00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Hunting Collective a very special episode. Today, we're gonna say goodbye to Turkey season. It's over now for most of us in the office, most of us around the country. We had a great one. We had a lot of great discussions on this podcast, a lot of great content on the mediator dot com. But we're gonna say goodbye the turk season. And and the only way I could think to do it, and that's by talking to Joannice a lot of vi an eagle, but tell us probably the best turkey hunter on our crew, although Ranella might argue, but we have Janni. We're talking, and we're saying goodbye to the turkey season. We're talking tips and tactics, we running gun, We're sitting get um and reflecting on our interview guest for today, who is Colonel Tom Kelly. Colonel Tim Kelly is ninety three years of age as it stands. Throughout his life he's been called the poet Laureate of turkey hunting, and and in my mind is has done the best job of representing turkey hunters and turkeys and our pursuit in the written word ever maybe ever. So he's a legend, and it's very specially sit down with him, probably the only podcast he's ever done and ever will do you're about to hear, So hopefully it stands up to the lofty goals of his career. I've long wanted to meet Tom and have a conversation with him, so hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did. But before we get to that, we're gonna talk about something from First Light, and that's the woody Grit muck boots. Now, these just went onto the website at first Light dot com. I saw him there and I fear I want to talk to you about him because I'm I got him and they're gonna be badass. Um. These are the Neopreme with the p K mesh lining Uh. They're in their featured in First Light Fusion. And if you don't have, if you've never worn muck boots, what the hell are you doing? Get yourself a para munk boots. I will. I was just wearing my muck boots out for musher money last week. So it's it's a must if you live in the muddy climate of the spring early spring here in Montana or really anywhere else. If you're a duck hunter. Um, you wear them shoveling the driveway in the wintertime. Whatever you need, the muck boots are there for you. And these just happen to have a kick ass first slight fusion pattern on them, So you should go there, go to first, like dot Com, check them out. They're pretty cool. I like him. Nobody told me to say that. I just saw him on the website. Um, they're limited runs to get there now, They're gonna sell out soon. I bet so get over there first, like dot Com. All right, without further ado, one of my favorite podcasts of all time, coming right at you. Let's go. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pared do the medal. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new clothes, the games that can hand from the rich kids next door, and I grew um baths like it's like up. They have a thousand things inside of my head. I wish I ain't saying and now I just wanted to a real bad dream or being a lack. I'm coming a part of the scenes, but thank you, Jack Daniels. Hey, everybody, it's me Ben O'Brien, I host this podcast, it's called The Hunting Collective, and we're back on a very sad, sad day. It's June. It'll be the June four when you're listening to this. And this is kind of in memoriam two. Turkey Season. She she was good to us this year. I feel like, and and we got to move on to other things bears, spring bear season, and then just like, what makes it a female? What's that? What makes Turkey Season a female? Just because I'm in love with her, you know, it's the head of her sexual relationship. If you're saying I love him but just me, But I mean, I'm not. I I wouldn't judge anybody if they wanted to personified Turkey Season as a guy or gal and it or whatever you needed to be. But for me, she's a gentle, gentle lover and I we'll miss her until I don't really hunt fall turkeys, or I would miss her to the fall, but spring turkeys to me is just a different, different time. Yeah. I always say, if I get all my big game tags filled, I'd go chase and fall turkeys. But that doesn't happen yet. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm just really melancholy. Right now, I'm sad I had a good year. You had a good year. Yeah, I'm actually not. I'm not sad because yeah, because I I quench on Sunday and some very satiated. It's Tuesday, so that was two days ago. And um, yeah it was a very I say, you could say, I say the best for last, the best turkey season, save the best for last. She's a wonderful, wonderful companion. Um, all right, we'll tell us this last turkey story. I believe you were in Wisconsin, were you not. It's a great Doug drt. But you know, just a few days prior to that, Steve and I were in Michigan hunting turkeys with a very special guest that'll be on media podcasting. I don't know if we should mention it or not. I forgot to all fair. It's a super big secret. Yeah, big teaser, how to go without saying who? All I say is there's a couple of people that fit this bill. But he played a couple of sports really well. Yeah, Um it went well. Did he play turkeys really well? Uh? Did not play turkeys really well? Unfortunate, unfortunate passed up shots at Jake's though, well it's a classy gentleman. Yeah. And I'll start my story in my turkey hunting story in Michigan with a Jake because it was the last day. I passed up Jake's on the first day. We only had two days a hunt, so there's one the first day, the second day, first and last, and uh, Steves given me a bunch of ship. He's like, really a one day hunt, you're passing up a Jake. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's what I did. You know, I like those the big breasts of a gobbler, you know, I really like those big breasts. Um and uh. I like long beards. You know, there's something just something about killing a long beard over a jake. It just, uh, it feels a little bit better for some reason. But guy who was who I was hunting with, who uh runs this ranch for every buddy, Matt, He was like, Tom is a Tom, A gobbler is a gowler? Jake or Tom. He's like, it's a mail turkey to me, doesn't matter. And we just happened to see five Jake's At that moment when we're having this conversation out in the field and I'm like, yeah, we got like four or five hours left before I really have to go. And he's like, buddy, don't let me influence your thinking. But I would be killing a jake. And I'm like, you know what, you're right, like once the last day and you want to go home with some meat, you got some jake's in front of you, you should probably try to kill one. So we I take like five steps, I'm like, and he's like, I'm gonna call a little bit and see what they do. You know what. I'm kind of glass and I'm gonna take five steps and looking I'm like, oh, ship, they're coming, you know. I'm like, I'm just gonna sit down right here at this tree I'm next to. He's like, go to that next one. I'm like, no, man, they're coming. Like it'll be good. And we're kind of on a little a little logging road that just connects a power line to a field. And it's only seventy yards long, um, you know, maybe fifteen yards wide. And uh, I mean I'm pulling my seat down with one hand holding my gun in the other and I'm my butts still like a foot off the ground and I'm looking down the lane and I see a long beard come around the corner of the field and onto the road that we're on. But the Jake's are still you know, it's out, you know, And all of a sudden, this long beard just like hey what' and uh, I mean I barely had time to just I mean, I just let go of my seat and just put my butt on the ground and threw out my gun and popped him. Um. But I almost felt like it was a sign because I was like, I'm cool with shooting a jake and then whoever it would be up there that, you know, helps make decisions like that was like, you know what, since he made amends, here's a mother, here's here's a long weird for you. Thanks for your flexibility. We're gonna let you. And this is a Michigan ste or is this yeah? And that was number what turkey for you? This this sprout was number six six. That's pretty that's that's more than most people kill you that I had best in my best ever season of five at that point, and so you're just it's all gravy. I was. I was shooting for ten. I had enough tags to make it to ten in Wisconsin. I told Duck during that on the phone, I said, I was like, YEAHNI has a little bit of Hubris coming out there. He's shooting for ten. Then he reminded me, He's like, aren't you shooting for ten? I was like, yes, oh yeah, yeah, I'm similar Hubris. Not only got to four myself. Um, and that's that's a big issue with me. I feel I don't feel like a failure because I every hunt I went on, I killed a turkey. That's good. But yeah, but I just well, I think you did, didn't you except for that one Montana burns you guys. Yeah, I didn't kill on that one. And that was a lot of days we put in and I even went back to try to kill that bird. We'll get back to him, get to him. We're gonna get to him. But but but to set up our turkey season, I always go in for ten is my goal, always, because I feel like how many like always, like the last three years? Okay, always? Because you've been hunting turkeys how long since I was fourteen? I don't know, fifteen, So that's twenty years, twenty years, probably twenty years, thirty three, twenty years of turkey on we got ten years on me, probably roughly twenty years. But I mean the first the first how many every years, Probably the first twelve years, it was very sporadic. Over the last eight years, I've really gotten you were real serious, real serious. It was Turkey season, I'd go. But over the last eight years, it's like, I got, how many years have you called yourself a turkey fanatic? Probably four or five like that, something similar to that, when I really felt like that's the thing I was waiting for the most and I don't I know, I live in Montana. Announced was sale cunning and blah blah blah. But I've said this on this podcast many times and I repeat it, that there's something about Turkey season that gets been going. It just really gets me excited. So I try to kill. For the last three years, I've said a goal of ten birds per year, knowing that east bird would yield roughly eight to ten pounds of meat. I feel like ten birds, Plus I love love hunting him, so I would take twenty if possible, But ten birds kind of feels like the amount of meat I would need to to offset a bunch of need for white meat for the rest of the year, plus legs and thighs and things that will that you can due to offset some other consumption. So that's something that I've been trying to do. I think I've gone like six six four this year or something like that, or five six four or something like that. So it always seems like I end up in that mid like halfway to my goal. Yeah, man, And that's a lot of turkey hunting is a lot of turkey killing. It is to get to five or six it is, and it's never I never feel I feel this year like the time I spent the woods, I maximized, you know, with with everything going on, I maxed by the time in the woods. And like you were just saying about Michigan, I don't know if everybody else is like this, but it feels like my turkey hunts are only a day or too long. I never get like a five day turkey hunt or a sixth day hurt turkey, and it always feels like they're truncated to the point where I'm I'm going hard after Just know you're like, oh, I could take a nap all, but I'm only here from one day. I better keep pounding it and maybe I'll get this gobler fired. Up at one thirty in the afternoon and it often leads to killing afternoon killings, but anyway, that was my goal for this year. It also leads to being tired, as that that there's no there's being tired in the midday of a Turkey hunt is different. I've been like mind bending lee tired this year on a couple of afternoon I actually think I went a step farther. I used to enjoy the mind mending tiredness where you're kind of like the world's and this happens all hunting too, if you haven't taken your midday naps like you should, like a good alk hunter, where the world seems to get a little hazy and foggy and your brain is hazy and foggy. You can't make good decisions, and you lay down for an hour sometimes two every now and then three, and you wake up and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, this is how how everything should feel, and look again, you know, and you're back in action. It's like fifteen minutes sometimes it's like your synapses just aren't quite fire, and then fifteen minutes brain reach. It does help. And I've been remember in Texas this year I was. We were on you guys had already left and I'd stayed an extra day and we just went through like as hot as hell, no gobbled day. We heard a couple of golls on the roofs was just nothing after that. It must have hiked we like a long way around that same the