00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, the Hunting Collective, we're here another episode. It's a good one today, you're gonna like it. Um. We're gonna start off the show with my friend and Meat Eaters Hunting editor Spencer new Art. He's back on the show and he's got a lot of turkey facts. Actually, he's written some articles and done a lot of studies in the past on the history of the wild turkey in this continent. He's gonna give us some of those facts, and I'm gonna quiz him on some turkey facts, see what he knows. We're gonna flip it to the interview portion of the show, and in that he is a very impressive gentleman. Dr James Earl Kennemer. I went and met with him down in Edgefield, South Carolina at the n w t F headquarters. He was for a very long time, three decades in fact, the chief conservation officer for the National Wild Turkey Federation. So you're gonna love it. But before we get to that, I want to talk to you about First Light. That's my favorite gear company on the planet Earth folks, and they've got the whole New twenty nine team line out on their website and I got this thing called the Men's brooks Down Sweater. I've been wearing it. They sent it to me, and I've been wearing it. I didn't think I don't have to wear in the spring, but my dad and I were bear hunting, as you heard last week on the show, and it was cold as could be, and so we needed to layer up as it were, and pulled out the Men's brooks Down Sweater and it solved a lot of my problems. I love the thing. It's super lightweight, it's easily packable. Um, it is everything all the installation that you expect from an outer layer piece like this from First Light in this design, using more down than its closest competitor to be the lightest way possible, ensuring best in class warmth. And when it starts to snow in June and Montana, uh, you're a little bit depressed, but you're also happy you have this thing in your back. So go to first Light dot com and look up the brooks Down sweat out. All right, without further ado, we're going back to turkeys this episode. Let's go. I guess I grew up on an all the road A pared'll do the meadal I always did what I've told until I found out that my brand new clothes the games that can hand from the rich kids next door, and I grew up baths. I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted through a real bad dream of being a like I'm coming apart of the scenes. But thank you Jack Daniel. No, hey, everybody been O'Brien here another sort of the Hunting Collective six eighteen nineteen is when you're gonna be listening to this bad boy. And I know I told everybody that Turkey season was over and well in Jannest Matels and a couple of weeks ago said a sad goodbye to Turkey season. But in my infinite power, in this podcast, I've decided to bring it back. And we're not gonna talk about hunting turkeys. We're gonna talk about the history here the wild turkey and what is I think probably one of the most incredible conservation stories that we've got, and we have a lot of them. So I'm joined by Spencer new Art, the Hunting editor here at the Meat Eaters, to talk about that. What's up, man, it's up, Ben. You know, turkeys are cool when we are like a few months away now from LK. Hunning and you know, mule deer and white tailor right around the corner, and we are still yet talking a lot of turkeys. I know, maybe people get bored of turkeys, but I don't get bored of turkeys. So I'm bringing it back. I'm bringing it back because for a lot of reasons, I love turkeys. But I went. I flew down to the n w TF headquarters there in Edgefield, South Carolina, a couple of weeks back, and I talked to a man named Dr James Earl Kennemer. Yeah. You probably don't know who that is, um, and that sucks you're you're about to um. He was the chief conservation Officer for the n w TF for thirty two years. Um. This is a man that And when when the movement to bring the turkey back, bring turkey populations back from the brink, We'll discuss that in a moment. When that movement began in Earnest, this was one of the guys at the helm right. It had been going on for a few decades before he had an official position at the n w TF. But he and a bunch of other of his contemporaries, we're the ones that we're using cannons to trap turkeys, were drugging turkeys. Uh. He tells a story and the interviews what that's coming up about being woken up by snoring turkeys in his apartment because they were drugging him, putting him in a bag and he would put him in his apartment before they would go and release him. He tells you. Yeah, he tells some stories about trading turkeys between states, organizing these these turkey trades with other wildlife. So it's it's an interesting story. He's an interesting man. What years uh was he active? Like? Where does his story begin with? His story begins in the eighties, um with the National a Turkey Federation, but he's been involved in turkey restoration since the sixties. UM. So he's you know, if you want to if you really want to talk to somebody who was in the middle of it all and has just about every crazy story you can think of, it's this guy. Um. He's now retired, but he's nice enough to kind of come back to the end of a t F headquarters and chat with me a little bit over there, so you're gonna hear that in a little bit. But before we get into that, Spencer and I are going to regale you with all kinds of Turkey facts in a Turkey history. And I'm gonna start by We're gonna see if um Spencer has the knowledge that he says he does. I'm gonna quiz you on the origin of the turkey names of all four Well, there's more than four subspecies, but there's four in these great States. So I'm gonna quiz you on these. The Merriam's wild turkey is named after whom Miriam Mr Mr Merriam Nope, uh Dr E. W. Nelson a d named the Merriam's turkey in honor of the first chief of the U. S Biological Survey see Heart Merriam se Mariam. I would not have gotten that. It's a hot fact. It's a hot fact. I don't think a lot of people would have gotten that. I would have credited to like some one and that was with Lewis and Clark or something something like that. You want to ask me one, you got one for me. We didn't prepare these, but you got a nice fact. I won't get it. I'll probably get it wrong. How fast Kenny turkey run? Man, I'm pretty fast. Not as fast as a federal premium TSS heavyweight load? That does the man? Tell me? Tell me? Uh? So I wrote about this number of years ago, how cool turkeys are, and that most people um just thinking about their vision. But there's so many other things to consider. One of them is their legs. Now they can run twenty five miles or and uh it was like when you say Bolt ran his gold metal uh race for the Hunter meter dash, I like he was topped out at like twenty two and a half miles an hour. So you're telling me so, you're telling me that a wild turkey could beat you, Saint Bolt. I don't know if it would have the breaking news, that's what Spencer's telling us. Maybe, I don't know if it had a longevity to I think it would be able to not fly eventually be like screw this, and it would just take flight because it has wings and the same Bolt is not, as far as I know, have wings. I just checked here. It's that two keys can run twenty five miles per hour. That is three miles per hour slower than Usain Bolt so close humans still got him, all right. I didn't want to get any messages from Usain Bolt fans about this. What about the Florida What was originally called and described the Florida Turkey and eight by W. E. D. Scott, and he named it for a chief from what Indians? What? What Native American tribe? I don't know, based in Florida, popular in Florida. I don't have a good guess. It's a seminoles seminal tribe. That was an I was trying to throw you. You gave me plenty of clues. Um, And that was they named it after again, a famous seminal chief, Osceola, and that's the Osceola Turkey. Um. The Eastern wild Turkey doesn't really have a specific like a specific name or no mc glacier, but it was named by L. JP Via Elliott in eighteen seventeen using the Latin word sylvesters, meaning forest turkey. So now you know that got that one. So before we get to a guy like James R. O'kannamer, there's a lot of history for the wild turkey, a lot of things about the wild turkey that people probably don't know, and there's a lot of the story that they probably haven't heard. So we have Spencer here who has a background and one the written word, but also in biology wildlife variety. So give us a little bit of color on the story of the wild turkey prior to its modern conservation success and some of the things that you know about it. Yet. Well, uh, when when Europeans kind of arrived here, uh in this sixteen hundreds, they really took to like all the big game that North American had to offer too much. So there was a rising colonists population, and uh, they were just taking out turkeys because they were easy to kill turkeys, Henman hunted that much. And they were also taking away a lot of habitat. So you know, by like eighteen thirteen, I think we had the First States losing their turkey population for those reasons, the loss of habitat and over hunting. Yeah, and I and when you're pan settlers landed here, they had only ever seen like guinea foul, p foul other types of birds, so they didn't even really know what a wild turkey was. And if you read a lot of the writings of early European settlers, you'll see like the guinea foul looking bird is around, and then they started to learn more about it and understand that they were easy to kill. What they killed him with who knows, probably our tree equipment. Yeah, and and it got worse, like through the eighteen hundreds. It was by nineteen twenty that eighteen of thirty nine states had completely lost their wild turkey populations. So that left like two percent of the continents original ten million turkeys. Uh, and that you know would seem almost like an unsolvable problem. Yeah. Yeah, And in the turkeys, there's there's some myths that come with the turkey. And this is something that Dr Kennemer corrected me on a few times during our our conversation. But everybody kind of say about that the first Thanksgiving thinks about wild turkey. Um, that's the famous meal in sie um. But it's it's really been speculated and and this is something Canmera believes that the turkey didn't come a common part of Thanksgiving dinner until the eighteen hundreds. So whether or not a turkey was present or they just we've posthumously added it to the meal, we don't know. But Cannmra believes as that's a myth. And he also believes. Um, there's another thing that I brought up in the interview where Benjamin Franklin champion the wild turkey um as the as the national bird over the bald eagle. That you've heard a lot of people, a lot of people will say that, right, Um, this is discussed in like the seventies, seventies and seventeen eighties. UM, that wasn't so like there was a seal committee for for what the national bird would be. In the first seal committee was formed same day the Declaration of Independence was signed in seventeen seventy six. UM. That was composed from Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, um, and the in that committee that was there to decide that did not reach an agreement. And it was only later on that Franklin grew tired of the variety of bald eagle motifs and stuff that was around after they had already named the bald eagle the national bird, and then he started to push a little bit of his his conversation about the wild turkey, but he did not argue