Bear Grease - Ep. 50: Turkey Tales

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast we’re doing something we’ve never done. We’ve assembled an eccentric flock of turkey hunters to tell their single favorite turkey hunting story. You’ll hear from the likes of Steve Rinella, Janis Putelis and Will Primos, but we’ll also hear from some backwoodsmen who ain’t been on the TV who’ve influenced me in significant ways. We’ll hear from Gary “Believer” Newcomb, Brent “Pretty Boy” Reaves, Moe “Mosely” Shepherd and the Brown boys hailing from down around Yocanna, Arkansas. Stories are an important part of the human existence, the oral stories of those we respect shape our lives. On this episode we’re going to let stories do. You’re not going to want to miss this one…   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.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. You see that glass deal right there? Yes. Mr. Will's pointing at a big glass milk jug, probably two foot tall. It's full of turkey feet, spurs and beer. Jugg of some sort.

And they're tagged. Every once in a while I'd go and I just remember hunts. You know, because you forget a lot of them. They'll jog your memory. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're doing something we've never done. We've assembled an eccentric flock of turkey hunters to tell their single favorite turkey hunting story.

We'll hear from the likes of Stephen Ronella, Janus Patelis, and Will Primos, but we'll also hear from some backwoodsmen who you ain't seen on the TV who've influenced me in a significant way. Stories are an important part of the human experience, the oral stories of those we respect shape our lives. On this episode, we're going to let stories do what stories. stories do, and you're not going to want to miss this one. And he said, I called this old big gobbler, and he said, but when that dude come in,

he said, he'd come in on the other side of the log. He said, well, I just wrench under that log, and he said, I grabbed him. And he said, the log was so big, I couldn't reach over and get him on the other side. And the guy said, my God, Doc, what did you do? He said, well, I did the only thing I couldn't do. He said, I turned him loose and called him around the other side. 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. Oral stories have always been important for humans. They operate using a supernatural technology that replays a moment that's been overran by time. The telling of the story allots it a second life, resuscitating it to transcend time and geography in the mind of another human. You can't tell a story to a dog or a horse and expect them to get much out of it, but that's what makes us special. The words of others shape imagery in our minds, and in many ways, it's better than actually being there. The storyteller has rendered out the impurities and the valuable details, information, and the takeaway of the experience is delivered to the listener in a neat, tidy package. That is, if the person is an efficient storyteller.

And stories always indicate the values of the teller. I'm always looking for where someone puts emphasis and shows what's important to them, because it will show you something about their insides. Well, that was a fancy way to say that if you like a good turkey hunting story, you're going to love this podcast. Turkey stories are different than any other kind of story, because there's always lots of action, hand gestures, ups and downs, and turkey sounds being replicated, told by the right person at the right time,

and the right company of people, they're hard to beat. I don't recall a better lineup of turkey hunters and storytellers than in this here podcast. We got them stacked like turkey beards in the cigar box. I'd like to invite you to sit back and enjoy a campfire with some people from my world. Every one of them I respect in a unique way, but they've all got one thing in common. They live for hunting wild turkeys. This first story is told by none other than Janus Putellus of Meat Eater. Since time immemorial, the South has been the cultural epicenter of turkey hunting.

But the burgeoning gobbler populations of the West are spawning some great Western turkey hunters, and Janus is one of them. The man can flat cover some ground and chases some turkeys hard. By my request, here's Janus's most memorable turkey hunt. and his emphasis might surprise you. Clay, here's my hunting story. My turkey hunting story isn't necessarily a story about me. It's more about my wife and where I got to see her experience through a turkey hunt.

It takes place in Montana about seven years ago, and we had gone out, we had just moved to Montana, and it was our first spring turkey hunting in Montana. I found a spot on a map. that looked good. We drove in there, set up a camp, started hunting. I went out first one day. She stayed back with the kids. I might even got a gobbler the first day. It was good. And so when I got back, I said, you should go out for an afternoon and just see what you can do. And she'd maybe been out a couple days with me, but very, very early in her turkey hunting career,

little to no experience. I sent her out with a slate pot call and a peg, some basic camouflage. she was looking at it more like, I'm going to go out and get away from kids and life and the craziness and just go out and enjoy the forest and the outdoors for a few hours. This was maybe 2 o'clock in the afternoon. She walks out of camp. So the girls and I, we go and hike a little mountain nearby. We glass. We go pick flowers.

Come back to camp. Maybe it's four now. Mom's not back yet. We go leave camp There's a pond nearby We go to the pond Try to catch some frogs Look at turtles

Throw rocks in the water Come back to camp No mom Make dinner Kind of postpone Eating dinner Waiting no mom We eat dinner

Still no mom Starting to get dark Now this is probably May in Montana So the days are long It doesn't actually get dark Until probably close to 9 p.m. So she's been gone

Six, seven hours now And soon enough the kids are tired, so I put them to bed. Eventually, it's like getting dusky. I have a beer, still no mom, no wife. Eventually, I'm like, well, I'm going to go to bed. She must have gone out for a really long hike, and she's just really enjoying herself,

so I'm not too worried about it. I'm just going to lay down next to the kids in the tent, close my eyes. It gets really dusky, and I'm just fading into some sleep. When all of a sudden, zip, that tent door zips open, and I hear like, Oh my gosh, there he was.

There I was. And I was calling. And he was calling back. Was that you calling? I was calling. And then he was calling. And then I think I spooked him. But then I went around the hill.

And then I called some more. And he called back. And I was making these sounds. And I was doing this. And he was calling. And I'm like, just waking up. And I'm like, whoa, whoa. Whoa.

What? Who are you? What have you done with my wife? What is going on here right now? And she'd experienced not only one, but gotten to work. two different gobblers in her whatever, seven, eight hours that she had spent out there roaming the hills of Montana looking for Mariam's turkeys. And twice had gotten to experience like the, the joy that we all find in turkey hunting that I especially love. And that's like the communication

with that gobbler, with that bird. And it just bit her so hard. Like I hadn't seen my wife so excited about a certain thing in who knows how long, probably since the kids were born. But she was so fired up, just like asking all the questions, what did I do wrong? I should have done this. And then she's hyper-analizing it and just the excitement of it all. And of course, I'm just kind of coming out of just almost being asleep. And it was all hard to comprehend for me at the moment. But in the end, we sussed out that she had been working a bird that had actually roosted. And it was on a nearby ridge from camp.

It was only maybe three or four hundred yards away. And she said, well, I thought he was there. I think he had roosted. And I figured I should just back out and then come back to camp, which is the right thing to do. But when she came out to the road that we used to access the hunting zone, so she says, I backed out of there, but I left a pile of flowers in the road. And if you take a left at that pile of flowers,

if you go down the ridge, you'll run into this gobbler. So the next morning I get up nice and early, walk down the road. I see a pile of fresh but wilted from being sitting out there overnight. Aerleaf balsam root, bright yellow. Even in the dark, you could see them from 50, 60 yards away. A pile of flowers, I take a left. Don't go too far. Sit down.

