Bear Grease - Ep. 422: Backwoods University - Saving Wild Turkeys

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Back in the late 1960s a ground breaking initiative started in the wildlife conservation space that would lead to one of the greatest wildlife wins we have in the entire country. The restoration of the wild Turkey can be attributed to the hard work and dedication of many people across wildlife agencies and conservation organizations this week. We have the privilege of talking to Mr. Benny Herring he was among the first in the state of Mississippi to start the successful Turkey restoration program. Connect with Lake Pickle and MeatEater Lake Pickle on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places, and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to On X Hunt for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. And if you remember, when we last spoke, I said that in this episode, we would be learning about some life-altering conservation work. My friends, this is the kind of wildlife conservation story that makes me want to stand up and start cheering. This is the kind of story that you'll want to be a lot of story that you'll want to be able to be. want to tell your friends about and believe me when I say if you have ever had the privilege of hunting, hearing, or watching wild turkeys in the springtime, which we are quickly approaching,

I dare say this story and conversation will send chills down your spine and make you even more thankful for every turkey you hear, see, or take from here on out. Let's get into it. That's good. Come on, Lynn. Sir. Hey, how are you? That's my wife, Fennie. Good morning. I'm Lake. Nice to meet you. Lake. Yes, ma'am. You can you go to my home?

Yeah, I am. Okay, see, yeah, right. Okay. It's early February, and I've driven a few hours north from my home in central Mississippi to meet a man named Mr. Benny Herring, to talk about his involvement in one of the greatest wildlife conservation winds in the country's history. This is my room. Yeah, that's just 50-something years of junk. Junk. Yeah.

Yeah. I have been pretty fortunate. I've been able to hunt a lot of places, and it's just been pretty well about as blessed as you can be as far as being able to hunt and go. Yeah. My wife's been very supportive and had quite a career. I've just been fortunate.

Yeah. That's all I can tell you. I follow Mr. Benny to his office in his house. The room is lined all the way around with turkey beards, various wildlife and hunting photos of him and his friends, taken from all around the country and other parts of the world. I see pictures of buffalo hunting in Africa, wings shooting in Argentina,

along with deer, elk, and antelope skulls, and some of the longest turkey spurs I have ever laid eyes on. It became very clear to me that this man has seen and done a lot. Quite a collection of beards and spurs you got. I've been lucky, of course, I've been hunting turkeys a long time. Ooh, whoo, whoo, long time. Yeah. You got some long spurred turkeys.

My goodness, gracious. Yeah, I've got some pretty good ones. They owe them. My goodness. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for doing this. Well, you're welcome. I always try to benefit the turkey as the best I can, you know, working with them for years. When you're a biologist, you don't never really quit being born.

Can I use this chair? Yeah, just move it, do whatever you need to do, like, just, you know. I'm thawaring your leave. You just do this the way you want to do it. Mr. Biddy possesses a rare quality, truly. That's not blowing smoke. The zeal and admiration for wildlife, and particularly the wild turkey, was so evident in the first few minutes of meeting this man, I was just so excited to set up my podcast gear and get this interview underway. I knew before the formal conversation even got started that this man was going to have some incredible things to share with all of us, and believe me, he did. I started turkey hunting in 1970. Okay.

Atala County, which is the county just south of Montgomery County, opened their turkey season in 1970. And my friend, Wendell Neal, lived in Kasyasco. And he and another fellow were about the only two that turkey hunted in Attala County. And I got invited down there to go turkey hunting, and that was in 1970. And the first time I ever went turkey hunting in my life. Did you, had you heard of anyone doing it prior to that? Was there anybody around that was turkey hunting? Not here in this county.

Now, Wendell, of course, lived at Casasco. He had turkey hunted some in the southern part of the state. And I did not know anybody personally that turkey hunting. Now, later on, of course, we opened parts of Montgomery County the following year. and there was about three of us here in the county that turkey hunted. Wow. Yeah. It was just, you know, things were different then.

