Carl Wolfe of Pelahatchie joined his friend and turkey hunting partner Greg Shoemaker on a low-key hunt in Newton County the last weekend in March hoping to hear a few turkeys and get away from the stress of everyday life too. The hunting partners are cousins and lifelong friends who attended school together as well. Things didn’t start out too well as they tried to locate a gobbler on the roost the first afternoon, but they didn’t hear a peep.
“We spent the day looking for a bird to hunt but didn’t hear a gobble from anything,” Wolfe said. “The next day it was more of the same as we never got on a bird during the morning or afternoon.”
Though Wolfe didn’t know it, things were soon to be looking up if he stayed with it.
“The next morning I made some coffee and got dressed and then went outside the camp house and heard one gobbling,” he said. “I started walking towards where I heard him and then all of a sudden, the birds were lighting up and going crazy.”
Wolfe sat down and listened and waited until one gobbled close by.
“He flew down, so I called, and four turkeys gobbled!” Wolfe said. “I was getting excited then and all of a sudden things got quiet. I made another call and all of them went crazy gobbling and cutting up.”
The moment of truth
Wolfe heard something slightly to his rear and he turned and saw a gobbler to his left directly behind him.
“The gobbler had a jake with him and he was putting on a showing in full strut,” Wolfe said. “He was turning circles, doing figure eights, and pirouetting all the while gobbling at most any noise. The gobbler went behind a tree, and I spun around to get a better shot. I eased around super slow and pulled my gun up and when the gobbler stepped out from behind the tree he gobbled and stuck his head out, so I just pulled the trigger and shot.”
The shotgun roared and the turkey began his death flop.
Wolfe walked over and saw his long spurs and grabbed him to try and keep him from leaving but he was flapping and flopping and spurring anything in sight so it wasn’t as easy as he thought it might be.
“I finally put a killing blow on his head as he was spurring me,” he said. “I picked him up and started back toward the camp and he was getting heavier and heavier, so I stopped a minute and noticed he had more than one beard. Greg met me about halfway back and was amazed at the number of beards and size of the spurs.”
“That turkey has four beards!” Shoemaker said. “And look at the size of those spurs!”
A true trophy
The gobbler was the trophy of Wolfe’s lifetime and sported four beards, measuring 5 ½ inches, 6 ½ inches, 10 ⅛ inches and 6 ¼ inches. It also had 1 ½-inch spurs and weighed 19.8 pounds.
Not only was this Wolfe’s first hunt of the year but he killed the gobbler of a lifetime in the process.
“I guess you could say that was the most perfect hunt I’ve ever been on,” he said. “I called the gobbler up with a Woodhaven Toxic Orange mouth call and shot him using a Franchi 12-Gauge Affinity shotgun with #9 TSS Hevi-shot. Come to think of it I wouldn’t have changed anything about that hunt because everything was just perfect.”
Perfect indeed!
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