Welcome to This Country Life.
I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a.
While as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
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All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tail gate. I've got some stories to share. Escaping the bubble and Turkey. Number one Turkey season is upon us and I couldn't be happier. It's the only hunting season I ever threatened to quit a job over, and now it's part of my job.
Sweet mother of Pearl, It's Turkey.
Week here at Meat Eater, and all week long, it's been a virtual Turkey palooza. Steve's podcast and Cal's are Turkey themed. I was a guest on a true crime special episode hosted by our very.
Own Jordan Sellers.
Jordan put this unsolved, intriguing mystery together that I hope you adults will listen to. Who knows you may know something that could help bring this case to a close. They're all on the meat Either podcast channels and not hard to find. My friends Gary Stanton and Charlie Moncaster of Muscadine Bloodline are talking turkeys over at God's Country. Then you've got Spencer's Turkey Tribune, the Render, and yours truly was on cutting the distance just yesterday with Dirk
Durham over at Phelps Game Calls. Turkeys in the morning, turkeys in the evening, turkeys at supper time. We're off and running. And now I'm gonna tell you a story. For eight years in a row, from when he first started turkey hunting, my brother Tim would get his limited birds at Arkansas. Then you could kill two male turkeys, only one of which had to be an adult. In other words, you could kill a jake, a juvenile male turkey that historically had been reserved for kids in first
time or inexperienced hunters. It was perfectly legal, but so was shooting mallard hens. But just because you could do something doesn't mean you should. It was frowned upon and seen as not being as much of a challenge as older, more weary turkeys. They tasted the same. I know this
because desperate times have called for desperate measures. And while I wouldn't shoot one, now there were times about one hundred turkeys or so ago, when I would throw punch the occasional Jake towards the end of the season, when I hadn't had any luck so far, and see old, any port in a storm is good theory. I'm not proud of it, but I ashamed of it either. I only had two or three places to hunt within driving
distance of my house. My opportunities were very limited, and I had to take advantage of him when I had the chance. Tim was the same way when he started out, but now he was slipping up on being a ten year veteran. Jake's worn't on his hit list, but he had a problem. The rest of us were smashing turkeys with reckless abandon and he couldn't have hemmed one up in a phone booth. It just wasn't working out for him. Everything he did backfired on him. On top of that, the rest of us could.
Do no wrong.
I was tagged out Joe Bryant, Tim's brother in law, who I've talked about before on here as being an additional brother to all of us. He tagged out Mister Bryant chose father, Tim's father in law, and a turkey hunting mentor like no other had tagged out, and there little Timmy sat with a pocket full of turkey tags when the rest of us had none. But did we make fun of him or ridicule him? Did we question his outdoor abilities and even that of him being a real man?
Of course we did. That's what That's what families do.
We did it until mercifully, mister Brian had decided tim and had enough and if we didn't do something to help him, he was going to jump off of Celeine River Bridge. Everyone usually gathered mid morning at the store to grab a cup of coffee or cold drink, visiting check the turkey check sheet. And back then there was no online checking of turkeys because there was no on line.
You brought your turkey to a check station which was set up in country stores and they took down your name, measured the beard and the spurs, and waited and recorded all the harvest data for the gaming fish to collect. At the end of the season, tim was starting to skip our mid morning rendezvous, either going straight home or
staying all day in the woods. Joe diagnosed his problem and told him he was hunting under the bubble, meaning he had to do something to break through or nothing he would do would work, and he couldn't do it alone. It was desperate times and it called for desperate measures.
He needed help.
Mister Brian told him one evening, after another fruitless day of hunting that he would be taking Tim the next morning and he was not to bring a call. He would do everything he told him, and just like he told him, no deviation, and Tim agreed. Another sleepless night followed by meeting mister Brian at his house for the short drive to a spot he had picked out for
Tim to bust through the bubble. He only had to do one thing, follow mister Bryan's instructions to the letter and shoot the first legal turkey that walked close enough to shoot.
Tim agreed, even though he didn't want to.
He didn't like not being able to call that that was the strongest part of the allure of turkey, to begin with. Communicating with a wild animal and luring it into range for a shot, which you folks should know, if you didn't already, is not.
The order of how it works in nature.
Gobbler's gobble and hens come to them, not the other way around. They arrived at the spot right on Q and also right on Q, mister Bryant's morning coffee had worked its cleansing magic and began to rumble around in his belly. With the time for that morning richel were already figured into the timeline. Off, he trotted for a comfortable and private place to let gravity do the rest. Tim waited in the pre dawned darkness for a turkey to gobble and mister Bryant to return minus what the
coffee had been stirring up. Tim said upon his return he looked happier and more energetic then what they'd been waiting on, more than anything else, a turkey gobble. They moved off the road and set up a little over one hundred yards away from the roosted birds. The gobbles were from more than one turkey, and Tim was fired up. Mister Brian set him down and sat down a few trees behind him. His last instructions before setting up to call was don't you call one lick and shoot the
first legal turkey that walks in. Turkeys hit the ground gobbling out in front of where they were set up, and they hadn't seen or heard a hen. Mister Brian started calling in short order a line of turkeys was headed to where they waited.