for the wild turkey in that seal committee when they decided on on the bald eagle. UM. The cool bird has been not that cool. I guess now we'll screw you, Franklin, Like, get on it, man, you came to the table too late. We could have had the coolest bird, a flightless raptor flightless dinosaur could have been the national bird. And now we got the bald eagle. Boring um and a letter to his daughter. This is something that can remember pointed me to in a letter to his daughter in before he noted that the order of since I don't even say insatatus, that's really makes me sound stupid, had to produce like a badge, more like a turkey than an eagle. And Franklin went on to talk about the bad points of the eagle and the good points of the turkey, but never actually recommended the turkey for the American symbol. Um. So now we can we can call that a myth to tall tales. But back to and then we'll go back to the demise of turkey populations and then the recoveries. Um, there's still those five subspecies and they, as you said, they declined to their lowest numbers in the twenties and the thirties. And what else you got, well, it's kind of in the thirties that they was in unintentional unintentional rebound. Um. When the Great Depression happened, you had this uh migration from the farmland to the city, and it left a lot of this egg land abandoned. And as that started to come act uh to its native form, turkeys took up that landscape. And so unintentionally kind of before like turkey recovery was a thing, it was already happening. And then a little bit later on the next few decades, UM, you had some major failures. Once it was recognized that our turkey flocks are depleted, UM, we need to help these things out. They went to the most obvious way to fix that, which was released more turkeys. So they raised these things and pens kick them out. But it was a failure. UM. One statistic that I found was that of pen raised birds failed to establish populations. So that is just like uh peeing into the wind, bad news, piston, end of the wind. Yeah, and there's a lot of things that really allowed these conservation moves that could go on, you know. UM. Out of Leopold published his book of Game Management Principles in ninety three, and then you got the Piven Robertson Acts that came seven seven that started to allow for these principles to take hold, but also for them to be funding and things, you know, and mechanisms and things to allow for this stuff to get get going. Um. And that's that's something I walked through the nd FCF Turkey Museum with Dr Kenner and he pointed a lot of that out, like there was this confluence of events that all happened, stuff that you're mentioning, like societally and culturally and just shifts. Then also some mechanisms within the government to allow that to go down. Yeah, And it's cool that you get to talk to somebody from the sixties because that is like maybe the actual genesis of turkey recovery and the fifties they had the first turkey cannons developed, um, and once they figured out that we need to be stocking or restocking wild turkeys rather than pen raised turkeys, that was when they were able to really help out the country's populations. And so you were talking to somebody who was earli early on in that well, I screwed up and talking to him because we didn't talk about the cannons. We did later on in the museum, look at one of the cannons and talk to talk about the nets that they used to capture turkeys. And in originally these these canons were for capturing waterfowl. They were so there was a giant cannon. Do you know what the purpose was where they putting wild waterfol It might have been the for tagging and waterfowl and things of that nature. Um, But they were designed to shoot at flying game or flying ducks and geese and things like that. Um. But they would conceal themselves on the ground and they would put some corn out in a row, and these turkeys would come and they would either eventually um, they start drugging them and putting them to sleep and then capturing them. In fact, there's a picture that I'll share with this podcast of Cannamer in the seventies barefoot holding it asleep turkey Like this is part of their efforts to go out end up ts, go out drug these turkeys and move them all around the country and transplant them the way they did. But they Cannaber sent me another thing about the cannon net technique. It just says that it involved concealing on the ground and net that would be remotely propelled over turkeys by a trapper from a blind and it's like a thirty to sixty foot mash cloth and opens up for it's propelled by black but like three or four black powder cannons elect and can be and was often detonated electronically, So it's a it's pretty powerful thing. And then some of the early there's there's a lot of stories about some of the early turkey researchers testing these nets on themselves and it works, it ends up and end up and end up getting getting injured. But the first he also told me that the first wild turkey is known to be captured with this method were on the Francis Mariam National Wildlife Forest in South Carolina, and so that when it was popularized, who knows, but the idea that this needed to happen was goes all the way back um to win Canama was in his prime doing this and that ended up being like the silver bullet for helping out turkey populations, yep. And then it's it's it's just amazing to me, like there's so many things that are amazing about this, but the fact that we were cannon netting, I wish I could shoot one of I might get one of these cannon nets just to see if I can capture Renella in it or something, or maybe Yanni, maybe the lobby an eagle. But for for I mean, these folks like Canama and his contemporaries did something did not not in its just in the concept, but in the activity that seems impossible, Like for it to have gone in that short time, in five decades, for it to have gone to where it was to where it is, it seems impossible. Yeah, yeah, And it was like over that time period, once we figured out the net cannons that you had to restock wild birds that it was nineteen ninety there were three point five million turkeys and then today there's seven million turkeys. Compare that to its lowest point in ninety seven and thirty thousand birds. It's wild that that level of recovery was able to happen, And to put in context, like people think of an imperiled species like African lions or polar bears. Um polar bears, there's twenty five thousand of those left. African lions there's fifty thousand of those left, and at one time there was only thirty thousand wild turkeys, and now the tags are some of the most attainable you know, in the country, driving around the West this this spring, just picking up tags. That's right. Like it's nothing, that's right. We talked to each other in the office here and like, how many tags you've got this year? Six? How many tags you've got this year four? So we talked openly about trying to kill ten turkeys. Yeah, it's wild. That would have been a large percentage of the entire population. I't even doing that back then. It is wild. And I think because I love turkeyanic so much, like a little bit reverse the story and learn about how they got here, because as we as I discussed with Dr Kennemer on the podcast and then afterwards, you know, the worst thing we could all do is forget or go tricky hunting, like that's just the way it's always been, or maybe worse than that, that's the way it's always going to be. Um here is for those of us who want to call it slips conservationists, here is a version of a real and true conservation at work, real wildlife management, some really creative ship going on there to get to get to that many birds but now all I mean every state, but I think Alaska has trouble populations, right, I mean it's pretty crazy. Yeah. And and not to put a downer on on the ending to this intro, but recently on the meat eator dot com, we covered uh A New Silent Springs what the article was called about how turkey populations are kind of on the way down and some states are noticing that flox are getting smaller and smaller. So, like you said, it's important to recognize that um turkeys aren't unique to or excuse me, what am I trying to stay here? Well not they're not exempt from conservation. Well, they're not in pervous to habitat loss and predation and things like that. And that's if you would ask these early conservations should go and sit with the people who know. They'll tell you that habitat loss was the main was really the main driver of turkeys going away. Forest like deforestation and some of the things we were doing to eliminate the habitat. And that's why you'll you'll go to the end of the TF and it's saved the habitat, save the hunt. But again, like we're still I mean, there's still there's new predators on lots of different landscapes where, um, where they haven't been before. So it's it's still a delicate situation to to to ever return back to thirty thousand turkeys. I highly doubt that we ever do that. But that doesn't mean that we should sit and rest on our laurels with what we've got, um, because I certainly love hunting turkeys and it's one of my favorite things too. And in fact, um, I'm reviving it after I said I was gonna let it go bringing it back. I think this is a good cap or to your turkey coverage. You think, so I probably won't bring it back again. I probably will move directly into like bears and other things like that. But in fact, next week we're gonna go and talk to someone um all the way in Indonesia. But for this one, it's turkeys. UM. Do you have any other trivia you'd like to add in here, any other like facts that people need to know about turkeys? I don't think so. I'm still reeling from not getting seminal correct. Yeah, I mean that was an easy one. That's embarrassing. I'm a little bearrass for you. Yeah, is this your first This is your first appearance on th HC and not no. Mark Kenny and I talked, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well all right this is the tryout still tryout phase, not yet a recurring guest. Might be the last, yeah, it could be, could be the last. I was like, the easiest one I could have given you. Um, but yeah, we're being down. I'll just add a little bit to being that the NBTF going down to Edfield, South Carolina, where they're and seeing there the history of the Wild Turkey played out. Um, it's pretty amazing that it included. It was right after I talked to Colonel Tom Kelly, who who you heard on this podcast a few weeks ago. You go down to their museum and you'll see they have some of his original work there to some of his original manuscripts. One of his original writing desks is all there enshrined in the National Wild Turkey Museum down there in Edgefield. So if you're ever running through Edgefield, South Carolina, go down there. Because I was really lucky to be able to walk around that museum with Dr canamer Post podcast and learn a little bit more about turks um and where these wonderful birds came from. And in fact, when I was there, there was a giant bus of children being taken through the museum and it was kind of like a cool to watch. Canamber stand there and watch that and know that he was a part of not only bringing turkeys back, but a part of an organization that also really gave back to the youth, um, young hunters in our world. I think he was proud of that, and I could see kind of a little glint in his eye watching that all go down. So it was fun. Um, it's fun to think about the history of turkeys and history recovery. There's