It's been a turkey season of firsts and Brent's still reeling from an incredible opener in Missouri. He's got two great hunts on tap for you, a movie review, and is sharing a listener-submitted tale that pairs well with this episode. Sit back and relax, it's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
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Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and the country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you. If she can hit a cow, she can hit a turkey. The good fortune continues as we navigate through Turkey season with friends and family and the show me State. I had two amazing hunts back to back that I promised to tell you about last week. There were two firsts and they were fifteen hours apart. I'm going to tell you all about both of them, but first I'm going to tell you a story. We've got another listener submitted story that I'm going to tell you this week and imperfectly fits the message of our second helping hunts coming together. It was sent in by This Country Life listener Jordan Crawford from Winnsboro, South Carolina. This is one prime example of a plan coming together, staying focused when you think maybe it didn't without further ado and Jordan Crawford's words and my voice here it is a few springs back. The season started off pretty strong. I doubled up with my brother for the first time. You're in the first week, But after that nothing. The woods were quiet except for a case gobble followed by complete silence and no interest in checking out my best imitation of a hen cutting and yepping. A few weeks of bouncing around on different properties, walking and calling had produced zero Just exercise. Now, don't get me wrong, anytime you get to spend time hunting America's greatest game bird, you should be appreciating it. The weeks of silence and turkeys have absolutely no interest in playing the game can wear on a man's mind. It was the last day of our season in the part of our state, and as I said at work, waiting for quitting time, all I could think about was squeezing in one last hunt. I waited my options, and I decided to hunt my ant's property. I figured there might be a long beard hanging around her cow pasture that would give me one last opportunity. I left working. I pulled into my ant's driveway when just a few precious hours of the season left, I got ready. I grabbed a shotgun and headed for the logging road that looped all the way around the property. It ended at the bob wire fence in the far corner of the cow pasture. I walked the road, stopping to call occasion and listening for any gobbler that was willing to reveal his location. The silence was broken only by songbirds and a few crows that were having an altercation with a red tailed hawk. Now, with a little over an hour left of season, I finally made it to the fence where I could peek into that pasture and see if there were any turkeys that were spending their afternoon out there before heading to roost. A long hen caught my eye working her way down the fence line about two hundred yards on the other side of the pasture. While I washed her feet down that fence row, a half dozen more hens popped out from behind a knole, following right behind the lead hen. A few seconds later, three red heads popped up over the knoll, and three gobblers fell in line right behind the hens. Out of nowhere. The three long beards started fighting and it was hard to tell who was getting the better of who. It was an all out brawl. As I watched the fight unfold, I noticed the lead hen was headed towards a group of cedar trees that was three hundred yards down the fence line, a spot that I thought would be perfect set up to fill one of the two tags I had left in my pocket. So I did my best impression of Forest Gump and I made a big loop through the woods to get around to the cedars. And running through the woods was about as graceful as you can imagine a man running through the woods toting a shotgun it was unloaded, and wearing a turkey vest full of calls, extra gloves, face mask and shells. I made it to the cluster of ceedars undetected and tucked into one of them, just looking down that fence line in the direction that I had seen that flock of turkeys. After taking a few minutes to catch my breath, I let out a few soft yelps silence. After twenty minutes of quiet time and no sightings of anything, time was my enemy now, with precious minutes ticking off the clock, I grabbed my slate column let out a series of fighting perrs, hoping those gobblers were still in the mood to duke it out. Five minutes later, I think I hear the base from someone's car speakers. Now was only one hundred yards from the main road, and that wouldn't have been uncommon to hear. Then I thought, wait a minute, I don't hear a car coming down the road. Hold on, that's a gobbler drumming, and it's directly behind me. I slowly turned my head and I picked through the limbs of that cedar tree to see a gobbling full strut at twenty yards. Time was slipping away in the season, and I only had one option. If I was planning on walking back to the truck with a bird, throw it over my shoulder. I'm gonna have to turn around, pop out from behind this tree, and hope he doesn't take off before giving me a good shot. Now, when I did it, he must have been just as surprised as I was. When I first laid my eyes on him. Right behind me, he broke strut and stuck his head straight up in the air. You couldn't ask for a better shot boom. To my complete and utter dismay, he took off like a fighter jet, up and over the big white oaks in the direction