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Speaker 1: Welcome to this country life. I’m your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just in 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 from the Store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I’ve got some stores to share the art of turkey hunting. According to a finger painter, when the folks I worked for told me we were going to have a turkey week, I got to wondering where are they going to put it? We already got fifty two at least that’s the way we think about it down here. And I just got back from Mississippi from hunting with my brothers of the turkey, and do I have a tail for you? I do have a tail for you. And there ain’t no better time to get to talking about it than right now. A wild turkey is a precious thing not to be taken lightly, and my reverence for them is only one generation deep. My father an excellent houndsman, horsemen, fishermen, and Woodsman wasn’t a turkey hunter. My passion for turkeys started when I was a young man. I would turn nineteen before I ever had the honor of listening to a gobbler on the roost, hearing him fly down, then strut, drum, and gobble his way into the very fabric of my life. I love chasing a wide variety of critters in a wide variety of ways, but there is something more alluring about chasing turkeys in the spring that goes beyond anything else. It is a primal desire that has no off switch. Colonel Tom Kelly, in his book Tenth Legion in nineteen seventy three, said I do not hunt turkeys because I want to. I hunt them because I have to. And from that second week of April back in nineteen eighty five, with my first glimpse of a mature gobbler only seconds old, and before I ever moved my trigger finger into the position to take that turkey’s life, I knew that I would do this again and would only stop when regulations over my health prevented it. I get asked often what my favorite thing to hunt is, and talk about all of the different things that I enjoy and how I enjoy doing them. But the ultimate answer will always be spring turkey hunting in the South. I’ll take hardwood flats and cypress, sloughs and mosquitoes, snakes, gators, hogs and swamps, over hills, rocks and mountain vistas any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. I can no more give you an explanation for this obsession than I can give you a reason for it, but it is real and everlasting. Last week I was in Mississippi at the invitation of my friend and colleague, Lake Pickle. Now Lake hosts our Backwoods University podcast, along with an independent podcast called Speak the Language with our mutual friend and brother of the Woods, Jordan Blissit. I highly encourage anyone who likes good, practical and interesting content to follow them. Both these boys are veteran turkey hunters and cinematographers from back when they used to follow mister will Primos around while he was gathering up wild groceries from the woods. Lake would be running the camera for me, and most of my hunts would be on a piece of ground that Jordan manages. I stayed at Lake’s house in the come of his wife Lacy in their two labs, Knocks and Fern, and the alarm would ring at four point thirty every morning, and I don’t think it ever caught me asleep. It was the first hunt of the year and I couldn’t wait to get started. The first place we hunted was at our friend Keith Polk’s place. I hunted there a couple of years ago, and I sat through a tense morning of back and forth calling and gobling between us and a squad of hens and three gobblers. It was a chaotic morning of moving here and there and encountering the moves the turkeys were unknowingly subjecting us to. People described turkey hunting as a chess match, but it’s it’s not much of a game when there’s only one side playing. The turkey is just going about his life. He has three things on his mind in the spring, and the rest of the year only two. But that morning two years ago, the third thing that had him gobbling nearly every racket in the woods owl’s, crows, woodpeckers, songbirds. It didn’t matter. He was also responding to Keith’s, Jordan’s and my calling. It had taken a while, but we’d finally gotten within one hundred and fifty yards of them, and listening to them duke it out and have a goblin contest with our hearts full of hope as we determined he was finally making his way in our direction. Our morning of zigging and zagging, whispering plans and looking at it on ax trying to figure out our next move was finally fixing to pay off. When boom, the neighbors shot him as he skirted off Keith’s property and walked in his lap. Apparently he’d been calling at him too that morning, and neither one of us knew the other was hunting. We never got close to the line, and he didn’t either. He was just in a better spot than we were in fortune favored him and respecting each other’s property is the only way that worked out. It was a good thing to see and be a part of, even though I got the short end of the stick that morning. Congratulations Keith’s neighbor. But I hope you beat in the bed that night. That hunt was two years ago, and this morning we were standing over there. But there were three things different than the last one. Lake was there running the camera instead of Jordan. It was thirty degrees and we weren’t going to hear that particular turkey gobble at daybreak. Actually, we weren’t going to hear any turkey’s gobbling at Keith’s place that morning. We heard one way off the property, but he only gobbled a couple times. It was cold, I was cold, we