same Yannie loop that you hiked spot in Texas. And I just by the mid day, Buddy Tyler and I were both just we would be talking and then one of us would fall asleep. We'll be walking and then we just one of us would just stop talking and you're one of your eyes will be closed and he just didn't really know where you were, and you'd wake up. And so at that point you just gotta take a nap. You do, it's gonna keep yourself break. But I think what happened to me this year, and um, I'm not complaining because half of it's for work, you know, that's what they call it, what they say, But because you're hammering like that, and so instead of taking naps, you're punching emails. Instead of taking naps, you're recording the podcast. Instead of taking naps, you're you know, fixing a meal for some people, whatever it might be. And then you're, you know, next morning, you're you were getting up at three thirty to go turkey hunt. Next one, you GetUp at three because you gotta make a flight somewhere at five thirty. And I think I wore myself down where I've been now battling. I think for ten days, like when I'm calling the Turkey crowd the Turkey season crowd, man, it's like I feel I feel like nine. I've been like at ninety and for like a solid ten days. Like it's not putting me down, but I'm just not quite there. Slow congestion or slight headache, and it's just I think I'm gonna sleep this week with not no no three thirty a m. Wake ups, and by Friday, I'm gonna be one on one again. Well I did. We did the rendez Dous. Then I went to Idaho and on a couple of days and I went to Oregon and it was and I just went to South Dakota and by by the time I got home from that little run, I was I was here, but not here for a couple of days, at least a couple of days. You know, I had the sniffles. I wasn't sleeping right, just hearing gobbles at every corner in the office. I just didn't. I just I just wasn't right. And I felt like that that was my turkey, like just the turkey hayes, the turkey fog. That's the causes. And there's other you know, white tails. You get that too. If you sit and do a bunch of all days sits in a row, you get a little bit loopy for sure, um and L two and everything else. But turkeys. Turkeys for me feels like you don't have to get up nearly early for all day November white tail sits. You're not burning anywhere near the calories. No three thirty. You want to make decisions, You're in a tree. The decisions made for you. All you gotta do is sit there. I guess you have to make a decision like, well, look at my phone in should I look left or right? You know? Sure, you have to like stay focused and then I'm not downplaying it. It takes mental toughness and energy and like as soon as you let your guard down breaking there's the box. You know you're not ready for it. But no, man, when you get foggy and he's goblin, And you're like, God, should I move? Should I know move? Should I go to the left? Should go to the right? Is he gonna go up to the bench? Is he not? You know? Should I get closer before I call? Should I call it? Set up and call right now? Yep? And that's that's that's why I love it. That's why I love it. Um, So we're gonna go through. I sent you some bullet pointed topics. Some of these are like internal debates. Some of these are just things that I want to talk about. One of them you just just mentioned. But this is one that we've been arguing in the office and on social media. Turkey vest versus pack, Turkey vest versus pack. Where do you fall? I found? I know where you fall, But tell them you don't know where I fall. I don't know what you tell me. You're gonna get hit me here in the last uh, trying to think. I probably started out, so I've been roughly hunting ten maybe twelve years hunting turkeys. I probably started out straight backpack then because I was jealous of everybody's seat. I went, but I didn't want to wear the vests because I had just this thing in my head about the vest, and the guys I ran with didn't run vests. That I found a I think it's called a Cabella's speed seat and basically a fanning pack with a with a butt thing, and I still have it, like its side palch I got one too. It's a good side palchre. It's cool. Yeah, it's not quite big enough. It could be a little bit bigger, but the problem is that the butt pad never really wants to like stay up in position, so it's kind of always flopping against the back of your legs. You know. I've done some modifications to it's a little bit better. Anyho. I ran that for solid five six, seven year or something like that just this year because I wanted to try it. That I got me premost turkey best. It's pretty cool because this one's called I think they're Rocker vest, so it's basically got like a crazy creek camp and share built into it. You familiar with the chair I'm talking about like two straps that kind of connect that you sitt in it and your legs support your back. So it's pretty slick because anywhere you want you can sit down and you're glassing. It works slick for glasses you just immediately have. Like Jennifer looked at me the other day. My wife is like, man, I can't leave. How long you've been holding that position? Like my core is just become a rock. I'm like, well, no, I had this chair. Um, So this is the first year I've ever run a vest and so I don't know. I've got thoughts on all of them, and I can't say one's better than any one of them are better than the other. And just to be clear that you've haunted in the intermount of West A bunch this year funded in Texas. You founded in Michigan and Wisconsin, so you've founded around both in an area where you would normally carry a pack, which would be Montana, Idaho, wherever where you're looking at a lot of steep pitches and a lot of hiking in areas that are more flat and arid, where you generally wouldn't need a pack if you're going out all day. There's no there's no property I've been to in Texas that I would think to take a pack and put anything in it, because normally you're walking on the road or walking to a feeder or walk, you know, like that just just doesn't feel the same. So I think that's kind of where this thing is like a cultural divide almost because you know, Brodie Henderson comes, I was like, I'm wearing a pack and this is why. Like, yeah, but that's because you live in Colorado. If I would take Brodie Henderson and raise him in Tennessee, I guarantee he'd be wearing a vest. Yeah, the thing I got my complaint. I guess I'll go with the pros of the vest first. If freaking keeps your ship organized, it also allows you to carry too much turkey. Should I feel like we're my little Fannie pack. I was like, no, only these three calls, you know, And with the vest, you're like, oh, as well carry three glass and too slate and you know strikers, you know, yeah, you gotta put some ship in them, you know. Um. So yeah, the thing about the vest, even in Wisconsin this last weekend, Uh, with the whole turkey in that vest, you don't have to walk very far until you're like, oh, this thing doesn't have a hit belt, it doesn't carry pound load on my back very well. My shoulders are feeling it, you know. So I think it comes down to how far are you willing to walk? Because we did some tours in Texas where had you killed a bird at the far end and you didn't have a buggy to ride back in, you'd be much happier packing that bird back in a pack then than in your vest um. The thing about the packs, though, is that were you really get troublesome? Because you do. And with turkey hunting you need a seat man. You want to call me a what's see for saying you need to have one? Whatever? I don't care, but to sit there comfortably for a long time and not fidget, and not twitch, and not be moving your butt sheeks back and forth, and be still like you need to be in turkey hunting, You've got to be sitting on a butt pad. And a lot of times you need to do it quickly. You can't be pulling it out of your backpack and wherever you got stuff or whatever and getting underneath it. And then when you want to run and gun or start crawling from your last position, you need that thing to be attached to you so you can't stuff it back in and then go doing your thing right now. There is not the perfect answer for I feel like what I would call like a I'm gonna say long range. It's not like a sheep hunter long range, but a long range turkey hunt. Like a day trip, like a day trip where, yeah, where you could easily be hiking five to ten miles would not be out of the question, and you might pack a bird back a couple of miles, and I think that land or hilly ground, you know, it doesn't matter when I look at it. I think it's like access like accessibility of your stuff, calls and things you need to go grab here comes a bird you don't have time to, Like if you're running a slate call and you have to reach behind in some extra pounch in your pack and so you have to have the stuff accessible. With the vest, everything is successible. Yeah, when I ran the Fannie pack though, I would just like utilize all my pockets that have in my clothes a lot more right, crow call and you know one pocket slate in a cargo pocket striker, you know, in the cargo pocket next to it, so it's not clicking and banging. That makes sense, I think. So if you can solve for accessibility with a pack on, if you could wear like a pack for haul and stuff, and then like a Fannie pack for carrying your essentials, or if it's something like stone Glacier would have like a little attachment for you know, your calls and whatnot. I think you'd be solved. Whereas you have all this successibility with a vest, but all the weight hangs around your waist. I mean when you're traveling in in in mountain countries, you're told to get to get the the load bearing strap of your pack above your hips to carry the weight better. You mean weights. You're burying the weight on your shoulders in a vest. Yeah, well, all the weights around your waist, which makes you bear the weight on your shoulders, right, it's all that's there's no displacement of Yeah, there's no hip belt. Yeah, there's nothing there. So you're it's it's moving around. It's not. It's not real comfortable to walk in, although once you get used to it, you're you're used to it. But it is still the way to distribute the weights that you're carrying sucks because if you say that you put a decoy in the back. You got all this box calls and slate calls and flashlights and stuff in the front. It's hanging off your body in a way that stresses decoy. Same thing. I hunted with some guys in Montana this year. They were packing deeks on their backpack and I was packing them in the just giant game pouch of my vest, and man, I could deploy and set up in half the time that it was taking them. And they're like taking their packs off, getting their snaps, and there's a turning packing up. Same thing. I'm like, we got a boogie, let's go. I'm like in my little pouch and and I'm running and they're like, oh, I gotta like get the bungee cords out, hold on big loud snaps. Oh, snap this in, snap this in the like, well the turkeys now gone. Great pack. I still lean towards the vest for the for the reasons I outlined there, but but I could see why a pack would be important if you're in the in the mountain West or somewhere, or you're getting a lot of elevation game, you're driving a lot of miles. Totally get all that. It's a great We'll continue to have it, but maybe one day we'll create the meat eater turkey best. It's perfect. I could definitely use uh more minimal turkey best um and then some sort of load bearing technology you know that would like yeah, okay, that's that's right in with your ideas or send sent us feedback. What's the ultimate turkey conveyance turkey carrying device? UM, A vest pack if you will, the best pack? All right? What else we got here? Do you? We're talking about this a little bit earlier, running gun versus sit and get. I've never heard sitting get. That's pretty good. Come up with that. Nope, nope. One of my first editing when I was working at the National Rifle Association as an editor for American Hunter. One of my co workers wrote the headline that was running gun or sitting Get. I'll use that for the rest of my actor hand days because it really does kind of you have like the micro elements of making that decision, but then the macro element of what kind of turkey hunter? Am? I? Like, what's my philosophy? Okay, I see what you're saying, because I was gonna ask you, I was like, isn't this podcast all about nuance? Because the answer falls somewhere in between the two. Thanks for bringing that up, Jannie, there's certainly no bullshit here, But no, I think your general philosophy is like what do I tend to do? And then in the moment, what do I decide? Can you just scribe it to like what would make me want one or another? So if you're a sit and get hunter, right, if you're a guy that likes to stay put, you're generally going to locate a turkey