Yeah. You could turkey hunt anywhere in the county and never see another individual. So about three of us, and that was about it. And, of course, it changed its time went on. I wish there was three turkey hunters in the county I live in now. Yeah, well, I understand it. I really do. There's a few key things we can pull out from this first little bit

Mr. Benny has shared with us. In that one short story, he made mention of several things that demonstrate how different turkey hunting and turkey hunting culture was back in 1970 when he started. Number one, the county he started turkey hunting in opened their season in 1970, as in turkey hunting. as in turkey hunting wasn't allowed before them. Think back once again to the Fannie Cook episode

and the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission being established in 1932. One of the first things that commission did was start protecting game species that had been grossly overhunted, turkeys being one of them. Mr. Benny started hunting turkeys right at the very beginning of some hunting starting to be opened back up in a very limited manner. Number two, did you hear him say that he was one of three turkey hunters?

in the entire county, and that he didn't know of anyone, not a soul that turkey hunting in the county that he lived in at the time. My friends, if that alone does not scream that we're talking about an entirely different era, I don't know what does. These days in Mississippi, you can throw a rock and hit three turkey hunters. It's a different time. But Mr. Benny was coming up in a crucial part of turkey conservation history, and we're going to fully dive into that. But before we do, I want to hear the last bit of this story so that we can really appreciate how much this man loves wild turkeys. That first year was fruitful, and of course, after I shot that first turkey, it was all over. I shook.

So you were able to call a turkey in that first year? Sure was. What was that like? Unbelievable. You know, nowadays, when you see a turkey approaching in fools, strut, and goblin, you've probably done it a good bit, and you don't. I reckon you kind of take it for granted. But that first time, now, you don't ever recover from that if you really, really love turkey hunting. Yeah.

That's a good way to put it. You don't ever recover. You never recover. Yeah. Mr. Benny Herring loves wild turkeys. That much is clear. So now, let's get into the meat of this conversation and learn about his work as a wildlife biologist. How did you get into the biology?

out of it. Well, I graduated from Delta State with a BS in biology and thought I was, might want to be a teacher. But I soon found out that with a BS, you could hardly live on what you'd get paid as a teacher. And at that time, I heard about a wildlife school at Mississippi State University. and I went over there and applied and was accepted. And I got my master's degree in wildlife in Mississippi State. And immediately went to work for the gaming fish. And I spent 32 years there with them. And I had numerous projects that I was involved in.

I was involved in morning to a project where we increased, finally got to increase in the bag limit. And then our turkey biologists at that time was named Champ Clark. And he was killed on one of our wildlife management years when he fell off of a tractor and the dish ran over him. And I had been working with Champ a good bit at that time. And it just somehow another failed my lot to start doing the turkey restoration. Right. And so for the next 10 years, I was heavily involved in that.

And we trapped turkeys in numerous locations throughout the state. As mentioned earlier, this was an important time in wild turkey conservation history. You heard Mr. Benny just make reference to trapping turkeys. This was a huge part of the restoration process. Trapping turkeys and then relocating them to where there were none and then allowing them to repopulate. I want to ask him more about this, and just a heads up, you're going to hear him mention something called cannon netting,

also sometimes referred to as rocket netting. It's a bird capturing technique used to safely catch large numbers of birds, and it's carried out by using cannons to fire a large net over the top of a group of birds. How far long had Turkey restoration been going on when you got put in that position? Of course, the restoration of the turkey. Turkey and Mississippi and the southeast really began in the late mid to late 60s when they realized that cannon netting, which was used to trap waterfowl first, could also be used

to trap wild turkeys for restoration. And that's when things begin to really take off and improve. Up to then, you know, there had been all kind of efforts made of raising turkeys and releasing them and of course it was ineffective. Sure. But when you took the wild turkeys and put them into good habitat, they flourished real quick. Yeah. So it started in the late 60s and in the 70s up into the mid 80s. Yeah.