And as it cracks light, I can hear the gobbler start to gobble in the tree. And it was a classic hunt that morning. I worked him for probably whatever, in the tree for 15, 20 minutes, and then on the ground for another 20, 30 minutes until he finally committed and came over the hill and I shot him. That's the story of how my wife got hooked on turkey hunting and hooked on communicating with turkeys. I'll never forget being woken up by a excited, energized,

near 40-year-old woman after communicating with a couple gobblers in Montana. Good one, Yon. and you'll have to wait to the end of the podcast to hear the story of his main sidekick, Steve Ronella. The next storyteller is one of the best Ozark turkey hunters I know. His name is Mo Shepard and his family homesteaded in the Ozarks in the mid-1800s. There's even a mountain named after them. Some people are just turkey hunters and Mo is one of them.

I hope you've got some rain gear because we're about to get wet. Well, it'd been a rough spring. I'd hunted hard every day I was able to, and it'd come down to the last two days of season. I hadn't hunted in four or five days, and I'd go back up to my mom and dad's old place in the mountains. Anyway, I got a pair of that night before, spent the night with them. It started storming during the night, bad storms, just lightening and thunder and pouring down rain. I had my alarm set. I got up, and when I woke up, it was still just thunder and lightning and pouring down rain.

I just shut my alarm off. I thought, well, I'm going to go back to sleep a while. No more had I thought that, and the door opened on the bedroom I was sleeping in, my dad walks in. He says, what are you doing still in bed? I said, well, it's storming out. He said, you can't kill a turkey laying there in bed. He said, you've hunted all season, said you just well get up and go.

So I got up, got my stuff together and headed out. Got to the place I was going to go, and it was still raining and thundering. I sat in the truck for a little bit. I thought, well, I'm already out here. I just will get out and get wet. Turkey's got to make a living too. And I started around in old. and it was just breaking light and I thought well I don't know if anything

will gobble this morning or not in this storming like this and it was thunder usually they'll gobble it thunder and stuff and I hadn't heard a gobble or anything but I got the spot where I liked the hunt right there there was a little spot where two or three ridges broke down off the big ridge I thought well I'm gonna get right here and I'm on alhut al hooted and a turkey answered me I thought well that's cool there's a least one god were left in here at the end of season. So I got up there and got up on the hillside and got set up and made a few soft calls. The turkey answered me and I just waited and I waited and I waited and I never did hear him

fly down. A lot of times you don't eat. I was pretty close to him. I don't know just how close but I was close and I thought I could hear him fly down and never heard him fly down and it was getting pretty good light and I thought well I'll call again. I made a few soft calls. I didn't hear anything but I looked and I could see a tail fan up on the hill above me. I was in some pine country there up here in Ozarks and I got my gun up and ready and he finally gobbled at me a time or two and then I could see him making his way around towards me and it was still this whole time it was just raining down pouring down rain and thunder and lightning and then he kind of vanished and I thought well he's probably had enough of this rain you know and I sat there a little bit and I thought well I'm

gonna I'm gonna give you a few more calls anyway I made a few more calls somewhere or another he had circled around and he was back on the other side I mean I caught movement and seen him and he was in range of me then of my gun, my shotgun, and he started strutting in that rain, and he come right in, and when he got in good range of me, I just clucked at him real loud, and he stuck his head up, and I pulled the trigger, and I had a down turkey on the next last day of season, and I hadn't had no luck all season. Well, I got the turkey, and I headed out, and I went home, or back to my mom and dad's, and my dad said, well, that's good. That's a good deal. You went this morning. I said, well, dad, I wouldn't win if you hadn't got me up, because I sure didn't want to

get out in this weather. He said, well, there's one more day ever you going to go tomorrow. And I said, well, I probably will. He said, where are you going to go? I said, I don't know. I said, I thought I heard another one gobbling there this morning while I was working this one, but I said, I'm not sure because it was so noisy from the rain and everything. Well, went to bed that night, woke up the next morning to the same scenario. It was storming and rain and thunder and lightning again. And I thought, man, I don't know if I want to do this two days in a row. About the time the door swung open, my daddy said, better get up. He said, if you're going to get after another turkey. And so I got up. He said, where are you going to go? And I said, I don't know. He said, won't you go back in there

where you killed that one yesterday? He said, you said, you thought you heard nothing. I said, well, I don't know if I heard one or not. He said, well, you said you thought you did. That's better than the other place you've been listening to him. So I drove back over to the same spot. And believe us or not, I walked around that old road, hadn't heard a bird gobble. It was was raining hard, thundering again. I got the exact same spot where I heard that one in the morning before. I al-hooted, and another one gobbled, he couldn't have been 50 yards from where the one was the morning before on that same little ridge up above the old road I'd walked in on. In nearly identical scenario, he didn't gobble but a couple of times, I got set up, I didn't hear

him fly down. The only thing was when he finally got fired up, he started gobbling. He gobbled quite a bit. And 30 minutes of working, maybe less than that. He didn't come strutting, and he just comes slipping in like they do sometimes, just to ease him along. And I finally seen him, and he got within about 25 yards of him before I could even get a shot at him. And when he got in the open, I pulled down on my shot, and took that turkey. got him and that was two big, and they were both big times. I still got one of the last one I killed, I still got his tail fan and beard mounted in my house that I fixed myself.

That was probably 25 or 30 years ago. I guess it's been 30 years ago because my dad passed away the next year after that. Moe's story shows the wisdom of age held by his father, encouraging a young man to stay persistent. And you can take the values of that story to the bank. Most of the time, what makes a great hunter great, is simply that he showed up more than others. If you don't recognize the voice of this next storyteller,

you've been living under a buzzard roost. This is Wilbur Primos, telling about his favorite gobbler hunt. So something that's interesting, you see that glass deal right there? Yes. I don't know what year I quit putting them in there, but those are feet and beards, and there is an aluminum tag. It's actually a tag for a rose bush where you could, imprint on the metal it'll never fade away okay and they're tagged mr will's point that a big glass

looks like a big glass milk jug probably two foot tall it's full of turkey feet spurs and tea glass jug of some sort yeah so i would every once in a while i'd go and i just remember hunts you know because you forget a lot of right they'll jog your memory oh right right right was down in capy county mississippi and i got there this is a man who's got 18 000 acres got very successful industrialist was one of my mentors in life and I pull up to his big house he's there having a little bit of coffee he goes where are you going to go hunting this morning will i said mr hood i'm going to go wherever you tell me he goes well i know that but i wanted to know where you think you might want to go i said nope i want to go just let me tell you what there's a turkey up on the top of moss hill and we can't kill him and you can't kill him

oh my god anytime you give somebody a turkey you the name his name was mr moss because he lived on moss hill here we go so i said well tell me about it he said well tell me about it he said well you know that hill i got gravel on that hill because you can't hardly get up it without some traction it's real real steep he said we're driving up at the top of that hill we get up on the top and we wait till he gobbles and he usually gobbles two ridges over right below you said okay he said but he won't come i said okay so i'm driving over that spot and i'm thinking how am i going to hunt this turkey and by myself this is before the days of strict video truth series before the truth series and i went i'm on park 100 yards from the foot of that hill where that gravel starts and I'm gonna walk up that hill.

I started walking and the gravel was loud under my feet. So I moved over to the edge and there was so much, there's been oak trees and there's all hardwood and they were loud so I'm trying to go real slow and trying to be careful. I get up to the top of the hill and I wait and that turkey gobbles right where Mr. Hood said he was going to be and I went, ain't no way I can get that turkey. All them leaves are dry. He ain't going to come over here. I came up with a little plan. I'm going to let him get light. I let it get. light enough that I could see to walk. He's gobbling steady. And so I started walking to him. Shoo, shoo, shh, shh. I was scratching the leaves. He started gobbling nonstop.

