March 5, 2025 • 46 mins
Turkey season is right around the corner, so on this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, host Clay Newcomb will get you primed with some amazing stories by some amazing storytellers from Mississippi and Arkansas. Listen along as Mark Sledge, Andy Brown, Robin Risher, David Huffman, Lake Pickle, and Med Palmer recall epic tales of turkeys with more beard than you can believe, busting poachers, dog collar-wearing bandits, becoming one with nature, and possibly the greatest turkey story ever told.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This turkey is coming. Like no if ans or butts
about it. This turkey is coming.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It was one of those.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
With every gobble he was gaining ground. And I'm sitting there, going, man,
any second we're going to be looking at him. And
then finally, just like you drawed up in your head,
out he appeared in full strut. And then came all
the rest of them, and I mean all the rest
of them. I do not know how we managed to
yelp up that many turkeys with only one turkey goblin
the entire time, because we thought we were dealing with
(00:30):
a single long beard, but it was not.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It was a wad long beards, Jake's hens.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
We had every variety, and they were all march in
our direction. I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Just like clockwork, the rotations of the Earth and the
tilting of its access towards the south have once again
found the North American continent in the early stages of
the most glorious and redemptive time of the year, the spring.
Despite the uncertainty in the world of men, natural systems
hum along with unfailing consistency, and by our good fortune,
(01:03):
many of us live in places where there are wild turkeys.
Why everyone in America doesn't hunt a wild turkey, I
do not know, but I'm glad that they don't.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
But I'm grateful that I do.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
And I'm truly thankful for every gobbling, spitting and drumming
and strutting turkey that I've ever messed around with. Being
a turkey hunter is but a small ripple in the
global affairs of men, but in our minds it stands
like a granite peak, impossible to avoid. You can't go
around it or under it, but each spring you've got
(01:35):
to go through it. This is our Turkey Stories episode.
It's one of my favorites of the year, and we've
got a group of turkey storytellers that are as good
as I've ever heard. And I really doubt that you're
gonna want to miss this one. And I'll leave you
with just one hint about the next hour of your life.
Whatever you do, don't miss med Palmer's story at the end.
(02:00):
It might be the greatest turkey story ever told.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
My name is Clay Nukem, and this.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
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
(02:36):
as rugged as the place as we explore. Of all
the things that we hunt and celebrate through story, turkey
stories are usually the best. The hunts are dynamic, involving
moving and sneaking, and ouling and crowing and yelping and
(02:58):
listening for the vocalizations or lack thereof, of an old gobbler.
The decisions of the turkey hunter are more often than
not wrong if the intent is to kill the turkey,
and the turkeys are usually right.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
But when the hunter.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Gets it right and he fools that old tom turkey,
the raw elemental chemical dump of excitement with that side
of fried wild turkey breast is a scenario without equal.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
But it's time to get onto the stories.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And our first one is from Mississippi, and the man
telling the story his name is Mark Sledge, but in
this hunt, Mark is rooting for the turkey.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
My name is Mark Sledge. I live in Ridgeland, Mississippi,
and back a few years ago I was a turkey hunting.
It was late in the season, and I was just prospecting,
you know, walking and calling, and I stopped. I was
way on the north side of my property, and I
stopped and was getting ready to call, and I heard
(03:59):
someone call, and there was no question in my mind
it was a person and not a turkey, and a
gob berer answer. And so I sat there for a
minute and tried to try to decide what I was
gonna do. And I said, you know, I bet I
know where that guy came in here. So I walked
continued north up to my property line. I got to
(04:21):
the property line, I was standing there looking at a
turkey vest where the guy had taken his vest off
when he crossed the ball bar our fence to come
on to us. And so I picked up the vest
and was standing there trying to decide. You know, when
I found the vest, I knew I was gonna get
the guy because he was coming back to get the vest.
(04:42):
But I was trying to decide where I was gonna
wait on him. And there was a big tree about
probably fifty yards away, a great, big oak tree, and
I'm talking about a huge one. And so I walked
over there to sit down next to the tree, and
before I got to the tree, he shot. And when
he shot, I realized the oak tree was in a
(05:03):
straight line, coming right up the ridge from where he
had shot. And I knew he's fixing a walk right
by me. So I just sat down next to the tree,
and I had, you know, I was turkey hunting, so
I had cameo gloves and camo face mask, and I
put everything on, just laid my gun across my lap
(05:24):
and sat there. And sure enough, man, it wasn't forty
five seconds I saw him coming through the woods carrying
the gobbler. He had gotten the gobbler. I sat there
and I didn't move, and I let him get about
three feet from me, and I said, boy, ended something,
how you look and go from being so good to
so bad in such a short period of time. And
(05:47):
when I spoke, he like to jumped out of his skin.
And I stood up and took my face mask off
and pulled off my right glove, stuck my hand out
and I said, good morning. My name's Mark Sledge. And
he said, hey, how you doing. I said no, I said,
this is the point of the conversation where you tell
me your name. He said, oh, I'm John Smith. I said,
(06:08):
come on, man, you got to do better than that.
You're insulting my intelligence. He said, no, no, that's really
my name. I said, no, it's not. I said, you
need to tell me your real name. No, no, I
promise you that's my real name. And I said it
is not your real name. I'm not buying that. And
I said, well, what do you do. He said, well,
I'm in school, community college. And I said you look
(06:30):
too old to be in school. I said where do
you live. He said, well, I kind of live on
the outside of Benonia. I said, so you live around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I said, man, you might as well tell me
your real name, because I'm going to find out.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
He said no, no, I.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Swear that's my real name. And I said, well, here
you go. I pulled one of my business cards out
of my wallet and I gave it to him, and
I said, that's got my office phone number on it.
Whenever you decide you want to come, tell me your
real name and get your turkey vest back, give me
a call. You can come down to my office and
we'll sit down and talk about it. And I picked
up his turkey vest walked off. Of course, I was
(07:08):
looking back over my shoulder and make sure it wasn't
dropping down on me while I was walking off. But
I went back to my camp and immediately rode into
ben TONI and it took about one stop to find
out who the guy was. And so I identified him
and called the neighbor who he had come off of
(07:29):
and told him what had gone on. And he said, Mark,
don't you worry. He will never set foot on my
property again. And I didn't hear from him. That was
on a Friday, and I figured, you know, i'd probably
hear from next day or to well. On Monday, a
woman calls me with the exact last name. I thought, wow,
(07:50):
this kind of strange, you know that for a guy
to have his wife call me. So I took the
call and she identified herself and she said, oh, miss Sledge,
you have my husband's turkey vest. I said, I sure do.
I said, I'm sitting in my office looking at it.
It's on a hat rack in my office, hanging right
here now. And she said, is there a handmade turkey
(08:12):
call in the pocket? I said, I have no idea.
I've never looked to see what's in it. And she said, well,
I gave. I gave him my handmade turkey call for
our tenth anniversary, and he said it's He said, it's
in the pocket of his of his turkey vest, and
I just want to make sure it's there. And I said, well,
hang on a minute. I went over there and looked
and I said, yeah, it's in there, and she said,
(08:37):
she said okay, great. I said wait a minute. I said,
why are you calling me and he's not calling me.
I said, that doesn't really make sense to him. She said, oh.
He and his dad and his brother got up early
Saturday morning, and when they were leaving, I asked him
where his handmade turkey call was and he said, well,
(08:58):
I don't have it. And he told me I didn't
have it and told me it was in his vest
and you had his vest and I said that's right.
She said, well, can I come get it? I said
absolutely not. I said he needs to come down here
and get it when he gets back into town. And
she said okay. And I said, let me ask you something.
I said, do you have any kids? She said yeah,
I have two boys. I said me too. I said
(09:23):
how are you boys? And they were a little bitty.
Then I want to say they were three and five
or something, and I said, think about this. Your husband's
come sneaking in there, a poaching on us. And I
got two sons and they loved a turkey hunt, so
they're out there turkey hunt. They have no idea your
husband's into her. And one of them accidentally shoots your husband.
(09:44):
I said, my sons have to grow up with the
fact that they've killed a man, and your sons are
going to grow on without a dad. And she said,
oh my gosh, I don't even thought about that. And
I twisted the knife a little bit more and I
had her pumped up where she was gonna waylame he
got home. So sure enough, about the middle of that week,
(10:06):
he finally called me and said, uh, missus Sledge, I'd
like to go get my turkey best. I said, I'd
like to give it to you. I said, come on
down here, and uh, and I'll be glad to give
it to you. So he came to my office and
I made him sit down in there and we had
a little chat for a little while, and Uh. At
the end of the chat, I gave his vest back.
(10:28):
And I've never seen the guy again, and i've certainly
never seen him trespass it again. I think I probably
made a hotist turkey counter.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
That was a good story, but I was surprised that
Mark didn't get the law involved. I kept waiting for
the game morning to show up. I wonder if you
were I respect a man that's willing to take care
of his own business, and I'd say that that was
quite merciful, mercy being an admirable human trait. Maybe that
guy that killed that turkey is listening right now, Thank you, Mark.
(11:02):
But now we're on to the next one, and it's
none other than a bear grease legend from western Arkansas,
Oh Andy Brown. He could tell a story about an
empty black pot and it would be interesting, but when
you get him talking about turkeys, it's hard to turn away.
Most really good turkey hunters that I know, kind of
in my experience, usually have two or three really great stories.
(11:26):
Andy seems to have an unlimited supply, and this is
a story about the best gobbler that Andy ever saw killed.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
My brother in law used to come up from Hope
and Bill he he really liked a turkey hunt because
he never got to do any of it. I used
to go down and hunt with him and Debbie down there,
and they were avid deer hunters. And I used to
love to go down there because you'd see more deer
in one day down there. Back in the eighties eighty
two probably so let's been forty years ago, but it
(11:57):
was nothing but soybean fields and cornfields. But anyway, i'd
go down there and deer hunt with them. And Bill
got to coming up in Turkey hunting with me. And
he came up one year and he was always really
enthused about it because this is something he had never done.