were all cold, but we chose a good spot to sit down and listen for a bit and do some calling. Because where you’re in a place where you know there’s turkeys, you have to give them every chance to reveal where they are on their own. Plus you don’t just want to go gallivant all over the creation of bump turkeys that were either coming to you or in your general vicinity. We all picked our spot, got it comfortable, and started doing a little call. We got to yelp in response from directly behind us, and after listening to it getting closer, we decided we should spend around and face the direction in case of gobbler was trailing along with that hen, and one time before we saw it, I thought it might be a jake, and I wish I would have set it out loud lake because when he finally stepped out into the open and revealed himself as a nine month old baby boy. I would have looked like a real turkey hunting genius. Then, for the next fifteen minutes, that clown walked around in circles between us and Keith, close enough for me to hit him with a pool Q, clucking with every breath looking for the hen he heard but couldn’t find. Finally, he and his IQ rating up somewhere around the ball. Turnip walked away free of us to get up a better spot. By forty five, we’d walk less than one hundred and fifty yards from where we called in that jake and bumped two hens off the roost. Apparently nobody wanted to get out of bed that morning except meet Keith and Lake in that feathered bowl Turnip we could just run into. We decided to make a bold move. Keith went to work, and Lake and I headed the Jordan’s spot about forty five minutes away. After a pit stop for fuel and a convenience store fried pork chop, we got the Jordan’s place around eleven, where we spied a couple of hens about a quarter mile away on a pire line. Right away we saw them any of the woods and quickly made a plan to loop around in front of them and the off chance there was a gobbler walking with him, which is a good plan this time of year especially. We hoofed it down the road. We entered the woods and found a spot to sit and settled in to spend some time. We designated twelve thirty as I get up and try another spot time. Now, that’s my least favorite way to hunt turkeys. It’s basically deer hunting them, and that just ain’t how I like to do it. Since the first time I saw will Primos get up and moved after he heard a turkey gobble, I knew running and gunning was the style of turkey hunting that I am. I told Lakies. We sat there whispering back and forth between calling and listening for a response. That I remembered seeing the first Premost video on VHS and watching it at my brother Tim’s house with his brother in law Joe Bryant and his father in law, mister Billy Bryant. Now mister Bryant was and remains to this day, a mentor not only in the Turkey woods, to me, but to everyone that knows him how a man should live his life, but running, gunning, calling loud and often wasn’t in mister Bryant’s playbook. He grew up when turkeys were scarce. It was more or less a Southern doctrine of yelping three times on a wingbone or a box call, and sitting still until the gobbler showed himself or or it got dark. Maybe not to that extreme, but you didn’t get up and move and move on a goblin turkey, and that never happened. His philosophy was, if he answered you, he was more than likely at some point during the day gonna come see you if you were still there. Now, I can’t tell you how many times over the past forty one years that I’ve gotten up and moved after a turkey went silent, only to have them gobble in that spot I left from, or have them roosted in that spot the next morning. Now, I bet that’s happened to some of y’all too. And at twelve thirty I asked Lake if he wanted to get some support and footage and cutaways or b roll is what we call it, before we moved. He popped up with his camera and started getting shots from different angles and we’d been sitting there in total stillness for an hour and a half at this point, just calling occasionally. He moved out in front of me about ten yards, and I picked up a pot call and started yelping and clucking, And as he was filming a turkey gobble no more than one hundred and twenty yards away, Blake’s eyeballs looked like they were on stems when they bugged out of his head as he scrambled to get back in position to film. I called again once Slake was back in his spot, and the gobbler cut me off. Twelve thirty five and I had a turkey answering me. Now, by every rule in the book, that turkey was a dead man walking more times than not. If I get a turkey to answer in the middle of the day and cut me off, that joker is as dumb his corn bread. We figured him at eighty yards or less the last time he answered me, he’d cut the distance by a third. And even though the hardwood flat we were sitting there was pretty open, there was a tangle of brush and briars about forty yards in front of him. He was going to have to pick a side to go on right, and the natural lady of the land had him stepping out to my right, and when he did, he was going to be close enough to shoot. On his approach. There was no way he was going to see us. With the short privet bushes leafed out and staggered between us and him, we were absolutely invisible. We knew that for a fact because Lake had just sat it in that spot between us filming and saw it for himself, and what we guessed him to be less than sixty yards We started hearing drumming. Lake whispered, he’s drumming, and I nodded my head and acknowledge me and tried to calm my breathing