He was hearing you and go ahead. Oh yeah, he's hearing me. Yeah. And I'd back up and scratch a little bit. Oh. And I'd go. So I got to that second ridge. He's right over that second one and I'm on the side. And I put my gun right there thinking he's going to fly down and walk up if he does come. And I sat down and I'd reach my hand out and scratch you and leave. Ain't said a word. Ain't yet one time. How my guns in there? All of a sudden I heard big huge wings.

He lit in a hickory tree about 15 feet off the ground on my left side, on the side of the hill that I'm sitting on and hammered it. And he's looking right down at me. Now I got my gun pointed right here. So he's to my left. You know, and I got my eyes cocked like that. I'm in a bind. I cannot move.

He gobbles again. He jumps off. off that limb and lands right below that tree. He's 30 yards from him. When he did that, I got him. Boom! And that was the end of Mr. Moll. It was incredible.

I felt like I was in a Western gun match out on the street. Yeah, yeah. You know, I had to draw fast, and I had to shoot before he did. But that was a wonderful rewarding hunt. Yeah. And you talk about your chest puffed up. Walk back to Mr. Hood's house.

You got him. And wait on Mr. Hood to show up and go, I got him. Oh, my God, I was riding out. Oh, man, you could ride a... That was putting on a clinic for hunting a pressured turkey, wasn't it? I guess. Doing things... It may not have worked another day, but it worked that day.

I'll be done. Didn't call him one time. And I learned scratching in the leaves because one day I was walking in the leaves, and I stepped in a really loud spot and a turkey gobble. And immediately hit me. He ain't just goblin. He gobbling at me walking in the league. Yeah, he thinks I'm...

And I stood there in that one position standing up, scratching with my... foot and I almost kill that turkey. I'll be done. I can probably find Mr. Boss's beard and feet in that big old jaw right there. Will's voice, accent, and passion just draw you in. His story was chocked full of insight and tactics that a young Wilbur learned long before he became a legend in the turkey hunting world. But one thing you can always count on from him is that he delivers the excitement.

You won't have heard of this next storyteller unless you're from the same town I'm. I'm from. Andy Brown is a name that has bounced around stories in my county my whole life. He's as good a turkey hunter as has ever walked these hills. Most people that are involved in outdoor media, if they're being honest, will admit that the vast majority of the best hunters have never been anywhere near a camera. And those are the kind of guys I like. Andy's son, Scott, is about my age and we've been longtime close friends. We'll hear from Scott later, But not before Andy tells about his first hunt in 1971 and then Scott's first hunt in the early 1990s. Here's Andy.

So growing up, my father, he liked to hunt. He liked to run dogs. And he wasn't a still hunter. And he wasn't a turkey hunter. And he wasn't a coon hunter when I was growing up. But I was fortunate. And I had a uncle and Uncle Ari that took an interesting. in me and anyway he was all the above he he'd be trapped he he he coon hunted and and he was one of the

first turkey hunters to kill a turkey in poe county i think in 1966 he was one on the list but anyway i was fortunate enough to be able to spend a lot of time with him and and uh listen to his stories of course as a kid you're bug-eyed and uh he could tell a big story he'd get a big chaw red man in a in a peach can and he'd rare back and he'd tell story and uh he'd rare back and he'd tell story and uh he'd uh he'd He took me on my first turkey hunt, and I think, Clay, it was the spring of 1971. Up until that time, all I had heard was stories. How about how smart they were? And, you know, Uncle Ari's deal back in those days was the best thing you could do,

once you call a turkey is just get up and sit around on the back side of the tree because he's going to come in behind you, you know, and you can't move. You know, you got to be still. But anyway, the first turkey hunt we went on was what we called. a two mile motorway and we got over there. I mean, it was double early and dark, dark and had a little old flashlight. And we got out and we walked back east or south there. It'd be south up the high line.

And we got in there and we pulled a little old mountain there and we got out on top of it. And I'll never forget him saying to me, he said, when it starts getting daylight, there's going to be one gobble right here. And I'd never heard a turkey gobble in my life. And so the anticipation was just unbelievable. And sure enough, when it's, It started getting just a little bit light back in the east, just right straight across the holler. There's no big and gobbled right out on top.

And, of course, I didn't know what to do. He said, well, we're just going to sit here until he flies down and see what he does. And so he taught me a little bit there about turkey hunting. He didn't like to call a turkey on the roost until he pitched down. And that's the way I hunted all my life. I mean, not to say that I'd never call one on the roost, but I wanted him to fly down before I really got excited with him. But anyway, the turkey flies down, and we go down there. and he gets me all set up.

And at that time, I had a 1,100 Remington automatic modified barrel shotgun shooting Super X shells number sixes. And I'll never forget sitting there. And he says, now I'm going to get right up behind you on the ridge here. And I'm going to call. And he made his own calls. He had a little old, he hollowed it out. He was a carpenter and had a little bridge on it and a little striker that he struck, he yipped with.

And that's all he did. He was a three-y-y-up guy. and shut up. But turkey gobbled, he calls the turkey, and he'd always told me, he said, now when they quit gobbling, you need to get to looking for them. I sat there. I was afraid to even breathe. I mean, the anticipation was, I can't even describe how the excitement was for me to just sit there.

And I sit there, and I sat there, and must have sat there for 20 minutes. Of course, Uncle Laurie never said another word on the call. in a little bit about 150 yards west of us, turkey gobbles. He says, come on. We get up and we leave. And so we go down and we set up on this one. He calls him. Turkey shuts up.

Anyway, we sat there and sat there and sat there and sat there. And about that time, the turkey that we'd been after to start with gobbles right back where we're at. There was two gobbers. But I said all that to say this, which I'm going to get into my story about Scott's first turkey hunting. That did something to me as a. 13-year-old boy that obsessed me with turkey hunting. And I spent, I neglected, well, in the

springtime, I neglected my family because I spent 30 days before season scouting. And I, I mean, I was after them. I mean, I lived and breathed. That's everything I wanted to do in life. And so with Scott growing up, I was a little concerned because, like I said, I didn't make it, I didn't make it fun for him in a lot of ways. But his first turkey hunt, we took off and it was probably, I don't know, half, three quarters of miles to the top of the mountain. So we pull in on the top and what we call the low gap and it was a fine, fine morning, nothing. I mean, got daylight, no turkey's gobbling. So we fell off the north side and went down through a divide into a little low, I don't know,

just a little high ridge lays north in there. And all of a sudden a turkey gobbles behind us back up on the mountain the way we come off. And I said, look you here. I said, we're going to get that dude, you know. So we, we, anyway, I got Scott set up. And, of course, you know, looking back on the way I did it, I did it wrong. I didn't put him, you know, I should have had him between my legs where I could talk to him. But I had always told Scott, I said, Scott, try not to shoot one walking.

I said, because when they're walking, I said, there's a lot of air around those dudes. And I said, you know, wait till they stop. Anyway, I got Scott set up and that old turkey's right there, gobbling one gobbles out west of us out there. I call him, he gobbles right back. and then this all of a sudden, here he comes. You know, just drumming ever, ever, crunch, snap, crunch, snap, crunch. And I look up and here that dude comes right down his gun barrel. I mean, just right, Scott's got his gun up and he's coming right down his gun barrel, right to him.