And I took him out on my mountain, did I
out west? I always liked out there. When we pulled
(12:19):
him out for daylight, got into the low Gap and
the same thing happened that day as happened to me
and Scott. I sent Bill west and I went east
and the man, it was fine one and got out
there and not a pe never heard of Turkey. And
I told Bill, I said one meet back at the
gap at ten o'clock. I walked back into the Low Gap,
probably about nine thirty, and the Bill was already there,
(12:40):
and I said to Bill, did you hear anything? He said, yeah,
I had one all over me this morning. I just couldn't.
He just wouldn't come to me, come in above me.
He'd went out west and kind of dropped over on
the north side, and this turkey come right in on
top of him, and it just wouldn't come off to it.
And he said, he gobbled good. He said, just all
the drumming, I could hear him drumming, and he just
he just wouldn't come. And I said, do you think
(13:03):
you can take me back out there where he was?
And he said, yeah, I think I ain't take you
here right where he was. It's he said, he was
out there where it kind of drops off. So we
walk out there two hundred fifty yards and he goes
out there, knobs out and kind of drops off, and
he said, I think we were about right here is
where I was. Got on the north side, and I
just walked up there and just walked up on the
south side, and then the called. When I did, he
(13:25):
just just broke me off.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
This is it.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
This is ten ten o'clock. You know, of course that's
ever turkey Hunter's dream. You know, you get one to
answer you at ten o'clock in the morning. And I said,
come on, So we we just got over on the
south side, and it just went out there and just
fell off in kind of a little old Kenyon just
kind of straight off got set up, and I called him.
When I did, he just broke me off down there.
(13:48):
And I looked at it and I said, this, this
is not this is an't gonna work. I mean, because
I don't know if he's gonna come up with the
left of the holler or the right of the holler.
I said, let's back up on top. So we got
up and walked back up on top of the mountain there,
and there's just a big flat and anyway, I really
put it in as I got aggressive with him then, and
he was just I mean, he was eating it up.
(14:10):
Every time I called him, he gobbled. And that's kind
of way I always did back in those days, early days.
If they wanted to gobble, I wanted to call up,
you know.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And uh.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
Anyway, I tore him up and he come in there
and Bill was I had Bill set up where I
just knew he was just going to walk up me
slap well, said that dude coming up to Bill. He
just come right around to the left of me. And
there was a little old blackjack thicket there he got
right in behind that. He come right up the mountain
(14:41):
east of me, full strut and got right in on
top about sixty yards and all the goblining he did.
Of course I'd shut up then. I hadn't said another
word to him, and he gobbled and he gobbled and
gobbled and he gobbled, and directly he just turned and
he come right back off the mountain like he come.
And he got off down there. And when he got
behind that blackjack thicket from me, I called him again,
(15:03):
and we had a little set in right there, but
I knew he wasn't going to come. I mean, once
they do that, your chances of calling a turkey back
where he'd already been is it's slimmed none. At least
it's always been that way from me. So he kind
of got over back off on the south side, about
fifty yards from me, and I motioned to Bill. I said, Bill,
(15:24):
come here, and Bill give me one of them. What
are we doing deals?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You know?
Speaker 5 (15:28):
I said, come on, and he said come on.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
I said come on, And so he comes to me,
he said, what are we doing? I said, we are
going to move. We just dropped over the north side,
and when we got over the north side. I said, Bill,
we're going to move on this turkey. We're going to
kill this dude, I think. So we just went east.
When we talked back over the top of the mountain there,
I said, if this turkey answers me, he's a dead turkey.
(15:52):
We didn't move seventy five yards, but we got a
little higher and got over on the top. I called him,
and shit, he is wore me up, you know. I said,
he'd better get ready. And it was so funny. I
was sitting there and I had my cun across my
lap in old Bill. I mean, it's pretty open there.
It kind of comes to the prayer makes a little
old bitch. And there's a there's a pine tree that's
(16:15):
four foot through right there on top, and I look, here,
come out on turkey. I mean, he's coming right to
us and can be close, I mean fifteen steps. And
when he goes behind that tree, Bill moves his gun.
And when he comes out, Bill didn't quite wait long enough.
He did, but he didn't because he shot about two
(16:35):
inches of that tree all. But he blowed that turkey.
He just blowed that turkey down. And when that turkey,
you know how they are heat. Turkey jumped up and
when he took off, of course, I was in really
good shape. Then I took off after him, and I
run that turkey. I had face mask and gloves and stuff.
Strode all down the side of that mountain. But I
(16:56):
run him about one hundred yards down the out there,
and finally he just stopped and put his head down
and went to clucking. I mean, I caught up with him,
and anyway, I finished him off. But that turkey was
the best turkey I've ever seen. He had thirty four
and a half inches of beard on him, He had
(17:17):
a ten and a half, a ten, an eight and
a six, He had an inch and a quarter spurred,
and weighed twenty one and a half pounds.
Speaker 7 (17:25):
He was a you know.
Speaker 6 (17:26):
And people said, well, it's not a very big turkey.
The twenty one and a half pound turkey into Washtaw
Mountains is a big turkey. But it was the most
awesome turkey I ever seen. And I told Bill, I said, Bill,
you'll hunt a lifetime and you will never kill a
turkey like this. I said, I've hunted these things like
I was mad at him for twenty five years, and
I've killed I've killed several with two beards, but I
(17:48):
ain't never killed a four beard a turkey.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
That's such a good story, and you could learn a
lot about turkey hunting from that story. Andy is a
rare combination of a man that's as good a turkey
hunter as has ever traversed the mountains of western Arkansas.
And he's the heck of a communicator too, knowing just
when to include details and humor and internal drama. But
(18:14):
really it just kind of flows with overt passion, and
you really can't teach that or copy that. Every step
of the way, you feel like you're right there with him.
I've noticed that every region of the country, even down
to specific families and hunting groups, have peculiar aspects to
their storytelling. I wonder if you've ever picked up on
any of.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Those from Andy.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
My old buddy Steve Ranella did, and after he heard
Andy tell his story one time, he said to me,
Andy Brown sure has a constant sense of the cardinal directions.
I laughed, if you're paying attention, Andy's always saying the
bird was coming up from the east, or we went
back to the west, or we were looking to the south,
where I grew up, which is where Andy lives. Always
(18:58):
having a sense of where no is was like the
eleventh commandment, thou shalt always know which direction is north.
I was never that great at it, but direction is
always included in Andy's stories, in the stories of his
son Scott and all their hunting crew. I like it,
Thank you Andy. The next story is off the Chain.
(19:27):
It involves an ATM and a man wearing a dog collar.
I first heard this man tell this story as a
guest on the Hayden Alabama podcast, and I cackled out loud.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Like a giggling hen.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I'd like to introduce you to a very funny but
precious man, Mississippi pastor Robin Rischer. You get what I
mean when I say precious, like he's a nice guy.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
I'm Robin Ruscher, and I love turkey. I live in Mississippi,
but a very short time living in New Orleans, Louisiana.
I went to seminary down there, and I was a
fish out of water in a big city as the
country had come to town, no doubt about that. And
I got a chance to go turkey hunting. I got
(20:17):
a permission to hunt some land in South Mississippi. I
told my wife and to let me go, and she said, yeah,
you can go. And naturally, when you get in your
wife's car is gonna be on empty every time. That's
a law of nature. And the seminary I don't know
(20:38):
about now, but thirty years ago it was in the
worst neighborhood in America, one of the worst. I bopped
out there and got my wife's little car. I was
gonna go into it because it got good gas mine
and I had a pretty far piece to go, and
we were rolling pennies for gas broke and no extra money.
(21:01):
But I had almost stuff laying on the front seat
of her car. My gun was laying there, My vest
with the shells in the pocket was laying there. I
come out of seminary in this worst neighborhood in America,
and I kind of goosed it a little bit. When
I did, my shelves came out of my pocket and
I noticed still illegal. I know I wanted so to
(21:22):
do this. I just took the shells in the magazines
at over age seventy. Now the gun was loaded, but
it would not fire until you worked the action one time.
And pump shot guns have a very distinctive sound, and
it sounds something like if you've ever been on a
(21:44):
bad end of that sound, you recognize it.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Well.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
I had that gun with bullets in the magazine but
none in the pipe or none in a barrel. And
I had to go get some gas because, like I said,
the car was on empty in the worst neighborhood of America,
and HTM machines were very different back then. You wanted
on us wipe it and they take a car away
from him and then access to your counting. There you were,
(22:10):
and the criminal knew this. But I one thing about that.
I just went there to give me twenty dollars to
get some gas. But in this car. And I walked
in there, this little HTM. It's about two in the morning,
but I was gonna go Turkey on the Mississippi is
about three hour drive. And I pulled in there and
(22:33):
I saw I saw this guy hiding in the AI
at bushes. By the time I saw this selling the
bushes there, he he wasn't wearing nothing but a diaper,
but he was some kind of ugly. I'm telling you,
he the uggliest hell I've ever seen in my life.
He was ugly, you g l y he didn't have
(22:54):
no alibi. He was ugly. M A, m A, how
you think he got that way his mama? The boy
was in bad shape. I saw him right after I
accessed my account. Now looked in front of me, and
there's a guy with a silver studded four inch dog
collar on and no shirt, and he was walking towards me.
(23:18):
I got my rightness, got pink and purple hair, and
they were all closing in at the rapid rate. And
they knew what they were doing because they let me
access my account. Now, I didn't have but eighty six
dollars in there, but that was eighty six of my dollars,
and I intended on keeping him. Now, I grabbed the
abigail there, my old trusty rusty. I shut that shell
(23:42):
in there, and when that thing went out of eight
seventy swallowed that copper plated magnum turkey thumping down on walping.
Mold Joe low old dog collar heard it. He went
to give him a signal. I don't know if he
wanted me to blunt, steal or take, but we got
all the stigna and.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I sold bad Uga there.
Speaker 8 (24:05):
He was in the bushes there, and he heard it
Old Pump follow that magnum load too, and they just
kind of stopped. I got my money.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
I got.