It really, well, in fact, we repopulated the state of Mississippi. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. That's why, well, one, you really. we're in at the beginning of it then. Right close to the start. Yeah.

And it's so, you know, talking to folks that hunt around the southeast now, I mean, there's counties that don't have a lot of turkeys, but I don't know if there's any counties that don't have any. I think, I think I'm correct on this, and that in Mississippi, all are parts of the county has some type of turkey season. And hearing, you know, hearing you, you know, here in, you know, you. you and other folks talk about these times were, because there were counties back then

that didn't have turkeys, correct? None. The different world. Well, see, at that time, of course, it wasn't just a, you'd go catch turkeys and turn them loose. You had to go through a process. You'd have a bunch of clubs or joining landowners

that would get together and they would request from the game and fish of the Department of Wildlife to be put on the list to receive a release of wild turkeys. And, of course, when we got their request, a biologist went and evaluated the property to be considered. And back and then, you know, we thought, okay, if you got 10,000 acres under agreement, you can provide

good protection and the birds will do well. We have since learned that it didn't have to be that large. Okay. Yeah. But at that time, we did. Right. And, of course, at that time, we didn't think that turkeys could survive in pine plantations. See, the turkeys that we were familiar with were in good hardwood block September. Man. That's wild. Yeah. Well, I mean, just thinking about today, it's like not, I mean, not a mismanaged pine plantation, but a pine plantation that's taken care of and, you know, burned and such,

a turkey would be all in that. All in there. But back then, y'all didn't know that. That's right. Different world. Yeah, absolutely. That is fascinating. Yeah.

Man, I cannot tell you just how much I love these old school conservation stories. Just thinking about those men and women with little more than a love for wild things and wild places and determination to figure out how to keep that kind of stuff on this landscape. Just those tiny little details, like not knowing a turkey could survive on a pine plantation. Heck, these days a turkey goblin in the pines goes together like a worm on a brimble. hook, but the reason it does is because these wildlife conservationists that came before us picked up the torch and they figured it out. So let's learn how they figured it out. When y'all started cannon netting, how did you figure, how did you determine a location?

I mean, I'm having to think that there was a little bit of like, how do we even do this, you know? Okay, well, if, like on Friars Point Refuge, you had a fairly good population of birds there. So what we would do, Wayne Strider, the main one, he was the main trapper, and I helped him all I could. Of course, first thing he would look for it was an opening or a space big enough that you could fire the net in. And it was about 60 by 60, but you could get along one of those roads, or junction of roads. And what we would do, we would pre-bate using wheat most of the time. and we would string a bait line probably a quarter mile each direction down that road and then you go to checking it see what kind of usage you're getting and then when they get at the main location and they're taking it cleaning it up every day you sit your net and when they come to feed the next time you catch them yeah that's cool yeah and what do you so you get these targets in the net how do you get them and get them to a into a place where you could transport them.

Okay. What you do, prior to catching the turkeys, we would buy a bunch of pasteboard boxes, and we would put them together, tape them together, and we'd cut a flap in the bottom of that box that we could stick the turkey in and then turn it upside down with a flap down on the ground with the turkey standing on it.

And we would take them all out of the net, put them in a box, and then we would load them in a truck. And most of the time, we would have people from the area that the turkeys were going to station somewhere within two or three miles of us. And we would either call them to come to us or we'd carry the turkeys to them. Yeah. And we tried to, and we didn't ever get it exact, but we wanted to have 10 hands and five goblers per release site. Uh,

sometimes we'd have more hands than that, sometimes less, sometimes we'd have more gobbers and sometimes less. Sure. And then they would go and release the birds. And when they'd release them, of course, they'd take them out of that truck that they were transported in, put them on the ground, open all of the flaps,

cut the tape at the flaps, and open them at the same time so all the birds could go simultaneously. Ah, yeah, so they'd be together. Yeah. And then we would do the best we could monitor those birds. And under most circumstances, it would be five years, and we would open short season. That's how fast they would respond to good habitat. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Yeah. How did you monitor them? Well, of course, first off, you consulted with the conservation officer in that county, and he had contacts with the clubs that had.