He just kept coming, and I'm going, shoot him, Scott, shoot him, and he just kept a coming and kept a coming. And finally he gets out there about 15 steps, and he just turns and he just walks off in the hall. get up and I go out there and I said Why in the world? Why are you shooting that turkey? I mean I'm double been out of shape about that you know And he says well dad you told me not shoot one walking I said well he's walking right to you you know

And I said that's okay This one gobbles over here And so we just immediately I said come on we'll go kill that one We just went and we went west of him Pull the top of the mountain got in above him And there was a big old log laid down right up on top Where it topped out there And there was a limb kind of went

out like this and I put Scott right between the log and the limb and the big steep holler and I just got over behind the log I called that old goburn man he just broke me off down there and here he come just crunch snap up that ridge well Scott's got his gun like this right here well when he comes up he comes up out of the holler right here well Scott just throws that gun up over that like that anyway that one flies off and so I ripped him pretty good like that and he's got his lip pooched out pretty good and you know I'm double-bent out of shape because he you know moved his gun you can't do the two big gobblers you know to make a long story short we never fired a shot that morning so so we go back to camp and anyway so we get up the next morning and we go south

of camp down in the ridges and we get down there and we get on some gobbers down there and and he's got that 870 and I've got him on a leg just kind of out from me there and I call all them old turkeys, and here they come right up that ridge. And about the time I'm going to say, let them get a little closer. Wham! And he kills the first one anyway, he killed his first turkey. I've got a picture of that, and he was proud of it. He was certainly not even more proud than I was.

But it's kind of neat to have kids that, you know, they've turned out, Scott's an excellent turkey hunter. I think he's one of the best there is in this country. He's very good at what he does, and I would like to think I have a little bit of that. but I was not easy on him as a father. Andy has one more story to tell, and I bet you're going to like this one. Does the frequency of this one sound familiar?

And just one more little story. I had a guy tell me one time, and he talked about a renowned turkey hunter down in South Louisiana called Doc Ryburn. He said he was well-known. He was supposed to be the best turkey hunter there was in that country. And I said, I was sitting in the coffee shop one morning. and says, old doc walks in during Turkey.

He said, Doc, he said, how'd you do this morning? He said, man, I killed a biggie this morning, he said. He said, well, tell me the story. He said, that's what I live for. He said, tell me what happened this morning. He said, well, he said, you ain't going to believe this, but he said, I was out there. He said, I'd lay him by a log, he said. And he said, I called this old big gobler, and he said, he just answered me right back.

And he said, but when that dude come in, he said, he come in on the other side of the log. He said, my God, Doc, what happened? He said, well, he just walked right on the other side of the log, and he said, I could look under that log, and I could see him standing there by me. He said, Doc, what did you do? He said, well, I just wretch under that log, and he said, I grabbed him. And he said, he was too big. He said, I was trying to get him under the log. He said, I couldn't get him under there.

He's too big. And he said, the log was so big. I couldn't reach over and get him on the other side. The guy said, my God, Doc, what did you do? He said, well, I did the only thing I couldn't do. He said, I turned him loose and called him around the other side. Now, that's a turkey hunter right there. That's a turkey cutter right there.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 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 Felps. 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. This is my good buddy Brent Reeves. He's a lifelong turkey hunter and a good one at that. This story involves some family, the saline river bottoms,

a tough turkey, and some mosquitoes. Now, this is a lot of, story happened over 25 years ago, but it was turkey season. It was going into the second week of turkey season. I'd already killed one, but my brother hadn't. And we always did everything together. We, we goose hunted, we squirrel hunted, we duck hunted, any kind of hunting, fishing, whatever. We always did together except turkey hunting. Turkey hunting was, it was understood that every man was on his own. But we're getting into two weeks in the season, and he calls one night and asked me what I'm doing the next morning.

I said, well, it's still turkey season. I ended up turkey hunting. He said, well, look, I need you to help me do something. And I thought, oh, my gosh, he's wanted me to help him work on something. It's turkey season. I guess apparently he's given up, but whatever it is, he's my brother, so I'm going to help him. I said, well, what is it? He says, I want you to come help me kill this turkey.

I'm like, what turkey? He said, look, I'm going to be honest. I've been hunting this turkey every day for 11 days in a row. In 11 days in a row, I have zigged when I should have zagged. He's done everything in the world opposite of what he did the day before. If I set up on the north side of him, he flies down to the south. For two days in a row, he'll do that. On the third day, I'll set up on the south side.

He'll fly down to the north. He's doing everything. He's reading my mind. And the only way I think I can kill him is if we tag team him. Will you help me? Well, yes. Yes, I will help you. And all the time in my mind, I'm thinking I'm going to kill that turkey.

So the next morning, I get to his house well before daylight. He's got breakfast ready. And we sit and we have breakfast and we drink coffee and we discuss on how we're going to attack this turkey. And he tells me then where he's at down in the river bottoms. So with breakfast at, we load up in his truck and down the road we go. Now where this is at is in the Saline River Bottoms in Cleveland County. There's a boat ramp there that's named after my father. my family's connection with that area and that hunting ground is,

dates back to when our family helped settle that part of Arkansas before the Civil War. So to say that we've got a connection to that place down there is a very huge understatement. But anyway, we get down there. We park on the side of the road, the gravel road, and there's an old dim logging road that goes up into the woods. And that's where he's been hearing this turkey goblin every morning. Two or three days before the season it started, so actually about 15 days in a row, this turkey is gobbled. Tim said from the same tree almost on the same couple of acres anyway.

So morning number 12, we're sitting there. Birds start chirping a little bit. It gets gobbling time. Nothing. It gets on past first goblin time. Nothing. No turkey's anywhere. It gets past flydown time.

Nothing. Not a peasant. So he said, well, let's go down the road to another spot. Let's make a big loop up through the woods. We'll see if we can strike up a gobbler. So that's what we do. We drive about a half mile down the road. We get out of the truck and we start walking. We make a huge loop up through the bottoms, up through the river bottoms. And we never find, or here in Turkey, we find lots of fresh sign, but we don't do any good. So it's now, it's after 10 when we get back to the truck. And we're just defeated. I just knew I was going to be the good. luck charm for that, but also I was kind of aggravated that I had wasted my morning to kill my second

turkey down there helping my brother in his futile attempt with this turkey that was obviously smarter than both of us. So on the way out, he says, you know, I'm going to pull back in and see if I can make this turkey goblin, old hickory nut, old tough one. So he pulls over on the side of the road there, I just crack my window to listen because it's dinner time. And for those of you that don't know, down here we eat breakfast and then we eat dinner at noon and then we eat supper. So now you know the time of day I'm talking about. So he

walks in front of his truck, he's got an old box call on his hand and he doesn't get to the third yelp on that box when that turkey gobbled out there and he couldn't have been more than 100 yards. It was so loud in the truck that I thought he could see it so he was so

close. And the look of astonishment and amazement and surprise and fear on my brother. brother's face when he turned and looked at me sitting in the cab of this truck was a look i'll never forget so i eased the door open grab my call and up the road i mean we are tiptoeing up this road this little old dim road to get away from the truck just far enough and at an angle that you can't see the truck that's parked there on the gravel so we get just out of side of that truck and we set down and our plan had been for him to set close and me to sit behind him and he to sit behind him

or at a different angle, and maybe I could, we could get the turkey working, and then I could take over the calling, and he would come on in to investigate, and then Tim would be close to him, and he'd drop the hammer on him. But this morning, since we had no time to prep, no time to get where we initially planned to do, when we sat down, we sat down beside each other. He is, his shoulders touching my shoulder. Now, we're staring out and through this little old bottom, and it's, it's a hardwood bottom, but there's, there's some undergrowth in there, and there There's some briar bushes and there's a few small trees and the leaves have put out pretty good. So while it's open, there still is places where you could actually move.