a lot more you can can read about it. It's a there's a lot of it on w TFS website, but you're gonna hear a lot more of it coming up right now with Dr the Mush already talked about Dr James R. Kennemer from Edsfield, South Carolina. Enjoy Dr Kenner, how are you, sir? I'm doing wonderful. It's wonderful to be here in Edgefields, South Carolina and at the headquarters of the National Turkey Federation. I very much feel like this is the mecca for me. Is the turkey hunter to come here um and speak to you and and see the turkey art and the taxidermy and just kind of feel the history of a place like this. It's it's pretty special. Well, it's it's one of the kind. You won't go anywhere in the world and see the museum or see the history of turkey hunting and the conservation of the wild turkey, then you would here to the Wild Turkey Center. Yeah, and it is. It's it's immense of folks haven't been here. It's been a couple of years since I've been here. I know they built a big shooting center out back and they were just doing that here. Which can you give give folks an idea about this place in particularly if they come for a busit what they might find or or just kind of the general idea of the center. Well, we have a facility here that's really unique in that we've got a little over seven acres that have been put together over five different uh periods. We started out with the center in one being built right here, and we expanded from that. So when you come here, you really see a collection of art, of guns of history that's here. You've also out an opportunity to see wild turkey management, So a lot of the facility is managed now, so you can come and we can show you where you prescribe burn and you see what it does over a period of time, or you can see food plots, and then you've got an opportunity to shoot in a world class shooting facility that we've got sporting Clay's got two courses here, skeet range and trap. So and you know, if you're into turkeys and into turkey hunting in the history, this is a place to stop in. And we're right off twenty not far from Augusta, Georgia, not far um And and when it comes to the history of this place in the history of turkey hunting turkeys in America, I feel like you're probably the pre eminent person to talk to um because you've been doing this for so long, um since and I've read and talk some folks that tell me that around the age of twelve was one of the first times you started thinking about being you know, turkeys and conservation and getting into the field of study in which you've done for the last you know, many decades. Here. Well, I was, I was Forcunate when I was into sixth grade, to be able to hunt with my dad, who was a World War Two veteran and fought with pattent Uh. He was able to get us on Fort Benning Military Reservation on the Alabama side of the Chattoochee River, and I got to watch him call a turkey up. And I was into sixth grades. I was twelve years old, and I'm I can see that turkey in my mind's eye, walking back and forth and then finally committing and walking in he killed him. And I said, this is what I want to do for a living. And I didn't have a clue what a living minute that time, but and I stayed through the course all the way through my career. So been pretty unique, is there. I mean, especially at that time in this country, there weren't a whole lot of turkeys that I said, we were just discussing. I just uh did a podcast with Tom, Colonel Thom Kelly, and he did he talked about the same thing, seeing his first turkey and understanding what it actually was. And at the time there weren't a whole lot of people that could call themselves turkey hunters. Well there there wasn't, and you didn't have all of the material that you can buy now from Camo to what having. My dad hunted in army green fatigues. He didn't have a face mask, had nobody to really teach him, had a person down in uh South Alabama that made turkey calls out of lead and uh and so he could get mouth heelppers and so, you know, because he was extension fish and wildlife s pesiers, he got to travel the state and I got to grow up hunting in places that were only very remote and very few places you go hunt. My dad grew up in Sellm, Alabama, and his dad was a quail hunter. Uh to my knowledge, Daddy Frank never saw a wild turkey in his lifetime. And now they got booney crockett deer there and tremendous turkey population, so that whole ecology has changed from quail to turkey. So you know, really, I was so blessed to be able to go see turkeys and hunt there when I was a kid, and a lot of people my age didn't get today. Well, it's it always strikes me when thinking about, you know, my generation or future generations. Wild turkeys just kind of seemed to have been there for a long time and UM and talking to folks like you and others realized that it's generationally it's only been one or two that the walte turkey has been is proliferated in our country. And it's done, you know, thanks to you and and other folks, done very well. But the idea that they're just there, I think for for the modern hunter needs to be pushed back a little bit and to learn how they became, you know, the bird that they are today and the populations that they are today. Well, there's a lot of people who never got to hunt wild turkeys. And it was interesting when I moved here in nine in eighty to be at the Wild Turkey Center UH taking people out because we had a lot of turkeys here at that time, and the kids would think, if you know, if I didn't get a limit of five every year, I had a bad year. You got to understand a lot of people never got to see that. I'd love just letting my daddy Frank just see one much less hunted. And we can't take that for granted because there's a lot of threats to the wild turkey today from a habitat UH concerns and losing UH management in a lot of places. So you know, we have seen the good old years, and the data is showing it. Turkey populations are declining in certain areas. So we've reached our peak. Yeah, I know, we've covered that on our website and some podcasts. That's we you know, and not even then they'll be t f have seen the boom of turkeys and then switched, not switched, but understood that now that the turkey population are healthy, wanted to start talking about getting youth involved and really growing the participatory elements of turkey hunting as opposed to just just habitat um, which which is this organization has done so well for so long. Um really in your stead um, So you you became the chief conservation officer here or you were involved in the in the Turkey Federation in nineteen sixty four, it was that your first year. No. I came here in in nineteen eighty. Prior to that, for ten years, I was assistant and associate professor at Auburn University, teaching wildlife and doing research when my students primarily with turkeys, but with other species from beaver ponds to uh deer or what have you. But when I came in nineteen eighty as director of Research. And we were a very small organization at that time, I think at twelve thousand members, and uh I was hired to come in and start trying to collectively do research with all his universities and state agencies around the country, and it kind of grew in. As I told our board, Uh, if we do research, we can't put a turkey under every tree, but we can put a lot of things that we can put together about research. But we got to do management and expand populations, so we really don't have anything to work with. Yeah, well, we go back to you know, when you're at Auburn and I just read my notes wrong, nacis as far as when you started really getting involved in all turkey restoration, Um, take us back to that time. How did it feel to be interested in that? How did it feel to be on a mission to restore the wild turkey? And and you know what were your thoughts when you started what would be a fifty some year mission to do it? Well? I graduated of Auburn and Wildlife Management or what was called game and is what it's sixty four and then was able to go to Mississippi State to work on my master's and doctorate with Dr Dale Larner. He had done some early early work at Auburn UH with wild turkeys, and he was really a mentor for me and how I had the opportunity to get in the Mississippi Delta and do some real early work with telemetry trying to trap turkeys and how you would catch them and move them and do the parious things that we could do. And you know, I really, other than I dearly loved doing that and being in the woods every day with them, get to look at their habits and and learning turkeys. I was just obsessed with that. And then it morphed in after I finished that to go back to Auburn to teach, and then it's just been a wild ride ever since. You know, I really didn't sit down and think about the mission as much as this was my life's work and this is what I wanted to do, and it allowed me to get to meet and be with people in the wild turkey world that I would never have been able to do otherwise. And so I'm really blessed the Good Lord gave me that chance. Well, in the early years, you know that things are so much different and I've I've read stories and talk to folks who were, you know, a part of that, and I've heard from I heard a story the other day from the Turkey research said that when they first started capturing while turkeys, they would give him a drug. They would put it in some corn. I think you were involved in this as well. Put it put the dragons. Yeah, put that in some corn. The turkeys would come and eat the corn, they would go to sleep. They put him in a bag, and this um gentleman was telling me that he would go to a bedroom in his house and put the turkeys in and close the door, and then when they were ready to go and transplant him, come back and get him. Every once in a while, the turkeys would wake up and there be a little commotion. So I know that you have lots of stories like that that I really think are important for everyone to hear and just kind of how gritty it was to do what you're doing. So, um, is there anything that comes to mind right off that that just kind of yeah that I guess one of those would have been when we started doing half for Chlora lows and Love It. Williams in Florida had perfected the opportunity to do that, and so you'd put it in a ha up of cracked corn and put an ounce of this uh chemical call alpha chloro loos and you'd mix it up and then put it out in the woods with pre bates. So we knew how many birds were coming ahead of time, so you were able. I was by myself in the delta, which is one of the greatest times of my life because I got to see a lot of wildlife every day from daylight till dark, and I caught my first seven turkeys. I remember there were seven coming to debait and I caught all seven. I had some some boxes. I put them in some crates and put them in my bedroom and during the night you could hear the turkey is actually snoring during the night, keeping me awake. And it took about twenty four to thirty six hours from the wake up. But it allowed you to go on and measure them, put your streamers on their wings that we could identify them at a distance, or put you to limatry equipment on them as well, and so you know, you were able to really pioneer how all of this had to work out. And the radios that we used way back then were big clumsy things that hung around your neck. They were like here in a suitcase, and being on the Mississippi Delta, we would be listening to tow boats coming over the instead of listening to the beep of the radio. So, I mean it was very, very primitive. But to