Ep. 100: Spring Turkey Stories 2023 (Part 2)

on the rising tide of spring turkey hunting. It's time. It's early April, and surely every gobbler in America is sounded off in the pre dawn darkness, doing the limbs, strutting, drum tight rope walk dance every morning, pitching down with the business of love on their mind. The biology of turkey breeding is complex yet simple. We understand more than we ever have, but much is still a mystery. It's fundamental in its purpose pro creation. But to a human

the spring turkey woods can be poetic, even symbolic. A proud, beautiful bird strutting his iridescent feathers to the ladies literally puffed up, presenting his best self to the world, hoping to be appealing, maybe start a family. Isn't that the story of mankind? A gobble is an excited, hopeful sound fitting for the spring. And I do not know whether the sound of a gobble was made for the spring or if the spring was made for it, but goblin

turkeys create a rare intoxication for many. It's exhilarating to call, get a response, and watch a turkey work in the shotgun range, and to partake of this ancient ritual. The turkey hunter has the opportunity to step into the world he does not fully understand, and participate in it for short windows of time. It's a rare experience. On this episode, we've got eight storytellers, one of which is North Carolina

novelist David Joy. Jim ron Quest also tells us a Missouri turkey utton story, and we've got a couple of great Mississippi stories again. But also we've got some old favorite storytellers and Gary Believer, Nukeam, Brent Reeves, and Andy Brown. I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this second Turkey Stories episode. God, they're just so purty you know, some's coming up and kind of backled it through that

tail fan. It's just so per I could see it like it was yesterday and this has probably been gosh nang forty years ago. Holy smoke, that just kind of did the math in my head. That's that's been a minute. My name is Clay Nukem, 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 lived their lives close to the land.

Presented by f HF Gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Just this week, I killed a gobbler in Mississippi while hunting with two sure enough bona fide turkey hunters. You'll meet them next week on the bear Grease Render. We all three witnessed the same event from slightly different angles, and after the turkey was done flopping, we all had three different but very true stories.

What we all agreed on was the durned thing had an eleven and a half inch beard. I ain't even lying hearing the interpretation of the event of life through the eyes of another is extremely important. It's like using triangulation and navigation to find an exact location. He saw this, the other person saw that, and I know for sure what I saw. And you take all that and do some mental trigonometry, and you can come away with the

clearer picture of life on this planet. I'm not just talking about Turkey stories either, but really the importance of stories in our human existence. Stories are entertaining fun, and we learned stuff. But I believe this sense of entertainment, intrigue, or interest in listening to stories gives us a biological reward. The enjoyment of a story functionally like what actually makes you like it is a dopamine release in the brain, causing us to feel happiness and satisfaction. Something deep in

our DNA is scripted to reward us for listening. Think about that and to nerd out, just to touch more, just hang on, boys, and further convinced us of how we're all addicted to stories. Netflix, sitcoms, the news podcasts, YouTube, it's all stories. Human life could almost be broken into two categories, the stuff we do ourselves and then the

stories we're told about what others are doing. The good news, though, is that this podcast we're about to listen to has some very important stories, Turkey stories, and I'd like to invite you to sit back, relax, pay attention, and listen

for distant gobbles and drumming. These are good stories, like a big gobbler pitching down from the limb our first storyteller is none other than my dad, Gary Believer knewcom It's one of those unique hunts when things work out precisely, and I mean precisely as he predicted, and he has two very unusual guests witness the hunt. Here's Gary. Years ago and I don't know how many years ago, I went to a kind of a new spot. We all knew about it, but very few people hunted in there.

And you parked right on the side of the highway and you walk up an old road, keep getting high and higher up on this mountain, one of the highest places in that part of the county. And I got up in there and sure enough got a bird working, and I had my bow and I sit down. I was on the bird. Things were going good, and all of a sudden, somebody starts calling, and you know, I got my bow, so I put a lot of time into this. I found a place I could sit where you know, I had a shot if he came in.

It's a lot of work put into it. And all of a sudden, this guy below me starts calling. And the way this road is laid out, you can hear birds from way off, you know, I mean, the road's going up, everything down in this little canyon type deal, you can hear birds. So I'm working the bird. He starts calling, bird leaves. Never heard the bird again. Go back to the truck, and here he's parked probably five feet from my truck, parked right beside it, and he

came up the same road. So anyway, I wasn't too happy about that, but I mean, you know, it just happens. He might might have never thought anything about it. So I looked his truck over and got his license number. I wasn't gonna do anything about it. I just kind of like to know who he was. And I found him, found out where he worked, and I never said anything to him, because I mean, you know, maybe I've done

somebody like that. I don't know. I surely hadn't. But so anyway, in the process, I find the strutting zone and it's probably where I was setting up. You know. Once the bird was gone, I just got up and started walking around, and I go, holy smokes, this is a major deal right here. So I go home and have lunch and puddle around for a while, and I tell Judy, I said, I'm gonna walk back up there. Want you go with me. It's about I'm gonna guess half a mile to a mile walk on old road,

pretty easy walking. I said, we'll get our exercise. I'll kill this turkey and get my lab some exercise. We'll take Gracie with us. Gracie, you could take her to church and just go, Gracie, sit stay. You know, you could park at Walmart parking lot and go sit and stay in a parking spot and she'd come. She'd be there when you got back. So Gracie, Judy and myself Juju took off. So we just we just walked up