A turkey could walk through there and you wouldn't be able to see him. So my brother sticks his mouth calling his mouth. He makes a little old yup and the turkey gobbles. I mean, he's just wow. I mean, just right there. And I look and my brother says, he whispers to me. Can you see him? I said, yeah, I can see his fan.

He said, don't shoot him. I said, okay, I want. I need to mention that when we sat down there, the mosquitoes were so thick and in the grass on the edge of that road that it sounded like a covey of quail when we sat down. It was just constant buzzing until that turkey gobbled. And when he did that, all our attention was directed towards him, and I forgot about the mosquito. So I'm looking at him, and I said, can you see him? No, I can't see him.

I said, well, I can see him. Tim says, don't shoot him. I said, okay, I won't shoot. Where's he at? I said, he's straight down my gun barrel. I'm looking at him. Can you see him? He says, no.

No, I can't see him. Please don't shoot him. I said, I'm not going to shoot him. The turkey goes behind some bushes. I said, I can't see him. I hear my brother go, make a soft moan. He just went, mm-mm. I thought, dang, he's scared.

This turkey's going to get away. About the time the turkey walks out behind that bush, and he's coming towards us. Now, this turkey is 50 yards, and he's getting close to gun range, for sure. But he's walking towards us, and he's not scared. And the goal for this mission is for my brother to kill this turkey. I said, I can see him. He said, please don't kill him. I'm like, okay, I won't kill him.

I thought he was fixing a cry. Well, the turkey makes two or three more steps, goes into full strut. I said, can you see him? He said, no, please don't kill him. I said, I'm not going to kill him. Then my brother went, mm. And I can hear he's grunting. He's straining.

And I don't have any idea what the problem is, but I can't look over at him to see him because the turkey is within 40 yards now, and there's no way that he wouldn't see either one of us move. My brother keeps making that sound. I thought maybe he was having a stroke. I didn't know what was going on. But finally, he says, I see him. I say, can you kill him?

And boom, his shotgun goes off. Old turkey rolls over and commences to flopping. We get up and run out there, and he's got his foot on his neck, and we're high-fiving and hugging and talking about it. all the things that culminated in that hard morning to hunt that finally we're victorious and standing there looking at that turkey on the ground a big turkey too and i said hey that racket that you was making what in the world was that he said huh i said well we were sitting there beside one another you kept talking and then you was grunting or straining or something they just

i didn't what was going on he said oh man you remember them skedas back there i'm like yeah i do i sure do. It was at this point my brother described how a multitude of mosquitoes had taken roost in his nether regions and proceeded to give him a very painful one-way blood transfusion. He said it was

almost to the point where he couldn't keep the wagon hitched. Anyway, he did, we prevailed and we got the turkey. Nether regions? For a cornbread connoisseur, this was pretty diplomatic. You ever considered working for the United Nations Pretty Boy Reeves?

Switching gears. This next story is one of my personal favorites. It involves a tough public gland gobbler and some lightning. I'll be telling this story. It was late April 2012, and I'd been hearing a couple of birds roosting on a big pine ridge across a big holler from where I was hunting. I decided that I would look on a map, which I didn't have aroused, On X back in those days, looked on a map, figured out how to drive around there closer.

Then I went in the next afternoon, and I took my son, Bear John, Newcomb with me. And it was going to be one of his first kind of real turkey hunts where we had a gun and were actually on birds. I took him out of school. And we went over there. My plan was to just get within, you know, 100 yards of where I felt like they were roosting, set up and just call lightly all afternoon and just see if we'd call on him. Well, we'd get over there, set up the blind. I yelp a time or two, cackle a little bit. And I go to sleep.

And bears sitting there, and I kind of had him scratching on a slate call. And he's having a good time, got him some snacks and drinks and stuff. And I'm dead asleep after probably 30 minutes. And we've got probably two and a half, three hours before dark. And directly, Bear starts poking me and he says, Daddy, I heard a turkey gobble. And I didn't really know how much he knew what a turkey sounded like. And so I said, did you really?

Which direction? He pointed right the direction he thought it came from. Directly, sure enough. Turkey gobbles is just probably within 150 yards. I call a little bit of answers. I call a little bit of answers. And basically we spent the whole afternoon working this bird from the blind, and it came in just almost within gun range.

We never did fully see it while it was on the ground. And it gets dark on us, and this bird's probably gobbled 50 times. But bear sees the turrets. turkey fly up into a big old pine tree. And he says, Daddy, I just saw that turkey fly into that tree. And I didn't see it. And then I said, which tree? And he points out the tree and describes to me where the tree is. And, you know, I believe him. And I know the tree this turkey is in, which is a pretty rare thing in turkey hunting. So we go home that night and the next morning I decide that I'm going to go in. And it's late in the season. And these birds are tough, man. They just don't respond to calls. They've been

highly pressured, and I knew that to kill this turkey, number one, I wasn't going to call much at all, if any, and I knew I had to be very close to that tree. And so I had a game plan. I was going to get in there a minimum of two, probably three hours before the crack of dawn. The woods were dry, man. It was crunchy, crackily dry. And there was no way that I was going to slip up real close to this roost tree without spooking this turkey. So my idea was to get in there. super early, and I was going to get within about 200 yards of the tree. I was going to take my boots off, and I had some little booty inserts, like in a insulated boot, and I was going to put those over my sock feet so that I could walk essentially barefoot. And I was going to take

two hours and get basically within shotgun range of that roostry. And I was just going to walk, because a turkey, you know, they're up in a tree at night, and they're hearing deer, walk. They're hearing possums walk by. They're hearing skunks walk by. So they're used to stuff walking, but not the cadence of a man. So I was just going to creep in there. And I was going to be within shotgun range of that tree at daylight. Well, I wake up that morning that it is a fine April morning for killing a turkey. No wind. You can see the stars. Everything's beautiful. There's no forecasted rain whatsoever. I drive out there. It's about an hour from my house. I pull up. I walk all the way back in there, long ways back in there.

And I pull over the mountain to where I'm kind of in this turkey's domain. And I hear him gobble. I mean, it's probably two and a half hours before daylight. And I hear that sucker gobble in the dark. And it just kind of shocked me. But, you know, it's like, okay, well, good. I'm going to know just where there's tree's at. I'm just going to walk right to him.

And I go to taking my boots off and I see just kind of like a flash of light from a long ways off. that just kind of makes me jerk my head up. And I look again and I see another flash and I go, man, that's lightning. But it was so far away that I couldn't hear the thunder. Well, I pull up my phone and I was able to get cell coverage and I pulled up weather.com. And man, on the Arkansas radar map, there was not a single cloud in the entire state of Arkansas, except for a few miles west of where I was at. there was a thunderhead, bright red thunderhead, about as big as the end of a pin showing up on that radar.