and plant yourself in an area close to it where it would where it would funnel tours or where it might tend to travel, and sit there and stay there hours hours. You're sitting on a food plot. You're playing the game he's gonna come by here eventually, and I'm going the game that I'm playing is my patients will win out. This turkey is gonna want to be in this field strutting or whatever he would be doing. It's a pinch point and then whatever in the timber. So that's the sitt and get hunter. You would tend to do that. So if the bird flies off the roost, he doesn't come to your little field at the spot you've set up. He starts going to a place where you know you might be able to kill him. Like I think I'll back off. That's to not pressure him. He's gonna come back by here eventually. As a running gun guy, you might start off thinking, while I'll sit here and see if he'll come by where I'm at. But you can't just can't take it patients, you're lacking patients, or maybe you have this Turkey hunting hubris build in that you think you can outsmart him and you think you can do it quicker than being the guy that sits and wait. So the guy maybe we're talking about, like the running gun guys a gambler, and the sitting good guy or gal is is more is patient, he lays in weight. Man, I've definitely have been both of them this Turkey season, and uh, I can tell. And maybe I had more opportunities that allowed me to have more fun up being a running gunner. But when I, um, that's what I'm looking for, sort of went towards patients and sit and get more, I became more successful. I would. I think you're right. I think there's a lot of Turkey hunters, me included, who just can't. It's just at the time of year the way to hunt. You just feel like if you can move around and you have space, and you're not confined to a small property or whatever, which tends to be out here in the West. You can tend to move around a good bit that bumping a bird, Oh well, like I'll find another one. So you feel like I'm willing to gamble because it's more fun to me. It's the better experience to go and work. You know, understand and understanding where this bird wants to go how to manipulate him is a little bit more interactive than just sitting in a place and letting me be knowing that there's a turkey in this field and continually hammering on that idea until you've convinced him to come over or he's coming anyway. But I just feel like beyond you know what your general philosophy is here, it's like knowing where the turkey wants to be. It's a huge part of the equation. Yes, if you know kind of where he wants to be and how he wants to get there, you can play either one of these two games pretty effectively. Go get there and say it down, or get in between where he wants to go and where he is, whatever, whatever the case might be. Do you feel like that maybe in this this whole game of strategy with turkeys is the one thing that matters the most if you eliminate where they want to be. I think with any hunting, any game, it's that's just a huge advantage of knowing it, you know, when you roll in cold and never have hunted a zone. I mean, that's mostly what you're trying to figure out for the first two or three days is what the hell is going on? And that includes what what does everything look like? And it includes where where does the game want to be? Where do they sleep? Where do they eat? You know? Um, yeah, I think you know, being a mountain hunter and having you know, legs that can go and not minding go, it's certainly tough to you know, sit for long periods of the time. In the first day in Wisconsin, h uh, Jennifer and I was hunt with my wife and we uh circumnavigated the farm twice and dougs like, dude, it usually takes me three days to do it once, you know, and uh, the first day we did it twice. You know. Um, but again, I think I was kind of doing some recon, you know, and you know, but you know, we weren't hearing a lot of goggles and then I got on one and I was trying to get close. I was pushing him and he saw something that did that, or I bumped a deer over past him and that was enough to to shut him up. But um, I muffed him. And I was really really upset because I was like the first opportunity we had had in two days. And yeah, I have to Yeah, I have two distinct muffings this year, two times where I muffed it the second time and that was it. I got way more than that. Well, there's probably other muffings that I didn't even realize I I perpetrated. The second one. We were I was an Oregon hunt with Kevin Harlander from First Light, and we had this is a pretty unique situation. I think this bird, I'd never heard of turkey gobble as much as this turkey, like he couldn't go. It seemed to me like he couldn't go a step without gobbling, Like he would take pregnant pauses of like ten fifteen seconds. But he just bla blah blah blop hitting him like he had just I believe what I think later is that he had a month, just had a hand that he had bread that went to nest or something like that, like she had just left him. Something had happened. Because it was pretty still, pretty late in the season. It wasn't he wasn't just starting to get fired up. So I was trying to just in trying to figure that out he was when we first heard him, he was a good ways away, and we covered this country well. He ended up being on this kind of pine knob in the middle of some pretty It's a pretty rolling country. So by the time we got to where we knew where he was and we could hear his gobble every five seconds, so we just tracked him pretty quickly. There was a clear cut between us and him, and he had the elevation on us. He's probably three ft above us. We're down in this little creek bottom that was edge was some timber, and we're standing at the edge of this timber. He's gobbling. I know, if we crossed this clear cut of timber to get to this stream to get on the hill he's on, he's probably gonna see us. Like, but if we take the chance and we get over there, we're gonna kill him. If we get across this clear cut and get on the same hill he's on. You couldn't go around. We could have gone around, right. Kevin gave me the like, hey man, we could maybe go around. I was like, yeah, but but if he doesn't see us, times of the essence, yeah, times of the essence. This guy's gobbling his face off. If we can get across here without him seeing us that we're in the money now circling around. I've never been in this country. I don't know what's over there. He may see us. We go that way, So we kind of could either sit here and see what he does, or I didn't feel like he would have had to fly down to us from where he was, and I just didn't feel like wanting to chance. It's that with letting him know we were there, and so we I was like, let's just screwt across you really quick. Let's wait till he's gobbling. It sounds like he's facing the other way, just like, I don't know if he can see us or not. But boy, if he's at the lip of this hill he's on, he'll be able to see us and he'll spook. And so I was like, kept say, okay, we got halfway across that field, stopped in this little set of timber, went the rest of the way across that field. By that time, he's no, no, not a sound. And this is a bird that's been gobbling every five seconds for twenty minutes. And so I knew me. I'm like, dude, we just spooked that bird. And and and it's not something where we we did. We never saw him. I don't think we ever got really that close to him. He just had the high ground on us, and he like that was his its own, like you, that was his area. And so he ended up gobbling later, you know, about five minutes later he gobbles. He's five dred yards down there, you know, away from us, and ended up killing him later on. But that was a crappy feeling we had. We had the most fired up turkey I had ever heard within five yards and we just screwed it. Yeah, nothing worse um from going and fired up from here to zero turkey woods zero. And you were you were there for the first the first one. I'm off to where I just was with the buddy Tyler and you had left with Brandon and we were in Texas hunting. This is right? Was it? Right before we killed that bird, my the bird eye shot right after the evening hunt. We had shot my bird in the afternoon, and then we'd split up, and Tyler and I were sitting on a spot really just napping waiting in the mid afternoon. The next thing you know, I got a gobbler like four h yards starting to light it up. Start calling, he's coming on a string. But I know he's coming through like a cattle pasture, and I was worried that those cattles are gonna bump him around. And I'm calling him, calling him, calling, he's coming on a string. And then all of a sudden, as he's about the crest is little ridge to get down in the flat where we are. I hate like the next goblet here is three yards the other way, going like what what happened? And so I said, well we better we better get up to this little ridge, show him the fan, do something to get his attention so he comes back and we can kill him. We got up, we went about fifty yards, were on the hill, the little crest of this hill where we were gonna show him the fan and see if we get him to come back. And we hear spitting and drum and on the other side of this rock we're sitting by, and he had come all the way back across and it was now ten yards away from us. Space just came to mind. I've heard that story a couple of times, so I just came to mind, is which often happens. Happened to me this weekend. Is he might have turned or been in a depression, or just through his voice and he gobbles one time at fifty and then he gobbles and he something changes the direction that he's pointing when he goes into a little depression, and that same gobble sounds like it's and I think that's what happened to us. I think he maybe there was cattle in there, and he might have been bumping around a little bit in ways he wouldn't have otherwise. But I think he just turned and gobbled the other way, and I heard it wrong and was impatient. If I'd have been patient, he would have walked right down. We just shot him. But I was impatient. And both those two cases, I feel like just being patient and just playing the cards your delt, not trying to force it would have been dead turkeys. Both those cases that screwed the pooch sitting, Get sitting, Get baby. Well that's good. Now we can figure all that out for everybody. I think you just got to determine when you go out to turkey hunt if what you are you running gun? Are you sitting? Get and think real hard about him. Here's the last one. There's time for both. I say, I think you're right. Is a turkey fan safe to use in public lands? Do you use it on public lands? I do? But definitely public lands where like I haven't seen another turkey hunter. Yeah, like you you're aware of the kind of like if I parked somewhere in a trailhead where there was like the chance that I was going to see another turkey hunter, there was another truck there, probably wouldn't be working a fan. I'd probably still pack like a decoy that has a fan use it, but I wouldn't be like fanning a turkey and just holding that thing right next to my head. I think that's a bad idea. I think so too. I've got a lot of people ask about that. It's like, what do you feel like it's unsafe? I'm like, yeah, it is unsafe in general. I mean, if you're hunting a place where you don't know what other hunters are around, or you can't predict that for sure. Some states, you know, I think it's Pennsylvania says that you can't you can't hunt, you can't stalk with a decoy. I think is how how they put it will be smart. I mean it's not. It's definitely not out of the question. I'm sure if we looked pretty hard, we'd find a lot of examples of guys getting popped. Use turkey fans, Yeah, that's getting shot. Assess he was from Pennsylvania says there's quite a few every year, And I mean turkey hunting just lends itself to that. I mean, think about it, man, all these people out there not taking their naps, got up a three d morning and now it's eleven, and like, you had three tough days of hunting, and now you hear one that's hammering. You go over the ridge and you happen to see the fan decoy instead of the gabbler that's two yards to the right or whatever. You're just like, well, should be really easy to be hazy and not. Yeah, and there you are with your head behind a fan and everyone's while you're looking out. But I mean you're really presenting the thing people want to see. Oh yeah, my fan doesn't have My fans got a red head attache. Yeah, your fans got everything you'd want to see, exactly right there at the base of the neck. So yeah, I mean, just I guess be smart. But I think as turkey hunting community, you have to. We're gonna have to figure that out. It's a relatively relatively new phenomenon that guys are caring and Turkey fans around. Um, so hopefully it doesn't become a big, big issue, but it's certainly something