Tim said, I knew it was Jake's.
When I saw him coming, but I was hoping against hope that a big turkey was in the line somewhere. I don't want to shoot a Jake, but Joe and mister Brian both told me if I wanted to get out from under this bubble, I had to take the first opportunity. One by one, they passed in front of him as if they were on a string, come to mister Brian's call. The first opportunity was walking point for a squad of juvenile delinquids twenty steps away.
Tim didn't shoot him. He said he was too little. That wasn't what mister Bryan told him to do. Told him to shoot.
The first legal turkey that gets close enough. And that was the first one that just walked by. Although he was only sporting a three inch beard, he was the first one. The first three that passed were all carving copies of each other. The fourth not much bigger, but the fifth one, the fifth one in the conger line of seven, had a beard about five inches long. Tim said, I picked him out and let him have it right in the kisser. Tim walked over and fetched his turkey,
and mister Brian congratulated him. Tim said, I know he was aggravated at me for not she the first one, but he didn't have the biggest beard. On the way back to the truck, Tim talked about how now the bubble should be broken and he ought to be free of whatever powers that befell him in the first place, that put him under that dismal umbrella of turculus hunts.
He said, even think our mentor his father in law, was so sure it was done since he didn't do exactly what he was told, but he never said that it was just a feeling the guy. That feeling was amplified as they approached the section of woods where they had taken off through the woods after hearing the turkeys gobble that morning, and Tim stepped in something that wasn't meant to be stepped in. Mister brid looked back and laughed, I guess, I guess he should have shot that first turkey.
But now there's a PostScript on this story.
After Tim washed his boot off in the creek, they went to the store to check in his turkey. He was glad to hopefully have this whole embarrassing and literal mess behind him. Then the lady at the store measured that stubby beard and laid his turkey on the scales while she recorded his name and the measurement of his cigar.
Lengked beard.
Tim said he looked at the scale and saw it said that turkey weighed eleven pounds, and he wanted to cry, knowing everyone from then after would see that he killed water mount into a big chicken. He said, I put my I put my finger on that scale officer of where she was standing, and got him up to thirteen pounds before she took him off. And next week my brother killed a big gobbler with one inch spurs, and accord to my brother Tim.
That's just how that happened.
I get asked all the time what type of hunting I like best, and it's always an inner struggle for me to answer. Then, after arguing with myself and talking about all the different kinds I like, I always wind up saying turkey hunting every time. I don't know why I can't just say it that way from the beginning.
It's like I'm throwing shade on duck hunting or squirrel hunting. Or coon hunting, but they're all so different that it's hard to compare. I'm thinking about it now and second guessing myself while I'm saying this, and it's what I'd plan to say when I sat down to record it. There's so many things to say about coon hunting. I'm never alone when I'm doing that, even if nobody's with me, because I got my dog wailing. He's my coon hunting partner every time I go, regardless of who else is there,
but turkey hunting man. There's just something about it that supersedes any and everything else besides my family. From the first time I've ever killed one, I've had an issue with him. I talked about it with Derk Durham on Phelps Cutting the Distance podcast that came out yesterday. We had a good conversation. I'll slip over there and check
it out when you get a chance. But while we were talking, he asked me if I remembered when I killed my first turkey, and without hesitation, I said I sure do, was April eighteenth, nineteen eighty five, and he laughed at how quick my response was.
I told him a little bit about that hunt. More or less the bullet points of how it all went down, but I remember every detail of it.
The year before I.
Was still hunting for squirrels over there what we called the woodlot, and that was a scope of woods on the west side of our farm and just south of my maternal great grandfather house. I found a turkey feather while I was doing my best toend the squirrel population and decided right then that there was a turkey hunter hidding inside me that was begging to come out. Next spring, I went to Carls one stop on the edge of
town and Warren, out past the Bradley Lumber Mill. It was the mecca for all outdoorsmen in the area and the only place I knew of that you could buy turkey calls without having to order them through the mail. I went in there for a box call and left with the Lynchest world Champion call and a diaphragm mouth call made by a new guy from Mississippi that was getting in the call making business. They said his name
was Will Primos. I should have got mister Will to come with him, because I had no idea how to use it, and I just stuck with the box the five or six times that I went hunting at the Woodlode, never seeing or even hearing a turkey that spring. That may have been what triggered me obsession, total and utter
failure from the start. Pretty sure Jesus was trying to spare me from all the sleepless nights and weeks that would follow by letting me see how most of by hunts would wind up walking back to the truck with exactly what I had taken in with me and nothing extra. The next spring, I was what I liked to refer
to as being semi enrolled in college. I went when it was convenient, like when the fish weren't biting, the deer weren't moving, and the ducks weren't flying, and narrowed down my attendance to a pretty slim portion of the calendar, which coincidentally was in spring. And then I got invited to go turkey hunting by a turkey hunter. Anyone who'd killed at least one turkey by themselves was a turkey hunter in my book, and this guy had killed several.