that old road. And when we got just to the point where I knew that Strutton zone was, I go, Gracie, sit and Judy. You know, you guys, get comfortable because this could take five minutes. So I ducked down as low as I could and started walking with my gun ready, and I probably walked thirty yards forty at the most, and I squatted down, and soon as I got to where I could almost hear him drumming and stuff, well I could, I'm sure, you know. I just stood up

and there he was. You know, I had a thirty yard shot, and that sucker he was up there strutting. He wasn't goblin, but he was strutting. And so as soon as I got to where I could see him, I just stood up. He saw me, and I shot him, and he was a big bird. You know, he was a good bird. He was one of those deals where you're pretty sure you can pull this off, but it never works the way you wanted to. Something always goes haywire, and there's so many things that could go haywire. You know,

this is a wild bird. I don't know. I don't even think I was all that shocked. I just, for some reason, I could just tell by the sign that bird he wanted to be there. So we threw him over my shoulder. Juju thought I was Superman and walked out. I loved the audacity of bringing your wife and a Laborador retriever and having them sit less than seventy yards from where you think of turkey's gonna be and simply

walking up and killing it. Dad strutted out of there with that jelly head thumping on his thigh, while Jude, you and Gracie must have thought he was the best turkey hundred in Arkansas. That's a good story. Our next story is told inside of the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leland, Mississippi, by the curator Billy Johnson. Billy has just got back from a hunt, and he's wearing some faded, mismatched camo muck boots, and he's sporting a dashing food

manchew mustache too melt the grin off a possum. He's got a story that will take us deep into Mississippi turkey hunting history. All right, We're in the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum this morning, and it's in a converted hundred year old two story hardware store building. And I'm sixty

eight years old. And when I was seventeen, before there were walmarts and all these cabellas and bass pro all over the South, hunters and fishermen would go to their local hardware stores to buy whatever they needed, clothing, ammunition, guns, And I was in here happening to be in here one day and a man named EO. Mitchell walked in and he sold turkey calls here. Mister Mitchell and his turkey hunting friend, Henry Milner, were telegraph operators for the railroad,

and they became interested in turkey hunting. And there was a country store out on Highway fifty one between Vaden and Winona, Mississippi, and a widow lady had the store. And in that store she had a turkey call that came from Montgomery Ward. And mister Milner would go out there and play the call, and this and that, and his time moved forward. Telephone lines took the place of

the old telegraph lines. Well, when they took the telegraph lines down, they were one hundred year old cedar poles, and mister Milner and mister Mitchell they got a lot of those old poles, and through the next sixty years they made hundreds of turkey calls using the Montgomery Ward pattern and using the gold cedar poles. In those days, people like mister Mitchell that sold calls would go out through the country to different hardware stores and the day

that I was fortunate enough to run into him. He pulled an old polaroid picture out of his pocket, and those polaroid pictures had that old black plastic stuff on the back, and it was all cracked and gone, and it was a picture of a mostly white turkey. And I, you know, ask him, I said, well, I got to hear this story. Well, come to find out he was in start from Mississippi. They had a hardware store and

they had some chairs sat up. People would come in, old, old retired guys would come in and they would whittle, shotten their knives and spit the back and tell stories. Well, the story was they told him about this white turkey that couldn't be killed, and that all of these fifteen or twenty people had been out there and tried to call a turkey up and couldn't call it and couldn't be killed. He said, well, if his turkey can't be killed, then you fellas probably wouldn't have a problem with me

hunting it. So one of them took him out there and showed him the ridge where the turkey roosted, and showed him the bottom where he flew down. So he surmised that Colin wasn't a way to kill the turkey. So he sat down the next morning in the bottom, and sure enough, the old turkey started sounding off. So he refrained and waited until flydown time. And once fly down time came, he took his cap and he went

like a hen, flying down. And he waited a minute or two, and he got a stick and started scratching in the leaves, when lowing behold, a big turkey pitched down and landed within twenty yards of it. He killed a turkey time. He got the turkey loaded up, got back to his truck, got the turkey loaded up, and got back to town. The hardware store had opened, and those old guys were in there, and he goes in there and he said, well, you boys want a firsthand

look at this turkey. Y'all said, couldn't be killed. Come on. I got him out of here in my truck. And those guys couldn't believe it, you know, And one of them spit his tobacco. He said, mister, I tell you what this is. Fifty years ago, he said, I'll give you one hundred dollars with a call that you used to call this turkey up. He took his cap off his head. He said, so, you know, less than thirty feet from where he showed leaves the picture of that turkey.

We now have the turkey mounted here in the Mississippi Wildlife Museum. Those old call makers, I mean EO. Mitchell's called Ruther Smithsonian. EO. Mitchell's mounted white turkey is in the museum, along with several of his famous calls. I was really impressed by the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum. If you're traveling near Greenville or Leland, you ought to stop in. It's full of big white tails, mounts of all kinds, lots of waterfowl stuff, unique displays from old call makers,

several turkey beard collections, and incredible photos. It's a template of what every state ought to be doing to document their hunting the heritage. Our next storyteller is one of my favorites. It's Andy Brown of our Saw. I'd say for certain this is a one in a million hunt.

