know the moves we need to make to get on him. So it's super, super steep, and we just drop off the side of this mountain through a bunch of laurels and roto and get down into the bottom along this field, and the birds are roosted at the bottom of that field.

And we kind of make a plan on what we're going to do. And right about the time that I was going to go sit at my tree, I could just sense that he was really nervous. It was something I'd never experienced with him before because he knows how safe I am with guns. He's been around me with guns all the time. You know, I always tell him when the guns loaded, I tell him when it's unloaded.

And he just started asking a lot of questions about the gun. And so I told him, I said, Raymond, I said, I'm going to unload my gun. I said, I'm not going to touch it. I said, I'm going to get behind you, and I said, I'm not going to touch it. I just wanted him to hunt. So we start calling to this bird, and they pitch out into that field. And they had a bunch of hens with them. And for the most part, we spent the morning, you know, calling to no avail,

trying to call a bird that had everything he wanted. And so, you know, we spent the morning calling at him and every once a while he'd answer, but never made a move up there towards us, just stayed in the bottom of that field. And about mid-morning, probably around 10, those hens started to leave the field to go to nest. When they did, that Tom started following them,

and I had already made a move further away from Raymond. My plan was to try and pull. those birds up to us and that that field made a real hard like a hard right dog leg back up above us and so my plan was to was to try and make it sound like there had been birds that moved up that field that they couldn't see and so I was up there and I was calling and they were still answering me and it was late season so I'd started gobbling on a box call and every time I'd gobble on that box call they'd answer me but so those birds are working up the field and

And as turkeys, you know, always do, they did not cooperate. They went the opposite direction. And they went at the left-hand side, and that gobbler just kept on, you know, gobbling with his hens up through the woods, and I thought, well, this is over. And about that time, I seen a turkey pop up over the hill in that field, and he was on the right-hand side, and he was coming in silent. I think he was probably a subordinate bird. that had broken off from them others,

but was coming to check out all that noise he'd been listening to all morning. And so he pops up, and he starts walking through that field. I mean, just gorgeous. The sun's just hitting him perfect. And I'm watching him work up through that field, and I think any minute he's gonna get in front of Raymond, and Raymond's gonna smoke him.

And it gets to the point where I'm convinced that he's past him. And all I'm thinking is you've let that bird get past you because you want me to kill it because that's something he would do that's just him he's always like he's always thinking of others before he's thinking of himself so i'm thinking you idiot man you've let this bird get by you and and now we've got to hope it gets all the way up here to me and right about the time that that that thought is is settling in my mind i don't hear raymond but i know he must have called because that bird threw his head up and he just walloped him out there

in that field. And I don't know what it is about that bird that really sticks out in my mind. I guess it's more the friendship than the bird. And I think it's just a testament to, you know, what the outdoors and what the sporting life means to people who can't live without it. You know, it's a testament to that good medicine that is spending time in the outdoors. That was a good story, David, and a serious one. I think you should write a novel about a man getting shot by a stranger in the back while turkey hunting, and the shooter escapes on a crooked-hoofed mule. Years later, the shot turkey hunter unknowingly saves the life of the mule trapped in swirling Mississippi River Eddie.

The steed presumably belonged to the mysterious shooter. We don't know who he is. And the beast has a unique brand on his left hunch, BP3. But unfortunately, the mule dies three days later. And, I mean, it's a long story, and David would do such a better job telling it. But it's kind of a plot twist and weird, but the shooter was actually the man's brother, and they didn't know about each other because of the father's double life. And their father, a turkey hunter, had accidentally told them both about the same ridge to turkey hunt on

where they fatefully met on the morning of the shooting. Oh my at the drama! And the mysterious brand stood for Black Panther 3, because, Three generations of those hillbillies believed they'd seen a black mountain line. Like I said, David would tell it better. Anyway, in all seriousness, the thought of getting shot turkey hunting is a nightmare. And if you don't know much about turkey hunting, it's a unique hunt because we roam around in the woods, making the calls of a turkey without any hunter orange on, because turkeys can see color.

Most firearms hunting requires people to wear hunter's orange to be. be visible. Hunting accidents are rare, but possible. But honestly, to me, the other version of the nightmare is being the one who made the mistake and shot someone. I think about that more than getting shot. Be careful out there, folks. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence.

Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest.

Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're now going to go back to Leland, Mississippi, to the Wildlife Heritage. Museum to meet our next storyteller who is from the Delta. His name is Roy Stubbs. He worked for the gas company. Roy is in his 80s and it's clear that he has a unique appreciation for the wild turkey. I was so glad to be able to capture his story and a little bit about his history.

My name's Roy Stubbs. I'm living in the Mississippi Delta and that was the place to be if you had the opportunity to hunt turkeys, especially along the Mississippi Rook. My desire for turkey hunting started at an early age when a friend of ours in a little town I lived in, the Binaught, Mississippi, would kill a turkey and bring it by when we'd have our little Wednesday morning at school, and he would bring his turkey in and lay it down and talk about the turkey, and then he'd take a leaf off of a tree. of some kind and use that as its call. And so it kind of stayed with me.

