Kelly, who runs a turkey hunting school at Westervelt Lodge each spring, said there was a noticeable difference in the number of turkeys and turkey hunters in the early ‘60s when an extensive trapping and relocation program by the Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division (Game and Fish back then) was in full swing. The majority of turkeys were trapped in southwest Alabama and transplanted around the state. The relocation program has been so successful that with the addition of Morgan County next year every county in the state will have a turkey season.
Kelly said turkey biologists like Lovett Williams have revealed a great deal about turkeys that could only be realized with extensive research and the use of telemetry.
“Lovett Williams’ new book, “Turkey Hunting and Management,” is the finest thing that’s ever seen done,” Kelly said. “A guy like me, anything I know about turkeys I bootlegged by hunting turkeys, carrying a shotgun, on company time. Because of guys like Lovett, we know way more about turkeys than we did 50 years ago, and we’ve got way more timber.
“We’ve got some things happening now that if I was asked about it 30 years ago I wouldn’t have believed it. I was asked last year to go and hunt on a place within nine miles of where I live in Spanish Fort. The land used to belong to Scott Paper Company. It is a solid pine plantation. There is one knob on it with six or eight big live oak trees, and there are a couple of little creeks with nothing but black gum and sweet bay. It is so full of turkeys; they’re just everywhere you look. The guy told me he quit coming out there because he’d been out there with a turkey gobbling his brains out and he couldn’t see him. Now I don’t know what they’re eating, but I can assure you it’s not acorns. They may be getting on the telephone and having pizza sent out there, I don’t know. I killed a couple of turkeys out there and they were hog fat. So they’re eating something. People who say turkeys can’t live in pine plantations, that just ain’t so. Now, they ain’t nearly as much fun to hunt out there.”
Despite the encroaching human population, Kelly thinks Alabamians will be able to enjoy turkey hunting long after he’s gone.
“I think we’re going to be hunting turkeys 100 years from now,” he said. “Now we’re not going to be hunting them on Bienville Square or on the outskirts of Fairhope, like we used to do. But turkeys are adaptable creatures. I believe they could make it on the State Docks. I believe they could make it on the soybean that fell off the grain cars.”
Kelly considers right now the most productive time to be in the turkey woods.
“To me the last two weeks of the season are the best,” he said. “The hens are going to the nest earlier and staying on the nest a lot more. When the hens are staying on the nest, the turkeys begin to gobble again in the afternoon. When the hens are on the nest all the time, they quit gobbling on the roost because it doesn’t do any good anymore. Everybody says they’ve quit, they’ve gobbled out. It’s all over and done with, I’m sorry I ever took this thing up anyway. You can still make a turkey come to you. A turkey I hear on the roost that I go to and sit down, that gobbles after I sit down – which means I haven’t screwed him up yet, but I’ve still plenty of opportunities for stupidity, but I ain’t done any yet – I will probably call up two-and-a-half out of 10. I won’t kill two-and-a-half out of 10 because I’ll still do some dumb things.
“Those turkeys you call to on the ground and he gobbles – the last two weeks you can call up six out of 10. The odds get that much better. Now you can still dumb it up. But that time of year, you’ve got to be careful because the leaves are getting thick. Anything you can do in a minute and a half, you’d better do it. And if all you’ve got to hide behind is a spruce pine cone and two blades of grass, you’d better take it. Some of those birds will come in in two or three minutes. You’d better be ready.”
Kelly also heard the tales that if a gobbler answers you, he’s going to come to that area at some time during the day. Kelly said he’s not sure if that’s true.
“My grandfather used to swear that if a turkey ever hears you yelp he will come there if it takes to 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “If he does, the heck with him because I’m gonna be gone. I ain’t mad at turkeys. No turkey has foreclosed a mortgage or insulted my daughter. I ain’t sitting there until 3 o’clock in the afternoon listening to blue jays. I give him a reasonable amount of time, but after that, the (heck) with him.
Despite all those years in the woods, Kelly still marvels at the wild turkey and its knack for making even the most seasoned hunter look like a novice.
“After 70 years, a turkey will still do things to me that I wonder, ‘how in the (heck) did he do it?’ ” Kelly said. “I think where the fascination lies is that every time you go something happens a little bit differently - every time. And they’ve got a genius for making you look stupid.”
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