One time I was having to work and we always had a turkey camp in uh in April, and uh, I mean we had a We had a big time, and I wasn't able to get off early enough that evening It was the day before season to go rooster Turkey. So when I when I get to camp, my my buddy Wayne says, I got you at Turkey roosted and he said, he gobbled, he stail office even I said round, he said, I said, you know where? He said, I know right where he's at. He said, well, we'll go

up right in the morning. So anyway, next morning we got up double early. Ridoran pulled the mountain, got right in on top and he said, he's just over on the south side, right here, And sure enough, just a minute he put in and he was just he wasn't I don't. I don't think he was over seventy five yards off the top. But all the gobble he does, he gobbled, he got one hundred times on the roost. And right there where we were at on the end

of that mountain, there wasn't nothing. I mean, it was open at the end of that right I only end it. It It was just opening there, and there wasn't no place to getting. You know, I'm trying to figure out where I want to get and how to how to do all this. So I finally get over on the north side about fifty yards that on the north side, got in a big old bushtop and in a minute I could tell he hit the ground because he you know how they do. He couldn't hear him as well.

I never liked to call a turkey on the roof, so they un till they dump off, because you never. They'll sit there on you a lots of times. But anyway, he hit the ground, and I hammered him. He right back at me, and you can tell here he come, and he come right up over the top, just like he's supposed to. And he got out there and he's in full strut, which I don't I just never did like shooting way full strut and neither there. But all the doing around up there he done, and back and

forth and back and forth. I couldn't get him to come out of strut. I cut at of me. Would he just staying strut and just back and forth? And I got a little antsy, probably, and I thought, I kill you, you know, So anyway I pulled the trigger. I shot at eight seventy pump At those days, two and three quarter super X number six is you know, I mean, that's all you could get back in the day. I couldn't drive at that dude, and he took off running and I shot at him again. And this when

he pitched a fly. There was a big canyon that laid west and I'm talking about a quarter and a half mile wide, maybe a half a mile wide. And I stood there and I watched that turkey sail all the way across that canyon, and he sailed over there, and he just flew in there on the thing and lit. So he gets up. He said, out of the world, you miss that dirt? Yes, I said, there a lot of air around him, was all I did, you know, But I said, I know, I've been out of shape

and shaking my head. And back in those days, I smoked, and so I got me a cigarette out and I wasn't shaking my head and saiding there, and we're looking across the canyon there, and all of a sudden, that turkey he just pitches out like he flew in, and he sailed right down that canyon south around down there. He flew a quarter and flew right into the side of the mountain there and just you know, you just

hear him flat there. So Wayne says, if you didn't hit him, we'll give him about thirty forty five minutes the way that and gob will go over and kill him. He'll cook put in the gobblin again. So awful mountain we went and we went down there and we hit a four wheel trail. We went around there and we got in there about where we thought he flew in and walked up on the side of the mountain there dug in and we probably lay there forty five minutes, nothing,

nothing beautiful more. And I told Wayne, I said, before we leave, I said, let's just walk up here on the side of the mountain. I said, that turkey. It didn't sound quite right where that turkey flew in the mountain there. And we walked up there. We didn't walk seventy five yards and there late that gobbler dead. I never forget it, had red ants on his head where the blood was coming. Just hit him a two or three shot. But that dude had flown the turkey was.

He was a half a mile from where from where I shot him. We found him dead, laying there just perfect. You just don't do that, you know, But we got him good three year old, I mean a good That is a wild story. What are the chances of finding that turkey a half mile from where they shot it after watching it fly across the canyon twice. Only Andy

could have pulled that off. Our next Storyteller is currently working as an undercover wildlife agent posing as my dear friend, trying to catch me doing crimes that I am completely unaware of. He seems to have really dug in because he's been at this with me for over a decade. He's always available, always ready to hunt, and always has

an unbelievable alibi and ridiculous backstory when he can't. Brent Reeves is a Bargreave's favorite, and he's got a good one from the Saline River bottoms of Arkansas with his brother Tim. You'll laugh and scratch your head on this one. This story takes place in the Saline River bottoms where a bunch of my brother Tims and I's adventures started and stopped. Turkey season was the one season that we

didn't hunt together a lot. Probably about sixty percent of the time in Turkey season we hunted alone because one hundred percent of the time that we hunted together there was some kind of calamity that ensued. Something happened. On this particular time, it was my turn to kill a turkey. And we had gone way down in the river bottoms before we ever heard the first turkey. We walked in way before daylight. We got in there and we waited and waiting, waiting, filing turkey gobbles. And he was long

ways off. I mean, it's about as far as you could hear. And we both coursed him pretty good. Knew the area well. My family had been hunting this land down here for generations. We got there, we took off for that turkey. We get about halfway to him, and he's goblin. We don't hear anything. We happen to stop at this big old deer stand. And at that time we didn't have any big tower stands on our where

we deer hunted. It was all individual stuff, just lean up stands, or we'd sit on a bucket or something. But this stand was big enough for two people to get in, and we were marveling at how much room that guy had up there, and we thought, you know, if we had one like that, we could sit together and make enough racket that we wouldn't kill a deer, but we could still be out there hunting and not