to think about and talk about. I say, oh, yeah, I think most people know that you need to be I think with decoys in general. I mean, this is a little more dangerous because you are like working the decoy in your hand. But I think most people are pretty aware of that. True. True. All right, Well, do you you have your big laughing eagle paddle call a giant box called But I got a new one. Yeah, Now I got one that I can actually put into my turkey vesta that long handle where they call him. What is the actual name for the long box call? I don't know, is there a name for it. I was just making paddle That's what I always called paddle call. There's something else might just be box called. Anyways, Yeah, I got a one sided box call from um. A fellow by the name of J. D. Peck More and Brothers is the name of his company, Gobbler's Choice, and our buddy guy zoc Fine tuned it for me, and uh, she sounds good. It's pretty sweet. There's a guy wrote in Bill Rays from Canyon, Texas, and he was asking about is there a specific type of wood that you prefer for your calls? He said that I seem like a knowledgeable turkey hunter. I don't think he knows me well. Um, and is there a call maker you would recommend? What do you think? I'd never really thought about types of wood. Honestly, I just pick a call up and feel it and slam on it, and that's beyond me. I mean, you have to have like a musician's ear to be able to hear the the nuance difference between if it's a butternut or a cherry or whatever. That I think that new box call I have his butternut and ipe are the two different ones I've heard. I've heard a lot of like mahoganies over the year. Like people say mahogany is good. I've also heard say people say poplar is good. I don't know Walnut. I've heard it's nice. I think it just like a lot of slate bottoms are made out of cherry. But I have no personal preference. I pick it up and if it sounds, but there is there is a groove you get. I think you get in these groove with all calls where you're kind of hit it enough where you know exactly you know, like it's like a musical instrument, like playing the violin, like you kind of just know how to play it, which we used it long enough. I mean, you certainly can make the notes if you just pick it up for the first time. But when you're having a conversation with a turkey, that that Oregon bird, I called him back in with a box call, with the old wet Willie call my dad had given me when I was a kiddoh um or I had since I was really young, and it just I just know how to play the call. It's a piece of ship like it's it's no good, like it's it's it probably just needs to replace. But I kind of just have done it so much with that thing that I know, Yeah, turkeys, I don't think i'd be replacing it. I was just kind of falling apart. I need to I need to fix and fix it up. I have no no bill for Bill. Sorry Bill, We're just we're useless in this. But we're about to get to call. But he did ask who makes Who's who are some good call maker? That he did ask that you listen. I'm I've gone all the way from like custom calls to I had a custom amerk in Iowa make a slate call for a hunt. I did. And then a guy over in Maryland, UM, a buddy of mine have another custom box call made. And those things are They're both great calls, and I use them. But I wouldn't put it past like a night Inhale or a pre most. I've picked some of those calls up and thought they sounded really good. Sometimes they all those factory calls will feel chintzy when you pick them up, but you you strike them and they sound great. So I don't. I guess my advice there's as bad as my advice for the type of wood is man. You kind of have to go through them and I don't know that I've ever run into a custom call that sounded so much better then a store bought, factory you manufactured call that I could say, one way or the other. How do you feel about that? Yep? Um, I haven't messed around with the custom calls too much. There's a guy by the name of Albert Paul who might have quit making calls now. Um. And I think that his field grades were running right around a hundred bucks. Um. The guys that mentored me early on all ran his box call. Um, so it was the best. Like I said, that new when I got from J. D. Martin that was only twenty bucks. It's a steel for a call that's not, you know, mass produced. I like it. Um. Who else? Yeah, Jason Phelips obviously we like his diaphragm calls. Yeah, Cat was running some of his diaphragm calls. They saund are really good, man. They were striking up some Texas turkeys like you wouldn't believe. Um, really good. But I want to move on to kind of the reason, well, maybe one of the reasons I'm here. Maybe it's one of the reasons you're here as well. This podcast uh is includes an interview with man named Colonel Tom Kelly. UM. I traveled to a couple of weeks back, traveled to Bethesda, Marylands, where Colonel Tom currently lives, and was able to track him down in uh an apartment in a high rise in Bethesda, Maryland where he lives now UM following the passing of his wife. His his daughter and family lived there. He's ninety three years old, UM and he's a bit of a like kind of in an assisted living situation where he has nurses that come and people that comment clean his apartmentent, but he's still for for being ninety three years old, he's he's as intelligent and surprised he always imagine he would have been in his prior years. UM. And I think it's an important conversation. It's very important to me because this man's work UM mainly his book Tenth Legion, but some of his other books have maybe I inspired me. Is is maybe a word that's to trite, but definitely some of the most creative storytelling around turkey hunting there ever has been, and a person that has been able to capture what it is to be a turkey hunter, to be a part of the culture better than anyone that I've ever read. Um, so that's what's made him a legend, made him the poet laureate. Has a lot of people call him turkey hunting, So that's my opinion. But what what do you think they're on about Colonel Tom Kelly? Yeah, I agree with you. I haven't read any of his other work other than The Tenth Legion, but I've probably read that book three or four times in the last thousand years. Is again, same crew that mentored me early on. Um gave me that book in my first or second turkey season and said, read this and this will explain a lot about it. And uh, it's cool because, like he said, it talks about the culture and what it means to be a turkey hunter, and then he gets into tips and tactics as well, and um, mostly what I get out of it, man, is just like the respect that he feels that, you know, the turkey demands and deserves. And uh, and I think you can tell that he would feel that way about all wildlife. You know. I think that's you know, we probably shared those same values with him, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean I asked him if if I don't want to spoil the interview, so we get to it here in a minute. But I asked him if he could have a conversation with the last turkey that he would ever kill, what would he say, you know, what would he say to the turkey? And he just said something to the effect of, I wish you weren't the last one was there was another one behind. I was like, it's just he's just a ninety three year old man who's definitely got less days ahead of him than that there are behind him, and like he still has a hunger like to do it. He was sitting there at this fairly like poorly adorned apartment with a walker, and it just, you know, it seemed like he had been transplanted into a place that he wasn't comfortable. But still in front of him were turkey hunting books in a box call he was working on, and he maybe didn't you know, you'll hear in a minute like he might have struggled through some of the details of his life because he's three and he's not as sharp as he once was. But when you talk about turkeys, you can hear it in his voice like it's still still there, still has the passion which says something about him, but also something about turkeys that that he's it's still captivates him the way it captivates us now. So maybe when we're ninety three will be lucky enough to still have that have that drive. I'm sure we will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because those turkeys will have the ability to humble us no matter how long we hunt and how much we think we in quotes figure him out, you know. Yeah. And I think there's really no better way to say goodbye to this turkey season, bye bye. Um. Then by talking to Tom Kelly, Colonel Tim Kelly, UM, it's a good conversation. Again, Please remember that that Tom did his best to work through this very respectful with his time. UM. But he is getting up there in age, so he's probably not um what he once was as far as his memory in some of the ways that we went through the interview. But regardless, man, what a gym. And he still had a lot of one liners for us um in there. So do you want to do you have any you know, final thoughts on Colonel Kelly that you want to keep people out I mean the words that you remember or you know kind of what the death lesion means to you. You know what stuck out last time what I read it is I think he wrote it. It's like sixty five ish, maybe, yeah, in the early seventies, early seventies maybe. Um, there's definitely a lot of stuff that's dated, and some of the stuff was hit some of his ideas or maybe proven very right or just like wrong. Like he was talking about how some guys when calling him, they'll even scratch their hand in the leaves to make it sound like a turkey scratching, And I don't know about that, And I'm like, well, that right there, is they tried in true tactic? Is that will fool the wary gobbler that has had enough of your calls. But if he's like, but man, there's a hand over there scratching and leaves. You know. So that was pretty funny to read to read that this year and be like, yeah, but Tim, it does work. You know, we figured out forty years later that it really works. Well. Um, but no, I don't know if I have any like big big thoughts on or any quotes from that book off the top of my head. Um. The one I guess it does stick with me though, is I think it's twards the end of the book and where he says like, well, you're not allowed to do in that game that you play with that turkey, is that when you have him dead right, you don't. You don't. You can't let him walk because it's disrespectful to him and to you, disrepect for the game, distract of the game. Well good, we'll say goodbye to this Turkey season, um, and we'll see we'll we'll pick this conversation up next Turkey season. But we're gonna transport ourselves over to Bethessa, Maryland to talk to the legendary Time Kelly. I imagine this is one of the very few podcasts he's ever been on and a few conversations will have going forward about Turkey. So enjoy it. I enjoyed it. It's a bit of a time apple for us. And I believe this man not only to be our poet Lauria for turkey hunting, but um, you know the key to a cash of eighty years of turkey hunting stories and expertise. So hopefully enjoy this conversation. We'll take you there right now, Mr Kelly, how are you today? Colonel Kelly? Thank you, Thanks for thanks for joining me and having me into your home here and in Bethesda. Uh. There's a lot of things I want to talk to you about, um, but the first one is why do you think turkeys was the thing that you became famous for writing about? The thing that is I think really triggered me into it. With my wife. Uh, we would go into some place and she said something to me, and she said, you know, I hear you telling oldies Torre stories to people about this who might order write that down and maybe if somebody would want to would want to listen to it. And I had no idea about about doing anything like And I said, all right, I'll try that. And I had been at that time, I had been writing. I had been sitting an occasional story to feel and stream and outdoor life. And I used to sell something to uh uh, the one sports illustrating. I used to selling them sports illustrating before they fell out of a little with killing things, you know. And uh, and so I did that and I started doing it, and then that triggered the whole damn thing that that triggered to me. Uh, I'm not at all interested in Big Game one. I mean, I I do not want to when I hunt something, and this may be cowardice, but when I hunt something, if I lose, I want to lose. I don't want to lose some arms and legs or get my head knawn off. I don't want to hunt elephants who I would be trampled by the damn elephant if I if I do something wrong, I'm a not a sufferer. And and that really is what triggered. The whole thing. Won't be anything else. And and then once it started, uh, the police book I did was tenth of Legion. The tenth Legion is old Jesus. Tenth Legion must be an It's I don't know why I don't walk m any editions. I just don't. Well, it's