be able to follow that over my career see the technology change and how we can do things now that we couldn't do back then, was really pretty unique. But uh, the early days were a lot harder. We couldn't do the things we want to do, But I loved every minute. Yeah, how you know, when you're in it like that, you don't realize what could be Obviously you're just trying to get done what you want to get done. Are there are any other moments or things you look back on them that just make you chuckle for how wild it might have been trying to well, you know, sitting in blind sometimes and trying to catch turkeys all a particularly in the fall of the year, we were trying to catch some hens with broods and you would have plywood blinds with no top on them because you're talking about you know, real, real hot temperatures and the sun all day long is shining in on you, and so you're sitting there with your shirt off and and your shoes all trying to sit there and try to cool down and watch for turkeys to come in. So, you know, those kind of things. You look back and I'm like, how did we do that? I mean, how did we put up with the problem with not having four wheel drive and using trucks that you know, you couldn't get around like we can today. So no, it was it was an adventure. But you learned to adapt and you learn to figure out how to make it work. And that was good lesson for me. And how did you what did you hope to learn in those days? How did you approach that learning? You know, I wanted to try to put my my mind in the turkey's head and figure out why is he on what he's doing? Uh, and particularly and and trapping back then, and I watched this through my career. When you had state agencies trapping turkeys and moving them, you had certain few people that could catch them consistently. And what they could do is walk into a site and say, the turkeys will come to here, or they'll come to their or they won't come to here. And so that was my first lesson in trying to figure out what are they gonna do, which way are they going, and how's the best way to go catch them? And so that put me in tune of trying to learn everything I could about why they ate, what they ate? Why did you go here? And and you know, why did you gobble today and you did in gobble yesterday? Kind of a deal hunter. If I could figure that out, I probably wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. But that's it's just been, you know, and I still have learned a tremendous amount. But our turkey hunter did spring and they put it on me a more than one time, and I thought I had it figured out, and you never did. It's the magic of it. They're just never you know. You wonder if they're too smart or too Dumbies don't really really know. So back then, um, as you're doing your studies, how many states had wild turkeys at that time? You know, in the late sixties, well, most of the states had had some remnant populations. Of course we don't have in Alaska, and they were already in a white because they had been carried over from Texas. I'm sure with some of the pineapple people that had uh literally stole them and moved them over there, But you just had pockets of populations which made it very difficult for state agencies to try to transplant them because he didn't have many to begin with. You're trying to hunt them, but you've also got to expand populations, which meant you had a limited resource to go do. And that's where we got into Target two thousand and in the eighties, which really I think accelerated the restoration of the wild turkey all around the country, which, into me is is the shining point in my career to be part of that. Yeah, I think turget T Towns and I want to talk about a good bit here, but it strikes me that we should probably return to how this problem got to be now. I think the narrative on on on this show and and and really I think in the honey community of the turn of the century was really in market hunting was the time where our wildlife was depleted. And we think about buffalo, but but I think folks in the honey community understand elk, white tail, turkey stucks. We're kind of all depleted in similar manners. Can you just quickly give folks the cliff notes on, you know, running like how we got to where we were, Because there was a time when Ben Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be America's the America's bird. I hate to say that, but Ben Franklin really never said that. Okay, it's it's kind of a I know why I tell the short version is he along with I think, uh, Jefferson and Monroe, if I remember right, uh, we're kind of set up to pick what would be our national symbol, and both of them picked the bald eagle. He had parting of the Red Sea with Moses, and when the wild Turkey didn't come up until later, he wrote a letter to his daughter in Los Aere back in England and said the wild turkey should have been our symbol, but he was after the fact if he'd have brought that up to begin with. But legend has he wanted to be the wild turkey. So that's not true. But legend is going to be here with us, and you're not gonna change it. But I think if you look at the wild turkey being as resilient as it is, it survived only where we couldn't get to him and kill him out. And if you look in North Carolina, the Rhono Oak River Swamp was part of that. In South Carolina it's what's now the Francis Maryon National Forest. It was very remote. If you go to Alabama, which is a mecca where Tom Kelly lived and hunted, they're out of Spanish Fort. You had the role of the Tensol River Delta that came through there, and so people had islands and those turkeys could get on there and survive. And so taking those remnant populations and moving them allowed us to bring the wild turkey back. But we literally around the country if you go look, took them out of every state at some point, uh, particularly if people had access to them because they were gonna kill him for food, our market, hunted whatever. Now that's a that's a good way to think of the story, like we've kind of we pushed them into these places and then folks like you and others teamed up to take them from those remnant populations and turn them into what is um many millions of turkeys today. So that's a good set up for for when you came to the n w t F. Like as you said, you're the director of research, and there's some really good stories I think of how when you came here you kind of led those the transplants while turkeys and did some trading from state to states. So can you kind of set up that time. Yeah. One of the real unique things about the restoration of the wild turkey that the n WTF played a major, major role was having our n WTF Technical Committee, And so when I came here, we had people from each state. There might have been a legend in their own they may not have worked with the state agency, but we changed it up so that every turkey project leader from every state, and course all the states were really interested in bringing wild turkeys back came together at our national convention and so we would meet for two days and talk about various issues, uh from restoration research and this was a high point of bringing all these collective minds together and in different situations. We had some regional committees like the Northeast Turkey Committee, in the Southeast Turkey Committee and others. We created one for the West coast, but that was the key to getting them all together and identifying the problem. And up to that point, everybody was trading something for another state. So if you had white tailed ere and you wanted to trade it to some other state, then you had to trade something they wanted. And we collectively in in their mid eighties realized that there wasn't a way to do that, and I proposed to the committee and almost got run out of town on the rail about let's pay replacement calls back to the state where they they came from. The turkeys are a gift to you, but then uke to pay what it colls to catch them or what read the restitution value, which we determined over a period of time to be five hundred dollars. And the big issue with the state agencies was that this will be violating the Lacey Act. You're selling birds across state lines. And I kept telling them we got legal help, we can look at this. You donate the birds, let us at the Federation work with the state agencies on either side and have one request birds to you directly. So we were kind of the middleman, the marketer, and we would hold the moneys for the various state agencies. And really and truly I didn't realize it at the time, but it's a high point of my career to be able to get everybody to finally agree to do that. And what we were able to do to get Joe Currs, who was the chief wildlife in Georgia, to agree that we could move birds and he would set it up with his director. And so we moved birds from right outside of Augusta, George at Thompson, Georgia and took him to Tyler, Texas. And we had we had made that altogether. And once we did that and flew them on Trammel Crow's private airplane over there and turn them loose, then everybody said, well it's okay. And so then we were up to move in two and three and up to four hundred and I think twenty turkeys moved in one year between one state and another. And so it allowed us to go ahead and finish restoration. If you take North Carolina for example, uh Wayne Bailey and some of his people that were working with him, they were trapping in state, but they had limited populations. As I said a minute ago, by helping here, South Carolina would donate birds to them, and so they would trap them on places where you couldn't hunt in South Carolina, take them to the boarder, transfer them over to North Carolina who turned them loose. The money is that they paid for the five uh per bird came back to the state of South Carolina and they used it to buy land that would be in public hunting. So it was a win win for both states. So there's a tremendous amount of matching moneys that could go with pr dollars to buy public land on the states that donated to turkeys, and I was one of the big states that really at the time they were able to buy land because it was during the farming crisis of the eighties and early nineties. For forty dollars an acre, they could buy up some of this land that was ravines where they couldn't farm, and so the state was able to move turkeys to Texas and and really bring it back. So it was a win all the way around. We had a lot of good habitat turkey restoration. And if you look at North Carolina, they accomplished their restoration in ten years, which it took South Carolina almost thirty because they were working out the Frances maryon moving turkeys all around the state. It's just amazing, you know, one that we take this kind of activity for granted, but too that it was going on in the scale that it was um And I read about the example in the East Texas that you speak of, where they're trading you know, white tail deer and redfish finger links for turkeys, and it was astounding to me to think of of the like the grit and the on the ground worth that you had to do to just to get this, To get the idea that this would be okay to do this is amazing to me. Well, it really was. And getting over that hurdle, you know, making everybody because of the buying and selling, and I used to really cringe every time somebody says, well, we're gonna sell you some turkeys. No you're not. You're given the turkeys. We're just gonna pay you the restitution. But once everybody bought into it, the state agencies deserve all the credit. They're the ones that made it