Speaker 8 (24:17):
Out of there and went to the Mississippi and killed turkey
that morning too. And the more of the stories is,
they made a decision to take my money. I made
a commitment to keep it.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Some of the best turkey hunting stories have little to
do with actually killing a gobbler. I'd have been scared
too if i'd have heard Old Trusty Rusty swallow that
turkey thumping, Dino wopping Mojoe load. And Hey, if you're
looking for some good country storytelling, go check out the Hayden,
Alabama podcast.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
They're doing some fun stuff.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Our next story is from none other than Lake Pickle,
also from Mississippi, but this story takes place in Old
Mexico and it's got a shocking ending.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
Here's Lake.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
So it's spring twenty seventeen and I got the opportunity
to travel down south of the border into Mexico Turkey,
which is something I'd never been able to do.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I travel down there with Brad Feris and Troy Ruez.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I feel the need right now to tell y'all that
I was there with those two gentlemen, because when I
get to the point in this story where I talk
about the actual incident, it is so outrageous and so
bizarre that, even though I have video evidence that this happened,
I just want everyone to know that there were also
two other people there that witness this and can confirm
(25:39):
that this story is true. But anyway, we travel down there,
we cross the border, drive for several miles. I think
we drove for maybe an hour a hour and a half.
And anyways, we get to this property that we're hunting.
So the next morning we wake up. It's a pretty
clear day, and man, did we hear some turkeys, but
they were in some flo And if you ever dealt
(26:01):
with big flocks of turkeys, they are really fun to watch.
They are really fun to listen to. But man, if
you aren't where they want to be, they can be
a pain to try to call to you. So we
spent all morning in turkeys, looking at turkeys, hearing turkeys,
but we didn't shoot any turkeys. So we go back
to camp, grab a nap, grab some lunch. We're sitting
there eating lunch with the landowners, telling them out our morning,
(26:22):
telling them what we saw, and he says, Hey, you know,
there's a power line, and every time I'm on that
power line.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I see turkeys every time.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
He also mentioned at this same lunch that despite the
fact that he was not a turkey hunter, he always
wanted a big, pretty gobbler to mount and put in
his camp. Remember that that's an important factor of this story.
So anyways, we head out to this power line. We
get there and we start walking. Our plan is really
just to walk until we find something that looks like
we gets set up calling every once in a while
(26:51):
along the way. If we hear something, we'll sit down.
We're just kind of rolling with the punches. We're just
kind of easing up this power line. I don't remember
who saw it, but we noticed that there was a
dead hen turkey just laying kind of right off the
just right off the side of that power line.
Speaker 7 (27:05):
We look at it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
That's kind of odd, but we didn't think much about
it and kept walking. And we walked a couple one
hundred more yards and there's another dead turkey up under there,
just off the side of the power line, in the
same spot. Another hen. We're like, huh, something's to that,
But again we don't really know and don't make much
of it.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
We just keep walking.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
We end up setting up and start calling, and sure
enough a turkey answers us. Turkey gobbles at us, and
this turkey, unlike the ones we got into this morning,
starts quickly closing the distance, and I'm back filming, running
the camera. Troy and Brad are up front, and this
turkey is coming. Like no if ans or butts about it.
This turkey is coming. It was one of those. With
every gobble he.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Was gaining ground.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And I'm sitting there, going, man, any second, we're gonna
be looking at him. And then finally, just like you
drawed up in your head, out he appeared in full
strut and then came all the rest of them, and
I mean all the rest of them. I do not
know how we managed to yelp up that many turkeys
with only one turkey goblin the entire time, because we
thought we were dealing with a single long beard, but
(28:06):
it was not.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
It was a wad long beards, Jake's hens.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
We had every variety, and they were all march in
our direction.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
This entire wad of turkeys makes it within twenty steps
of Brad Troy. But the problem was is there was
not a second, I mean, not a single moment where
either of them could have pulled the trigger and only
killed one turkey. They were so clumped up together that
I mean, if any of them would have shot, they
would have killed multiple turkeys, five turkeys even. I mean,
(28:36):
it was crazy, and obviously we were not trying to
do that.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And it was in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
They stayed there forever, just standing around, strutting, gobling, yelping, looking,
and it starts getting dark, and these turkeys start getting shifty,
and all of a sudden, turkeys start flying up. So
turkeys start flying and roosting in trees to the left,
to the right, behind us, in front of us. One
gobbler picks up and flies out of the middle of
that power road and lands in a tree almost right
(29:02):
over Troy, which is just off the right side of
this power line, and that turkey he starts getting kind
of shifty up in that tree, and for whatever reason,
he decided that limb he had picked was no longer
good enough for him, and he picks up and flies
and tries to cross that power line I'm assuming to
land in a tree on the other side, but we'll
(29:25):
never know because he's flying and all of a sudden, Zippi,
there was this loud, popping noise, this bright flash of
lights and sparks, and that turkey fell out of the
sky and thudded on the ground, dead as a rock,
right on the other side of that road. He had
hit that power line when he tried to fly across
the road and.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It killed him.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I mean, in all reality, it looked like a giant
mosquito hitting a bug zapper, I mean, just zap and
lights out.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
That turkey was gone. He did not flop at all.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I will never forget the look on bradon Troy's faces,
which I probably had a pretty dumb founded.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Look on my face too.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
But we got up, walked into the woods, found that turkey,
and I remember all you could smell was burnt feathers.
But other than that, the turkey looked to be fine.
And if I'm lying, I'm dying. That turkey had four
beards and an inch into quarterspurs. So we put him
in the back of that buggy and drove him back
to camp. Told the landowner what happened, and said, hey,
(30:19):
you said you wanted a big, pretty gobbler at a
mountain put in your camp. I think we found the
perfect one.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
I told you that that was a shocking story.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Thanks Lake. And by the way they got all that
on video, pretty cool. Our next story is another Mississippi
turkey hunter. And if you haven't seen a trend in
this episode, we got a lot of Mississippi boys and
(30:50):
I'm quite certain that Mississippi is the cultural epicenter of
turkey hunting. This gentleman's name is David Huffman, but he
traveled out well asked to turkey hunt, and I'll be
interested to hear what you think of this story.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
My name is David hoff and I'm from the Jackson,
Mississippi area. Turkey hunting my entire life. Done a lot
of traveling turkey hunting. Without giving too much information on
where we were in the state we were in. But
there are several Indian reservations across this country that you
can hunt on. But when you go to hunt on
an Indian reservation, you have to have a native god right.
You have to have somebody to walk you around the
(31:28):
place and show you where to go, what lands you
can go on, what's tribal.
Speaker 7 (31:30):
What's not trivel.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
So we had enlisted the help of a local.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
Guy where we were going, and he was very well
recommended in the area. He had been there for a
long time, very well respected. So me and three buddies
went out as our first time traveling to the state
and got there and we you know, we're young, were
just fresh out of college, had been traveling around for
a while, and you know, we were sitting pretty high
(31:56):
on our horses of you know, we were good turkey
hunters and we knew what we were doing.
Speaker 7 (31:59):
We were going really didn't need a whole lot of help.
Speaker 9 (32:02):
I come from, you know, a family of my brother
in law is a guide.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
He owns an outfit.
Speaker 9 (32:09):
So I understand that the saying don't guide the guide, right,
So if a guy tells you to do something, you
should probably listen because he knows more than what you
know about that area.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
So we get there.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
And I meet the guide first, and we start riding
around his truck and he's like, well, do you want
to go see some turkeys?
Speaker 7 (32:24):
Like, yeah, absolutely, let's go check some out.
Speaker 9 (32:26):
So he pulled to the top of this hill and
he says, Okay, they're going to be down this bottom
and he shuts his truck off, and he reaches into
center console and he pulls out this old cherry bark
box call and he reaches out and he makes the
three most god awful yelps you've ever heard in your life,
just squawks across it.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yep, yep, yep, yep, And sure.
Speaker 9 (32:46):
Enough, pull a little they come out of this bottom
and walk up this hill, right to the top of
the hill, twenty yards from the truck. And I'm thinking,
all right, this is going to be pretty easy. You know,
this ain't gonna be a whole lot of thought to this.
Just listening to this guy and we'll be just fine.
So my three buddy they were a day behind me,
and they show up and I tell them what happened
that afternoon, and said, look, you just need to listen
to this guy and help points in the right direction.
Speaker 7 (33:07):
We'll kill our turkeys and we'll get out of here.
Speaker 9 (33:08):
Well, I've got two buddies that are a little bit
more headstrong than I am, and so they're big, bad
turkey hunters and they don't need anybody to tell them
where to go.
Speaker 7 (33:17):
They to be pointing in the right direction.
Speaker 9 (33:18):
So they go off and they always hunt together and
me and my other buddy always hunt together when we're
on these trips.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
And so first morning, the guide, his name is Ken.
Speaker 9 (33:29):
He tells our body and says, okay, look, I'm going
to send you downe to this creek bottom, and when
you get down in there, the birds are going to
be chirping, owls are going to be hooting. Let everything
calm down. You have to let the creek accept you.
Very native American thing to say. They're very in tune
with the earth, very in tune with everything around him.
He said, you have to let the creek accept you
before you make a call. He said, do not call
until everything has quieted down. You'll know the crick has
(33:52):
accepted and then you can start turkey hunting. So he
tells them, and I can see that they're just scoffing, like, okay, whatever,
we're not going to listen to this. So they go
down in there and he takes us to another spot
and he tells us the same thing. He says, let
the creek accept you. People, wait till everything calms down.
Don't make a call until that happens. And so I'm
walking down to this creek bottom with my buddy, and
(34:13):
I said now, I said, let's let's just, you know,
take what he said to Hart and just see what happens.
And so sure enough, birds are chirping, owls are hooting
whole nine yards. We don't hear a single bird gobble.
As soon as everything calms down, I said, okay, they're here,
and so I yelp, yep, yelp, yelp, And ten minutes later,
(34:33):
turkey flies down, walks right to our gun barrel.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
We shoot him. Simple is like, h there's something to this.
Speaker 9 (34:39):
So we get back to the truck and calling our buddies,
and we see them going across a mountain. They're going
across his hilltop, probably five hundred yards away, chasing turkeys.