of the creek. He cleared those big trees without any hesitation and disappeared. How did I miss that turkey? There's no way. Everything felt right. The beat of my shotgun was right at the base of his neck when I pulled the trigger. I took a few moments to collect my thoughts, and I walked over to where he was standing when I shot. Well, there's the waden of a few small black feathers laying on the ground. That those should have come from his neck. I started walking in the direction he flew, still believing I hadn't missed ISAI exacted the side of the hardwood ridge. Nothing. I dropped down into the bottom and I started walking the creek. As I made my way around a big pine tree on the bank near a bend in the creek. There he was laying in the middle graveyard dead man. I was over joyed to find that bird and to be able to wrap my tag around his leg on the right back of the house. I couldn't help but think what if I hadn't taken the time to study the ground where he was standing. What if I hadn't looked for him after he flew like he did that when I thought he hadn't been touched, he would layd in that creek and been cold food. And that's no way for the King of Spring to make his trip to the Turkey woods in the sky anyway. More of the story. You think you've mortally wounded turkey, put in the effort to make sure he got away cleanly. I know we expect him to just flop when we pull the trigger, at least show some kind of sign of being hit. That wasn't the case this time. Nothing really surprises me when it comes to these birds, but that one flying off like he did after being shot in the head, only to make his final approach and land in a creek. Honestly, it blew my mind. And according to Jordan Crawford of Winnsboro, South Carolina, that's just how that happened. My first week in Missouri turkey hunting this year was like no other I'd had in that area. I hunt a lot of field turkeys there, and everyone that's turkey hunted knows that they can be some of the toughest nuts to crack. They can set out in the middle of the bald open strutton and gobblet in relatives safely from hunter's arms with anything less than a sniper rifle or cannon. Now Missouri has yet to allow those two platforms for the legal take of Meliagres Galipavo silvestris, the scientific name assigned to the object of my obsession by old Carolus Lenius of Sweden way back in seventeen fifty eight, some two hundred and twenty seven years before I would send my first one to the promised land. Nice job, Caroless, but Turkey is way easier to spell anyway. I left off last week, when Isaac Neil and I were walking back to the side by side, I told twenty three pounds of feathered goodness after giving him the old one too, before the sun had a chance to get much higher than the fence posts that surrounded the pasture where I just throw punched him. I had no idea what that was in store for me over the next twenty four hours, and had I known, I wouldn't have been able to sleep that night. I'd actually planned on takeing a nap that afternoon at Toby and Mary's house. I've told you about them before, but if you're new to this country life, I've been going to their house for many moons now, chasing turkeys and visiting with them and their family and friends, who've all become just like mine. A turkey hunting is really just an excuse to go see them, and I was taking their youngest daughter, Emily the next morning on her first turkey hunt. Emily has grown now, but a few episodes ago I told you about when she was about six or seven, along with her older sister Peyton, they were quite a dynamic duo of innocence and beauty. Emily was the one that gave her pet cow tea bone a rock to the head after she sweetly called it over to the fence. I was hoping to give her the same opportunity bright and early the next day with one of the other turkeys i'd heard that morning. Then my friend Quentin called me and he said, I'm going hunting this afternoon if you want to go with me with the only thing better than a nap in the afternoon after you filled your allotted turkey tag during the first week of the season, It's helping someone else feel theirs. I'm in the truck and on the way. This year was the first time in my experience where you could hunt in the afternoon in Missouri. Now, I'm not sure whose idea that was, but here's to you, mister. Let's hunt Missouri turkeys in the afternoon. Man Quentin had heard several that morning and even called one in for his wife Chelsea to shoot. We were paddling into new waters being able to hunt in the afternoon. I was betting on it not being a disappointment. I should have doubled down. We were hunting his family farm, and he knew it well and knew where the turkey's like to move throughout the day, so when we walked into the area, he suggested we start. I was a little surprised when we called and got no response. We thought better of moving any further and decided to stay put. It was the first day and there was no reason to bump the turkeys out of that area of us spooking them. Besides, even if they didn't come into where we'd set up, we should be able to roost one for him to hunt the next morning. Well, I goid it. Emily now we'd been cracking out calls every fifteen or twenty minutes since we sat down, and after an hour and a half we heard a faint gobble to the northwest, bingo, we're in business now. Patients and time were on our side once again. We each fought the urge to call very often, and when we did, we didn't do a whole lot of excited calling or caculing, mostly just yep's loud enough to let him know that where we were and we were inviting him to come