twenty something when that yeah, yeah, and then of course that trigger did, and then and then when that trigger did, and then and what you just meet a while with nice folks? You really do? You meet a lot of I agree, I agree, yeah yeah. And then because I think the question what people love about that book? What I love about that book is the way you articulated the motivation of the Turkey Hunter, our our relationship with the Turkey, and our interactions with yeah, Well, if somebody, if somebody would, God, I don't look, I don't have any goddamn idea how many Tukis I've killed. I mean, I've been hunting on since ninety all right, And and and uh, when I was getting to kill, took his family regulart. I wish to god I had keptable oh jun. Yeah, I mean, if it was normal, then hunted here and hunted down, hunted is and did this, and did that and did the other thing. But ok, okay, So if I've been hunting took his for fifty years more than that, say years, If I've been hunting tookis for seventy years, and and if I've killed four or five turkys a year, that's whatever four or five times seventy years hundred something like h three fifty turkeys like that, two three hundred fifty four hundred turkeys in your life, if you if we were round up to it. Yeah, that's a lot of interactions with one animal. Yeah, and and and and and the thing about it is, I don't care how how much you've done it, and I don't care how good you get at it. Every damn Yeah, and one of them is gonna do something to you, and you're gonna think, and the hell could I have been that damn dumb? It never gets old, It never never ever gets old. You feel and you feel that all turkey hunters have. You have a hubris, have a confidence that you get to a point where you think a bird is gonna do something you think you haven't figured out. Like why do we continue to return to this confidence? Because we don't because he he will destroy it. If you get that much confidence, he's gonna break your neck with Uh. It's one of the one of the moublest things about about doing it. If if if you told me that I could never kill another turkey, I could still enjoy taking people because you can take somebody in and I took you. This guy won't characteristic. He cannot hear a whisper. If you talk like this, you can hear, and you can sit. And when I take somebody hunting, I sit right here behind him. Yeah, well I can look over his shoulder that way. If he choose me with your shot gun, he's gonna turn it around and take off his boot and pull a trigger with his toll. So and I ain't gonna sit there and wait for him to do that. But if if you can, you can wait and you can whisper him all the way to the gun. Yeah, you can say, hey, comes, he comes. They didn't give bhind that tree. I don't do anything. And you can talk him all the way up there and do it. And you can hear about if you told me I could never kill another turkey, I've killed him off. I like to eat him. But if you told me, if I could never kill another turkey, I could get a pile of enjoyment out of taking other people took him. Now, as long as I'm as long as I can get about like this and this, this can't go on. You know, you've moved it along more than most I moved along. But I ain't going to left to a hundred and eight or a hundred sixteen. So the end is out there and and just hopefully it will come quick. Well you said you just turned ninety three two days ago. Yeah, happy three, Happy birthday, um, happy belated birthday. I want to take you all the way back to where you were born, kind of going through a little bit of of how you came to be, to be Tom, the Colonel Tom Kelly of Turkey, hunting. I was born in South all About, born a mobile and uh uh and it was in nine seven, nineteen twenty seven and uh the thirty years. Uh, you know, kids growing up, playing football, all that kind of stuff. Early years when I when I got to be a World War two came along. Seeing when World World World two came along, I was fourteen, Well, I wanted at that point in time, I really wanted to You could you could go in to serve. The draft was at eighteen, the drest starting at eighteen, but you could go into service as seventeen. Well, I wanted to go into services seventeen, and my daddy was willing to let me go, but my mama one and I can't understand that. No, no, mama wants a seventeen year old boy. I take getting shot at that. That's common and he and he expected, and especially early in the game like that, when we were not doing well at all. In fact, we were getting the ship kicked out of us and then YE had them. Nobody could do anything about that. But I finally I got in and I got into service, and uh I got in, Uh I got I got in just before I got drafted, so I could pick picked my location and I was a back seat going to dive bombas it's B two c's it s B D S first and NSP two cs and then the leader and the war when when it was obvious that everybody was moving, we we ended the war. In Europe we had one now one and in the Japanese we were having a hell of a time with the Japanese. Everybody was and everything was moving and moving that way, and moving that way and moving that way. I have not seen the operations I order. I expect the operations I order would fill two box calls, but the we were seriously expecting something like twenty million casualties by the time we took the Japanese islands, and at that time population of the United States was hundred fifty millions, under sixty millions, something like that. It would have been see. I never did yet, I never did get it to come back. Okay, just every everything was moving there, everything was going, everything was going, everything was going, and then boom, it was ending. And of course at that time, when you're seventeen years old, you're amort I mean, you think you line up two hundred seventeen years out there and tell them tomorrow morning, all of the people standing in the damned ranks would be dead except to And you think, Jesus, I'm o mist these guys. When you get to be forty two and you tell them that four people that those ranks are going to be dead, you're gonna insting over your bunk, you know your that's that's that's why you That's why you got that's why. That's why I soldiers and sailors and and people in combat arms. It's just for the young because they they just don't believe anything had happened to there. And that's all right now. Well and when when the war was over, um you went back to a man, Well I went back to Alabama. But well what happened then? Then the Korean all came along. We'll see when I got out, and I thought, okay, now I'll just stay in. I just, uh automatically, I went into reserve. Well then when the when the Navy called me up and said, now we're gonna begin to call folks back in. And I said, well, now I've graduated from school and uh is is not possible, as I could get a better job. And they said, well I don't, Well you can get a better job, but not, we don't know what the hell you can do well that that then they will call it up National Guard divisions. And I had some friends in the thirty first Infantry Division, and I went and talked to him and took the physical and went to Montgomery and it was signed up in commission as a sacred lieutenant of artillery in twenty four hours. That was the most unqualified second lieutenant of aultillery you ever slowing your life. But I didn't a lot of using machine gun and had an ultillery battery has got in it a self defense unit that's got machine guns in it and rifles, and I could shoot. I could. I could shoot a shotgun and shoot a rifle well. And then of course, once I got in there in state, in there and liked it well, then and then and then then I began to get promoted. And then I got to the point where you were making a little bit of money at it, and and and then one thing left to another, and I served. I think I ended up with something like thirty eight years service. Wow. Part they don't they don't give you the same amount of time for reserve service as they do factive service. But it's it's a it's a pretty decent. It's it's a hell of one. And see you you're you're eligible for all couns hospitalization of stuff as a veteran, a double veteran. Yeah, well what people call everyone calls you Colonel Tom Kelly. I just wanted to made I wanted to make sure that everyone understood. I want to make sure everybody understood the history behind that. You know, uh, the I forget the damn thing. I don't know it was. It was coming in the South to hold everybody up, got to be you were an actual, You were an actual. I really was a coul of no ship. I've heard some people ask is he does he call hips of Colonel Tom Kelly because he's a colonel of the tenth Legion. That is not not That is not correct, sir. He's an actual colonel. So I just wanted to make sure. I just wanted to make sure that people knew that's the United States Army and this man was a part of two theaters of war. And going back to your upbringing, because I definitely want to talk about your first Turkey and all all those things. Why do you love Alabama so much? You've written about it, you talk about it. We're not in Alabama now, but like I know that's where your heart is and yourself, well I knew it. I knew to people. Uh. And and then working wicked as I did in the woods with that many people, so you know whoa bossing Boston six hundred people it was. It was a lot of folks and and and you get to you get you get a real feeling for people at what they can do. And it does a lot of good for a southern one and getting rid of somebody's prejudices against black and white. I had a lot of instances we played it. We played it strictly on what you could do. And I had a lot of instances where I had black crew leaders. A normal logging crew for us was a full man crew. Well it was really it was a three or four man crew. You had the boss and then you had a soft hand with him, and then you had a truck driver. And and the truck driver went and came in rolled the truck when it broad brought his own truck to the bill. He loaded his truck at night and brought it home with him when he got up early in the morning. He went to the mill where he was delivering, and he was the first one in line. While he was there, the crew chief picked up the other guy and the crew and they went out there and started running to skitter and pulling stuff into piles. When the truck driver got through, he came out there, loaded his truck and went and that went on all the time, and and then the whole thing put together. It was. It was that they were a very lively group. And and I had in a lot of instances, uh, White's working for black And I have had guys telling me, Mr Tom, I don't want someone, so I don't want him. He and I ain't gonna get along together. And in every case I went with him. If you were bossing the crew, you had to write to put anybody in your crew that you wanted to, so long as he could pass the physical do this noime. He made for an absolutely level society. In three right, you took a position with the scott Paper Company and then you oversaw Did you do that for forty years? Yeah? Yeah, you oversaw six d employees or more at any at any given time. And he said, what that that? And I really and truly miss him. I miss him yet I could see it yet, Yeah, no question about it. Mission is that is that you know why you you loved Alabama so much as the people, the people, the people, the people. I probably could have would have done the same thing someplace else, but I was there. I knew the country, I knew the people, I knew the land, I knew the temple. I like to hunting fish and in Alabama there's a hell of a lot of hoot right now, you get all the migratory stuff besides the datish stuff. Yeah. Well, it feels like for your generation you had a very normal, normal upbringing and a very and a very you know, a lot of people in your generation went to Warren, came back and worked for the same company for a very long time, and my grandfather was very much the same. So it seems like you had very typical you know life in that way. But what what where I would say it's not typical, is is your ability to to take the stories, these stories that you had not only in the woods, because there's you've written twenty five books, right more, six books not just about hunting, but to be able to articulate your experiences in a way that like inspires people. It's inspired me to be a better turkey hunter, more mindful turkey hunter, to see the bird in a different way. Like what what do you think is has allowed you to do? To do that? I have no idea the luck of the draw. It's it's high come you've got brown eyes instead of black eyes or big ears instead a little is it's just And then then the I am I am pretty much interested in everything except going to Africa is shooting out from saying interested in that. But I'm pretty much interested in everything. And uh uh as a rule even now, and I read a lot Jesus, I must read. I must read three