And so I fast forward then several years, and I had the opportunity to become a member of a hunting club along the Mississippi River. And there was lots of turkeys. Lots of turkeys. And the time frame we're talking about is late 1960s. So it's been around those turkeys for the first time. the woods. I just had this desire building, but hunting turkeys is just so much different than hunting anything else. You just have to have a lot of knowledge. So I had a friend of mine.

There was a barber in a small town dear me, and I used to go and sit in his chair and talk with him. He made his own mouth calls, and he taught me a lot about calling turkeys. He taught me how to make a mouth call even. And I hammered out, I had a piece of aluminum and some rubber. And I made my first turkey I killed in 1967. I called it up with my mouth call. Later on, I developed a way to use my natural voice. And I used it most all the time until I got too old to.

Turkey hunters have a bond all across the country. It's just a part of hunters and camaraderie, the love we all have for each other and for the sport itself. Turkey is a magnificent bird, and it's not to be taken lightly that when you act a kill, to thank the Lord for naming you have this opportunity in his creation. So in 1984, I lived in Greenville, Mississippi, which is right on Mississippi River. My club I hunted on with just a few minutes north of town.

And so started the season off and had a turkey that just caught my attention right away. The mainline levee, if you've never been there, is runs from Memphis to Vicksburg. there's dikes on it. We call dikes that are run, and they're there to control the water flow as it flows on toward the Gulf. And so we travel on these dikes. They're all road on top of them,

and you can drive down through your woods, and a lot of them go all the way to the bank of the Mississippi. So we ride down them and stop and call, and the turkey can'tra. We get a hunt on. So this particularly, year started off with this turkey and I noticed the first few times I went I'd drive down there he would gobbled so I said okay I know where you are I know how to how to get you well that that started

my season long turkey home so I would go out and call that turkey and he would gobble and so we would get in I'd move he had moved and literally literally I would We'd go every day, you know, at that turkey. With my job, I had that time, I'd get all my men working, and I'd sneak off, getting my truck drive up there and call, and he'd answer me, and I'd go hunting. So we did this, day in and day out. It's the weather permitted, and Sunday's off mostly.

Well, we came down, it's going to be the last day. Last day of turkey season. well unfortunately on the last bed trucker season my wife had us a social event to go to well I thought I had a train but she slept at septuio on me and so I'm thinking about my turkey I got one last chance one last chance to get him and so I had many encounters through the year I'm crawling up on snakes. I had deer walk up to me and check and see what I'm doing. I made coons, possums, all my dills.

I did a lot of belly crawling that food that year trying to crawl up on this turkey. He was smart. He was smart, smart, and he was really fun to hunt. And it was just calling experience and learning experience that I'll never forget. So the last day, so I get there about the middle of the afternoon and I start my hunt and I got a plane I know what he's done the last few times I hunted him so I've come in a different direction changed everything up got a different call but I was going to have to do my crawling so I eased up and kept going going and he kept coming a little bit finally I had him in range I guess one of my

disadvantages was I was laying down and it's hard to shoot a gun holding it up besides the turkey head and anyway I got it all set got it all ready got my gun up and just looking at that turkey just the magnificence of him and I really sometimes think the good Lord has a hand and who we are and what we do and he also has control over what happens in in the woods so much many times with us. And I'd rather blame the Lord, I think sometimes than blame myself for not being able to make the kill or whatever. So very carefully, I got my gun up and got my head down on it. I thought just right, which is difficult to do laying down. It can't move. You can't

move. So I get everything just right. I pulled the trigger, and the truck had to have expression on his face. So he just lifted up and flew right over the top of me about five feet over my head. And he said goodbye for the day, for the season. And I got up and I said, tip my head to him and I said, thank you, thank you for a great season. And I think that turkey today, if he's in turkey heaven, I know. What a classic gentleman overflowing with appreciation for just getting to chase one. And who knew there was a turkey heaven? These boys from Mississippi are just made different.

And I'm extending a genuine bear grease hat tip to Mr. Roy Stubbs. Our final storyteller is Russ Arthur from Cleveland, Tennessee. If Russ's name sounds familiar, it's because he was on our genuine outlaw series of Bear Grease, episodes 52 through 56 a couple years ago. Russ was the undercover agent who hunted with Louis Dale Edwards in Western Arkansas in the 1990s. Louis Dale said Russ was the best turkey collar he'd ever heard. Russ is one of those guys who has a story much bigger than a single turkey story,

and it was an honor to sit with him and hear this one about his late father, Jim Arthur. Well, my name is Russ Arthur. I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in a community called Hickson, Tennessee, right outside of Chattanooga. I was blessed to have a father who was a passionate outdoorsman. My dad killed his first turkey in 1961. Of course, I was only two years old at that time, so I don't remember that.