down. This joker was fixing to step out to our left instead of the right, But it didn’t matter either way. I was sutarting to push his nose in with a tablespoon full of number ten tess. Any second now, I’d see him step from the shadows into the sunlight, and it would be the last time he’d have to squint his eyes looking into the sun. Second now, any minute now, he’d step from the darkness of the leafed over hardwood flat. Any minute now, Any minute now, for the love of humanity? Where’d he go? Immediately you replay the scenario in your mind, wondering what you did wrong? At least I do, no matter what happens. Both Lake and I were looking at each other like a calf looks at a new gate. What just happened? No putting, no running off, no nothing, just silence. Lake had him coursed pretty well by hearing him drum as he walked away. I missed it, but I knew he knew what he was talking about, so we had to plan to get around in front of him. Off we went back toward the truck. We made a big loop and got set up on a food plot, one of many that Jordan has put in since taking over that piece of property, turning it into ground zero for Turkey’s deer. And we even heard Quail whistling out there. If he kept going in the general direction Lake had him leaving in, we’d be in a good spot to cut him off. Once we got there. It was a pretty good haul to get around him, but we made it quietly, got settled into a new spot and waited to hear him and see what our next move was gonna be. Well about two and a half hours later, after calling Session nine million, a turkey gobbled, and he was a long ways away, but he answered me nonetheless. We gave him a minute and he gobbled again, and this time he was on the move, and so were we. A quick check of the old an act showed him moving down the edge of a scope of pines into a bigger hardwood flat. The dude was walking towards us and gobbling every so often. Maybe he was coming to turn himself in. He must have heard who was on his trail. We beat feet toward where we thought he was going, and after a couple of hundred yards we were surprised by him again when he gobbled less than one hundred yards away. He had been coming towards us as fast as we had been going towards him. We planted our behinds on the ground before a barncat could lick his, and I gave out a soft yelp, and ah, he answered right back. Then a jake tried to gobble, and then I heard wings slapping, and I knew immediately that there was a fight taking place just out of sight. And once you’ve heard it before, that sound is unmistakable. We were sitting on the edge of the road. Jordan had planted his one big long food plot to the right with some cover that buffered a pine plantation that had been burned a couple years ago. To our left was an open hardwood flat full of white oak, red oak, and beech trees. We were looking down the food plot road for about two hundred yards before it turned back out of view. All at once, I saw a big turkey with a redhead do a forest gump imitation as he hit the road like he was flying by his mailbox on his cross country run. I could almost hear Jackson Brown play it in the background. Good riddance. The gobbler has beat up to Jake and he’s headed for green of pastures. Now there’s nothing left to do but uncorked this load of number tens I got from my boys at Rocky Ridge Amo and go put my foot on the reason I’d driven five hours in Mississippi. As soon as he steps out into the open, let me go on and make him gobble one more time, just for fun. I called to him. He didn’t answer. I waited nothing. I called again, he didn’t answer. This was starting to not be fun. Right where that turkey got scooted out of the woods and down the road a band of four jakes walked out. I was a detective for a long time, but it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that jake I saw smoking it down the road like a road runner cartoon wasn’t a jake. That was the gobbler. And he was being bullied by that quarteta juvenal delinquents on both times he tried to come into our calls. The first time on the other side of the property, and this time that had just happened. Good night, nurse. Now there wasn’t a whole lot to complain about. We’d been on turkeys all day, had come really close twice on filling one’s lips full of high speed steel. And I was hunting with my friend, and we were hunting on our friend’s land. And like Scarlett O’Haras said, after all, tomorrow is another day. It was another day. And when the sun started turning the Magnoli State sky, Pink Lake and I were standing two hundred and fifty yards from where Jordan had heard that turkey gobble three or four days in a row. But you already know what happened. He gobbled twice, and he was so far away we’d had to call an uber to get to him. Alas, all was not lost for a second. Turkey was goblin on the other side of the property, and although it wasn’t that long of a walk to get to him, it’s gonna feel like a week before we get there, literally a week like next week. On the next episode, Brent, what a dirty trick extending the turkey hunt for a week. It better be good. Well, it will be good, I promise, at least for someone. Reva insert the foreboding music here, because something that can to skullduggery is afoot. On the next episode. Ooh, that’s scary. Hey, don’t forget. It’s still Turkey Week going on over at store dot themeateater dot com until next week when I finished this turkey hunting saga. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y’all be careful having done at
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