happen. We were just the facilitator. We held the money's and it's one of the state UH directors told me if we don't, if you don't hold the money and tell me when I can spend it to buy my land, that the General Assembly will take that money and they'll spend it somewhere else. So we were able to hold the dollars till they told us. And so it really was when for all the where you know history to be proud of um and not so and are not so distant past? Do you feel like during that time you guys had a you know, you were really effective in we're gonna take these turkeys, this is why we're picking these turkeys, and this is where we're gonna take them. Um. I think talk people through that idea how you would choose, you know, you we we talked about how you would would go to rendom populations. But how was it just whoever wanted turkeys got them or was there a more strategic kind of Well that that's an interesting question really being the uh is you would imagine going to a state where you had a rich legislator or somebody that won't need turkeys on their land, they would have been the ones to say, look, if we get birds, they need to go to my place. And what the state agencies did was come up with the criteria and they would look at I mean landowners can we put together and a lot of them use ten thousand acres as a block, and so getting their everybody to agree that we will protect them for five years and at the end of five years, if we want to come trap them, we can move them somewhere else. So they set up a criteria that would rank the number one places they could go to, and then you work down that list. And so Target two thousand was set to finish in the year two thousand twenty thousand. But anyway, it turned out that um that we didn't quite make it, but we got most of it done by that time, but using the priority system to make sure we got it done. And I think that's that's Is there a time where, um, I think in the inswer this, but a time where you would shift too, because I think Target two thousand we'll talk about here in a second. Is it really it's it's it's a genius idea, and it's turned out to be one of the more successful conservation programs. Are ideals that that we've had. But was there a time where it was it went from shifted from just moving turkeys around and get populations in place to really just focusing on habitat or was it was were those things happening in parallels they were happening in parallel. I think it made an inciny for the States in particular to try to work on managing these populations once they got to establish. So what can we do to enhance the opportunities, whether it's burning or food plots or timber thinning or whatever it happened to be. So they were kind of going hand in hand, and you know, as we finished at the end, we we all realized that, you know, we've accomplished a great goal, but now what's the next thing going to be? And and so that's kind of where we are today and trying to look at all the threats to the wild turkey in particularly with declining populations in these areas like we mentioned, and you know, you're looking at a lot of different things that to me or or something that's of a concern to me debating that's going on for turkeys and a lot of other species. We got technology now and we can shoot turkeys a lot further out than we used to. There's a finite limit to how much of this you can do with existing population. So I'm not I'm not anti having, you know, good equipment, but I think you can take it to an extreme to sun Yeah, So for for getting the target tooth thousand is essentially, uh, you got sought to restore all wild turkeys to their suitable habitats by the year two thousand. Yeah, our goal was every suitable habitat would be filled with wild turkeys as much as we could in North America. Of course, primarily we were focusing on the United States, but parts of Canada. We have moved turkeys into Ontario, which has got a very good turkey population. There's other areas where turkeys had moved in and Canada, and of course we've worked in Mexico as well. So, um, how did that Who came up with the idea for Turkey thousand? Well, it was the staff here at the end, wtf. You know, we wanted something that was catchy, that would we could say and you know, when you got down to it, with a number of different names, we we just kind of decided among the senior staff that target two thousand would be a catchy thing and that you know, here's our target, here's the early nineties. Unless set our goal and everybody bought into that's awesome. Did you guys, did you feel personally at the time how big an effect that would have on hunting and just not whild turkeys, just like the hunting culture, you know, the industry, the companies that be making products. That's just the proliferation of media things of that nature. When you're well, I guess it had to be perfectly honest with the I was so busy trying to do the job. I didn't think about that because you know, the concern that I had and moving and keeping up with the books on all of this, and we had a staff to help do that that we wouldn't make a mistake because if we ended up and didn't have a letter of transmittle or the dollars got confused used and we were audited by the federal gunman inn our because they said you were double dipping with the moneys, and we survived that it was not illegal. So quite honestly, I had no idea what he was gonna do, and and just let's get it done, and and we were all working so hard we never thought about it. Yeah, what I mean, it's it's it's a it's this is a grand idea. It's it's like that's a big undertaking as well, and you know, like a broader reaching thing with goal to have what what do you remember some of the big challenges, you know, even the broader challenges than even maybe some of the hardest days you know, and getting there, well, I think getting everybody on the same page was the hardest part of the early days with Joe uh he saw the wisdom and he said, I can buy land and and put in public hunting in Georgia, and this will be a way to go do that. He had that had that vision, but a lot of people were extremely reluctant. Know it's number one if we start really trapping turkeys, some of the state agents that says it. You know, I'm gonna have to go to work now and really get out in the field and get up at four in the morning and work hard to catch turkeys. So those were the more frustrating things for me, is trying to get everybody behind it all and moving ahead. And then once we hit critical mass, it all kind of came together and then it was just a matter of collectively figuring out where the turkeys needed to go. Because I had a demand more than I had turkeys to go get and so it put me in a political nightmare of trying to who am I gonna try to help the most, and so uh, that was a big challenge for me. Ben, Yeah, I mean one point three million turkeys in nineteen seventy three to seven million turkeys today, that's that's unbelievable. Well, if we hadn't done what we did, I think he would all would have been accomplished down the road one way or another. But the fact that we had the group of people from the Tech Committee and the state agencies collectively putting their brain trust together to go out here and do this. You've got a tremendous number of people and kids included getting to hunt turkeys right now that it would have been down the road before they would have had that opportunity. So that played a part in that to me is as I said early, one of the highlights in my career. Yeah, as well as well it should be and and there's guys like me run around chasing turkeys that should be thankful for that work, and I think are but being aware of an idea like Target tho thousand and the fact that it worked at the level that it did and continue to work. But again we still face challenges. I mean, we don't um the work that was done. Like you said, when when do you really feel like that was achieved? Um, because we've already kind of touched on the fact that populations, you know, I would say, skyrocketed and then have have leveled out and started to wane in recent years. UM. I'm sure, as I'm sure it'll be cyclical. But but when did you really feel that that had crusted? And I think around two thousand and five would have probably been about when we realized that, you know, we've about done all we can go do. We might do a little moving here there, but we're not gonna make a big difference in populations one way or another. And and of course looking at at some of the prime habitats, particularly where turkeys would have to winter in some of the colder regions, and knowing that people are gonna take that land over and make it into summer homes or what have you. Um, that was gonna be a real challenge to see if we can maintain the turkeys over that period of time. So that last fifteen years of my career doing that was trying to work to make sure we can save the habitat and protect them so we can maintain those populations down the road and get other hunters involved, because that's a big focus for the n WTF and we have been working on that for a number of years. Yeah, I think it cons very space. It's always we always, everyone has very much advised this organization for that shift. You know, let's get turkeys out there, Let's make sure the habitat is stable, Let's make sure the habitat is valued. And then once we feel like we've crested that hill, we're going to add to it by saying we want more youth hunters. We want more people out there caring about the resource um and pursuing the resource like we have all done. I think that's that's widely considered one of the greatest conservation kind of pivots that any organization has done. That's at least that's what I feel about it. All right, I think you're right, it's uh. The Federation played a major role in that. And then I think we'll stay down the road trying to maintain that we will have this for generations to come. You know, the goal I had as I started out with all this is to make sure that we keep hunting relevant for the next two hundred years. And we've got to do that. If we're going to maintain hunting because of the threats we've got against it, plus the eight percent of the country that doesn't hunt but will tolerate the fact we do get to hunt. And there's ten percent of us so that they're going to be dying the wool and gonna do it to our dying day, and another ten percent that hates everything we do. And so you're looking at gun issues and all the things that go with that. Uh, that that's a major concern. Is so we had a we ran an article on the meat either dot com recently talking about turkey populations currently and what's what's happening with Can you give people just an overview of of some of the more negative aspects of just like recent population trends. Well, I know in Arkansas it's probably a good example that I know of that there. I don't I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but they've declined about fift in the number of birds that they've been harvested in the spring. And we were very involved working with some of their early people about expanding populations in Arkansas. Part of it was in the early days that, uh, there was too much indiscriminate hunting, and so the hunting clubs were killing these turkeys and hauling them out. And once the hunting clubs were really controlled to the point where you're not going to be able to do that, the turkeys started responding and coming back. But if you look at it now, that they're kill is dramatically way less in what has been in the past. Uh, some of the other states