books a week as well as we sit here. There's books, books, books, books, books, bookspapers and books everywhere. Yeah, magazine, Well, I mean that's the appreciates that that I have for you and your work. Um, but there's there's it's more than that. It's like an understanding of, like I said earlier, an understanding of our relationship with with the Turkey. And so I guess to understand how you were able to do that, we should we should start at the very beginning and you well you know, and and into uh ship you learned something to do you die, yeah, if you, if you, if you, if you at yourself, and if you fall into a coma no, but if you had yourself, something will come well, pus, somebody will come in and say something. It'll be something brand new, always learning eight you killed your first turkey? I heard I heard a story about nineteen thirty eight, you killed your first turkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you tell me about that. And without loud's and shut down. He started calling and finally I saw him coming to up. Uh. Uh, I had no end I had. I didn't pay any attention to whether they were hims or gobblers. And when they got in close, in close range, I killed one of them, and when I want out didn't pick it up. I thought, oops, oops, I have never I have never officially admitted that. And iations it's still got the color. I think we're talking. We're talking in generations. Yeah, but it's a it was and that and that trickery. And after that I kept up dove hunting, uh, and a course dove hunting momanship. Yes, I mean, you know, you get out there and and then fairly laid in my career, I stumbled ottle snipe and if you have been. If you have been killing the limit of dolls out of a box of shells regularly and you take up snipe hunting, you are going to be disappointed because you ain't gonna kill that. They ate the same thing on ago. Well, he used to trick as a kid. We used to trick folks and tell him we were taking them snipe hunting. Well, yeah, it's not. It's not it as a matter of fact, because I got a book older there called Reflections on Snipe that was done by Day There something like fifteen or sixteen separate species of snipe. Snipe is worldwide. It's in every it's in every country, but uh, and then it's the South Pole. But it's from me. Every it is from every country on down from Canada. And it's a it's good, and a snipe is great. Snipe tree. He reminds you of a woodcock. Of woodcock is fattah and he flies of Woodcock's easy to kill a snipe tub man, he's listening. He's gonna makes your marks a night there. You damn right. What's the first time you heard a turkey gobble? The first time I heard it took your gobble. I didn't know what it was my my I had an uncle who waked at the shipyard at Pasca Google and he had a friend named Kennedy. And the Kennedys had they had three boys. They had a boy younger than me and a boy older than me, and a boy who was my age, Pete and Pete sort of well, their daddy awaked for my uncle, and their daddy lived just north of Pasca Google, Best Sippi and I lived in Bobile, and I had gone over there to visit my uncle, and Pete and I hit it off together and he started taking me with him. And that's what that's the first Yeah, I heard gobble, Pete, and I thought it was a dog bocket, it's you know, And he said, no, that's it too, and that that triggered it. And from then on out it take you take his turkeys all the one. What about the first time that you made a turkey gobble with your calling abilities? Uh? The first time? Well? What what? I what? I fell into the trip of doing. I got one of these one of these boxy pots and uh uh and I and I I hear you hear tuck your gobble and you I try to get pretty close and then and then, uh, the first time I hood one gobble, I knew what it was. I knew it was him. It did's a it's a you when when you don't know nothing. And when it was my uncle didn't know the first damn thing about Tucky on he'd killed some turkeys on deer drives. You said, out tell what you shot gun on deer drives? And when the when the when the dogs are running the dead past the standards. I'd sit there on the first guard. My hand was a single barrel. You sit there with the angle barrow, and I'd have uh, a buckshot into single barrel. But i'd have a h number six shot in my hand and you could trigger it a gun when you do it didn't come in. If he wasn't a deal, if you thought it was a turkey, you could trigger the gun and put the other thing and then shoot him. Buying pigeons come out of locks. Whatever it is? What is it about that when you're a kid, that you just just want something in your hand. You want to say I've done it. You're right, And that's it's universal for all childers. Right, you've got grandchildren now, ship he got little things, you know, you're a hunter gatherer gather at that age much you hunt them down and kill them. Uh, our thanks ain't much and clawls buds. We have shot we got shotguns though we got shotgun well. I think, I mean, I got so many questions for you, but I think it's it's it makes sense to kind of try to get your perspective on where we are as a modern turkey hunter now and where you began. I mean, you have you have lived through the age of turkey hunting. And before we hit recorded, we were talking, Yeah, we we were talking about that. I think, and I think it's this is a natural thing that a lot of people that hunt turkeys today feel because they're so abundant that it might have always been that way. It may have the way it is now, might be the way that it has been. It was a friend of mine named Jim Andrews. He's dead now like most of my friends, but Jim Andrews were one of these guys. And if you went to someplace, Jim Andrews were gonna find a damn twicky and if they were in the two here gonna be ko one, Jim Andrews gonna kill it. And he couldn't doably explain why he's written about him. Yeah, I've read it. I've read many passes about where he was buried and what direction he might be traveling. Yeah, tell me about him your relationship. Then you talked about him being I've read that that he just was a turkey magnet. He was. He was ead that. He couldn't explain it either. He couldn't explain it. His daddy was not a turkey hunter. None of his uncle's was a turkey hunter. His brother, his brother Henry was a fight apart and and and his brother Henry was a great shot, but he was a shifty turkey up. It's just that, well, I think the principal characteristic his patients. It's a big bud. It's big enough to be you. You you created important, send the bood yourself, and that's what that's what you say. Yeah, and guys like Jim, I mean you've written about this too, like the friendships that we make, the connections we may then see Jim and I worked together. Yeah, and in fact about the fact Jim worked for me. Uh. He said what he came to took you and then I worked with you? What what is it? What is it about turkey hunting that makes that like if not makes friendships like that enhances them and makes them that it is the people. Well, if it may be like all appreciation. A guy falls in love with Peyton and then I don't care who he's talking to. He wants to talk about painton and painless and how they did this all sculpture and sculpted in that. Uh. And and you know there's all kinds of thing that that that that hossill that yeah, that black hole, I did that, Holls, I did this. Uh, there's just crap around here that I did. Uh did did you know? You just I don't know. He asked me why? And to hell with a guy waste his damn time making a fake unicorn when he aul such a thing as a real unicorn, And I can't answer the question. You just feel like time to make a goddamnunic So I'm Mabel. That's been tasting. But yeah, I mean I think that you're right. I mean, as a as a hunter, as someone who appreciates this, you want to surround yourself with people that have equal passion. And for somebody like you, your passion is unequal. It's hard to find people that that can that come to it like you. So then you end up around exceptional folks like Jim andrews Um talk about I mean you you've written about burying him, you know, or being you know where he was buried, and trying to figure out kind of and going to church and trying to figure out in the pastor talking about which direction he might have traveled in the afterlife. And you had an experience with some turkeys that you called in Do you remember that experience? Yeah, yeah, yeah, here's mama. I knew if we get when he introduced it to his mama. Well, he lived in Camden, which is in off It's it's uh, it's it. It jumps into the Alabama and the tomb by Rivers uptown, and then he hunted up around that. And when Jim, when Jim got out of school, he went into cow business and went broke, and and then he had he he had to go to work for us, for market tumber for people. When he would just scratching around making a living any damn where he could make a living, and he uh he but he never he never, he never lost. He never got mad at the world because he would he was he didn't have any money, and he had five kids for four four girls and a boy. And uh I still carresby with some of the kids. They they were still write a little bit back and forth, but he would. He was just one of those guys that everybody likes. You meet one every once in a while. They ain't many, but you meet one everyone. Jim was just one of those guys. And I guess, I guess twok is just liked him when they wouldn't go to anybody. You tell a story about when you went turkey hunting after you died, and there was five, I think five gobblers that gobbled on the roost and gobbled and gobbled and gobbled, and they flew down out of the tree and there you were with your call, and they would gobble at anything they got a tweety bird, they would gobblet one another, They would gobble at anything. But they ignored you, and anything like you were you did not exist, you know, And it was if if if it was Jim was Jim Andrews probably been friend lay he's probably been friend And you felt that those turkeys goblin and ignoring you, or maybe maybe a song that you wish it was that way, but you don't know that you wish it was his eulogy, that those that those turkeys were giving you one last chance to to see which direction he might have traveled. Yeah. Yeah, Well, the Tenth Legion is I think the thing that most people. It's the thing that I've I read it before every turkey season. I know a lot of folks that I work with do the same thing. And it's inspired since it was published in nineteen seventy three. I mean it's it's inspired many many turkey hunters. And I remember and I remember reading so the Tenth Legion was was published in nineteen seventy three, and it has inspired me to be a turkey more more involved turkey hunter and inspired many people to go and try it. I think we were had a coach of good guy. Did my partner we we it's a new edition coming out, Yeah, dish coming out and the new book is well, the new book is I have it here. It's called, Uh, you're still writing books at ninety three. Yeah, it's called infinite Varieties, that great infinite And he says the title comes from Shakespeare's play Anthony and Cleopatrick. I am probably one of the last few Shakespeare readers, especially in the Turkey. Any community age cannot wither her nor coat, no stale her infinite. Every time you go out there, he's gonna teach you something. Every time you go out there, he's going out small chy in some fresh way you never thought of. And it's it's never gonna get old. It's magical magic. It's magic, absolute magic. When you write that, when you write, I have some quotes here from from the Tenth Legion, not that you need need me to quote it, but when you you've inspired a lot of people, people call you the poet laureate turkey hunting. You like that title sales books, but that it does sales book to meet it. The tenth Leads is not a book, really, what's an explanation of turkey hunters. It's it's an explanation of a thought process. Absolutely it is. Yeah, and it's it's called the Tenth Legion because you felt like Caesar's to Yeah, Caesar's tenth Legion. And the members the members of the Turkey Hunting Army are are are uh? You have said like exhibit dogged determination, much like the Army tenth And that's why that's titled so and they all a hell of a lot of people would exactly a little thought process would they wouldn't be that any folks in the national wild took in Federation. Well, I remember when you said, when you began hunting, there was only you know, you remember writing this book and thinking maybe a hundred fifty people in the world might care. Yeah, because I I when I figured I could here, remember what I paid the guy to write it. They seemed, uh, theeld ghosts and sons in in in New York. And it seems to me I did five hundred copies, and I think I paid him fourteen hundred and fifty dollars or some such thing as that. And I figured it did there'd be at least some guys I knew