have to worry about skinny one. But while we were sitting there marveling at this wonderful tower stand, this guy had a turkey gobbled fifty yards from where we were, and both of us hit the ground like, oh my gosh, we're caughting the balled open. But there was a thicket right behind that deer stand and where that turkey gobble. And I yelled twice on a call, and that turkey gobbled and came straight to me. And I'm looking through

this thicket. My brother's sitting right there. We're leaned up against each other because we're not we're in the balled open, not against a tree nothing. I'm leaning against him, he's leaning against me. And I am looking through this thicket and I can see a hole, and I can see

that turkey coming. And when he gets to that twenty five yards, I guess to the edge of that thicket, I said, I see him boom, and I cut it loose and the turkey started flopping, and then the turkey started running, and I got up and took off running after him, and I got hung up in all them briars and stuff, and I was fighting through that thing like a buzz saw, and finally got on the other side and leaped and jumped on that turkey and caught him, and my brother knocked him in the head with a

pine knot, and we always called that the story of the time that I shot a turkey but Tim killed it. So we were congratulating each other and talking about this big, fantastic hunt that had just happened and how surprised we were. And we heard that turkey gall that we had heard originally, and he was right where we had said he was, and we were about half a mile from him. So with one turkey dead, I threw that one over my show older and me and my brother take off. It's

gonna be his time. Were getting within less than a quarter of a mile, and the turkey gobbles again, and we got up to the edge of this big old flat, big old oak flat, and he usually had a lot of water in the springtime, but this time it didn't, and it was wide open bottom land. There was nothing but huge oak trees and grass had grown in there.

It absolutely looked like a park. And across this way here, this thing was probably one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards across, and on the other side of that slough, just this flat. When we sat down, turkey gobble. He was just out of sight. So my where this thing was that the land went down like three feet into this flat. There was no place for me to hide other than there was an old stump right there behind

where my brother was gonna sit down. I laid down beside it, laid that turkey down beside me, and Tim went right over the edge of that flat, so he had that high bank behind him, and he was six feet in front of me. He called to him. The turkey answered and immediately popped up on the other side. Now he's one hundred and fifty yards away, in full strut. He starts walking towards us. Light was shining in there,

like a spotlight on the stage. It was like this turkey was on Broadway, and we had the best seats in the ass. And I am right over my brother's left shoulder. That turkey take five or six steps, stopped, strut and gobble, and he did this till he got to eighty yards, and it took him three or four minutes to go that far. He was the boss. He wasn't worried, he wasn't in a hurry. He was running

this whole show. And at eighty yards, he stopped and gobbled, and when he come out of strut and started to take a step, I heard my brother click his safety off and I thought, well, that's a little premature. And about that time he let that eight seven to go. That turkey jumped about fifteen feet off the ground, hit the ground, gobbled, turned around and strutted and gobbled the plum out of sight. Why my brother did that, I don't know. Why he shot at him at eighty yards

when he was coming to us on a string. I mean it was like he was on rail and coming straight to us. And why he did that, I don't know. He never turned around, he didn't say anything. He took a cigarette out of his pocket as he began to light it. I said hey, and he held his hand up. He never turn around and looked at me. He said, give me a minute. So I just set back there, reliving everything that was going on while he smoked half

his cigarette. He wouldn't never smoke the whole thing because he said he saw a commercial when he was like fifteen years old and Tony Curtis was talking, was advertising some kind of cigarettes, and he said, only smoke half because the laft half is the part that kills you. So my brother, my brother at that time when he smoked, he was only smoke half a cigarette, so I knew it wouldn't be long and I would get an explanation

on what had happened. So when he got half of that cigarette smoke, I saw him look down beside him and there was a crawfish hole there, and he poked that lit cigarette down in that hole and covered it up. He stood up and he said, let's go. So I picked that turkey up and we started walking back to the truck. And we were a mile from the truck, and we walked half of that distance and nobody had said a word. We were walking side by side and I was toting that turkey and he was just walking.

And at half a mile he looked over at me and said, hey, you want me to tote that turkey. It's bound to be getting heavy. And I took two or three steps and I said, now to him, it ain't near as heavy as that loads you're toting. And he started laughing and I started laughing. And we never did figure out why he shot at that turkey when it was so far away. As far as I know, that turkey is still living. That's just how it happened. It ain't near as heavy as the load you're toting.

That's good, Brent. Our next story is told by Mississippi author Robert Hittneil Junior. He wrote a very successful book in nineteen ninety called The Jakes. It's about a young boy growing up in the South and it involves some turkey hunting. On the last episode, mister Neill told us about the flaming turkey hunter. He'll now tell us about his first turkey hunt on the Mississippi River that involves

some lightning and a skunk. I'm gonna tell you about my first turkey that I killed was on Montgomery Island sixty five years ago. I was fifteen years old and Montgomery is where the White River splits around Montgomery Island coming into the Mississippi River. That's where we would go, and there was a big hunting club up there by. Daddy was in it Oxam, and we had turkeys on

that island when hard to anybody else had turkeys. We got up real early and Montgomery's two islands, but my daddy and Curry Holland were going over to the Big Island and I wanted to hunt the little island fifteen years old, and so they had a longer trip than I did. So we left the Kevin and they dropped me off into flat black dark, and when they let me out of the jeep, you could see lightning flashes

back in the west. And Curry said, I've always heard that turkeys will gobble when it thunders, so you listen for that. Said, okay, So I walked on off and they took off in the jeep. So went down there and God situated, and I like to stick a few little Papa branches or something up in front of me, break the out line, you know, a base of a

tree sitting there below a big pecan tree. And the lightning got closer, and you started to hear a little bit of rumble of thunder, and it's just black dark, and I sniffed something that and then a lightning flash hit and there was a skunk there was about ten steps in front of me that was monking around in a little brush pile there. He hadn't released his scent, but you can smell a skunk if he's round. So I just bed real still and hoped he'd move on off.