join the party. About twenty minutes into the game, and with him ever so slowly said and then closer, another one fired off to the southwards. How fortunate we were set up in some cedar trees at the top of a ridge line that had a pasture to the east behind us and woods to the west in front of us where the turkeys were now. Had there been more leaves on the trees and bushes, we'd probably gotten up and moved a little closer, cutting the distance and splitting the difference between them. If they didn't have hens with them, they should come on in. If they ran into some between where they were now and where we sat now, that might shut them up and we might not even hear another peep. That would be the only motivation to get closer. But the leaves were still a week away from putting out to any consequence, and you could see forever down through the woods. Moving closer was a gamble we couldn't afford to take. So we waited and we listened, and for the next forty five minutes we were treated to a lot of afternoon goblin while they moved ever so slowly closer to where we sat up. Then, when I thought they'd never get here, they were. They got together at about sixty yards, one of them strutting and the other one walking right behind him. As they approached the two decoys that we'd set out in front of us, a hen and a three quarter strutting jake, we're at twenty yards. Inn't exactly the wrong spot. I set them up, thinking the turkey's approaching would be at a at a bigger angle. But they came out riding the open and were walking straight toward us, with the decoys directly in between. Now, why is this not ideal, you asked, Well, you turkey hunters know it gives them more of an opportunity to look past the decoys and see us than if they'd had their attention been focused off to one side or the other. The strutter was on his way to start slinging hands at that jake when the dude that was following him smelled a rat and started to make tracks out of that quicker than he'd made them in. The strutter forgot. I all about wanted to beat up my decoy and was doing his dead level best to get back from whence he came When Quentin sent him a load of lead shot at twenty yards. It was a swing and a miss. Both turkeys flew at the sound of the shot and lit at about fifty This time he was right on the nogging And I just watched my friend shoot a gobbler on Missouri's inaugural afternoon season opener. Nice job, Boom boom, What a perfect day. Now counted my turkey that I told you about last week. That was two setups on two hunts on the same day, with two turkeys getting smashed. We walked out and I headed back to Toby's. I hadn't been there long. One old Quentin boom Boom sent me a text of his dad sitting behind a big turkey. Apparently he'd got home and heard one gobble behind his house not long after he got there, and he called his dad. Dad dad came over and they called it in My gosh, would this carnage ever end? The next morning, I was back at my old stomping grounds with Emily in toe, and we were standing where I stood the morning before I described in last week's episode. I owled and rite at gobling time. I got an answer on the ridge to the west of where we stood, about three hundred yards away. I picked out a tree for Emily. We listened to that turket gobble for quite a while. Fly down time came. I gave him a few tree yips and he answered immediately. I beat on my chest imitating wings flying down on the ground, and he answered that too. Then for the next twenty minutes after he hit the ground, he answered me every time I called to him. I didn't call much, just enough to keep up with him and to make sure he was interested. I had the decoys straight out west in front of Emily at the edge of the foo food plot. The gobbler would enter from the north and walk south to where we'd set up. My plan was to have him at stabbing distance, solely focused on the Jake decoy when Emily got the green light to shoot, And he must have read the script, because that's just what happened. It was turkey planning and execution to perfection. Emily drilled her first turkey on her first turkey hunt, and I had the honor of calling it in for and witnessing it all. That's a special moment for folks like us, the people who value the creatures that lure us each spring into nature. We all share that, regardless of how you pronounce the word acre. When she was little, she made me watch her do cartwheels across the living room floor until I got dizzy. She sat beside me on the couch, forcing me to watch the worst kids movie ever made. Don't believe it's the worst, check out Little Heroes three. It's so bad. Made me want to go to the dentist just to be somewhere away from the TV it was playing on. But Emily liked it, and to her it was special and she wanted to share it with me, And that's all the matter. Now she's all grown up and she picked me again to share something special. Her first turny don't tell her that if she wanted me to, I watched that dumb old movie with her all over again. That's gonna buy do it for me this week. I'm so thankful for all of you that have shared your stories with us, and man, do we have a lot of them to go through. Just know that we read them, and when and if we find the spot they fit, I'll share them on here. If you don't hear me read yours, just know that we appreciate your efforts in sending them in and hopefully it will eventually have a place to put. Y'all keep them coming. I haven't read a dud yet. Stories are just like biscuits. They're all good, some are just better. Now until next week, This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.