And we get back to the truck and said, Ken said,
they didn't let the creek accept them, so they should have.
Speaker 7 (34:53):
Killed by now.
Speaker 9 (34:54):
And so we watched them chase turkeys for probably two hours,
going across these hills and they get back to the
truck and said, these turkeys will not work with us
one bit.
Speaker 7 (35:03):
They keep running from us. They're heading the opposite direction.
We can't get in front of them. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 9 (35:07):
And Ken said, well, did you call before the creek
accepted you, and they said yes. He said, that's why
you won't kill a turkey. We'll try again tomorrow. And
we backed up in the truck and left. And when
we got back to the house, I said, you guys
better listen to him. I said, it happened for us
in five minutes. Said you better let the crik accept
you tomorrow. And they went down in there. The same
thing happened. They let the creek accept them. Two turkeys
(35:29):
walk in ten minutes later and they shoot them, as
simple as that. So that is a story of if
you go traveling turkey hunting and you go with somebody
that knows the area, you better listen to them.
Speaker 7 (35:39):
They know what they're talking about.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Let the creek accept you.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Even if you can't doctrinally accept the animistic element of this,
Gud's suggestion, if you're a woodsman, I think you kind
of get it. It doesn't always happen, but there comes
a point in some hunt when you feel like you're
a part of the natural system, not just a visitor.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
That was a good story, David, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Our last story is told by another Mississippian named Med
Palmer met as a biologist for the state and best
I can tell, he's the greatest turkey hunter who has
ever lived, period, or at least that's the way that
people that know him talk about him. And he's no
stranger to bear grease. If you recall, he lost his
(36:35):
son in a tragic accident on the Mississippi River in
December of twenty twenty. This story is about Gunner, his
son's last turkey hunt and an incredible experience Med had
the following year. Here's the greatest turkey hnna that ever lived,
Med Palmer.
Speaker 10 (36:58):
My be had Palmer County, Mississippi. The spring of twenty
twenty was an unusual year of turkey hunt. It was
it was a year that COVID had started and school
was out worked They were pretty much telling us to
work from home. So basically we could turkey hunt every day.
Me and my son gone him and uh. The limit
(37:20):
here in Mississippi's three and I limited out about middle
to the season, and Gunner, like one turkey limited out.
So we had got down to the last day of
the season. I had saved that last day for just
me and him, you know, did enjoy hunting together and
hopefully he get his last bird. And there was a
bird he had hunted through the season that had give
(37:42):
him bits. I asked him, like for so, where you
want to go? He said, I want to try that
bird again. So we go in there that morning to
get on the bird, and the bird was right on
the property line. I actually flew up on the property
next to us. We couldn't hunt got with hens, and
we just couldn't do nothing with you. I said, well
next year, I said, opening day, I said, we'll be back.
So we started heading to the house. I told him,
(38:03):
I said, I got one more spot.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
I said.
Speaker 10 (38:05):
We've been in there twice this year, but it was
it's an ordeal to get in there.
Speaker 7 (38:08):
It's like a three.
Speaker 10 (38:09):
Mile drive on a little fire land to get in there,
and then you got to walk by another quarter of
a mile to get to where the turkeys are. He said,
we've been in there twice. We hadn't heard any birds.
And I said, well that partext for spot's got a
lot of good nesting. I said, late in the season,
those hens come in there and started nesting. I said,
the gobblers, you know, they'll follow them, they'll be with them.
So we get we start going in there that morning
(38:31):
about nine o'clock we drive in there and get out
walked and God, I really didn't think we was gonna
hear anything. He was standing there kind of with his
head lord, which we was wore out. It had been
a long season and uh the first year Turkey. God
was in the distance about three hundred yards, and he
looked at me and started grinting, and I said, come on.
So weave in there, got set up and got set
(38:54):
up on the birds. And I figured it be maybe
one or two hens that late season. Man, when I yep,
after we shut up, it was like seven or eight
hens cutting up. They started taking him away. Well, they
got about one hundred and fifty yards and hung up,
and the gobbler hung up the hens I think they
was yet and trying to pull him, but he didn't
want to leave. So we pooled with him, back and forth,
(39:15):
back and forth, probably for another hour or so. Well
it was twelve o'clock straight up, because I looked at
my phone. All of a sudden he broke and he
starts coming. Well, he's coming up a fire lane and
we couldn't see him because the road made a bend
about thirty yards in front of us, and I yep,
and he gobbled right around the bend. I told Gunner, said,
you better get your gun up. I come around the curves.
(39:36):
Matter of practice, I see it and I could see
him coming gun and couldn't seehim at that time. I said, look,
just let him come. Let's enjoy the show. He rouns
a bend, he comes in there, Gunner shoots him, so
he kills him. We took her to death, went down
to the wire the last day. You know, he got
it done well. What I didn't know was that was
(39:56):
Gunner's last turkey hunt that year, December third, twenty twenty.
Gun it was an accident on Misissippi River. Actually scout
in the turkeys for a veteran to take take a
bean duck hunting the next day, and uh and we looked,
and you know, to this day, we've never found gun
(40:17):
of ours.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Buddy.
Speaker 10 (40:20):
The next year, I didn't even know if I was
gonna turkey hunt or not. I mean, I'd lost my son,
I lost my hunting buddy. You know, it's real hard.
And the day before the season, I decided I'm on hunt,
you know. And actually nobody had called me that year
to ask to go turkey hunt, which generally bopening week.
(40:40):
I've got the first twenty Days book, and that year
nobody had called. Anyway, I beside was gonna go. I
was gonna go to the last place where Gunner, me
and him hunting that bird that we didn't kill that
last day. He was probably the longest walk of my
life was that first I am turkey hunt without him.
(41:01):
But anyway, got in there, turkey come in, and I
killed it. It rocked on that whole season. I had
an off season. I don't think I called, but like
ten turkeys that was killed. To be honest with you,
I had lost my spirit. In the Bible, it talks
about somebody losing their spirit. So it rocked on into
(41:24):
the next year and I had some really exceptional hunt
with some disabled people, but I was still just amling
a long turkey hunt. You know, I just didn't have
that fire i'd had before. You know, I had lost
my way and I don't know how to put it.
So finally I decided, I said, I'm gonna go in
(41:46):
there in the morning. We're gonna kill his last turkey.
Because I couldn't even think about going that next year,
right after accident, I said I need to do it,
and need to get it over with. You know, that's
where I'm going in the morning. I said, it's early
in the season. I said, I probably won't hear nothing
because they hadn't moved in there. They're not nesting yet.
So I get in there that morning. Had to leave
(42:07):
real early because, like I said, it's a pretty good
ride in there. I get in there and then I
walk and I get there probably about ten minutes before
gobble time. And he gets about time. Birds starts chirping.
So I hoop and low and behold a turkey gobbles.
I said, man, he's right in there, close to where
Gunner was and it's still, you know, dark. So I
get in there, and the turkey gobbled early. So I
(42:28):
get in there and get set up by a hundred
yard from him, like you want to do. Well, this
starts getting light, and all of a sudden, I look around.
I said, I am on the very same tree Gunner
was on when he shot this turkey. And it starts
getting lighter. Of course, you know, it's emotional, you know,
because I said, what is the odds a man coming
in these woods two years later? A turkey goblin? And
(42:54):
where I need to set up is the exact same
tree where Gunner was when he killed his last turn.
And about that time it dawned on me. I said,
when Gunner shot, I said, he pumped the shot Gunn's
shooting at twenty gauge eight seventy. I said his shell
would be to the right. And I looked over and
(43:14):
about a foot from me there laid that shell. It
was pine straw when a lead covering half of it,
but the yellow part of that twenty gate shell was
sticking up, and it really got emotional them. And you know,
I'd quit calling because my mind was somewhere else. And
that turkey keeps gobbling on his own, like, hey, don't
forget about ma'am, I'm stealing this tree, you know. And
(43:34):
it gets about time to fly down. You know how
they always do. Right before they fly down, they'll be
godden to head off and then they'll go quiet for
a minute. He had done that. He guy said, he's
been a fly down. And by the time I heard
him fly, it kind of glanced him through the wood.
Well he flew away from me. So why yep, he
gobbled in there about one hundred fifty two hundred yard. Well,
yet again he's gone to bother, and then all of
(43:56):
a sudden, the next time, I yep, he gobbled about
seventy five yards over the hill. I said, he's coming.
So I get my gun up and I'm still in
most you know, all this is going through my head.
I said, this ain't been in the hat. I said,
I'm not gonna kill a turkey sitting on the very
same tree that Gunner killed his last turkey. I see
the pan pop up over the hill. He comes right down.
(44:20):
He gets about twenty five yards on the side of
a ridge, and all of a sudden, you know how
the dew in the morning, when the sun comes up,
it makes raised to the trees. It's like God put
him on stage. All of a sudden, the sun broke
out and it was raised, the sun just beaming on it.
It was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen in
my life. He strutted there for twenty minute till I
(44:42):
finally decided, you know, I need to do this. It
was going through my mind. I'm not gonna kill him.
I'm gonna let him live. And then I said, no,
if I don't shoot this turkey, Gunner be so mad
at me. And finally, and you know, I yep, made
him raise his head and I killed him. But it
was being I'm saying, a whole lot of turkeys before
in my life, but that turkey by boy. I could
(45:04):
literally see every car he had turned different, and I
could see a different color. And it happened on the
bey same trade that Gunner killed his last. I mean,
there's no doubt in my mind that the Good Lord
and Gunner said I'm okay, And that day I got
my fire and my spirit back my turkey hunt now
just like I always did, and I needed that to
(45:25):
get me back on.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
That may be the greatest turkey story ever told. What
a privilege that we get to hear it directly from Med.
Thank you for sharing that story so that we can
all celebrate Gunner's life.
Speaker 4 (45:52):
I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Please share our podcast with a friend this week and
be watching for me Eater's Turkey Week, which is coming
up where Brent and I'll be facing off in another
turkey calling contest. Now, I want you to know that
I'll be looking for your vote, but not for any
reason other that I'm just a better color than Brent,
(46:16):
and I think we all know that and keep watching
for First Light's new tree line Turkey Best. Yep, first
Light as a new Turkey Best. We've been using them
for a couple of years, the prototypes and truly it's
a great best.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
Check it out.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.