Before it got daylight, and I was going to turkey call and all that kind of stuff. And the storm got closer, and the lightning flashes came more frequently, and I could see the skunk right there in front of me. And then the storm got close enough to where all of a sudden, there was this tremendous clap of thunder and lightning, and a turkey gobbled right there in the next tree, over another big pecan tree. Of course, it's

dark except for the lightning flashes. I can't see the turkey, but every time it would thunder, he would goble right there over me. And there's a skunk right there in front of me, between me and the turkey. And so as it got a little bit more lighter, still hadn't rained yet, the storm still hadn't broken, still lightening and still thundering. I can see the turkey, and he's strutting on this limb. Nobody's called yet or anything, because it's

not even light enough to really see well. And the turkey's just, you know, pop into a strut and walk a few steps on the big limb, and he'd look over and the skunk was still right there in front of me. I'm shooting a milele thirty one Remington shotgun with a thirty two inch full choked barrel on it. I got my gun up and the thirty two inch barrel is almost over the skunk. He's still rooting around in the brush top. And the next time it lightened good,

the turkey's there, and I boom and shot. The turkey fell. I jumped up and jumped over the skunk, and he flooded the woods behind where I'd been sitting and missed me. And so I got to the turkey. He was dead as a hammer. He had like a twelve inch beard, huge gobbler, one of the largest I've ever killed. And the skunk left deaf, probably, and the turkey was just beautiful.

And then here came the rain. But I had my rain suit rolled up there, and I took the rain suit out, shook it out, and I wrapped that beautiful gobbler up in my rain suit, and I walked back to the cabin three quarters of a mile in the pouring rain without a rain suit on. That turkey didn't get a feather wet on him. That turkey didn't get a feather wet. Now that's a good story, And I don't blame a fifteen year old in the mid nineteen fifties in the least for shooting a turkey in a

tree when lightning flashed. Actually, in many states there's no law against shooting in the roost as long as it's past legal shooting light. And I'm certain with a thunderstorm rolling in it made shooting light exceptionally dark. Our next storyteller is very well known in the waterfowl world and even in the beargrease world because he's been on here several times. But he loves turkey hunting about as much as he loves Mallard ducks. I've noticed that people only

say good things about Jimbo ron Quest. Here he goes with the Missouri turkey story about him his dad, A fine spring morning and another skunk. My dad was my favorite turkey hunting buddy for years and years. Grew up hunt turkey him with dad. Dad was a really good woodsman. That's a picture him right there behind me, and that's how he liked to be to carrying the dead turkey with his camouflage coverall was on. So we had been hunting some we had place up in Zury. We love

to hunt. Of course, I know, you spend a lot of time in the woods in the dark, and you get used to seeing things, so you get used to your surroundings. I'm sure if you're walking up an old road, if there's something that wasn't there yesterday, you probably recognize that. Seeing. Dad wouldn't let you wear, you know, no kind of flashlight. You might have a little pen light that you'd had to shine through your fingers, you know, so you can see.

So we're easing up this road and just one of them perfect April mornings, you know, it's clear, it's cool, turkeys hadn't started gobbling yet. And we're going down this road and look up there and I see something in the road and I'm like, what the heck is that? And we step a little bit more in about that time, my dad's shoving me out of the way. And DA's pretty good sized, felt and at that time I was I was a lot rounder than what I am now,

and he's shoving me out of the way. And back that time, I could smell scump and I started laughing when I realized that he got sprayed all over his left side. And I kind of seen those scump throw its tail up and take off to like, oh man, And I was laughing and puking and gagging. You. Yeah, I'm dad in this incidence had kind of blocked me, so that helped a whole lot, but I still got a pretty good dose of it. So backing up, we get rid of the scump, but things settled down and

we hear a turkey goblin. Dad always said you needed to be where you wanted to listen from an hour before daylight, and we were pretty early, you know, but it was get starting to get light, so we had to get up crawled under a fence. So he ease up there and Dad's holding a fence and I'm trying to crawl through it and my best hung at bottom, staying of bob ward and I'm hung up and the fence made a bunch of racking. I'm like, oh god, name, we're gonna focus turkey. What we get to him? Well,

I kind of give it. He gets me unhooked and I grabbed the fence. Dad gets underneath it and we ease down there and we finally get set. It's still dark, turkeys ain't flew down yet, but they're gobbling dude, So we get set. You hear Old Turkey from him. I've got to look and I can say it, old white headed we chips here now, Bob Old Turkey finally dipped at him, just barely on the tree, got him thinking our direction. Sucker flew down, and he flew down. He

kind of hit lit underneath the ridge. There's old old dam road right there. I knew he said he hit the ground. You can hear him shuffling them leaves and drumming gobble hard. Wow. Okay, and I not quite got shakes, but I know he's coming. You know, I got my gun on my knee. He's up there in full strut and just god, they're just so purty. You know. Some's coming up and kind of backled it through that tail fan.