And you kind of zoom in, and it's just a single thunderhead. And it is a couple miles from me. And man, by the time I pulled it up, I saw more lightning. And all of a sudden, I heard the thunder. And turkey gobbles at the thunder. He was here in the thunder, and I couldn't even hear it. Well, it's closer. And I just go, I'll be darned.

Here comes a thunderhead. Well, I don't sit there very long and I start seeing the trees sway and I start hearing the wind blow a little bit. And directly I see lightning and thunder real quick. I'm up on a high knob. Man, it was no time before that thunderstorm was on top of me. And the way I described it is that it engulfed that mountain. Wind started to blow, trees started to shake, rain started to pound the ground, lightnings. started to crack and what did I do? Man, I put my boots back on and I took off in almost a run

straight for that turkey. I thought, holy cow, what an incredible cover to get close to this turkey. And as I'm moving through the woods, I'm carrying my shotgun and my right hand and a bolt of lightning strike so close. I literally threw the shotgun and laid face first, on the ground and was just praying that I didn't get struck by lightning. I laid on the ground and I promise you, I threw that shotgun and laid there until the bulk of that storm passed by me. And you know how a thunderstorm is, you know, the peak of it passes and then it's still raining behind it, and it's a little bit less.

Well, as soon as the peak passed and the thunder, the lightning was kind of away from me, I went and found my shotgun. And man, I just walked right up. It's still black dark. still two hours before daylight. And I just walk right up to where I believe that turkey is and get set up. And I am soaking wet. My gut is wet.

But man, I am in the game. Well, daylight comes. Birds start chirping. Crows start crowing. And that turkey's there. I know it. I heard him gobbling before the thunderstorm. He does not say a word.

He doesn't say a word. Fly down time comes. And I'm not, I don't dare. or yelp at this turkey very much at all. But I put my diaphragm call in, and I did a cluck and probably a three-note yelp, and I put the call up. I was done. Indirectly, man, I just, and I knew I was so close that I would see this turkey fly down. I never saw the turkey fly down just right at about fly-down time.

I see that sucker as wet as a Labrador retriever that just jumped out of a river from retrieving a mallard duck. He comes walking up the hill, big old beard just swinging. And he was kind of skirting around me going up the mountain. And I kind of wheeled to my right just a little bit, never gobbled. And man, he raised up his old neck and boom, killed that turkey. Man, I have rarely been so proud of a turkey. And I went and got him and it was just a big gobbler. And I hiked him out of there, put him in the truck.

And I took him to Bear John's school. And I got him out of school. and a bunch of the kids from his class came out, and I killed what I called the lightning bird. But I never would have done it without bears' help of telling me right where that sucker was roosted. I'll never forget the old lightning bird. This next story, though, is from my dad, Gary Newcomb. It's important to know going into this that when he killed this bird,

very few people were using bows to kill spring turkeys. and if they were, they were using blinds, which is something that he didn't want to do. Here's old Gary Believer Newcomb. Well, you know, years ago, I don't know what, 10, 15, I had that Black Max Matthews, Bo, I'm pretty sure. You had your old green truck. You were in high school. And back then we had quite a few turkeys. And I killed, I'd usually kill a turkey just about every year.

And then I'd bow hunt. Bow hunt for turkeys. go hunt for turkeys. So I went out and had my bow and that morning nothing was gobbling. It just looked like a dead morning. And so I went in an area that I knew housed quite a few turkeys. And I started climbing a mountain, got kind of tired and I thought, well, this looks pretty good right here. I think I'll just sit down, take a break and actually set up, you know, I mean, not blinds or anything, but just sat on the ground and a place where I could actually shoot. And so I'm sitting there on the side of this mountain up against a good tree, which gave me a little camo, had some

brush out around me. And so I'd call, just normal calling. I'd call and sit there. And, you know, 15, 10, 15 minutes later, it was real dry. And I heard what sounded to me like two turkeys. And one of them sounded like a big turkey. So in my mind, I had a, I had a gobbler, big gobbler and a Jake coming in. they came in about 20 yards above me and they just kept walking you know they they walked to the west

you know i'm kind of looking to the north and uh they did it just by the textbook that was what's so interesting to me i mean it's like i figured this old gobbler was probably a professor he was teaching these young guys what to do don't come downhill to a call you'll get shot so they they go down, you know, out of sight. I never did see them. I could just hear them. And they dropped down to my level. And then the big gobbler just came in. The other bird didn't come. I don't know what the deal was. So I had my bow ready, had everything ready to shoot, but the birds coming straight at me, so I don't get a shot. Well, there's a log on the ground, you know, 18 inches tall or so foot. And it ran about 10, 15 feet running down the

mountain and there was a brush at one end but there was an opening at the at the top side up here so i'm sitting there and i mean this bird put on a show like i've seen very few times and he came in and he got to strutton but when he got to that log he wouldn't cross it just like the textbooks say so he started going up and down that log and i noticed is he on the log no no he's not on the log When you repeated it to me the other day, you said, on the log. He wasn't on the log. He wouldn't come over the log. He was on the other side of the log.

And he would strut up, which I didn't have a shot because he's looking at me. Then he had turned and he had strut down. And so when he made his turn and started down, I had a shot. And so I watched him do this two or three times. And I mean, he's close. I mean, he's 10, 15 feet away. So once I saw his pass. then as soon as he came up and he made his turn and I'm like this I'm full draw and then

once he started down that log I just shot his head off almost you know I mean it was pretty simple and so once I shot him I shot him right at the base of the neck and you know when you when you're shooting with a bow it's pretty hard to kill them unless you hit them just in the right spot on the wings or take the head off or something and I was shooting the big jack hammers one reason the hunt was special I mean I've got like all hunters I had a lot of turkey kills that were really special it and the only reason this was so special was that the bird put on a big show he was real close but also nobody was killing birds with a bow now when I

was off at a big bow shop I ran into one guy that killed them pretty regularly and And one thing he told me, and that's, I used that a lot, he told me that if you'll cackle real hard, they can be looking right at you and you can kill them. So I didn't want a blind. I knew a blind would work better, but if I couldn't kill them, just looking at them straight in the eyes, I didn't want to kill one that way. So I never took anything. There were times when I might throw some camo cover out around if it was really out in the open,

but almost never. I just like to sit in the woods and see if I could get them in close. So there were guys doing it, but not around here. Scott Brown is just a few years older than me. We grew up in the same town, and I've always looked up to him as a deer and turkey hunter. When I was in my early 20s, I'd spend hours listening to Scott tell turkey and deer stories

and describe in detail how game-used mountain terrain. I've never forgot what he taught me. Here is one of Scott's favorite stories. A friend of mine, Randy Stepp, had called me and said, man, I tell you what we ought to do on Wednesday and we're off. I said, well, I guess we could do that. I said, I don't know where we'd go. I hadn't been out. You know, I'd be going in the blind, but you could go to a place that I'm pretty familiar with.

We'd probably find a bird. He says, man, I'm game for whatever. So drove in here west of town, kind of accessed this mountain that I like to hunt from the south side. You know, we got in here extra early because it's a. It's a good 30-minute pull from the time you get out of the truck to the top of the mountain, probably. So we pulled in on, on top, and there was kind of a big gap in there, and we sat around in there till daylight. And there was a turkey that started gobbling on the south side of the mountain across a big holla out there.