But he would always hunt on this management area where there was only the season back then in the 60s there was only one or two days a week that you could hunt there were very limited counties in the state of tennessee that had turkeys he would always come home and talk about his adventures the hunts were normally friday saturday sunday and he would always go up on a thursday in camp he had an old station wagon a 50-something model station wagon and he would go up and and camp out of it and he would normally hunt on Friday and Saturday and come home Saturday evening for church on Sunday. As a kid growing up, seven, eight, nine-year-old kid, I could not wait to, to hear the

stories. And it was later in life that I figured out that my dad had done a very noble thing, and that is he took the curiosity of a kid and turned it into a passion, because he would give me just enough information about what he was doing, where it was at, and I had this this mystical place in my mind that I wasn't old enough to go to yet. And he didn't drag me along as a six-year-old or a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old. He waited until I got old enough that I could handle a single barrel, and then he started taking me. So I had this passion through my dad, and one of my favorite turkey hunting stories will have to go back to, and this is, if I get emotional, I'm sorry. Well, he had an old call, and he called it Sweet Thing.

And I've got that call with me today. He bought it for, I think it was $3 from a gentleman by the name of Earl Dishroom. As a 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old kid, I had heard all these names, the Earl Disham, the Bobby Card, the Jack Halls, the Charlie Elliott's, the Gene Denton, the Dan Layman's, the Glenn Honeycuts. These were all people's names that were these true turkey hunters. And I was kind of like a little kid that was hearing about a gunfighter. You know, these were legends. You know, when I first started getting to come and stay at camp, I would meet all these guys.

And we had a place in the mountains that he had taken me to the year before, and we had heard a few turkeys. And I was 13 this particular year, and I was carrying a single barrel 20 to get you. And he said, son, I'm going to take you on this ridge. And there was an old trail. He called it the Indian Trail. And it was just a hunter trail.

Nothing that's marked on a map. And he took me up there when I was 13. And he set me in a gap. And he said, you stay here. I'm going to go on out the Indian Trail. And after about two hours, if you hadn't heard anything, come on out, the trail. I will either be on the trail or I'll put a rock in the middle of the trail and draw you. an era with a rock telling you which direction I went and you wait right there.

Well, that was our way of communicating. So I'll admit, I'm 13, I'm sitting there, I cannot wait for it to get daylight. And I thought it would never get daylight. And I never heard anything. Now, I'm going to have to back up again. The only call that he bought me what was called a lynch jet, turkey call. I still got it today. In my opinion, it was a terrible call.

it was a very small slate cost insid and wood and had a burnt wooden peg and it was good for a cluck or a purr but that was about it so an hour after daylight i couldn't stand it i needed to go find daddy i was ready for some action so i ease out the trail and i get oh probably three or four hundred yards from where i had left and i hear a turkey just hammering and i mean it's just hammering its hat off i think i can call that turkey up you know i've sat with my dad and I've watched this last year, I can do this. And I sat down on that call, and it was terrible. And that turkey, it gobble. And it gobbled. And I just kept doing it, and it gobble every time. And then it started going away. Next thing, I know I heard something coming up through there.

It was my dad. And he was frustrated. I'd run that turkey off of him. He was getting ready to shake hands with it. He came right straight from where that turkey was gobbling. And all he said was he said, son, he said, we need to work on your calling. You know, but I've got to tell this story. If you think that there's not a higher being, 10 years ago tomorrow, my dad passed on February 10th, 2014.

Well, we were getting ready to bury him. and he had left in his workshop he was very meticulous. There was a wooden box full of notepads. They were all the same make and model. And I opened, I reached in, I said, I've never seen this before. And I did not know that my dad had kept a diary. And literally the day we were burying my dad, I found this in his workshop. And it was as if he had set that out for us to find.

I reached in and I pulled out and I said, what is this? And I opened it up and it was a journal. And when I opened that up, it turned to April 12, 1972, and I got to read about what he thought about that morning when he left me in that gap. I closed it up, I put it back, and I'm not ready anymore since. So one of these days, I'm going to take it. that and go the mountains and go the cabin and and read it but it was pretty

amazing that the very day that he left me for the first time in the mountains that I pulled one of the 72 books out and turned to that date so what did he said he was just talking about how proud he was and and I didn't be honestly I didn't read it all but when I recognized Where it was at, what he was writing about, it would just overwhelm me. I closed it up, went on. But anyway, that was a great man. What an incredible story in man.

Jim Arthur was the first chapter president of the Chattanooga National Wild Turkey Federation chapter. And in 2003, he was inducted into the Tennessee Turkey Hunter's Hall of Fame. Russ said there was a time when the state was trapping turkeys out of areas where Jim hunted, and many people were mad about it, but around the campfire Jim would advocate to his peers that this was a short-term sacrifice for a long-term game. He was influential as a grassroots spokesman for the Wild Turkey Relocation, which ended up being the salvation of the Wild Turkey. I truly love these Turkey Stories episodes.

And like Mr. Roy Stubbs said, turkey hunters share a unique bond around a unique bird. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. We've got another Turkey Stories episode coming up. We put our heart and soul into these episodes documenting the stories of our collective history. Be sure to check out Brent and I's Mississippi River Expedition film on the Meat Eat Eat Eaters YouTube channel. And if you're out west, check out the Meat Eat Eat Eaters. live tour schedule. I'm going to be there at every show.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers

are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go, listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with

Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises.

and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.