requested and they would keep records and tell him when they saw poats and hens here gobbers here and also we used county mail carriers the local mail carrier that's he had world of information oh just seeing them where did you see turkeys how many did you see so you put all of that together and you assume that you've had pretty good reproduction for four to five years and if you did Then you opened a short, gobbler's only season. What would a season look like sometimes when you open the season up? What would you set it? Sometimes it would be two weekends, sometimes short, very short.

Yeah. Always started off very short. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And if, you know, you could, if you had success and things went well, then just like the rest of the state in the deer season, turkey season and everything, you gradually increased. Yeah. What was the attitudes like if, you know, in an area where.

you've done one of these relocations. Four or five years later, y'all open up a short season and folks get to go out and hunt these turkeys a little bit. How were they just thrilled? Thrill. When Mr. Benny shared this part of the story with me, I caught myself trying to get in the headspace of one of those county residents

that had watched or at least known about turkey relocations. And then, after five years, got to experience an actual spring turkey season. They were watching wildlife conservation and restoration happen right in front of their eyes back then. And seriously, how cool would it be to track down one of those mail carriers from that time period and talk to them about their job as an official turkey observer? Man, that is just too cool. Seriously, if anyone out there has any connection to someone who was a mail carrier at that time and helped the game commission back then, please let me know.

I would love to talk to them. 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. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. 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 backwards. 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. Okay, so we have a good idea about the actual process of how they caught these turkeys and released them. But I now want to move into what I believe is one of the most important and also really cool parts of this story. And honestly, enrolling the mail carrier's help is a good example of the direction we're going now. The Game and Fish Commission at the time was one small agent. To be able to carry out this turkey restoration at the statewide scale that they wanted to,

they would have to have help. Like I've said before, I'm interested in the relationship that we as humans have with our wildlife, and the impacts that we have never cease to amaze me. And this part of the story is worth highlighting. Probably the premier place that we trapped turkeys was on Friars Point Refuge, which is in Cajoma County. On the river? Between the river and the river. the levy. There's a family

over there. They're still on land over there by name of McKee's. And Mr. Ms. McKee set up about 4,000 acres as a refuge for us to trap and transplant turkey zone. Were these people

so they own this land? Yeah. And they set it aside they didn't hunt it at all? Nope. Were they turkey hunters themselves? I don't think so. What was their motive for I think that I never met Mr. McKee, but I met Ms. McKee later on, and they had such an interest in the promotion of wildlife conservation in the state of Mississippi. And at that time, we called them game wardens back then, but there was a game warden who's a conservation officer now by the name of Wayne Strider that lived in Cahoma County.

And he was very good friends with the McKees. Yeah. And he was instrumental in that refuse being set up, and he was also instrumental in catching, no telling how many turkeys for restoration in the state of Mississippi. Yeah. Very few people ever heard of Wayne Strider, but he, that's a name you should remember. He was a real good conservation officer. He was a better turkey trapper. and I got to know him real well

and spent a lot of time with him trapping and releasing turkeys I just think it's I mean I knew from just doing some research I knew a good bit of the trapping for relocation took place somewhere along the river I had no idea it was some private landowners that set it aside for you to do that

that's incredible that was the main place there were other places like middle porn hunting club catfish point hunting club They allowed us to trap turkeys at various times for restoration. And other private individuals around Columbia, Mr. Bill Walker, allowed us to trap on his place. And it was just a lot of private people that knew that they had good turkey populations, and they wanted to see them all over the state.

