Turkey hunting in Mississippi, Florida, South Dakota provided unique achievement
To achieve a double slam on turkeys in a season is a grand accomplishment for any hunter.
For Rusty Ellis of Clinton, it means a lot more.
Ellis, 60 — who took two Easterns, two Osceolas, two Rio Grandes and two Mirriams this past spring — made his slam even more special by making it a family affair.
“The neat thing for me was that I hunted with my two grown sons on two of the four hunts,” said Ellis. “I hunted with my oldest son Jason in Florida to get my Oceolas and in South Dakota with my youngest son David to get my Mirriams. Both sons doubled on their trips, too.”
It was his reward, the elder Ellis figures, for passing on his love of turkey hunting to his sons.
The season started with a little bit of planning, which, oddly, did not include a plan to pursue a double slam. Rusty Ellis booked two trips, one each with both sons,to Florida and South Dakota.
It was Jason Ellis who first put the idea of the double slam into his dad’s head.
“He told me that if I doubled in Florida and South Dakota, was able to get two Easterns in Mississippi, I’d only need the Rios to complete the slam,” Rusty Ellis said. “I started checking around.”
This is where luck enters the picture.
“I went by to see Jimmy McGuire, my taxidermist, to see if he knew of a Rio hunt and, as luck would have it, he was leaving in two weeks on a hunt and needed someone to go with him,” Rusty Ellis said.
All of the trips were arranged with flights out of Jackson on Thursday, always allowing time for afternoon hunts that day, plus hunts on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday mornings before the flight back home.
Only once did Rusty Ellis push his double slam to the last day.
Osceolas
The trip began March 22, when Rusty and Jason Ellis headed to Deland, Fla., about an hour north of Orlando. Rusty Ellis had his two birds the first two days, but “my son didn’t get his second bird until the final 10 minutes of the last Sunday-morning hunt.”
Easterns
“By far the hardest birds to get,” Rusty Ellis said of the two birds native to his home state. “I killed the first one on April 1 and the second on April 7, both at my camp at Bolton.”
Rio Grandes
Hunting with McQuire near San Angelo, Texas, on April 12, Rusty Ellis wasted little time getting his double out of the way. “Killed them both the first afternoon,” he said.
Mirriams
The longest leg was to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Kyle, S.D., where Rusty and David Ellis flew in on April 26. It was Rusty Ellis’ third trip to the place, including the year before with his other son
“I killed my first bird the first afternoon but didn’t get my second until the third afternoon,” Rusty Ellis said. “That was the closest call to not doubling.”
Rusty Ellis credited his success in South Dakota and Florida to a tactic he calls fanning.
“If you have never seen or been a part of that, it’s crazy,” he said. “If you catch a strutter with hens in the open, you crawl out and show a turkey fan. When the gobbler sees the fan, he will drop out of strut and come 150 or 200 yards right to you in a hurry. We actually killed birds at five steps in the wide open.”
All eight birds were taken with a 12-gauge shotgun with 3-inch Nitro loads.
“I actually could have killed the Rios and the Mirriams with a bow; they were that close,” Rusty Ellis said.
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