This turkey is coming. Like no if ans or butts
about it. This turkey is coming.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It was one of those.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
With every gobble he was gaining ground. And I'm sitting there, going, man,
any second we're going to be looking at him. And
then finally, just like you drawed up in your head,
out he appeared in full strut. And then came all
the rest of them, and I mean all the rest
of them. I do not know how we managed to
yelp up that many turkeys with only one turkey goblin
the entire time, because we thought we were dealing with
(00:30):
a single long beard, but it was not.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It was a wad long beards, Jake's hens.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
We had every variety, and they were all march in
our direction. I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Just like clockwork, the rotations of the Earth and the
tilting of its access towards the south have once again
found the North American continent in the early stages of
the most glorious and redemptive time of the year, the spring.
Despite the uncertainty in the world of men, natural systems
hum along with unfailing consistency, and by our good fortune,
(01:03):
many of us live in places where there are wild turkeys.
Why everyone in America doesn't hunt a wild turkey, I
do not know, but I'm glad that they don't.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
But I'm grateful that I do.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
And I'm truly thankful for every gobbling, spitting and drumming
and strutting turkey that I've ever messed around with. Being
a turkey hunter is but a small ripple in the
global affairs of men, but in our minds it stands
like a granite peak, impossible to avoid. You can't go
around it or under it, but each spring you've got
(01:35):
to go through it. This is our Turkey Stories episode.
It's one of my favorites of the year, and we've
got a group of turkey storytellers that are as good
as I've ever heard. And I really doubt that you're
gonna want to miss this one. And I'll leave you
with just one hint about the next hour of your life.
Whatever you do, don't miss med Palmer's story at the end.
(02:00):
It might be the greatest turkey story ever told.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
My name is Clay Nukem, and this.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
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
(02:36):
as rugged as the place as we explore. Of all
the things that we hunt and celebrate through story, turkey
stories are usually the best. The hunts are dynamic, involving
moving and sneaking, and ouling and crowing and yelping and
(02:58):
listening for the vocalizations or lack thereof, of an old gobbler.
The decisions of the turkey hunter are more often than
not wrong if the intent is to kill the turkey,
and the turkeys are usually right.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
But when the hunter.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Gets it right and he fools that old tom turkey,
the raw elemental chemical dump of excitement with that side
of fried wild turkey breast is a scenario without equal.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
But it's time to get onto the stories.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And our first one is from Mississippi, and the man
telling the story his name is Mark Sledge, but in
this hunt, Mark is rooting for the turkey.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
My name is Mark Sledge. I live in Ridgeland, Mississippi,
and back a few years ago I was a turkey hunting.
It was late in the season, and I was just prospecting,
you know, walking and calling, and I stopped. I was
way on the north side of my property, and I
stopped and was getting ready to call, and I heard
(03:59):
someone call, and there was no question in my mind
it was a person and not a turkey, and a
gob berer answer. And so I sat there for a
minute and tried to try to decide what I was
gonna do. And I said, you know, I bet I
know where that guy came in here. So I walked
continued north up to my property line. I got to
(04:21):
the property line, I was standing there looking at a
turkey vest where the guy had taken his vest off
when he crossed the ball bar our fence to come
on to us. And so I picked up the vest
and was standing there trying to decide. You know, when
I found the vest, I knew I was gonna get
the guy because he was coming back to get the vest.
(04:42):
But I was trying to decide where I was gonna
wait on him. And there was a big tree about
probably fifty yards away, a great, big oak tree, and
I'm talking about a huge one. And so I walked
over there to sit down next to the tree, and
before I got to the tree, he shot. And when
he shot, I realized the oak tree was in a
(05:03):
straight line, coming right up the ridge from where he
had shot. And I knew he's fixing a walk right
by me. So I just sat down next to the tree,
and I had, you know, I was turkey hunting, so
I had cameo gloves and camo face mask, and I
put everything on, just laid my gun across my lap
(05:24):
and sat there. And sure enough, man, it wasn't forty
five seconds I saw him coming through the woods carrying
the gobbler. He had gotten the gobbler. I sat there
and I didn't move, and I let him get about
three feet from me, and I said, boy, ended something,
how you look and go from being so good to
so bad in such a short period of time. And
(05:47):
when I spoke, he like to jumped out of his skin.
And I stood up and took my face mask off
and pulled off my right glove, stuck my hand out
and I said, good morning. My name's Mark Sledge. And
he said, hey, how you doing. I said no, I said,
this is the point of the conversation where you tell
me your name. He said, oh, I'm John Smith. I said,
(06:08):
come on, man, you got to do better than that.
You're insulting my intelligence. He said, no, no, that's really
my name. I said, no, it's not. I said, you
need to tell me your real name. No, no, I
promise you that's my real name. And I said it
is not your real name. I'm not buying that. And
I said, well, what do you do. He said, well,
I'm in school, community college. And I said you look
(06:30):
too old to be in school. I said where do
you live. He said, well, I kind of live on
the outside of Benonia. I said, so you live around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I said, man, you might as well tell me
your real name, because I'm going to find out.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
He said no, no, I.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Swear that's my real name. And I said, well, here
you go. I pulled one of my business cards out
of my wallet and I gave it to him, and
I said, that's got my office phone number on it.
Whenever you decide you want to come, tell me your
real name and get your turkey vest back, give me
a call. You can come down to my office and
we'll sit down and talk about it. And I picked
up his turkey vest walked off. Of course, I was
(07:08):
looking back over my shoulder and make sure it wasn't
dropping down on me while I was walking off. But
I went back to my camp and immediately rode into
ben TONI and it took about one stop to find
out who the guy was. And so I identified him
and called the neighbor who he had come off of
(07:29):
and told him what had gone on. And he said, Mark,
don't you worry. He will never set foot on my
property again. And I didn't hear from him. That was
on a Friday, and I figured, you know, i'd probably
hear from next day or to well. On Monday, a
woman calls me with the exact last name. I thought, wow,
(07:50):
this kind of strange, you know that for a guy
to have his wife call me. So I took the
call and she identified herself and she said, oh, miss Sledge,
you have my husband's turkey vest. I said, I sure do.
I said, I'm sitting in my office looking at it.
It's on a hat rack in my office, hanging right
here now. And she said, is there a handmade turkey
(08:12):
call in the pocket? I said, I have no idea.
I've never looked to see what's in it. And she said, well,
I gave. I gave him my handmade turkey call for
our tenth anniversary, and he said it's He said, it's
in the pocket of his of his turkey vest, and
I just want to make sure it's there. And I said, well,
hang on a minute. I went over there and looked
and I said, yeah, it's in there, and she said,
(08:37):
she said okay, great. I said wait a minute. I said,
why are you calling me and he's not calling me.
I said, that doesn't really make sense to him. She said, oh.
He and his dad and his brother got up early
Saturday morning, and when they were leaving, I asked him
where his handmade turkey call was and he said, well,
(08:58):
I don't have it. And he told me I didn't
have it and told me it was in his vest
and you had his vest and I said that's right.
She said, well, can I come get it? I said
absolutely not. I said he needs to come down here
and get it when he gets back into town. And
she said okay. And I said, let me ask you something.
I said, do you have any kids? She said yeah,
I have two boys. I said me too. I said
(09:23):
how are you boys? And they were a little bitty.
Then I want to say they were three and five
or something, and I said, think about this. Your husband's
come sneaking in there, a poaching on us. And I
got two sons and they loved a turkey hunt, so
they're out there turkey hunt. They have no idea your
husband's into her. And one of them accidentally shoots your husband.
(09:44):
I said, my sons have to grow up with the
fact that they've killed a man, and your sons are
going to grow on without a dad. And she said,
oh my gosh, I don't even thought about that. And
I twisted the knife a little bit more and I
had her pumped up where she was gonna waylame he
got home. So sure enough, about the middle of that week,
(10:06):
he finally called me and said, uh, missus Sledge, I'd
like to go get my turkey best. I said, I'd
like to give it to you. I said, come on
down here, and uh, and I'll be glad to give
it to you. So he came to my office and
I made him sit down in there and we had
a little chat for a little while, and Uh. At
the end of the chat, I gave his vest back.
(10:28):
And I've never seen the guy again, and i've certainly
never seen him trespass it again. I think I probably
made a hotist turkey counter.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
That was a good story, but I was surprised that
Mark didn't get the law involved. I kept waiting for
the game morning to show up. I wonder if you
were I respect a man that's willing to take care
of his own business, and I'd say that that was
quite merciful, mercy being an admirable human trait. Maybe that
guy that killed that turkey is listening right now, Thank you, Mark.
(11:02):
But now we're on to the next one, and it's
none other than a bear grease legend from western Arkansas,
Oh Andy Brown. He could tell a story about an
empty black pot and it would be interesting, but when
you get him talking about turkeys, it's hard to turn away.
Most really good turkey hunters that I know, kind of
in my experience, usually have two or three really great stories.
(11:26):
Andy seems to have an unlimited supply, and this is
a story about the best gobbler that Andy ever saw killed.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
My brother in law used to come up from Hope
and Bill he he really liked a turkey hunt because
he never got to do any of it. I used
to go down and hunt with him and Debbie down there,
and they were avid deer hunters. And I used to
love to go down there because you'd see more deer
in one day down there. Back in the eighties eighty
two probably so let's been forty years ago, but it
(11:57):
was nothing but soybean fields and cornfields. But anyway, i'd
go down there and deer hunt with them. And Bill
got to coming up in Turkey hunting with me. And
he came up one year and he was always really
enthused about it because this is something he had never done.
And I took him out on my mountain, did I
out west? I always liked out there. When we pulled
(12:19):
him out for daylight, got into the low Gap and
the same thing happened that day as happened to me
and Scott. I sent Bill west and I went east
and the man, it was fine one and got out
there and not a pe never heard of Turkey. And
I told Bill, I said one meet back at the
gap at ten o'clock. I walked back into the Low Gap,
probably about nine thirty, and the Bill was already there,
(12:40):
and I said to Bill, did you hear anything? He said, yeah,
I had one all over me this morning. I just couldn't.