So really, it was a collective effort. Oh, yes. Man. Yes. I love that. Yeah. Oh, it's great. I'm going to once again refer back to the Fannie Cook episode to a quote that we pulled by Aldo Leopold

when he was talking about the wildlife challenges that the state of Mississippi was up against. This is what he wrote. There's one offset to all of these defects, a widespread and intense popular interest in game and hunting. In this respect, Mississippi excels any other states so far surveyed by me. Leopold then goes on to say in so many words that leveraging this popular, of hunting by using education at agencies was going to be the only way to maintain a game supply in the state. And we found out back in 1932 that they were seeing very clear lines connecting hunters and conservationists as the clear pathway to saving wildlife. Fast forward to the late

1960s and 1970s to win the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission, individuals like Wayne Strider, Benny Herring, and several private landowners such as the McKees who on the river property, the hunting club such as Catfish Point, Bill Walker, down in Columbia, and several others that I wish I could mention, and we're seeing this play out in a real, tangible way. If you've listened to this podcast long enough, you know that we focus on the impacts that we as humans have on wildlife, and we all likely know that we can make some real negative impacts. But my friends, if you don't remember anything else from this episode, remember this. if we turn our efforts for wildlife towards the good,

the positive impacts that we can make on wildlife and wildlife habitat are truly limitless. And if you want further proof of that, let's keep listening to Mr. Benny. I never will forget. In Lafayette County, you know, that's where Oxford's located. Yes, sir. At the time we were doing restoration, Lafayette County had tremendous habitat.

Well, all north-east Mississippi had tremendous. habitat but no turkeys. But at any rate, and of course, Lafayette County has a lot of public land in it, too, the National Forest. And so we would begin to do some release not only on national forests, but on private lands. And Haroldine Prestige was a conservation officer up there at that time. And he asked me one day, he said, Benny, you think that'll ever mount to anything? I said, well, Haroldine, I'm pretty sure it will. it's been successful in other places,

and all you've got to do is give them a little protection. He says, well, I can do the best I can do. He says, but now the hunting clubs are the landowners that's the ones that's going to give us the real protection. I said, that's exactly right, and that's your job to make sure that they understand it, that they are most important in this protection stage. So in about five years, he told me, he said,

boy, you were right. His turkeys ever were up here. So, you know, it responded that quick. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. I love the, I can't get over how cool it was, the landowners and the agency working so closely together.

Well, think of it like this. 80% of the land in Mississippi is private owned. So if we didn't have good cooperation with landowners concerning wildlife, we'd be in a mess. Now, you can do so much on public land, but when you only have 20% in public land, that's not going to cover the whole state. You've got to involve private landowners.

At what point had y'all been doing these restoration efforts did you or other people in the agency start to be like, man, this is really gaining some momentum statewide? Probably probably within probably by 7, 1977, 77, 78, we knew then that we had seen enough success

releases that it was going to be successful statewide. The habitat was there, provide a little bit of protection, and the turkeys will take care of the rest of it. Imagine how cool it was for all involved, when they came to the realization that it was going to work. I mean, really think about it. They had been on a mission to restore wild turkeys since the 1930s,

and now it's all coming to fruition. What was it like from you just as a turkey hunter as you were doing this to start seeing, you know, going out? I'm assuming that as the years went on, you were going out and hearing more turkeys, seeing more turkeys. Best feeling in the world. You know, it's just amazing. of course I began to expand my area of hunting, you know, Tala County, Carroll County, Montgomery County. We'd go to South Mississippi hunting, and we'd go to Georgia, and we'd go to New Mexico. And it's a tremendous feeling to know that you were involved in it in your home state.

But you also saw the same thing happening in numerous other states. Right. All over the United States, you can go to Turkey hunting. Yeah. Did you have contact with any of the other biologists from other states? Sure. Sure. Yeah.

We had, of course, at that time the National Wild Turkey Federation was formed. 71, I believe, was when the first meeting was held. And you went to a conference in every state in the southeast and other parts of the country had biologists there. And you rolled ideas off at one another. And you got made contacts. And then you got, well, you know, I believe I want to go to hunt the Rio Grande. So you called your buddy that worked for the Texas Parks and Wildlife and says, I'd show like to come out there and hunt Rio Grande.