Within the first couple hours of daylight, Scott and Randy move in on a bird that was a long ways away. He was gobbling every breath, but by the time they made it to him, so did someone else, and the bird got spooked. The boys were pretty down. I think we're both a little bit disappointed that that didn't work out, so we decided we were going to work our way back. So we pulled back up, kind of headed east, and I told Randy, I said, let's walk up this ridge, and we'll get out in this divide up here.

It's a really good place, and we'll spend some time. So we pulled this big ridge. It's just one of those places when you walk into it, you just know. It's just a beautiful place. Everything ties together out there. I walked in there, I said, Randy, you might not know what you're looking at right here, but I said, I know of a half a dozen big gobblers have been killed right here in just about in my lifetime.

I mean, this is the spot. We sat around there about five minutes probably, and I decided I was going to call. And when I called, a turkey just gobbled above us on the mountain, just like it's supposed to happen. And when he gobbled, Randy looked at me, and I said, Randy, we're about to kill this turkey. And he said, all right, what do we need to do? And I said, just get right out there by that big pine tree. Face your gun towards the mountain right there in those open woods. And I said, we are where that turkey wants to be.

Anyway, in a minute, the turkey hadn't said anything. So I thought I'm going to call him one more time, see where he's at. When I called that time, that turkey gobbled. And I mean, we should have been looking at him. You know, he's just right there. And about that time, I looked past Randy looking towards the foot of the mountain, and I see the bird fan out. And when I saw the fan come up, I saw Randy kind of skis.

down on his shotgun and it's a pretty good way is it's 50 60 yards through the woods to where this turkey's fanned out well i'm looking at a bird over 50 yards away probably and all sudden i hear i mean bad close i don't even have my shotgun up i've got to laid across my lap you know just kind of kicked back to watch the show anyway i said randy did you hear that and randy never said a word he just because the whole time he is looking at what he believes is the turkey that we're trying to kill here. And so am I. And about that time, just again, just close, really close. And I can't, I can't find this turkey. And I'm thinking, there's no way that turkey I'm looking at is the one I'm hearing. There's a big old bull pine tree. When I'm talking to one of them, huge pines about

10 steps in front of Randy. So this big gobbler just steps out behind this bull pine tree at about 10 yards from Randy's gun barrel. What had happened, he came in. to us right behind that pine tree the whole time and we just never saw him and when he steps out from this pine tree he's just right on top of us and course I panic I'm sitting there with my shotgun laid across my lap wishing I had it on my knee because Randy's out of position he's aiming at these other turkeys the turkey comes up hard to his right well anyway the turkey just kind of just kind of walks out behind that pine and then walks behind another big pine and when he does Randy's able to he did he did perfect he just stayed still

until the turkey got behind the next pine, and he just swung the barrel over, got it up on his knee, turkey walks out from behind the pine, hasn't seen any of that go down, and Randy just, bam, he shoots. And when he shoots, he just kills the turkey stone dead,

which rarely ever happens, right? So you shoot probably 90% of turkeys you shoot flop for a little bit after you shoot them. He pulled the cord on this thing. Look, when he shoots, the thing just falls over, stone dead. Of course, there's a big commotion and these other turkeys blow up and fly off and all this stuff.

So Randy's kind of standing there. And he goes, you can tell you just had this look on his face. He said, I don't know how I missed that turkey. Randy, you didn't miss that turkey. He's like, I didn't? I was like, no, that thing. He's laying stone dead right there. He's like, oh, man, he's, I thought I'd miss when I shot.

He was nowhere to be found. I thought he was just gone, you know? I'm like, no, man, he's laying right there. You killed him, you know? So anyway, we'd jump up and go out there. And, I mean, he's killed a dandy. I mean, it's a, you know, close to a 20-pound turkey. It had good beard and spurs and all that.

He's like, what do you want to do down? I said, let's pull back up on the mountain, where we started out this morning. So we pulled back up in on the main mountain, walked out across what we called the big gap. We kind of got back around in there. We got in there, and I said, Randy, that turkey this morning was about halfway down this leg. I want to call right here, and let's just see what happens. And, man, I put my call in my mouth. I called one time that turkey just gobbled big right below us.

This is about 11 o'clock in the morning. And I'm really wanting him to gobble again without me calling him. So I'm just kind of sitting there waiting on you gobbled. Well, he gobbled. But when he did, he was half the distance. In fact, he wasn't much out of sight from us. And so we just had to take what we had right there. Randy sat down right there.

I sat down. I got my gun up. And by the time I got my gun up, I reached down and grab my face mask, which was down around my neck. And I pulled it up over my face. And when I pulled that face mask over my face and put my hand back down on my gun, I looked and could see that turkey coming. The whole time he's in strut.

Randy immediately, he's like, I see him. And I was like, yeah, I've got him right here. He's coming right up the leg to us. He just keeps coming up the leg to us. Just keeps coming. Just keeps coming. Anyway, it kind of starts around to my left, which would be kind of east of me there,

starts around to my left a little bit. And the whole time, this turkey's in strut. Like, he has not dropped out of strut, even to take a step. I mean, he's just coming the whole time to strut. He's drumming good. I mean, the whole, he's doing everything you want a turkey to do. Anyway, he finally gets down here below us.

It's probably about 40 yards, maybe a little bit more. gobbles, looks right at it's kind of gobbles. All I'm really waiting on at this point is for him to get out of strut. He swings around there, swings around there, he just won't drop out of strut, and he's about to get around to my left hard enough that I'm not going to be able to swing around anymore. So finally,

he walks out there in the opening, I just cut at him a little bit. When I cut out he, he threw his head up big, just like you want. I shot him at about 30 yards, you know. Pulled the double. There can't be a better feeling than walking out of the spring hardwoods with two big Gobblers. Our last story is told by a young author and aspiring media personality named Steve Ronella

of Meat Eder. He just recently published a book called Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. You might want to check it out. You might be surprised too to know that turkey hunting is probably Steve's favorite animal to hunt and he's chased after a lot of them. Steve always has some insight and a good story. Here's Steve. Now, I like books. I like films. I like to cook. But when it

comes to, you know, physical disciplines, right? I'm only interested in one thing. I'm interested in hunting and fishing and trapping. Three things, but I imagine them all sort of bundled together as a single entity. Anyhow, I have kids. And so I put a lot of pressure on my kids

to do what I like to do. Like, I want to take them to do what I like to do because I am my best as a parent when I'm in an arena that resonates with me and brings passion. I want them to see like discipline, passion, drive, like manifest through the things we do. I don't care if, like, if someone told me, like in terms of my daughter, hung and tell a story about it, if someone told me that when my daughter is 25, she's going to like move to L.A. and open a smoothie shop, right? I wouldn't be like, ah, I'd be like, okay, good.

I'm glad she'll go there and do that, knowing the stuff she knows from the time she spent with her old man out hunting and fishing. I'm glad I armed her with those experiences, right? So it's not like a means to an end. It's sort of an end in itself. In the state where I live, a kid's got to be 10 to start hunting turkeys. I live in Montana, right? There's other states, a bunch of them, in fact, but this particular one has story has to do with Wisconsin, where they don't have that age requirement. As long as they're with their mentor, a licensed mentor, right, they can hunt whatever age.