He just wouldn't come to me, come in above me.
He'd went out west and kind of dropped over on
the north side, and this turkey come right in on
top of him, and it just wouldn't come off to it.
And he said, he gobbled good. He said, just all
the drumming, I could hear him drumming, and he just
he just wouldn't come. And I said, do you think
(13:03):
you can take me back out there where he was?
And he said, yeah, I think I ain't take you
here right where he was. It's he said, he was
out there where it kind of drops off. So we
walk out there two hundred fifty yards and he goes
out there, knobs out and kind of drops off, and
he said, I think we were about right here is
where I was. Got on the north side, and I
just walked up there and just walked up on the
south side, and then the called. When I did, he
(13:25):
just just broke me off.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
This is it.
Speaker 6 (13:27):
This is ten ten o'clock. You know, of course that's
ever turkey Hunter's dream. You know, you get one to
answer you at ten o'clock in the morning. And I said,
come on, So we we just got over on the
south side, and it just went out there and just
fell off in kind of a little old Kenyon just
kind of straight off got set up, and I called him.
When I did, he just broke me off down there.
(13:48):
And I looked at it and I said, this, this
is not this is an't gonna work. I mean, because
I don't know if he's gonna come up with the
left of the holler or the right of the holler.
I said, let's back up on top. So we got
up and walked back up on top of the mountain there,
and there's just a big flat and anyway, I really
put it in as I got aggressive with him then, and
he was just I mean, he was eating it up.
(14:10):
Every time I called him, he gobbled. And that's kind
of way I always did back in those days, early days.
If they wanted to gobble, I wanted to call up,
you know.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And uh.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
Anyway, I tore him up and he come in there
and Bill was I had Bill set up where I
just knew he was just going to walk up me
slap well, said that dude coming up to Bill. He
just come right around to the left of me. And
there was a little old blackjack thicket there he got
right in behind that. He come right up the mountain
(14:41):
east of me, full strut and got right in on
top about sixty yards and all the goblining he did.
Of course I'd shut up then. I hadn't said another
word to him, and he gobbled and he gobbled and
gobbled and he gobbled, and directly he just turned and
he come right back off the mountain like he come.
And he got off down there. And when he got
behind that blackjack thicket from me, I called him again,
(15:03):
and we had a little set in right there, but
I knew he wasn't going to come. I mean, once
they do that, your chances of calling a turkey back
where he'd already been is it's slimmed none. At least
it's always been that way from me. So he kind
of got over back off on the south side, about
fifty yards from me, and I motioned to Bill. I said, Bill,
(15:24):
come here, and Bill give me one of them. What
are we doing deals?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You know?
Speaker 5 (15:28):
I said, come on, and he said come on.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
I said come on, And so he comes to me,
he said, what are we doing? I said, we are
going to move. We just dropped over the north side,
and when we got over the north side. I said, Bill,
we're going to move on this turkey. We're going to
kill this dude, I think. So we just went east.
When we talked back over the top of the mountain there,
I said, if this turkey answers me, he's a dead turkey.
(15:52):
We didn't move seventy five yards, but we got a
little higher and got over on the top. I called him,
and shit, he is wore me up, you know. I said,
he'd better get ready. And it was so funny. I
was sitting there and I had my cun across my
lap in old Bill. I mean, it's pretty open there.
It kind of comes to the prayer makes a little
old bitch. And there's a there's a pine tree that's
(16:15):
four foot through right there on top, and I look, here,
come out on turkey. I mean, he's coming right to
us and can be close, I mean fifteen steps. And
when he goes behind that tree, Bill moves his gun.
And when he comes out, Bill didn't quite wait long enough.
He did, but he didn't because he shot about two
(16:35):
inches of that tree all. But he blowed that turkey.
He just blowed that turkey down. And when that turkey,
you know how they are heat. Turkey jumped up and
when he took off, of course, I was in really
good shape. Then I took off after him, and I
run that turkey. I had face mask and gloves and stuff.
Strode all down the side of that mountain. But I
(16:56):
run him about one hundred yards down the out there,
and finally he just stopped and put his head down
and went to clucking. I mean, I caught up with him,
and anyway, I finished him off. But that turkey was
the best turkey I've ever seen. He had thirty four
and a half inches of beard on him, He had
(17:17):
a ten and a half, a ten, an eight and
a six, He had an inch and a quarter spurred,
and weighed twenty one and a half pounds.
Speaker 7 (17:25):
He was a you know.
Speaker 6 (17:26):
And people said, well, it's not a very big turkey.
The twenty one and a half pound turkey into Washtaw
Mountains is a big turkey. But it was the most
awesome turkey I ever seen. And I told Bill, I said, Bill,
you'll hunt a lifetime and you will never kill a
turkey like this. I said, I've hunted these things like
I was mad at him for twenty five years, and
I've killed I've killed several with two beards, but I
(17:48):
ain't never killed a four beard a turkey.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
That's such a good story, and you could learn a
lot about turkey hunting from that story. Andy is a
rare combination of a man that's as good a turkey
hunter as has ever traversed the mountains of western Arkansas.
And he's the heck of a communicator too, knowing just
when to include details and humor and internal drama. But
(18:14):
really it just kind of flows with overt passion, and
you really can't teach that or copy that. Every step
of the way, you feel like you're right there with him.
I've noticed that every region of the country, even down
to specific families and hunting groups, have peculiar aspects to
their storytelling. I wonder if you've ever picked up on
any of.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Those from Andy.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
My old buddy Steve Ranella did, and after he heard
Andy tell his story one time, he said to me,
Andy Brown sure has a constant sense of the cardinal directions.
I laughed, if you're paying attention, Andy's always saying the
bird was coming up from the east, or we went
back to the west, or we were looking to the south,
where I grew up, which is where Andy lives. Always
(18:58):
having a sense of where no is was like the
eleventh commandment, thou shalt always know which direction is north.
I was never that great at it, but direction is
always included in Andy's stories, in the stories of his
son Scott and all their hunting crew. I like it,
Thank you Andy. The next story is off the Chain.
(19:27):
It involves an ATM and a man wearing a dog collar.
I first heard this man tell this story as a
guest on the Hayden Alabama podcast, and I cackled out loud.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Like a giggling hen.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I'd like to introduce you to a very funny but
precious man, Mississippi pastor Robin Rischer. You get what I
mean when I say precious, like he's a nice guy.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
I'm Robin Ruscher, and I love turkey. I live in Mississippi,
but a very short time living in New Orleans, Louisiana.
I went to seminary down there, and I was a
fish out of water in a big city as the
country had come to town, no doubt about that. And
I got a chance to go turkey hunting. I got
(20:17):
a permission to hunt some land in South Mississippi. I
told my wife and to let me go, and she said, yeah,
you can go. And naturally, when you get in your
wife's car is gonna be on empty every time. That's
a law of nature. And the seminary I don't know
(20:38):
about now, but thirty years ago it was in the
worst neighborhood in America, one of the worst. I bopped
out there and got my wife's little car. I was
gonna go into it because it got good gas mine
and I had a pretty far piece to go, and
we were rolling pennies for gas broke and no extra money.
(21:01):
But I had almost stuff laying on the front seat
of her car. My gun was laying there, My vest
with the shells in the pocket was laying there. I
come out of seminary in this worst neighborhood in America,
and I kind of goosed it a little bit. When
I did, my shelves came out of my pocket and
I noticed still illegal. I know I wanted so to
(21:22):
do this. I just took the shells in the magazines
at over age seventy. Now the gun was loaded, but
it would not fire until you worked the action one time.
And pump shot guns have a very distinctive sound, and
it sounds something like if you've ever been on a
(21:44):
bad end of that sound, you recognize it.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Well.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
I had that gun with bullets in the magazine but
none in the pipe or none in a barrel. And
I had to go get some gas because, like I said,
the car was on empty in the worst neighborhood of America,
and HTM machines were very different back then. You wanted
on us wipe it and they take a car away
from him and then access to your counting. There you were,
(22:10):
and the criminal knew this. But I one thing about that.
I just went there to give me twenty dollars to
get some gas. But in this car. And I walked
in there, this little HTM. It's about two in the morning,
but I was gonna go Turkey on the Mississippi is
about three hour drive. And I pulled in there and
(22:33):
I saw I saw this guy hiding in the AI
at bushes. By the time I saw this selling the
bushes there, he he wasn't wearing nothing but a diaper,
but he was some kind of ugly. I'm telling you,
he the uggliest hell I've ever seen in my life.
He was ugly, you g l y he didn't have
(22:54):
no alibi. He was ugly. M A, m A, how
you think he got that way his mama? The boy
was in bad shape. I saw him right after I
accessed my account. Now looked in front of me, and
there's a guy with a silver studded four inch dog
collar on and no shirt, and he was walking towards me.
(23:18):
I got my rightness, got pink and purple hair, and
they were all closing in at the rapid rate. And
they knew what they were doing because they let me
access my account. Now, I didn't have but eighty six
dollars in there, but that was eighty six of my dollars,
and I intended on keeping him. Now, I grabbed the
abigail there, my old trusty rusty. I shut that shell
(23:42):
in there, and when that thing went out of eight
seventy swallowed that copper plated magnum turkey thumping down on walping.
Mold Joe low old dog collar heard it. He went
to give him a signal. I don't know if he
wanted me to blunt, steal or take, but we got
all the stigna and.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
I sold bad Uga there.
Speaker 8 (24:05):
He was in the bushes there, and he heard it
Old Pump follow that magnum load too, and they just
kind of stopped. I got my money.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
I got.