Can you help me out? Most of the time, he'd give you a contact. Yeah. So, yeah. And it just, I got, you know, I've hunted Florida. Still go to Florida once a year. Oh, do you? Yeah.

That's great. Yeah. And so when he's Florida, Georgia, I've killed, well, I hadn't been goose or oscillated. You know, I've gotten to the age that travel is pretty hard to do right now. But I've killed, I don't know how many slams, you know. Yeah, sure, sure. Florida's eastern Rio Grande and the Merriums. I just love how genuinely Mr. Benny answers these questions.

It leaves no doubt about how he feels about this subject. He also pointed out a very important part of this story when he makes mention of the types of turkey restoration efforts and results happening all across the country. I know that we're highlighting Mississippi here, but that's just because I'm close to this story. Similar things were happening all over. The conservation history of the wild turkey in the United States

is one of the best wildlife winds that we as a hunting and conservation community have to hang our hats on. Which brings me to one of our final points with Mr. Benny that we just can't go without talking about. We were talking early on about, you know, you knew of three other turkey hunters in a county. From your point of view, how did you see the hunting community change?

I mean, because just from then until now, I mean, I feel like everybody's a turkey hunter now. I did not anticipate such a rapid explosion in the turkey hunter numbers. I did not. I don't know why I didn't because if it was so good to me and the two or three other people that hunted them, if it was so good to us, why didn't we think it'd be that good to everybody else? But as time grew, you know, you begin to see more and people. More people going, more people here.

You'd go to somewhere. You'd never seen her turkey hunting. There'd be a truck sitting there. And it just exploded. Yeah. Right along with the turkey population. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Which is really a good thing, even though it may be aggravating to us at times. Yeah. You know, as long as you've got people interested in something like turkey hunting, they're going to support it and do what it takes to make sure that it's there. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Because I know today a lot of thing, a topic that you hear come up today is, you know, people talk about overcrowding or too many hunters.

And I'm like, man, like you said, I know it can be frustrating. But if you got hunters, you got turkeys. Every time. Every time. They'll support programs to make sure that they're there. Look, I know the feeling all too well of a hunting spot getting crowded or pulling up to a gate and seeing a truck parked where you've never seen one before. and I would never deny that that could be frustrating. It is.

But sometimes it is important for all of us to keep things in perspective. I'm going to quote Mr. Benny directly here. As long as you have people interested in something like turkey hunting, they're going to do what it takes to make sure that it's there. While turkeys are proof of that, the attempted public land sale from last summer is proof of that, and there's a whole lot more proof of that in our country, thankfully. I want to round this episode off by getting Mr.

to share with us a good, old-fashioned turkey hunting story, one that means something to him, one that involves his friend Wendell Neal that introduced him to turkey hunting back in 1970. Originally, I told Clay I would give him this story to use on a bear-greece turkey story episode, but then I liked the story so much, I decided to keep it for Backwoods University. Sorry, Clay, you've been coppled. That's an inside joke. If you listen to The Render about the CBS special with Ted Cople, you know what I mean. Well, I've been fortunate.

I've harvested a lot of turkeys. I can tell. I've harvested a lot of turkey. I've been hunting them a long time. But, of course, the first one always stands out. Sure. Without it, you know, you know that. For anybody, I can't imagine how the first one is not paramounted.

But along the way, you develop some special ones. Yes. And my special one, the most. special after my first one was my friend, Wendell Neal. He'd been turkey hunting and killed a lot of turkeys. And he began to have health problems and he lost his hearing. And he could, if he was close enough to a turkey, he could hear it, but he could not course it. No way.

So the last turkey that he harvested, he went with me right here in Montgomery County. and we heard the turkey gobble and the big black swamp. We went off of a ridge. He was roosted over a beaver pond. We got situated and I pointed and told one of where the bird was. And he'd been to getting to call. And shortly the bird flew down to him and he killed him. Well, that ain't the end of the story.