they didn't know I could read and write. They'd buy one around of curiosity, and they would be and and and if he quit right there, I would probably have gotten my money back. And if not, then I had a lifetime supply. Christ Front turned out to be a little bit a good, good deal better than that. Well, I think many, like many people regarded as not only just it's it's about people, right, It's about people. It's not. It's not about right about it. I write about people and what they do. We had one specific Yeah, so it's not tips and tactics. If anybody hasn't read it, shame on you. But if you have it, it's not You're not gonna get the tips and tactics. There's some in there, plenty in there. A lot of people going to read it and say, what this guy's talking about you? Well, there's there's the thing you said that many people who hunt turkeys do so with an intention to detail, a regard for strategy, tax and operations, and disregard for personal comfort and convenient That ranks second only to the apprecia but oft into cold rain. You know, hoping a turkey might come. You gotta be a little bit twisted. I'm pretty twisted. OK, Welcome to the live. You still you still believe at the age ninety three you have have that same passion. I mean, oh yeah, it ain't a bit of chain. Ain't a bit of chain? Uh d um. I've already accepted an invitation or two to go on next to you. I mean you can you can sit in that damn thing right there. You can fool that up and put her to the back of a pickup truck. If somebody can take me out in the woods. The wady who had won gobble and dumped me off. And so I'll come back and get you a nine foot and I can hunt. I can hunt up and down the rule over there. You can set right now. I can know, I can get out. I can walk. I walk. I walk probably now a mile of day. I walked the phone with the calls down and back and down and getting down and back. I got an exercise lady that comes by and uh as she comes three days a week, and and those things like breathing exercises and balanced like aer sizes and all this kind of stuff. She's real good. She's an English woman. She is a matter of fact. She uh yeah, she she she has just been home to England. I defer a one got children and it does this as a living And yeah, so why and I get around great, I mean, uh and you know, to get out there to be able to now, I don't try. I sold my car and and and uh uh but and it was better. It was I didn't really want to leave home, but my wife didn't. I realize she was dying and really expected to be at home, and then with her gone and my daughter worrid about how I was doing and what I was doing and when I was doing it, it was just more comfortable for her to me move up here where she can drive here in thirty minutes and find out what I'm doing and and and and make sure I've taken my Yeah, well you be. You got a little furniturere building furniture up here in this this this apartment, most of this I built for I got here. I can do some stuff here, and I've done a little, um, not much since I've been here, but I can. And as soon as I get through with with my with my souls and hammles and things old at it I got, I can, I can go back. I got a chair, I need canean I cane that chair foosted, and I'll go back to doing by between it and writing and reading and cane and chairs and uh, I stay pretty busy. You are busy. Yeah, Well, I'm gonna just want to like in my head as I as I'm turkey hunting, you are the narrator, like you when I'm turkey hunting. I've read your books so many times that some of the things that you've become. And the turkey's coming in. I'm thinking about the words of that book, and I think that's probably true for a lot of people. So I have I have people say that to me all the time. Well, you know, you never know what another guy's thinking. But I mean enough people have said the same thing. Enough people, well enough people at the at the convention when I'm sitting now. A lot of folks with buy books, and we we sell books that we have a book. We have a booth every year David talking out together, have a book. We sell books on our side, books and talk to kids and a lot of people. A lot of people won't be to they take a picture of a kid sitting on my knee, when they take a picture beholding a kid, and and and uh, I think, I don't know. I think maybe they think if they do it, and if they talk about it, and if they meet me, I think I think it forms a society. And I think that's why they do it. God knows, I ain't pretty well you've been working with that. That lady that comes and get you, I don't know. I don't know. Well, woman married who she married. Anyway, I don't want my wife to figure that out of you. I think I do think that one of the things that is important to me is it when you have an idea or like an appreciation for something and someone else is able to articulate or explain your feeling for that thing in a way that you never could, which is what you were able to do for so many people for turkey hunting. I feel like it develops a relationship. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I mean, yeah, and that cause because a lot of folks, a lot of folks when I signed stuff on we want me to put something on it about this and that and this and that and this and that and this and that, and you can really I mean, if a guy comes in and it's fine as right, Tom Kelly, all best wishes are good luck next year, but if he if he wants so, uh an intellectual dissertation of why he and I think alike, Yeah, I can't write that. I just can't do yeah, because people and a lot of folks will want that. I mean, they'll do this, and they'll do that, and they want something for their son, and then they'll want something for the other son, and they want me to say one thing for one son, and some of them pull out a piece of paper and started reading what they wanted to write. I love it, I love do you do you? Did you ever foresee that you would be signing books and that people would think of you in the way that something? No, I felt like, Well, you know, it's like I said, I went into it with no sense of with no sense of anything. I like it and I like to tell people what I like to do. When you when you go to the football game, you gotta you got a special team that you like to win, because you remember bought Star. He remember, uh, the Green Bay Packers back when they used to be the Green Bay Packers. So time do you feel? What do you? What do you think? He said? Your wife really is is one of the main reasons why you started writing. Oh yeah, how do What did she think about your your success and fame? She my wife would for the FBI, and uh, well when I when I got out of school. My wife was born in a song Mill town, born in a song of Tow. Her daddy waked for the sawmill, and her daddy his name was Leon Boseley, and he was one of those kind of guys did everybody liked him. There was no way not to likely on Bolsley. I don't give it them who you were. There was no way not to likely on board. For instance, he was I was uh uh we Helen was. She was up to teaching school and and uh at at the high school and Century, which is just across the line, just into the Florida panhell that it's just across the line from Alabama. She was up there teaching school and I went to wake up there for the sawmill, and we met and we started dating. And then uh she uh when uh she knew I was, She knew I was. She knew I was connected by Cane should with the with the service and that, and when the Korean War started that I was gonna have to go back. But she she left Century and went to work for the FBI, had bile bill as A as A as a secretary of the FBI, and uh we we got along great, We got along great. I I cannot remember ever having across the wood with her from the time I met her until the day should die. Not one time. And that's that's that's unusual. And I was not. And this was in the days when you know, without the cell phones when you leave working scattered over the area that I was scattered over when we when as I got up, we moved back to a town. It was just about a mile and a half from the town. She was brought up here, so she was there. She had a mother saying and her system still there. But uh, it was, uh, you go you you went out in the woods of the morning, and and she might and as late as as far as I had to go, with as much as I had to do, It might be some thirty eight o'clock I eight thirty before I got back. Never it in never never, just as smooth or all of that plane. This is smooth. Hunt with you once or twice and she she went, and she said, this is fine. But from now on out, if anybody asked me what I like to go, tuck you and I would tell him thank you. But I've already been. My wife and I have similar It's amazing separate the church and state. Yeah, I mean you know, I was now chasing girls or getting drunk, or or losing money or wrecking cause. And as long as I did that and brought home enough of a paycheck to feed the handy kid, it was that was it. Um. I want to just read some of your like some of the quotes from tent Legion, and just talk through someone with you, because I think it I've been wanting to do that for a long time since I first read your book. Uh, I think to to the title, there's a quote in there that says, while fall hunting is all about beauty, spring hunting is warm. Spring hunting well spring hunting, you're trying to kill him. Fall hunting it is you. You you you know the woods hit the woods in the fall. That's when the woods are pretty. Yeah, I mean the leaves are colored. Du the bud migration is on. Uh, everything out there is is bright and colorful. It ain't hot anymore. It's a lovely place to be if you don't do anything but go out there and wander around. Oh. I used to, uh when out even after even after I was working, even after I was managing that track of timber for the sawmill, I carried lunch with me, and uh, there would be it would be a lot of places that I would deliberately not eat lunch until I got close enough to go eat lunch there because they were just something into Around the end of the world that soothed you, and it made you feel at home, It made you feel comfortable. Just uh uh, it's a you become at one with the woo Ward's and uh would have it would have been to me, it would have been pretty grim to to go to a restaurant every day to eat lunch, or go to the lunch room every day to eat lunch, or the United You did that when you were there, But when when you were on your own, and there was there was there were three four places. There was a place on the other side of day more prison foam here it was rolling to terrain, great big damn timber and uh, a lot of poles, a lot of polo, and a lot of solo, a lot of everything. And I a lot of times make arrangements to be close enough to it where I could go there and eat. It was a couple of places in Chactaw County the same way up on up on some high Chactaw County changes from the flat lands to the to the the combination of upland and bottom land with a hell of a lot more hardwood, and it were places up there they were just confortent to be in. And then the fact that in those kind of places that were comforting to be in with all that variety of timber, but there were more turkeys. Did you feel long your life that there is a medicinal quality to turkey hunting? Like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, uh, well, what a lot of folks is just did I ko sixty? You know? Did I q O six? With me? It's a hill of a lot molder that's always been molder. Man's always been like and it I I often have this, especially in the ice the ice machine, every time you got ice, you know it. I think in the springtime when I go out, it's like you spent your inside all winter, or you're mostly inside. If you ski or ice fish or whatever, you can get out. Uh, spring is just like it's new, it's new. And then any any build up of anxiety or stretch you might have had during the winter months when you couldn't get out as much can be a race during that time. You experienced that through your your life, I imagine. Yeah, well, let's see what else we got here. The bird possesses a remarkable ability to turn arrogance into hopelessness, which we've kind of covered. But you think I got his ass now and you get out there and leap. Yeah. Every time we talked, we talked about uh, my friend Steven Ronnella talks about how it is that we returned to that arrogance having been beaten so many times. Well, yeah, but well, of course, uh there there will be areas well. Nobody I don't they have some they have some books that the show the normal Turkey ranges and in and and and and it might cover the whole section and a half thousand acres acres, and they they will range across that fifteen d acres fairly regularly. They'll they'll handle one part of it in the spring and when to him is a testing and there's do another part of it when uh well when when when when the agins get ripe, they would not be right at one time of the year, and