We drove thirty miles west from Warren right before daylight. We were a quarter of a mile deep in the wood, standing at the edge of a three year old clear cut. The woods we were waiting on daylight inn were open enough to see down through without any trouble. The clear cut I was looking at was a different story. A rabbit would have had to tote of the hatchet with him to get through it. Turkey gobbled and the fellow I was hunting with us said, get over there by
that tree. I'm going to sit back here and call.
I said, that ain't no turkey, that's someone shaking a box. Call.
He laughed, and he said, no, it ain't. Sit down and be still. He's still on the roofst but he's not.
That far now.
It was my first lesson in not guiding the guide. This guy had killed multiple turkeys, brought me to his hunting spot during the first week of the season, and I was telling him what he was hearing was not what we were hearing, even though I had never heard what we were both hearing. Don't guide the guide. He called to him with a box, calling turke. He answered him immediately. I looked back at him and he pointed
down at the ground. I looked down at the ground I was laying on like a green plastic Army soldier. The absolute worst position I could have taken to shoot my first turkey, or any turkey for that matter. I didn't know what that meant, but the turkey sounded different.
Now.
What he was trying to tell me was the turkey was on the ground. That's why he sounded different. I still couldn't believe he didn't know it was someone shaking a box call at us. Did I mention the mosquitoes? Oh, yeah, the mosquitoes. About the time he told me to get over there by that tree and sat down, and I chose to lay down like Sergeant York. The mosquitoes reached their zenith. They were feasting on my prone person with impunity.
I was wiggling all over the place trying to get them off of me, all while the guy behind me with a box car whispering for me to be still, and the guy shaking the box call out in front of him kept getting closer. There's no way that, sir, real turkey, and I'm getting to the literal life sucked out of me by waiting on another turkey under to walk up on us. He gobbled again, just out of sight, and I turned back to look at my guide again,
mouthing the words that ain't no turkey. I can only see about a third of his face, right around his eyes that were exposed by his mask, but I knew exactly what he meant when his eyes seemed to jump out of his skull and then narrow it down to slits, his eyebrows furring with fury. Whatever, dude, I turned back around and shouldered my shotgun and.
Watch what would be In a few minutes.
Gobbler Numero Huno stepped out into the opening up the little rise. I was arching my back as best I could to aim at his head. He was close and I was out of position. I was pointed at twelve and he was standing at ten. The dude that had been shaking a box called at us since before good Day had just turned into a real turkey. Hut him with what I heard him whispering several times over. Of all the structures he had given me that morning, that one seemed the most obvious. But I'd already decided to
do that. I just wasn't able to because I'd laid down instead of sitting against a tree.
A lesson.
I learned that on day one, and would never ever forget after what it like seen forever the turkey stepped back towards the way he came, preparing to get out of dodge, literally where my shotgun was pointing, and I pulled the trigger. He went down like a one egg pudding, and I had my first turkey. Thursday was six hours and ten minutes old when I held in my hand
the first wild turkey I'd ever heard gobble. It would be the start of something big for me, a seemingly uncontroled urge each spring from that day forward to try and out with a turkey, a wild animal with eyes and here in so fine tuned.
It's been said they can hear you thinking and see you change your mind.
For forty years, I have never missed a season, and now I get.
To travel and do it as part of my job. Who'd have ever thought my life would lead to this.
I could go turkey hunting just about anywhere there's turkeys to be hunted. But now, when the first signs of spring starts showing up, I get more excited about the people I'm going to see than the turkeys. I'm hoping to get from Mississippi to Alabama, Missouri and Arkansas and who knows where else. It's the people and families I've gotten to know over the last four decades, the ones I haven't met yet that mean more than any turkey ever. Could they say the quality of your life is measured
by the quality of your relationships. If that's true, and I believe it is, Turkey season has filled my soul far beyond it has my freezer. I hope y'all like turkey tales, because I'm hoping to have some more stories from this year's struggle in the next few weeks if I can avoid the bubble. Good Luck to spring, and watch where you step until next time.
This is Brent Reive sign it off. Y'all be careful.