It's just so prey. I can see it like it was yesterday, and this has probably been gosh dang, forty years ago. Holy smokes. That just kind of did the math in my head. That's that's been a minute. Anyway. He finally stuck his head up shout it's cool deal. He flopped out. Man, We high five not again. Like I told you, Dad and I loved hunt together. It was a big time so we snatch him up. I've told Dad that he smelled like skunk and he skunk bad,

and he's all right, let's go find another one. So we hung that one up in a tree because we was going on a pretty good hook up from here. They'd like to walk, but we'd heard other turkeys way down, so we went and made another set and struck another turkey and got set to him and just one, you know, mid morning, seven thirty hunts, you know, gott and cant yepping at him. Here he comes, and old turkey would stop and strut and stop and strut, and you know, decos and that, and you just try to get into

woods and hide somewhere. We're made that God to look for the hen. You know, I think a lot of people have lost that nowadays. We've gotten used to using d coos and hunting fields or pastors. If you think about when you set up in the woods, set up where that God has got to come look for that hen that he just can't see her from wherever he's at in open woods. And Dad was good about that. So another fantastic hunt, just the kind of morning you

live for Old Turkey's drumming. It's damn there is. And he was just milking it, you know, And I'm aunty. Dad choosed to turkey. So we've killed two long berridges this morning. So we had we high five and do all that stuff. And I'm tolding the turkey because I'm I'm the kid. So I told the turkey, we go find my turkey, go get the truck. We get in the truck and we get there. And at that time in my life, I tried to keep my truck pretty clean. I was a kid, and I had the inside. I'll clean.

I said, Dad, you can't worry them coveralls up in my truck. I can't be having the inside of my truck smell like scump. So he throwed him into tool box. And at that time, we you know, in Missouri, had to go to a check station and physically go take the bird and check it in and get somebody. So we're thinking, man, have a have a honey bun and a cup of coffee or something or coke. Bigod were walking this store and this lady worked behind the counter.

We no more walked in. I mean we didn't look around. She didn't say in a hip you do you need to check a turkey. She throwed her head up like somebody put a spotlight on her. She said, I don't know which one of you two got that skunk piss on, but get the heck out of my store. So that that was. That was one I will always remember. She did check the turkeys, but she said, y'all stay outside, I'll come out there. And we lost dad in March

of twenty twenty. And I remember we was laying when we was watching turkey hunting videos or something, and he talked, he'd always want to talk about that. That's a good story, Jimbo love it. Our next storyteller you'll be familiar with because it's old Moe Shepherd. I always learned something listening to Moe talk about these Ozark pub the land turkeys, even if he won't tell me where he hunts. Here's mold Well, I've got a pretty good turkey story. And

all I'll say is perseverance and don't give up. That'll kill you more turkeys than a lot of fancy calls or anything else. Just stay after him. This story begins on an evening in about twenty twelve. I was hunting in those dark mountains again on public land I'd hunted several days but hadn't had any luck. I mean, i'd heard a few birds, but I don't think i'd even call one in and gun range. I mean that season that you're ended. On a Tuesday. I hunted that weekend.

It didn't even hear a bird. But I side, well, you can't give up. I've got vacation i'm taking. I'm gonna take the last two days and hunt. Well. I get up that Monday morning, the temperatures dropped about forty degrees. It's about thirty five degrees, and this is like the second or third or fourth day of May, and the wind is blowing. Well, I go to a place where i'd heard some turkeys back earlier in the season, hunting there all morning. Don't hear a thing. It's boy, I've

wasted my vacation. Birds ain't goblin. I thought, well, i'm out here. I'd as well stay after it, so I ate me a little lunch. I thought, well, I know a place I'm gonna go. I hadn't even been in here this year, but I've killed turkeys in here in the past. It's a long walk from where you can park and get to It's a big, long mountain. It's got a big saddle on it, and two knobs on each side of that saddle, and it's got finger ridges runs off of that each of those knobs. It's a

great place to turkey hunt. I'm not gonna tell you where that's at. That's one of my secrets. But anyway, I decided to go up there that afternoon, so I took off walking, started walking up a long finger ridge to one of those knobs. I thought, we'll all making my way up this long ridge through the saddle, up on the second knob, and then come back off of it on a long ridge, and that'll make a good evening hunt. Well, I went all up its long ridge. Took me a probably an hour and a half or

so to get up in there. Up on top of that knob. Hadn't heard nothing to wind, still a howling and the blowing. So I'm calling a little louder and and more frequent than I like to, but sometimes you have to do that when the winds blowing. And well, I still didn't hear anything like, well, I'm gonna go through this saddle. Maybe the wind will be a little calmer in that saddle. So I got in that saddle. I was wrong about that. The wind was worse than

the saddle. It was whipping around. There was a knob and just whistling. I thought, well, this ain't no good. I thought, I'm not gonna get up on that knob. I'm gonna go around the side that knob and get on that finger ridge over where. I made my way around over there, called if you tidy, didn't anything. Got on that ridge there, and it really look pretty. There were some fresh scratchings in there. I thought, these turkey's in here, they just ain't say anything. So I'm just

gonna sit down here. So I got situated in there against a big old tree and started calling. And I don't know, I probably sit there thirty forty minutes, and I just fixed the get up, and I thought, I believe I heard a gobble down. Blow me in the hollow right, blow me there. So I settle bit and I called again. It's short enough, it was. I heard a turkey gobble, so I called in. Didn't hear nothing. Called again after five or six minutes, didn't hear anything.