had just been kind of a negative deal just a little at the time. South Carolina is a good example. They just changed some of the regulations here in the state to reduce the bag limit and the amount of days that you've got into season because we're putting more pressure on the population than we're getting recruitment back to fill it in. How how do you view that balance now after so many years of doing this, because I mean, I think that's what me as a hunter and the modern generation trying to understand the resource and the balance of the resource and and really treat it like resource um not to not to overuse it, etcetera. How do you see that after so many years of doing this. Well, it's a good question and it's kind of hard to answer, really, being but when our state chapter here in South Carolina asked me to go to the Senate here in South Carolina and testify about my career. And you've got a number of people who wanted to keep the bag limit at five. They did reduce it to three, and then expanded the season a couple of years ago to be fifty two total days in the spring, and the department had enough data to show that we're killing more than we're getting into recruitment, and several of the senators that are on there, uh, we're talking about but my hunting club where I hunt is very large, and I have plenty of turkeys, And I said, what, you can't deal with it like that. You gotta deal with what the average hunter has got to deal with around the country. And I think we've been spoiled and having turkey hunting so good so long that people are not wanting to recognize. We can't keep the pressure on it. And you gotta back off, because as I told us in it, you can pay me now, you can pay me later. You can let people go hunting, go out a number of days and not here turkeys, or we can restrict the number, cut back on the Only thing you can control is that the days you hunt and what you bag. Limit is whether we can't control the habitat to a degree we can't control statewide. So you know, people have got to understand we can't take it for granted, because if we do, we're gonna lose it. Yeah. Yeah, I was just spend some time in North Carolina here the last couple of weeks and talking about Sunday hunting laws. They're still dealing with a lot of blue laws there um as well as I mean when I I when I was coming up, there were some places we would turkey on where you can only huntil noon, you know as well. So how do you feel about those kind of restrictions and how they play a part. And we certainly hear hunters complaining about those things, and some people accept them and like them as additional ways to do it. Well, you know, I go to church every Sunday. I enjoyed doing that, and I feel that it's my role to have to go to church and and worship the Lord. But I don't think it's my job to keep people from going hunting if they want to hunt on Sunday mornings, particularly if they don't have an opportunity to hunt any other time. We have no data anywhere to show that half day hunting and I promoted this all the way through my career has had any effect on populations. And Wayne Bailey was one of the ones that came up with it, and he said, you know, we gotta give the turkeys arrest in the afternoon, and we gotta do all those things. Data is shown from our research that that's not the case at all. So we can't restrict the amount of hunting that we have in the daylight because that keeps kids that can go turkey out and after school, like a lot of them could do in some of the states. So I don't see the restriction on Sunday hunting versus afternoon hunting where you can't do that. That's there's no data for that. The bag limits a different deal because we know that probably of the turkeys are killed, but timbercent of the hunters, and so they're the one just gonna go out in and kill a number. The only way you can reflect that beyond the illegal kill is to restrict the number it's taken. So we need to give people an opportunity, particularly those that are blue collar workers and people that don't get a chance to go and hunt every day. They can only do it on the weekends or in the afternoons after they get off their shift. So we can't we can't keep that from happening. That's that's huge. And turkeys, I think I feel like for what they are, you know, some people if I've heard some people called big game, I don't know. Uh, we can have have that conversation, as samanthes at some level. But it's the most interactive hunting I believe you can do, and it's accessible. You know, I just did at about four different states this year and it was all over the counter, all public land that you know, As you said, the bag limits vary from state to state, which I think is both good and it can be bad for a turkey. I'm trying to understand the tapestry of of you know, kind of how it's managed from each state level. But it's one of the more accessible things as this organization you said correctly, it's one of the things that youth hunters can can really get into early, just because of the because of what the bird is, because of how interactive it is. Um. I really do believe it's kind of a gateway to other types of hunting. Um for sure. Um So how do you think about, you know, getting young people into turkey hunting, how successful we've been in doing that, and how much of a bridge I feel turkey hunting is for for every other type. Well, I think it's important to get them out. I think the first thing to do is not make it hard on them and take them in the woods and that I'm just enjoy what's out there and understand, and particularly to a social type of hunt like a dove hunt or something where you can get them together and I'll make it hard. Uh. One thing you don't want to do, and I've watched this in my career where you you don't want the kid to have a bad experience. You don't want to put them in a deer stand freezing to death because they're gonna get to the point they won't do that. Uh. It didn't matter in my case. I was gonna go regardless any care. And I've never been a hunting I didn't enjoy the day if it rained or coal or whatever. But I think getting the kids involved and mentoring those I have more fun. Taking somebody hunting now and let them do the sheeting or let them at least hear what's going on and explain some of the things we're talking about here is important. And the more we can do that and get them grassroots out on the ground as well as bring some of the hunters back in that we've lost. It's true. And like I said that, my boss, Steve Vernella, who is hunted many a thing around the world, said when he retires, he's he'll tell his wife, you can have the rest of the season, the rest of the year, I'll do whatever you want. But in the springtime, you're come with me. We're going to turkey hunt. I'm I'm with Steve. I am too, um because it's it's there in the Western United States and around the country, little bit. Sometimes the turkey gets maligned. Sometimes it gets gets called, um stupid. I'm sure you would disagree with that, oh absolutely. And and you know I got stupid in the sense that small brain, you know, not stupid, isn't well, their brains about the size of a peanut. But you know, one thing he doesn't though, is what he's gonna do next, and that keeps him alive in a lot of cases. But the fact that where they're hunted and where they're out into the wild where there's a predator draft from they figure out that's a lump against that tree that shouldn't be there, and so I'm not gonna hang around. Unfortunately, We've got a lot of places where and we helped move the birds from Virginia to Long Island and brought turkeys back there that you know, we were having a season two hundred years after they were eliminated. But the turkeys were protected to the point and they weren't hunted. And so those turkeys they come up in people's yards and they get on top of their houses or what have you. And so the turkey is my land because they've been trained to do that. And in fact, if you put them in the wild, event they're not they don't do calculus, but they know when some I'm not right, and I'm not waiting around to figure it out. Yeah. I heard Michael Waddell recently was saying that he just thinks turkeys they're too dumb for their own good. I mean, they just don't he said, They just you don't think they have any memory. He thinks they just bounce around from place to place. They don't really know where they're going. Or where they came from. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I've heard that from other people in the in the past, and my experience can seem like that. But it often seems like they're the smartest thing with two legs. Um, well, you've got to also understand their program to certain things, whether it's the males fighting among themselves. Why you've got several turkeys together and you kill one, the other one jumps on him, you gotta understand that no different than the white tailed dear. Those bucks are in constant fight with each other to set up dominance. Turkeys are in the same boat. So if you you want to take that program and play with it, yeah, you can call him done because he's doing what he's programmed to go do. He's also programmed to gobblin, let the hens come to him, and when they get hung up and don't come in, he's doing what he's supposed to do. So he's not stupid in one sense. But if you can play the deco or part of it, and I'll hunted with Michael, and I know exactly where he can do, and he's a tremendous turkey owner. He can make them do things I wouldn't believe a turkey would do. But he's playing to their program of what they do, and that there in aggression. I'm going to show you a fan and they're gonna come to me and you kill them. So they're not stupid, they're they're really programmed to be alert and and get away. Yeah, what's your you know what? After when you started earlier in the conversation talking about trying to get into the mind of the turkey hunter or at the turkey, and we talked about Tom Kelly getting into the mind of the turkey hunter better than anyone. Um, what what could you tell people? Because lately I've had the most successful and you know, becoming I think a better turkey hunter by trying to think, where's this turkey want to be? What's it want to be doing? How can I how can I make the coersion like less than the coersion? Let's get get into place where the turkey wants to be. He's gonna want to come to me anyway, even if I have a terrible caller and I can't convince him of much. Well, how do you think about those things when you're turcky in? Well, I guess I'm kind of in a different him because of being as old as I him. And I killed my uh turkey for the last sixty one year. So I've had a good, good run at it, and I've been buffalo a bunch of times. But the thing that that really means the most to me now, I've always wanted to make it fair Chase. I wanted, like I mentioned on the thing with Tom Kelly earlier, UM, I want to be able to match wits with a turkey. And if I came out with him to where I want him to do what he needs to do, then then the hunt it's not there. And I hunted with I don't use the decoy. Um, I've got some and I've hunted with him when we were filming. I shoot an over and undershotgun. Is only about five percent of us that do that. So I want to I want to match wits with a turkey as he is. I want to pick out where I think he's going. I want to set up on the right place and and making sure that I can be where I can see and do and I guess at the end of the day. And it really has come home to me the last couple of years. Turkey hunting. Is I near the end