Speaker 8 (24:17):
Out of there and went to the Mississippi and killed turkey
that morning too. And the more of the stories is,
they made a decision to take my money. I made
a commitment to keep it.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Some of the best turkey hunting stories have little to
do with actually killing a gobbler. I'd have been scared
too if i'd have heard Old Trusty Rusty swallow that
turkey thumping, Dino wopping Mojoe load. And Hey, if you're
looking for some good country storytelling, go check out the Hayden,
Alabama podcast.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
They're doing some fun stuff.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Our next story is from none other than Lake Pickle,
also from Mississippi, but this story takes place in Old
Mexico and it's got a shocking ending.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
Here's Lake.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
So it's spring twenty seventeen and I got the opportunity
to travel down south of the border into Mexico Turkey,
which is something I'd never been able to do.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I travel down there with Brad Feris and Troy Ruez.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
I feel the need right now to tell y'all that
I was there with those two gentlemen, because when I
get to the point in this story where I talk
about the actual incident, it is so outrageous and so
bizarre that, even though I have video evidence that this happened,
I just want everyone to know that there were also
two other people there that witness this and can confirm
(25:39):
that this story is true. But anyway, we travel down there,
we cross the border, drive for several miles. I think
we drove for maybe an hour a hour and a half.
And anyways, we get to this property that we're hunting.
So the next morning we wake up. It's a pretty
clear day, and man, did we hear some turkeys, but
they were in some flo And if you ever dealt
(26:01):
with big flocks of turkeys, they are really fun to watch.
They are really fun to listen to. But man, if
you aren't where they want to be, they can be
a pain to try to call to you. So we
spent all morning in turkeys, looking at turkeys, hearing turkeys,
but we didn't shoot any turkeys. So we go back
to camp, grab a nap, grab some lunch. We're sitting
there eating lunch with the landowners, telling them out our morning,
(26:22):
telling them what we saw, and he says, Hey, you know,
there's a power line, and every time I'm on that
power line.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I see turkeys every time.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
He also mentioned at this same lunch that despite the
fact that he was not a turkey hunter, he always
wanted a big, pretty gobbler to mount and put in
his camp. Remember that that's an important factor of this story.
So anyways, we head out to this power line. We
get there and we start walking. Our plan is really
just to walk until we find something that looks like
we gets set up calling every once in a while
(26:51):
along the way. If we hear something, we'll sit down.
We're just kind of rolling with the punches. We're just
kind of easing up this power line. I don't remember
who saw it, but we noticed that there was a
dead hen turkey just laying kind of right off the
just right off the side of that power line.
Speaker 7 (27:05):
We look at it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
That's kind of odd, but we didn't think much about
it and kept walking. And we walked a couple one
hundred more yards and there's another dead turkey up under there,
just off the side of the power line, in the
same spot. Another hen. We're like, huh, something's to that,
But again we don't really know and don't make much
of it.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
We just keep walking.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
We end up setting up and start calling, and sure
enough a turkey answers us. Turkey gobbles at us, and
this turkey, unlike the ones we got into this morning,
starts quickly closing the distance, and I'm back filming, running
the camera. Troy and Brad are up front, and this
turkey is coming. Like no if ans or butts about it.
This turkey is coming. It was one of those. With
every gobble he.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Was gaining ground.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And I'm sitting there, going, man, any second, we're gonna
be looking at him. And then finally, just like you
drawed up in your head, out he appeared in full
strut and then came all the rest of them, and
I mean all the rest of them. I do not
know how we managed to yelp up that many turkeys
with only one turkey goblin the entire time, because we
thought we were dealing with a single long beard, but
(28:06):
it was not.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
It was a wad long beards, Jake's hens.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
We had every variety, and they were all march in
our direction.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
I'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
This entire wad of turkeys makes it within twenty steps
of Brad Troy. But the problem was is there was
not a second, I mean, not a single moment where
either of them could have pulled the trigger and only
killed one turkey. They were so clumped up together that
I mean, if any of them would have shot, they
would have killed multiple turkeys, five turkeys even. I mean,
(28:36):
it was crazy, and obviously we were not trying to
do that.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And it was in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
They stayed there forever, just standing around, strutting, gobling, yelping, looking,
and it starts getting dark, and these turkeys start getting shifty,
and all of a sudden, turkeys start flying up. So
turkeys start flying and roosting in trees to the left,
to the right, behind us, in front of us. One
gobbler picks up and flies out of the middle of
that power road and lands in a tree almost right
(29:02):
over Troy, which is just off the right side of
this power line, and that turkey he starts getting kind
of shifty up in that tree, and for whatever reason,
he decided that limb he had picked was no longer
good enough for him, and he picks up and flies
and tries to cross that power line I'm assuming to
land in a tree on the other side, but we'll
(29:25):
never know because he's flying and all of a sudden, Zippi,
there was this loud, popping noise, this bright flash of
lights and sparks, and that turkey fell out of the
sky and thudded on the ground, dead as a rock,
right on the other side of that road. He had
hit that power line when he tried to fly across
the road and.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It killed him.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I mean, in all reality, it looked like a giant
mosquito hitting a bug zapper, I mean, just zap and
lights out.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
That turkey was gone. He did not flop at all.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I will never forget the look on bradon Troy's faces,
which I probably had a pretty dumb founded.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Look on my face too.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
But we got up, walked into the woods, found that turkey,
and I remember all you could smell was burnt feathers.
But other than that, the turkey looked to be fine.
And if I'm lying, I'm dying. That turkey had four
beards and an inch into quarterspurs. So we put him
in the back of that buggy and drove him back
to camp. Told the landowner what happened, and said, hey,
(30:19):
you said you wanted a big, pretty gobbler at a
mountain put in your camp. I think we found the
perfect one.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
I told you that that was a shocking story.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Thanks Lake. And by the way they got all that
on video, pretty cool. Our next story is another Mississippi
turkey hunter. And if you haven't seen a trend in
this episode, we got a lot of Mississippi boys and
(30:50):
I'm quite certain that Mississippi is the cultural epicenter of
turkey hunting. This gentleman's name is David Huffman, but he
traveled out well asked to turkey hunt, and I'll be
interested to hear what you think of this story.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
My name is David hoff and I'm from the Jackson,
Mississippi area. Turkey hunting my entire life. Done a lot
of traveling turkey hunting. Without giving too much information on
where we were in the state we were in. But
there are several Indian reservations across this country that you
can hunt on. But when you go to hunt on
an Indian reservation, you have to have a native god right.
You have to have somebody to walk you around the
(31:28):
place and show you where to go, what lands you
can go on, what's tribal.
Speaker 7 (31:30):
What's not trivel.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
So we had enlisted the help of a local.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
Guy where we were going, and he was very well
recommended in the area. He had been there for a
long time, very well respected. So me and three buddies
went out as our first time traveling to the state
and got there and we you know, we're young, were
just fresh out of college, had been traveling around for
a while, and you know, we were sitting pretty high
(31:56):
on our horses of you know, we were good turkey
hunters and we knew what we were doing.
Speaker 7 (31:59):
We were going really didn't need a whole lot of help.
Speaker 9 (32:02):
I come from, you know, a family of my brother
in law is a guide.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
He owns an outfit.
Speaker 9 (32:09):
So I understand that the saying don't guide the guide, right,
So if a guy tells you to do something, you
should probably listen because he knows more than what you
know about that area.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
So we get there.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
And I meet the guide first, and we start riding
around his truck and he's like, well, do you want
to go see some turkeys?
Speaker 7 (32:24):
Like, yeah, absolutely, let's go check some out.
Speaker 9 (32:26):
So he pulled to the top of this hill and
he says, Okay, they're going to be down this bottom
and he shuts his truck off, and he reaches into
center console and he pulls out this old cherry bark
box call and he reaches out and he makes the
three most god awful yelps you've ever heard in your life,
just squawks across it.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yep, yep, yep, yep, And sure.
Speaker 9 (32:46):
Enough, pull a little they come out of this bottom
and walk up this hill, right to the top of
the hill, twenty yards from the truck. And I'm thinking,
all right, this is going to be pretty easy. You know,
this ain't gonna be a whole lot of thought to this.
Just listening to this guy and we'll be just fine.
So my three buddy they were a day behind me,
and they show up and I tell them what happened
that afternoon, and said, look, you just need to listen
to this guy and help points in the right direction.
Speaker 7 (33:07):
We'll kill our turkeys and we'll get out of here.
Speaker 9 (33:08):
Well, I've got two buddies that are a little bit
more headstrong than I am, and so they're big, bad
turkey hunters and they don't need anybody to tell them
where to go.
Speaker 7 (33:17):
They to be pointing in the right direction.
Speaker 9 (33:18):
So they go off and they always hunt together and
me and my other buddy always hunt together when we're
on these trips.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
And so first morning, the guide, his name is Ken.
Speaker 9 (33:29):
He tells our body and says, okay, look, I'm going
to send you downe to this creek bottom, and when
you get down in there, the birds are going to
be chirping, owls are going to be hooting. Let everything
calm down. You have to let the creek accept you.
Very native American thing to say. They're very in tune
with the earth, very in tune with everything around him.
He said, you have to let the creek accept you
before you make a call. He said, do not call
until everything has quieted down. You'll know the crick has
(33:52):
accepted and then you can start turkey hunting. So he
tells them, and I can see that they're just scoffing, like, okay, whatever,
we're not going to listen to this. So they go
down in there and he takes us to another spot
and he tells us the same thing. He says, let
the creek accept you. People, wait till everything calms down.
Don't make a call until that happens. And so I'm
walking down to this creek bottom with my buddy, and
(34:13):
I said now, I said, let's let's just, you know,
take what he said to Hart and just see what happens.
And so sure enough, birds are chirping, owls are hooting
whole nine yards. We don't hear a single bird gobble.
As soon as everything calms down, I said, okay, they're here,
and so I yelp, yep, yelp, yelp, And ten minutes later,
(34:33):
turkey flies down, walks right to our gun barrel.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
We shoot him. Simple is like, h there's something to this.
Speaker 9 (34:39):
So we get back to the truck and calling our buddies,
and we see them going across a mountain. They're going
across his hilltop, probably five hundred yards away, chasing turkeys.
And we get back to the truck and said, Ken said,
they didn't let the creek accept them, so they should have.
Speaker 7 (34:53):
Killed by now.