I thought, well, maybe it can't hear me, you know, because it's winds a howling. So I don't mere if I cut or cackle or this yep loud or what I did and ride over the break from me just I mean got after it. So I got all excited and got ready, and I looked, and here comes two big red heads. It was two gobblers, two big my tree gobblers. And here in Arkansas we're only allowed one per day. Anyway, I just called and messed around and

final him. One of them got in a good place down a rank right shoot and I shot, took him down and the other and flew off down the canyon just out of sight. This was about probably five five thirty in the afternoon. I was tickled to death. I went down there and looked at my gobbler and thought, man, it paid off to come back in here and hunt, even though I hadn't been in there this year, because this has already been a good spot for me, and

took vacation his last next last death season. I got thinking, there's one more Dad Turkey season. I thought, why would I want to go anywhere else? I'm ass spooked him by shooting, But so what I know, there's a gobbler and here. If I'm interesting next morning, maybe I can get him. So I carried my turkey out, got back in my truck, went home, slept what little I could during the night, got up the next morning. It was same way, cold, wind blowing. I thought that turkey's up there,

somewhere off that long ridge down and there. Got about halfway up to that knob up there, and I hooted, and that dude gobble. He was right on top of that knob, up bearing all that wind. So I made my way up there. Within I wasn't at the same tree, but I was probably within thirty forty yards or where I killed that one day, evening four and it was starting to break light. He'd gobbled several times while I was walking up that way. He was still up on

the hill above me. I thought, I'm gonna set up right here, even though if that's the one that was here yesterday. And then he thought there was a hen up here because they were coming. So I sat down there and way a little bit of hurt him gobble again. It was getting light. I made a few soft yelps, tree ups, and a couple of clucks. He answered me back. I just shut up and just got my gun ery and set there, and the women was blown, so I

never heard him fly down. Probably ten minutes. I looked, and I've seen a tail fan right out there, right above me on the hillside there. I just got ready, and he just strutted his way right down about twenty five yards from me before I got it open him to shoot at him and took him down. Another nice, big,

old material, longbearded gobbler. And I asked, part of the moral that story is that I'd hunted all season, hadn't heard many turkeys or anything, but I love the turkey hunt, and I decided to take off and hunt those last two days. Patience and persistence will bid you a lot of turkeys out in those woods. It's hard to be the guy that just won't give up. We've all had

bad years. The fact that the last two days were cold and windy and he went anyway is inspirational, because that would have been a great excuse not to go. Our last storyteller is new to the Bear Grease podcast. David Joy is a novelist from western North Carolina. He's won a lot of prestigious awards for his books. He's written for Gardening, Gun Time Magazine, and New York Times, and his novel Where All Light Tends to Go. It's being made into a film, and they tell me, listen

to this. He's got a big following of people in Europe as well as here in America. As fancy as all that sounds about mister Joy, I bet you'll be surprised when you hear him talk. He's one of us. He's a turkey hunter. Here's our last story, Meet David Joy. So I'm really fortunate in that the woman that I fell in love with understands and has somewhat adopted my

obsession with turkeys. But the difference between us is that she works like a real job, and I'm forty years old and I really hadn't struck a lick at anything yet. So because she works, though, she might get two to three days to hunt every year. So this was probably her second season, and I had gotten she'd still never even taken a shot at a bird. But I'd gotten

this permission on a buddy of mine's farm. And the way that this land lays out, it's kind of like you're in a big bowl and at the bottom it's probably like twenty five hundred feet somewhere around there, and the ridgeline is probably four thousand feet and he owns all of it. But the house and the majority of the pasture is in the bottom of that. And when you sit down there of a morning, you can, you know,

you'll usually hear four or five turkeys goblin. And the way that those turkeys use that landscape is they tend to roost high and then they pitch low, and then they land in them fields at the bottom, and then throughout the day they slowly worked their way back up high. And so we were hunting this place. We'd spent all morning trying to get on birds and hadn't really gotten on anything, and it was just about time that she was about to give up and we were gonna call

it quits. And I thought, well, we'll just kind of throw the bag at them and see if we can't get something to happen. And a lot of times I like to run two calls at once just to try to sound like a couple of different hens. But the ideas like, you've got these two hens that are big and back and forth, and so I'm doing that and all of a sudden, this bird's hams just paah. Both of us, you know, just look at each other. And it's like a game on and where this bird is.