That was as good as it gets right there. Oh, yeah. but we picked that turkey up and you know how you do when you look at him and admire all of the colors and fan his tail out and look at his wings and look at the beard look at the spur

he picked him up and we started back up on that ridge and when we crested that ridge he looked down on the ground and there was a perfect airhead letting there wow and he picked that airhead up

and he, of course, had a good friend that was a paleontologist, archaeologist, I'm sorry, and he carried it to him, and it was what was called a Clovis point, which meant that it came from Clovis, New Mexico, said he'd been traded amongst tribes, and he had that made into a necklace, and every time I saw him and he had that on, it clicked on me that that was the,

about the special of Turkey Hunts United States, That's cool. Yeah. That's so cool. It was great. Yeah. Mr. Benny, if you only knew how excited Clay Newcomb is going to be when he hears your friend picked up a Clovis point after a successful turkey hunt, do you know where that necklace is now? His winner still has it.

That's cool. Yeah. That's really special. Yeah. Some of the, I think, man, I mean, some of the closest friendships I got were formed over a goblin turkey. Sure. I understand that completely. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's just like experiences that you get out there in the spring chasing those birds that you just... You don't get anywhere else. No. Yeah. You know. And I just think, man, speaking just, I guess personally with you, I think about why doing these episodes are so important to me is it's easy. I mean, you talked earlier about, you know, if you've seen a turkey come in and you've hunted a long time, you can start, you know, even. even if you don't mean to, you can start to kind of take it for granted.

Right. Right. And so I think about the younger generations of hunters coming up, even folks my age are a little bit older, you know. We have it so good right now. As good as it gets. We have it so good right now. Well, it's pretty easy to take things for granted when they're good.

I know. And it's just important for me to try to tell the story of what happened and what the work that you and so many others did to put these turkeys on this landscape to where we can go to enjoy them. Yeah. And make these. You know, it makes me realize I don't know why I was lucky enough to fall in that gap where I was involved in it. But, you know, I couldn't have a better life.

Yeah. So you loved what you did. Ooh, with a passion. Yeah. Wayne Strider would call me, and I was living right here, and he was living at Reno Laura in Oklahoma County. And he said, well, I got something I think we're ready to catch, Benny. He says, but now we're going to have to get there pretty early. I said, Wayne, you tell me what time bitch you'll have.

It didn't make any difference. That was not an option. You wanted to go. I was going to be there. Yeah. And consequently, we developed a strong friendship because I was as dedicated as Wayne. Yeah. And he soon realized it.

You still, I mean, you told me you still go to Florida every year. I'm assuming you still hunt them pretty a lot around here. Oh, yes. Just most of the time, if the weather is favorable, I'll go somewhere. Sometimes I hear it Turkish. Now, I'm one every time. Sure. So if I don't hear one, I go back to the house and, you know, work in a garden, do the yard work or whatever.

But if the sun comes up the next morning, I'm somewhere listening. You can't help it. No. This spring, whether it's your 50th turkey season or your first turkey season, my advice to you would be this. Just be thankful. Thankful for the bird. Thankful for the habitat that they live in.

And me personally, every time I hear a turkey gobble this spring, I'm going to think about the people that paved the way for folks like you and me to be out there enjoying such an incredible resource. The Fannie Cooks of the world, Fox Hayes, Colonel Tom Kelly, Wayne Strider, Benny Herring. We owe all of them our gratitude. We really do. And keep that in mind going forward

and think about what you can do to help the generations of turkey hunters coming behind you. It's so important. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University, as well as Bear Greece and this country life. If you like this episode, share it with someone this week that you know is fired up to hear a turkey gobble this spring. And stick around, because if this podcast was a turkey hunt,

we're set up about 120 yards from one gobbling on the limb, but it sounds like he is covered up in hens. We're just getting started. There's a whole lot more on the way. 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 bag, and there was a full of blood.

Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. 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 dark. 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.