they and they and and they cover that area pretty pretty comfortable. And and I think it's ah, you get it to me working working in the woods and being in the woods, especially when I was balking timber for the sawbill. The lower coastal plain is dull because you've got pine and nothing but pine, and you've got mokey bottomed hardwood bottoms and nothing but that you get a little bit off of there and you begin to get this absolute tremendous variety of species, tremendous variety of timber types, tremendous variety of different areas that are that are that are turkey or any other animal will work in. And it's just it's just more fun up to it than it is dyeing into flat woods. It is it is. I think I've in my life when I think about turkey hunting, and I try to think, if you say that your friend Jim Andrews could just think how a turkey thinks, I feel like that's the skill I'm developing. I feel like that's you probably at all. Probably it's like the one I want to develop. It you probably if I can think where he wants to be, or think where he's going. Since he going the COEs, I never see anything over there, but if I go over here, I see him all the time. I'm going every day an time, and I've recently moved to the move to the west where you have these big expanses of public land or you. This year I did it a couple of times where you roll into a place you know you don't know anything about the landscape, anything about the birds, and it's so easy to find out. You got you got, You got the resource planning a which cruise every acre in the United States is recruised every ten is. And you got maps, you got, you got, you got Google. You can call up a map. You can call up a map on Google. Look, I could call I can call up a map. You call up a map on Google, and you can see and and and they update the damn thing all along. And if your call is balked in your front y' audacincy, it seems to call that does see if you can goddamn neither read the license tame. Yeah, we have a mapping system now on your phone. You can you can see it's called on X. You can see pretty much. You can look at a ridge, you can see the topographical features. Actually, a turkey would definitely go there, and then you only find it. And maybe you're right, maybe wrong, but you do have a leg up. Yeah, that's for sure. This is probably I don't know of all the quotes I like, this is maybe my favorite. You have to pay for every bird you kill, and the coin you used to pay for them is time right time, you cannot hurry. M You can't say I got thirty minutes. I'm gonna run out to section fourteen. They kill a turkey and run right back. You can't say it to your wife. Okay, Thanksgiving is coming and then laws are coming down here. I'll kill a turkey to saft, dudey drop it off in the yard so you can be cooking it tomorrow. Schedules you can't do. Another one you said is you don't hunt turkeys because you want to. You hunt turkeys have to as you have to. You no choice. Imagine a man that's been doing it for eighty years. It's pretty stuck. Hey, here's another one when you there is a long one. But when you talk about what happens when you're a turkey hunter, how do you explain to other people? You say? He also knows that when he comes back at home empty handed, as he will do regularly, he will have no satisfactory explanation. He is well aware, for he has met dozens of them, of the numbers of people that will approach him on street corners and in bars, and that parties who opened each conversation with, well did you get him? When he answers no, they will be off and running. They will tell him in delighted tones, and in the clearest detail, the story of a friend of theirs who has a feeble minded nephew, of how this nephew is occasionally allowed home on leave from the state funny farm. How that the last time this poor defective creature was home week before last, he went out in the woods just behind the house, sat on the log with a turkey yelper that was given away as a souvenir by a typewriter company ninety seven. He yelped twice and killed a turkey that way twenty three pounds. The explanation of it, and that that story right, yeah, and its it explains why it's so magical because you can never ever you never mastered it. You can never get good at never you, you will never get good at you. You can get good at it, but you will never mastery. And every time you feel you have the mastery that that crazy horrible you you look like hi and hell God, I have been so goddamn dump but you really and truly on another one, my this is the one that I'll close with because I think this is the one that most people that's at the end of the tenth legion, and I think it really encapsulates everything perfectly. The first turkey that I ever came to be on the ground did it a long time ago. I sat there with my hands shaking, my breath short, my heart hammering so hard. I could not understand why he cannot hear it. The last turkey that came to me last spring had exactly the same effect. And the day that this does not happen to me is the day that I quit. I don't think i'll quit. I think that will be the day that they close the little of the coffer, that that final thump one you won't hear. Yeah, I mean, you've done this for so long, You've you've put so much into it, you know, it definds a lot of your professional and personal life. Well, and and then and then, of course, God knows god, I've gotten some money back. That's that's the marvelous thing. And I didn't get into it. I didn't sit down and say I believe I was still writing about turkeys and makeuple and money. Colonel Kelly, is there something you would say to turkey hunters of the future kind of about your experience at the turkey hunter and what you've been able to do. We need we need to we need to work well. I don't know, I don't know how you could do it, but we need to because we are really and truly losing turkey hunters. We're losing hunters every year. Every year, every state I think shows a diminution in the number of licenses. And there's a pile of things cruel to the animals. Uh, why do you shoot towards polar illnescent things? Why this? Why that? Why that? Why do you take all that trouble? Why don't you spend home and we spend some time at home with your kids instead of up down to goddamn roll. Uh. That that we've got to get. I think we make him do it in time, But we gotta get the world to understand that there are different kind of hobbies and your hobby is simply one of thousands and thousands and thousands of hobbies. Uh. And and then the fact that you can eat what you is a is an added thing. But that we we got, we gotta. If we don't do that, uh, well it ain't gonna be I don't know how long it's gonna be. But we could come to the point where, well, you like for himself. Now, I think in Australia you can't own a weapon of any kind. Now, there's places in this country where you know they've taken they've taken all deadly weapons away from anybody we except pocket knives and stuff like that. But they they they they're getting it where and and and the more of a riot the strata needs to be not like this. It needs to be that thick. Well you can play in any in any part of it you want to play and stay out of jail. Right about that, I think the last question I have for you is if you could speak to say the last turkey will ever kill, and you could have a conversation with that turkey, what would you what would you say? I wish there was one more behind you. I wish you would the least one. That's perfect. I don't think anybody. I don't think anybody in the wild he was able to say it. I've had all I need of everything, and I have enjoyed everything. I ate well. I like said, great respect for for what you do, and and sitting down and talking turkeys for over an hour with me is something I've never thought i'd get to do, so I really that's it. That's all another episode of the Hunt collective in the books. I want to thank not only the lot being Eagle Janie Poodlus, who's awesome as always, it's great to talk to you, but everyone involved and help him connect me with Colonel Tom Kelly, and then also Colonel Kelly himself for allowing me to come into his home and chat with him. It was special, special for me. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. I'll probably go back and listen to this many times throughout my life. I might listen to it before every Turkey season to get myself fired up for the next thing. When I and when I read the Tenth Legion, So go to Tom's website, which we mentioned there at the end, and and get yourself a copy the Tenth Legion. I have no stake in that game other than I love good writing, I love good content, and love good creativity. And the Tenth Legion checks all those boxes. And then so what else? What else? What else? Oh? Um Man, I gotta tell you a lot of people have purchased this Aldo freaking Leopold t here, So we thank everybody that's going to the metior dot Com. You're going to the store and you've you've bought this this T shirt that we came out with here at Hunting Collective picture of Aldo smoking a pipe with with the words described beneath him that I just mentioned. Um Me, Ryan Callaham made a good point to me earlier, and he's made it a couple of times. There's a lot of people that know of that name that maybe haven't read his works, um And I think that happens in all pursuits and and that's something we generally all I can understand that you might not have read every single one of his books. Are really even understand the man without understanding what he meant to conservation? But the count doesn't make a good point. Man, while we're while we're adding to the reading list the Tenth Legion and many of Tom's books, get out there and and take it in as much auto as you can. His writings, his works are all out there to be found. Everyone understands the Sad County Almanac, just like they might understand the Tenth Legion. But there's just a lot of works out there. But before you do that, go buy the shirt, man, Go buy that auto freakingly and pulled shirt and enjoy it. And it's it's really meant to be away for you to kick that conversation off with somebody says, who the hell is that guy? He looks cool. You can tell him the story of one of the fathers of conservation in this great nation. So go to the media dot com, go to the store and check it out there. Also, what I continue you need to continue doing is going to the th HC at the mediator dot com and sending in your audio clips sub two minute clips recorded on your phone. Just talk right into the notes on your iPhone or whatever you have on any other device, talking to the notes, hit record, record what you want to say, and then email it right from there. It's super simple and easy. We're as you're here in a minute. We play a couple of these at the end of every show, and I think it's just really cool to do. And I love to hear from you, and I want everyone else to hear what you thought of these topics, these shows and how we're doing good, bad, ugly. There's certainly a lot of good comments, bad comments, and ugly comments that I've seen about this podcast about me, But um, I I want to read them all and understand them all so we get better at this year podcast program. So but until next time, I've been O'Brien, You're gonna hear from two awesome listeners coming up next, and then the little old number seven all the way out. As always, thanks for another great episode. We'll see you next week. I'm on the collective, Ben. I want to try to drop a hot tip for your THC followers. If you're like me and live on the East Coast flat land, I'm actually in Florida. It's hard to find elevation to hike and prep for our Western hunts. But what I've been doing with my group is meeting at the side of an overpass and actually perpendicularly going up and down with a heavy pack load hashtag slan Stone Glacier and it's worked really well to give us that true incline and elevation feel. Thanks for your time, keep up the good work THC lo Ben. My names Art, and I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your podcast. I got turned onto you recently for listening to where that was meet either podcasts, and I love all the characters. I watched the show on Netflix and got turned onto your podcast as a as a suggestion through through Ronella. But anyway, great topics. I love the interviews, and uh, just keep it up. I'm from the East Coast as well. I've hunted Maryland and Pennsylvania. I've hunted sick of deer. Not many people that I know say they've done that, and hearing your stories in regards to that kind of ring home to me. Um. But anyway, Hey, living the dream out there in Montana. One day maybe I'll make it out there myself. Keep it up then, thanks back. I'm seven Dennis to you, is you got me drinking heaven and uh, he stopt it looks good to me. They're gonna have to depart it. Do the barded, oh the bard, get in the fury, ding on the fury, d dragging in heaven.