I can tell that he's maybe two pastures over. So we start looking around on where we might get set up and whatnot. Still don't know if the bird's coming at this point, but kind of get to an area where I know we can set up. I do the same calling sequence again and he's just pah, and this time he's cut the distance in half, and I can tell that he's in that very next pasture. And I told her, I said, and I said, this bird's doing everything, everything just right. I said. We'll get up here, I said,

and we'll get set up in this timber. And I said that bird should just pop into this pasture and he'll work his way up the edge towards us. And as turkeys are wont to do, this bird doesn't follow the script. You know, we're sitting there and we're set

up looking down this pasture. The next time this bird gobbles, he's above us and we're pinned down like there is no getting up, moving nothing, And Ashley's set up below me, and I kind of peek over my shoulder and I see this bird and he's basically set up a strutson up there and he's working back and forth, just bow and I called to him and he answers, but he's not coming, and I start making hand signals at Ashley and I tell her that we need to switch spots,

and she understands and she gets set up on that tree and I start belly crawling down the hill and I start just doing some real light hen calling, like a like a just a feeding hen, some purrs and you know, real light clucks, just wines, whistles, real soft stuff, leaf scratching. And the idea I had was that I was gonna try to make this bird leave, that I was a feeding hen that didn't want nothing to do with him, and I was just feeding my way on out of there, and so that's what I did. Well,

the bird's still answering. Next thing, I know that bird's coming, and so at that point I'm not I'm kind of out in the open, and so I'm laying on my stomach and I've just got my face down buried in my arms so that I hopefully will just look like the ground. And Ashley's up there with their gun pointed in the pasture, and I hear this bird answer, and I lifted my head, and I'll never forget this. There was two gobblers and there may be thirty yards above her,

coming down this pasture in full strut. Both of their heads just drained like our glasses, I mean, just just white heads. And I thought, oh my god, they're on top of her, and I just dipped my head. And I mean, the whole time, I'm thinking she's she's about to shoot, she's about to shoot, she's about to shoot, and this goes on. It feels like, you know, forever.

It feels like I'm laying there for an hour, and all of a sudden, as soon as she shot, I jumped up and one of the birds was flying off, and the other one had his head up and he was just turning his head one eyeball turn another, one eyeball turn another. I just trying to figure out what's going on. And I started screaming, reload, reload, reload, because she's shooting this old single shot shotgun and she ain't got but one shot. And she's looking at me like, oh no, what in the world did I do? And

next thing you know, that bird putch cackles. He's out of there, set some wings and you know, just pair of glider on across the mountain. What had happened was when that bird come down, she got so excited at looking at that turkey that she got off the gun. And when that happens, the tendency is you're gonna adjust the bead and nine times out of ten you're gonna

shoot high. It's like men, a buddy was hunting one time and I missed and I missed on a bird, and I told him, I said, I think I shot high, and him, being a lot older and a lot more experienced, he told me, he said, David, in all my years, I ain't ever seen nobody shoot the feet off one. And his point was that you inevitably shoot high. And that's what had happened there, was that she got off

the gun and she shot high. So she's just absolutely heartbroken and and it winds up being the last chance she gets to hunt that year, and so this literally eats her up for like a year, and she's just wanting her next shot. Jump forward that next year and wearing that very same pasture. Kind of the same situation. Didn't get on any birds early. It's starting to get mid day, it's almost quit in time, and all of a sudden one fires up. Just ah, and we're like

midway in the pasture. The bird is coming, the birds coming from the bottom of the pasture up. We don't have a setup, we don't have time. And I just see this old scraggly locust that's got briars and everything all around it, and I thought, I'm gonna put her in that. And I went just over the lip in this pasture and just I didn't have anywhere to get. I just laid down on the ground. We start calling to these birds and their answering. I can't see anything

that's going on down there, you know. I can't see the turkeys, I can't see her, I can't see anything. And all of a sudden, I heard this boom, and once again I jump up and it's the same situation. There's a bird taking off, and there's another bird standing over there with his head up and he's turning his eye looking one way, looking to turn wood, and I'm screaming, reload, reload, reload, and Ashley turns around and she looks at me and

she's just like, what are you talking about. I said, you missed, and she said I didn't miss And I look and there's a bird fly up and down there. And what had happened was there was four birds come in and I didn't see none of them, and I thought she'd missed again, but she'd finally killed her first turkey. One of the reasons that story sticks out to me is just it was one of the proudest moments I'd ever seen in her, and it was because of how

hard she worked to get it. You know, she'd hunted three seasons and you know, two seasons before she got her first shot, three seasons before she finally killed her first bird, you know. And I just remember that old Tom Kelly line where Tom said he said, we pay for every turkey we kill, and the coin that we pay with is time. That was a good story, David. Did she ever forgive you, though, for thinking that she

missed again? Turkey stories are unique, complex and give it's the opportunity to reflect on what actually happens in the spring woods. I find a lot of clarity in sharing my stories with people. We're living these moments as powerful for both the storyteller and the listener. Telling and listening to stories isn't a periphery human activity, but it's core and having a friend that will attentively listen, empathize, get excited, be let down, and relive the moment with you is

incredibly important. That's why we love people, it's why we have friends, it's why we have family, and it's essential to having a healthy whole life. I think this year I'm going to focus on listening more closely to other people's stories, and maybe if I do that, they'll listen to mine and we'll all be able to triangulate the data and we'll be some turkey hunting suckers. Man. I hope you all have a great spring turkey season in

twenty twenty three. Let's do some stuff for turkeys. Let's do some control burns, trap some predators, and make some timber stand improvements to help those gobblers as we know some of them are struggling. Hey, have a great spring. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grides. I look forward to talking with all the folks on the Render next week.