Speaker 9 (34:54):
And so we watched them chase turkeys for probably two hours,
going across these hills and they get back to the
truck and said, these turkeys will not work with us
one bit.
Speaker 7 (35:03):
They keep running from us. They're heading the opposite direction.
We can't get in front of them. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 9 (35:07):
And Ken said, well, did you call before the creek
accepted you, and they said yes. He said, that's why
you won't kill a turkey. We'll try again tomorrow. And
we backed up in the truck and left. And when
we got back to the house, I said, you guys
better listen to him. I said, it happened for us
in five minutes. Said you better let the crik accept
you tomorrow. And they went down in there. The same
thing happened. They let the creek accept them. Two turkeys
(35:29):
walk in ten minutes later and they shoot them, as
simple as that. So that is a story of if
you go traveling turkey hunting and you go with somebody
that knows the area, you better listen to them.
Speaker 7 (35:39):
They know what they're talking about.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Let the creek accept you.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Even if you can't doctrinally accept the animistic element of this,
Gud's suggestion, if you're a woodsman, I think you kind
of get it. It doesn't always happen, but there comes
a point in some hunt when you feel like you're
a part of the natural system, not just a visitor.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
That was a good story, David, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Our last story is told by another Mississippian named Med
Palmer met as a biologist for the state and best
I can tell, he's the greatest turkey hunter who has
ever lived, period, or at least that's the way that
people that know him talk about him. And he's no
stranger to bear grease. If you recall, he lost his
(36:35):
son in a tragic accident on the Mississippi River in
December of twenty twenty. This story is about Gunner, his
son's last turkey hunt and an incredible experience Med had
the following year. Here's the greatest turkey hnna that ever lived,
Med Palmer.
Speaker 10 (36:58):
My be had Palmer County, Mississippi. The spring of twenty
twenty was an unusual year of turkey hunt. It was
it was a year that COVID had started and school
was out worked They were pretty much telling us to
work from home. So basically we could turkey hunt every day.
Me and my son gone him and uh. The limit
(37:20):
here in Mississippi's three and I limited out about middle
to the season, and Gunner, like one turkey limited out.
So we had got down to the last day of
the season. I had saved that last day for just
me and him, you know, did enjoy hunting together and
hopefully he get his last bird. And there was a
bird he had hunted through the season that had give
(37:42):
him bits. I asked him, like for so, where you
want to go? He said, I want to try that
bird again. So we go in there that morning to
get on the bird, and the bird was right on
the property line. I actually flew up on the property
next to us. We couldn't hunt got with hens, and
we just couldn't do nothing with you. I said, well
next year, I said, opening day, I said, we'll be back.
So we started heading to the house. I told him,
(38:03):
I said, I got one more spot.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
I said.
Speaker 10 (38:05):
We've been in there twice this year, but it was
it's an ordeal to get in there.
Speaker 7 (38:08):
It's like a three.
Speaker 10 (38:09):
Mile drive on a little fire land to get in there,
and then you got to walk by another quarter of
a mile to get to where the turkeys are. He said,
we've been in there twice. We hadn't heard any birds.
And I said, well that partext for spot's got a
lot of good nesting. I said, late in the season,
those hens come in there and started nesting. I said,
the gobblers, you know, they'll follow them, they'll be with them.
So we get we start going in there that morning
(38:31):
about nine o'clock we drive in there and get out
walked and God, I really didn't think we was gonna
hear anything. He was standing there kind of with his
head lord, which we was wore out. It had been
a long season and uh the first year Turkey. God
was in the distance about three hundred yards, and he
looked at me and started grinting, and I said, come on.
So weave in there, got set up and got set
(38:54):
up on the birds. And I figured it be maybe
one or two hens that late season. Man, when I yep,
after we shut up, it was like seven or eight
hens cutting up. They started taking him away. Well, they
got about one hundred and fifty yards and hung up,
and the gobbler hung up the hens I think they
was yet and trying to pull him, but he didn't
want to leave. So we pooled with him, back and forth,
(39:15):
back and forth, probably for another hour or so. Well
it was twelve o'clock straight up, because I looked at
my phone. All of a sudden he broke and he
starts coming. Well, he's coming up a fire lane and
we couldn't see him because the road made a bend
about thirty yards in front of us, and I yep,
and he gobbled right around the bend. I told Gunner, said,
you better get your gun up. I come around the curves.
(39:36):
Matter of practice, I see it and I could see
him coming gun and couldn't seehim at that time. I said, look,
just let him come. Let's enjoy the show. He rouns
a bend, he comes in there, Gunner shoots him, so
he kills him. We took her to death, went down
to the wire the last day. You know, he got
it done well. What I didn't know was that was
(39:56):
Gunner's last turkey hunt that year, December third, twenty twenty.
Gun it was an accident on Misissippi River. Actually scout
in the turkeys for a veteran to take take a
bean duck hunting the next day, and uh and we looked,
and you know, to this day, we've never found gun
(40:17):
of ours.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Buddy.
Speaker 10 (40:20):
The next year, I didn't even know if I was
gonna turkey hunt or not. I mean, I'd lost my son,
I lost my hunting buddy. You know, it's real hard.
And the day before the season, I decided I'm on hunt,
you know. And actually nobody had called me that year
to ask to go turkey hunt, which generally bopening week.
(40:40):
I've got the first twenty Days book, and that year
nobody had called. Anyway, I beside was gonna go. I
was gonna go to the last place where Gunner, me
and him hunting that bird that we didn't kill that
last day. He was probably the longest walk of my
life was that first I am turkey hunt without him.
(41:01):
But anyway, got in there, turkey come in, and I
killed it. It rocked on that whole season. I had
an off season. I don't think I called, but like
ten turkeys that was killed. To be honest with you,
I had lost my spirit. In the Bible, it talks
about somebody losing their spirit. So it rocked on into
(41:24):
the next year and I had some really exceptional hunt
with some disabled people, but I was still just amling
a long turkey hunt. You know, I just didn't have
that fire i'd had before. You know, I had lost
my way and I don't know how to put it.
So finally I decided, I said, I'm gonna go in
(41:46):
there in the morning. We're gonna kill his last turkey.
Because I couldn't even think about going that next year,
right after accident, I said I need to do it,
and need to get it over with. You know, that's
where I'm going in the morning. I said, it's early
in the season. I said, I probably won't hear nothing
because they hadn't moved in there. They're not nesting yet.
So I get in there that morning. Had to leave
(42:07):
real early because, like I said, it's a pretty good
ride in there. I get in there and then I
walk and I get there probably about ten minutes before
gobble time. And he gets about time. Birds starts chirping.
So I hoop and low and behold a turkey gobbles.
I said, man, he's right in there, close to where
Gunner was and it's still, you know, dark. So I
get in there, and the turkey gobbled early. So I
(42:28):
get in there and get set up by a hundred
yard from him, like you want to do. Well, this
starts getting light, and all of a sudden, I look around.
I said, I am on the very same tree Gunner
was on when he shot this turkey. And it starts
getting lighter. Of course, you know, it's emotional, you know,
because I said, what is the odds a man coming
in these woods two years later? A turkey goblin? And
(42:54):
where I need to set up is the exact same
tree where Gunner was when he killed his last turn.
And about that time it dawned on me. I said,
when Gunner shot, I said, he pumped the shot Gunn's
shooting at twenty gauge eight seventy. I said his shell
would be to the right. And I looked over and
(43:14):
about a foot from me there laid that shell. It
was pine straw when a lead covering half of it,
but the yellow part of that twenty gate shell was
sticking up, and it really got emotional them. And you know,
I'd quit calling because my mind was somewhere else. And
that turkey keeps gobbling on his own, like, hey, don't
forget about ma'am, I'm stealing this tree, you know. And
(43:34):
it gets about time to fly down. You know how
they always do. Right before they fly down, they'll be
godden to head off and then they'll go quiet for
a minute. He had done that. He guy said, he's
been a fly down. And by the time I heard
him fly, it kind of glanced him through the wood.
Well he flew away from me. So why yep, he
gobbled in there about one hundred fifty two hundred yard. Well,
yet again he's gone to bother, and then all of
(43:56):
a sudden, the next time, I yep, he gobbled about
seventy five yards over the hill. I said, he's coming.
So I get my gun up and I'm still in
most you know, all this is going through my head.
I said, this ain't been in the hat. I said,
I'm not gonna kill a turkey sitting on the very
same tree that Gunner killed his last turkey. I see
the pan pop up over the hill. He comes right down.
(44:20):
He gets about twenty five yards on the side of
a ridge, and all of a sudden, you know how
the dew in the morning, when the sun comes up,
it makes raised to the trees. It's like God put
him on stage. All of a sudden, the sun broke
out and it was raised, the sun just beaming on it.
It was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen in
my life. He strutted there for twenty minute till I
(44:42):
finally decided, you know, I need to do this. It
was going through my mind. I'm not gonna kill him.
I'm gonna let him live. And then I said, no,
if I don't shoot this turkey, Gunner be so mad
at me. And finally, and you know, I yep, made
him raise his head and I killed him. But it
was being I'm saying, a whole lot of turkeys before
in my life, but that turkey by boy. I could
(45:04):
literally see every car he had turned different, and I
could see a different color. And it happened on the
bey same trade that Gunner killed his last. I mean,
there's no doubt in my mind that the Good Lord
and Gunner said I'm okay, And that day I got
my fire and my spirit back my turkey hunt now
just like I always did, and I needed that to
(45:25):
get me back on.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
That may be the greatest turkey story ever told. What
a privilege that we get to hear it directly from Med.
Thank you for sharing that story so that we can
all celebrate Gunner's life.
Speaker 4 (45:52):
I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Please share our podcast with a friend this week and
be watching for me Eater's Turkey Week, which is coming
up where Brent and I'll be facing off in another
turkey calling contest. Now, I want you to know that
I'll be looking for your vote, but not for any
reason other that I'm just a better color than Brent,
(46:16):
and I think we all know that and keep watching
for First Light's new tree line Turkey Best. Yep, first
Light as a new Turkey Best. We've been using them
for a couple of years, the prototypes and truly it's
a great best.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
Check it out.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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