of this whole life? Um to know I was in the presence of the turkey makes a hunt for me. If I can get out there and hear one, God will know he's somewhere close, It's really made my hunt. If I can call to him and he answers me, then that's the next level. And if I can kill him, then that's a bonus. So you know, I think we're so caught up in the kill and not in the experience and being able to enjoy the morning matching Wits were one of the greatest game birds in the world on his terms and playing in his home because he knows every tree all is there. And if I can outwit him and kill him, then I've I've had really the utopian too many times I think we just I gotta kill my five and then I'm done. However it takes to do it. That's not my game. How would you you know, knowing that, how would you describe your relationship with the turkey and both killing it and preserving it, and how all that has gone in your lifetime. I guess the hardest thing is when you hunt a turkey and and you kill him or and watched him as you were hunting that day in the full strut or goblin, and know when you had him drumming at that close and then taking that bird, and then having to clean him when I got through with him, because I don't waste any of it, whether I keep him whole or best him out and save the legs. Uh. To look at a magnificent creature that I've killed that I've got to now clean because I got a lot of respect for the wild turkey and what it's meant to this country and to me personally and to my family and my friends. It's given me an opportunity to do things that I would never have been able to do in the wild turkey brought it back. So I got utmost respect for a wild turkey as do I and I don't. I can never really explain, other than to point people to The Tenth Legion and other other works similar to it, never really explain what drew me to it other over other things, or why it was such a you know, always I've I've tried in the past. It's the time of year, it's the new life, It's it's the gobble, it's that sound bouncing off the timber bouncing over the planes to me and me being able to have a conversation with a dinosaur that sleeps in trees it's eating. I don't know that I'll ever be able to truly get the words out that the feeling of, you know, he's standing over at Turkey just shot or calling one into a deco, and I don't I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do it, though I think my job is at the talks. I'll have to keep trying. Well. I think it's it's a spirit of the deal. And and no one you've had that opportunity to be, as I said, in their presence and being around them, because I think think of all the people that didn't get to see it, uh over the years and when they were gone. And you know, my goal it was to make sure that we had my grandkids get the same opportunity to to go see the wild Turkey and to go hone him if they want to, if not, go see them. Yeah, that's for sure. Is there any Yeah, as you look into the future, um, knowing what you know now, is there any feeling, um like a foreboding feeling I've I know you talked about and other conversations that we can be our own worst enemy at times. Do you have a you know, as you you're now retired and you move onto that portion of your life, it's a foreboding feeling about the future for any any particular reason, or how do you how do you feel about where we're headed? Well, I think in this human nature, trying to make the kill easier, trying with all the equipment. I've got, the better shell, it'll shoot seventy five yards or a hundred yards, you'll get beyond the hang up ring. Uh debating issue we talked about earlier, where we're taking I think an opportunity to make less than fair chase into this, and we're bringing up a generation of kids that, uh think that maybe killing a deer is gonna be where I can be on a bait pile of corn and think that's hunting, which to me is not. It may be killing that to manage the population, but it's not a hunt per se. And so it really bothers me that we've gotten so technology with equipment and all the things that you can go do with trail cams, you name it. You know, we know what time they're coming to the bait, we know what time they're gonna be there. Uh, that's a fue voting thing for me, that we're losing the essence of the hunt itself. And I hope we don't do that, and I hope the generations to come get to do what Tom Kelly and I've been able to do is go match wits with him one oh one. And we don't have all of the equipment, but we do have better shelves, we have better guns, and I don't want to put that down. Is i'mn ti you know, having the equipment because the boots we got today away better they were when I was coming through, and and the clothes that you wear, so you know there there's a limit and hold it in perspective. Yeah, I know it's a good perspective. And I always this question I asked, and I feel like I've got my own answers, and I'm sure they'll change over time. But what do you think is in the hunting sense fair to the Turkey? Like how would you line that out? How? How what's fair in the in for the Turkey? And what's fair for you? Like, how do you you know we use the word fair a lot, but how would you kind of Well, I think from the fair standpoint, having the wild turkey in his element, being able to go match wits with him one on one, trying to use your call in or your woodsmanship, knowing the land to be able to hunt that turkey is fair for him and fair for us. And we know that we've got a uh while turkeys, we got gobblers that can make twenty to thirty hens at a time anyway, so we we've got a surplus of birds that we can go harvest and take out that population and not affect it. So I think as long as we keep it one on one and play in that game. So we're matching wits and trying to figure out what he's gonna do. And I hate to thank the number of nights I've laid in bed thinking about and now I know where he is and he's gonna do this, and he's up there asleep. He has no clue what he's gonna do the next morning. So but we gotta play with his set of rules, on his terms, on his ground, and that's what it's all about. Well, we should tell some turkey stories. You have, any good Colonel Tim Kelly's turkey stories for these are our r Wayne Bailey or any of those legends. And at least in my mind. Well, one of the hunts that that that I remember the most was hunting with Wally Straw, the astronaut. We were hunting in Colorado. Uh he had killed one turkey, but this was right when the right stuff had come out, and he was on our Research Foundation board his chair and invited me to come out in turkey hunt with him. And we were on a hunt up in some of the brush country out of out of Denver, and he had on a a rain slicker that was hitting all the old brush and was rattling, and I finally took it away from him. I said, Wally, we can't, we can't do this, and you do what you're doing. And we were chasing the goblet was with some hens and they were going over a little valleys and and I said, if we will hurry and let me have you coat, we can get around and I think I can get us to where they are. And so we did and I called in. The turkeys were thirty yards right over ride. So I just fell down on the ground and I had my slate in my hand, and so I'm laying there like a log, and Wally's sitting behind me against a tree, and I could see him, but I couldn't see the turkey. And it turned out he was two gobblers and some hens, and they walked up and one of the hens apparently was sitting right over me, looking down. And I'm looking at Wally as the gobblers were walking back and forth in full strut, and he's had just been with the n a A as I am the n are A doing a lot of ads. And I could see him as he came by, and he got to me and picked the gun up and go over me and put it back down and follow the turkey, and finally the turkey got off to one side. He shot and killed it, and I jumped up to take off to make sure the bird was down. And then I'm thinking I may get shot again if the birds up. But while he made a great shot, he killed it, and and we sat on the ridge and reminisced about that and and had the opportunity to talk about the space programs and all the things. He went with it. Man, I got we could talk about hunts like that from until next week. But uh, that's one. It really sticks out in my mind and the one with my dad, and and both my daughter and my son. I can remember their turkeys and that I've been bored to me that when they kill them, and I can see it in my mind's eye than any hunt I've ever been on. So how yeah, I mean, I think that's a good thing to talk about with your with your children. How how have they taken to turkeys and turkey hunting and not just you know, not just the hunting of them, but the idea of the animal and in those types of things, well, they had the opportunity to get immersed in it. My son has killed a number of turkeys with me, and of course he's got his own family now and and it makes it harder for us to get an opportunity to get out and go hunt. My daughter's got a family too, and they both got jobs, so that makes it harder to do. But my my goalfend next spring is to get both of them, including the granddaughters. And my two grandsons are too young at the hunt. Uh, so you know that that means more to me to take them and go out and have their hunts and watch them express and get to do things. Then i'll ever get today. I mean, how how does it feel to make that connection? If you if you go back to the beginning of our conversation, it's the nineteen sixty four. There's not a lot of turkeys you work for the next four decades to get you know, you're one of the major players. And getting these turkeys back to where you felt they needed to be. We all, I feel like are felt they needed to be. And then your two generations down the line, now you have grandkids. They are going to get a chance to take part in the thing that you work. You're in almost your entire life to build for them and for us. How does that feeling? It's gotta be unbelievable? Well, it it is. It's an awesome responsibility because if I can't teach my grandkids the importance of being in the outdoors and the respect for the animals that we're able to deal with whether you hunt him or not. Just to learn what nature is all about, watching a humming bird or watching the lizard is it runs? You know, kind of a thing um to me. If I can't teach them that, then there's not a lot of hope around the world to get it done. In a bigger mass because we got parents that are single parents or no place to go, is you well know and and so it's an awesome responsibility. But it also brings back some of the best memories having my grandkids on a hunt and they have to put their smartphone up. I won't let them use it. You're gonna watch out here and we're gonna least see what's going on. Um, well, that's it's hardening to hear. And you know, I've got young children, and I watch my son the way that he kind of sees the outdoors and he's big enough now that kind of explained to me what he's seeing. And we get to talk about and he asked questions and it just opens up a whole different you know, a whole different light on the way you walk around outside. Do you have any strikes me that here in the snoring turkeys kept you up at night is the thing that makes me chuckle? The monster? There any other as we close this chat out, are there any other just kind of crazy moments like that that that you remember that put in perspective what you did. Yeah, I guess one. And I'll show you a picture in a little bit down in the museum. We were drugging some turkeys at the Northeast