It's as it should be, and it's up to the family to decide when it's appropriate for a kid to hunt. So when my daughter got to be eight years old, this is last spring, I packed her up and took her out to Wisconsin for the youth turkey season. In preparation for this, I'm pounding in her head that she's going to shoot a turkey. Like, we're going to call in a turkey. She's going to shoot the turkey in the head. And I get her a little break open 410 shotgun. And we load it with the stuff called federal TSS, right? Like tungsten super shot, right?

It makes it that you can shoot it 410, but really deal death on turkeys with such a small caliber, if you will, shotgun. to make it easier for her to aim, I put a red dot site on it. So we start shooting at targets and look like turkeys. And I load her up with game load, like a load that doesn't kick that strong. Not a very powerful load, right?

So she doesn't learn to flinch from the recoil and the noise. And we just train her up on that, aiming this little break open shotgun with a red dot site at turkey targets. And I'm like pounding in her head. Like, you know, you got to aim for the waddles, right? Aim for the waddles.

Aim for the waddles. And I make it in her head that the measure of success as a turkey hunter is whether or not you aimed for the waddles and shot the turkey in the head. And I even told her, everything else, everything else, I'm going to be heavily involved. But when it comes to that, that's your job, right? So we go out and youth turkey seasons come early in the year. And, you know, it could be like a snow blizzard, right? Because it's in April.

But we go out and it's just glorious weather. And we go out and have some encounters. And it gets to be late in the afternoon. And there's a couple gobblers just ripping up on this ridge line at my buddy Doug's place. So imagine you got like a gentle Wisconsin driftless area, valley floor. There's a creek running through the bottom. On either side of this brushy creek bed, you got cornfields. And then the cornfields kind of at the edge of the cornfields,

and then you enter mixed forest, hardwoods, pines, a lot of briars, grapevine, multiflora rows, right? We hear these gobbler's ripping up on this ridge line. And we go greasing up to the edge of the cornfield to where we can get some cover leaning on this pine tree. and there's one gobbler in particular going hammering up there. I put a hen decoy and then Rosie and I back up about 20 yards from that hen decoy and we lean against this big white pine. And we're facing the decoy and the birds are gobbling what's now to our left. We just had to put the decoy the clear, like the only clear kind of shooting land we had.

And this gobbler strutting up and down the ridge top just hammering. And after a while, it hampered. It hammers its way down to where it's, it's not to our left anymore, but it's like way behind us to our left. And then it starts coming. And eventually, I'm looking out my peripheral vision. And I can, I can like sense and see this gobbler, goblin and also drumming. And he's like, like right off to my side, man. And I'm just telling my daughter who's facing toward the decoy, I'm saying, Rosie, do.

not move. I'm like, Rosie, do not say a word. Don't talk, don't talk, don't move, don't move, do not talk, right? And I'm just pounding this in her head because this bird's coming, coming, coming, come and coming. And this thing passes us by, like, I think I could have reached out and grabbed its neck.

But then it's got to pass us by, but then walk 20 yards before she's going to become aware of its presence, right? And, you know, I could have just swung around and shot it, but I'm trying to, like, get a good shot opportunity for her. so the bird comes but get this too that rosemary is like shorter

than I am and she's in my lap so my view at my eye line is different than her view from her eye line my eye line is like crystal clear out to the decoy her eye line unbeknownst to me is just a bunch of sticks but this is her first like real close encounter

shooting at a gobler so she doesn't even know to mention it to me well this gobler passes me by and it gets to the decoy and this thing is like trying to assault the decoy right he's 100% fooled. And I'm telling Rosemary, I'm waiting for the gobbler to get in like the right position

where it's holding still. And I'm like, shoot, shoot, shoot. And bam! She shoots. And normally when someone shoots out of turkey, expect turkey just to pile up, right? But this turkey doesn't. This turkey kind of spins

and then lifts off flying. And it flies a, cross the cornfield we're in, flies over the brushy creek, flies across the other cornfield on the other side of the creek, and burrows into the nastiest briar patch you've ever seen,

to the point where it burrows into that briar patch and basically imprisons itself into briar patch. It couldn't leave if it wanted to leave out of the briar patch. So I grab her, we go running down, cross the creek, run up the other side, I am shoots the turkey again

and rather than it being like a triumphant moment for her she is just disappointed in herself because that first shot she hit it in the leg and she said once we got to analyze him what happened she said I couldn't see his head and you

said to shoot so I had to shoot and the only part that's the only part I could see and I said well why didn't you say that you couldn't see its head and she said you told me not to say anything. So I felt pretty bad.

And then I felt like I was trying to move the goal post, so to speak. I had so focused on marksmanship and hit it in the head that even though she got the turkey, which was like the result we were actually after, in her head, it was somehow like her first hunt was a failure because I hadn't said, our goal is getting a turkey. I had said, your job is shooting that turkey in the head.

advance ahead a year. Next year turkey season, we get a bird, comes in, and bam! Headshot. Bird just piles up. In her head, if you went and asked her, if you went to interview to her right now,

she would tell you that was my first turkey. And you'd think, but what about the other turkey you got? No, because I didn't hit it in the head. And I had asked her, this year after we hunted, I said, you need to write a thank you note to the landowner where we hunted and write him a letter and thank you for letting them hunt.

And she writes her letter and I read her letter and she's like all this stuff like thank you so much something's on your property and all that and she gets to the end and I'll paraphrase a part of this and directly quote her

the other part. She basically says if you really stop and think about it this is technically my second turkey but the last line in her note verbatim is but this is the first one I nailed.

For the first few seconds that I see a gobbler's red head bobbing through the timber coming to my call, after I've only heard him gobble, I am mesmerized to the point of emotional trauma. I continue to be amazed at how it feels like a gobbler can look into your soul, scrutinizing every square inch of your being. It feels like he can hear your thoughts. For a moment, you're completely out. of control. It doesn't even make rational sense, but it's at this moment we connect to and flow inside of something primal. Chemicals are released in the body no less addictive than crack, and then

the spirit, which science can't track, flames to red hot. Interaction with a wild place at such an incredible time of year, the spring is surely something special. The moment, however, is ephemeral. It doesn't last long. It either quickly evaporates as the turkey slides into the timber after a soft putt, but now and then the plan comes together and the big gobbler steps into range and you get to take him home after the blast of a shotgun or the release of an arrow. This happens so few times in one's lifetime that most of us keep detailed counts of its occurrence. We've notch knife handles, keep the beard and spurs of turkeys, we collect their tail fans. Think about that. How many things do you actually keep count of in your life? Like we said in the last

podcast, turkeys, especially in the southeast, are in a tougher spot than they've been in a while, and we're going to have to work hard to protect and improve habitat and be cooperative with our state game agencies as they begin to manage turkeys in a new era. Opportunity is key to igniting passion. And passion is the gateway to getting humans excited about protecting wildlife. It's a fine balance between allotting opportunity to hunters and protecting the resource. In the end, whatever we have to do will be worth it to see that big red-headed gobbler strutting through the timber and the April's yet to come.

Long live the goblin turkey. Hey, thanks so much for listening to Bear Greene. Do me a favor. Leave us a review on iTunes and tell the worst turkey collar that you know about this podcast and tell somebody about bear grease this week. I hope you finish out your turkey season strong and we'll see you next week on the bear grease render.

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. and there was a full 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.

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