Turkey Committee meeting in Pennsylvania years and years ago. They wanted to understand how the drug in was being done. So while we were meeting, I had gone out into dark with them. We'd put out our bait piles and left a conservation ulicer on there too. Uh, watch the bait and call us when the turkeys were coming into the bait. Unfortunately, went to sleep and he woke up and the turkeys were on the bait. He had no idea how long they've been there. So when he called us back in, we all went to the site. And when I looked out there there's three long beards that are drunk, but they don't quite know it yet. And so we've got a real issue here. How we're gonna catch these turkeys. And this fall of the year, September dry leaves and so, uh, there's probably twenty five oh us in the group. And I took my shoes off and I started tiptoeing with a deep net up on these turkeys. And I caught two of them, and the third one was really not quite asleep yet. And but every time I get close to him. He had moved on ahead of me, and I was afraid he had flushed, because if he did, he could fly three or four d yards and land and we would have to go try to find him. And I didn't realize it, but the group behind me was taking bets on whether I was going to get him or not. And I caught him, and when I did, I got him under my arm and we're walking back out and and a good friend of my Boby Eric's from New Jersey, who was there, a turkey project leader, took a picture of and it hangs in the museum down here, and people wondering about me barefooted carrying the turkey. So it was it was just, you know, one of those moments was light and it was fun, but it had a had a moment to show you can't you can't leave turkey's on a bait. You gotta be away. You gotta pay attention to what you're doing, or you don't do it. It's got like that has meeting now, right, That photo has meeting, because it's it's the freaking work that went into the result. I'll said twenty times, the result that we all enjoy. There's some some incredible stories and work that went into that. Um do you guys never you know, had any like turkey attacks or any crazy times where he drugged one and it woke up and because that's what I picture. No, no, and that not with any of them that you drug, because they're they're just trying to get away. I was holding a big gobbler one time when I was in Auburn and had a graduate to you know, it was banned in the turkey, and I let one of the wings slip loose and and he cracked me across the nose and nearly knocked me out. And if it's so uh, that was the only time they really got back on other than shooting turkeys in the early days and grabbing him by the legs and not realizing what a spur can do when he's flopping. So I won all those battles from that end of it. Other than that one. Yeah, straight years to one one cracking the nose. I feel like you've you've won. Well, Dr Kennermer, thanks so much for chat with me. We're gonna go down and well I'll we'll film a little bit talking in the museum here and talking about some of the historical things there, because I think those are are interest things. But for folks that won't see the video or or want to just a kind of get a glimpse of what's down there, give him a just a real quick run through of some of the exhibits and things they might see. Well, you get to see starting off with how turkeys came about with the Indians and their relationship, the restoration, how it came back, and how we lost the wild turkey. We've got dioramas that show each of the subspecies in their native habitats uh And as you come around, you've got an old man sitting on the porch of a cabin and he's telling stories about hunting or about the comeback of the wild turkey. And then we've got a literally you go in the room and it's like being on a ridge, which was a vision we had here, where you can sit on a ridge and watch the day wake up in the turkey's goblins. So that people that come off the street and never seen a wild turkey, it won't go hunt get to see what we kind of go through at daylight in the dark listening for a turkey. And then you go into the second half of the museum and you get to look at collectible calls, a lot of things that you know, the calls has been around for a long time, and decorative calls, historical calls. The Tom Kelly exhibit, We've got a helicopter that your kids can get into in parents and you can actually see what it's like to be in a helicopter and drop in fire. You can see a big oddities exhibit, and then we do a video that shows kind of the comeback of the wild turkeys. So if you're into turkeys and want to see Wayne Bailey's desk and where he was and some of the history of this organization is right here in Edgefield. Oh, I love it. I can't wait to go and walk it with you. If you is there is there some sort of summation of this for you? I mean, you're retired now, Um, I'm sure you have a lot of time to think about your works and you enjoy enjoy going out in the fruits of it. Is there some sort of way that you would, you know, surmise or summarize all of your your time with turkeys. Well, the Good Lord bless me to have the opportunity to have a life Uh, epiphany, if you will. When I was in the sixth grade and EMDA may not have made the best grades all the way through school, my I was always pointed towards that goal, and I set that goal to be able to do this as a career. UM. Being blessed to get to do that and meet everybody who was anybody in the turkey world, in the conservation world, is is an honor that I can't express that. Uh. Being able to do that means the world of me and the friends that I've built over the years. Uh, some of which are gone now and some that we work together and don't get a chance to visit now. But the fact that we got to make a difference in conservation as a collective group, hopefully there will be better for this country. This is uh to the four billion dollar industry that people chasing wild turkeys. That has a lot to do with the economy of this country, and it's part of the history of this country. The wild turkey has come back is really a conservation mar Well that nobody else can can equate too. So being part of that, being able to make sure we've got it for generations to come is what keeps me going, Well, that's what what brought me here and and that's why I wanted to talk to you. I want everyone that listens to this program and hopefully well, um you can understand what it means to to hunt and to have the resource, and what it meant to build it up, and um, what it means to steward it into the future. I think all those things are paramount to what we do. So thank you for your work and thanks for talking to me. Well, thank you, it's been and honor all right, Thanks, that's it. That's all another episode in the books. This is the real end of Turkey Talk for this spring. I promise we had to return to it to get Dr James or Kennemer in the show. So thank you to the n w TF. Thank you to Dr James Earle for coming on and chatting with us about what turkey. Thanks to Spencer new Arthur Hunting editor predding a little color and little history there as well. I hope it was an intriguing conversation. Hope there was some really clim if those you took from it, and also that you learned a little bit about how turkeys came to be where they are today. In this great nation. What else? What else? Wash? Um, go to the meat Eator store. I tell you that all the time, but she could go there, help me out, help me, help you. Uh. There's th HC hoodies, there's YETI tumblers with the t a C logo. There are pro nuanced anti bullshit t shirts. There are auto freaking Leopold shirts. Uh there for you as well. There's a bunch of stuff. But then you also find wired hunt merch and Mediator merch there as well. So go there, help us out, show off your pride from listen to the show. It is really really helpful. Now. The other thing is th HC at the meat eator dot com TC at the meat eater dot com. I want to hear what you think about the show. Um, I want you to write in a lot if you already have, I want more of you two right in. Tell me what you think, ask questions, will answer them on the show, and send in your audio clips. Go to your phone hit notes if you have an iPhone talking to talk into it for less than two minutes and send me that audio file. You can do it all on your phone. It takes no time at all. In fact, one of my favorite listeners is a guy named Eric Hall from North Carolina. Eric has sent in a couple of really good just like meandering reviews of the show. I just love this dude. I love the way he speaks um and he is the man, and we're gonna listen to him here coming up with some of his feedback. But I want your feedback to I want you to send those audio files. A lot of you have as well, so thank you. We're gonna try to air them all on these shows at the end, So t C at the Mediator dot com hit us up please without further ado, We're gonna get to Mr Hall some of his feedback over the last month or so, and then old number seven to take us out. Thank you for joy us. Join us next week for Doug a bike Clark, a writer who has some of the most amazing stories about a group called the Lama Larans, the last subsistence whalers on the face of the Earth. We'll see then bye, Okay, just got done listening to the thing directive the North American Sportunes of the Life enjoyed the also one particular episode that I really enjoyed or two of episode three episodes dex with the episode you've done with the old trapper code Hunter in Texas. Really enjoyed it. Also enjoyed the two part podcast Since You Ask that talked about the North American model while model Jody very much. I think Anna would be part of the high school curriculum. Kid just don't know about that stuff. That thing that would be very good for them to here. Enjoyed the story about you getting lost not take it taking the trail from and trail advice from a hippie woman, and it's probably a pretty good advice not to do that. And a particularly this portion. You're putting this out there for people to give your feedback. I listened to the Mediator podcast. I really enjoy it and particular, one particular part I enjoyed by the media podcast is the feedback from people that lived, So I enjoyed. I appreciate you putting this out here for to get feedback from people. One particular thing I do not life that you do it and Steve we know it does it. They call you called turkeys turks. I think they command a little more respect. But that's just me. It's a little pet be and I'm not gonna but listen that because of it, but I enjoyed the podcast. Keep us good work all you guys. The meat eater Eric all Okla, Yeah, Ben you do man. Eric Hall here from Thurmond, Okai. Just got done listening to the podcast with the Colonel Tom Kelly. Really enjoyed it wasn't to hire on the new format start with, but starting to grow on me. I enjoyed the first part there with Yanni's but tell us enjoy listening to y'all. Got an hour drive to work and back, so keep them rolling. Got two hours podcast every day. Uh. Turkey season was pretty good here and actually killed two birds and wish Virginia Nunn in North Carolina this year a little tough here, but did get some turkey breast, some leggs, tried to make some soup out of the legs and five I think one of the meat either crueler kind of inspired me on that turned out good, so keep up the good words. Enjoyed podcast Jack damn oh number seven and as you wisk you got me dragging heaven and uh and just stopped. It looks good to me. They're gonna have to to bump into the barde oh do the bar reddre do that do that be needed