Latest limit contines 30-year tradition
Bill Tanner was at home on Good Friday, tending his massive urban garden and taking care of a few other chores — including deboning and preparing a turkey breast for the freezer.
“My season is over,” Tanner said matter-of-factly. “That there in the sink is my limit turkey. My third gobbler this season.”
Getting a limit of three spring turkeys is nothing new for the hunter. He’s been doing it for years. He’s not sure how many in a row it’s been, but he can be forgiven for that.
After all, he’s 96.
Yep, 96 years old, with his birthday preceding his limit turkey by 10 days. Born in 1916 in Smith County, Tanner started turkey hunting:
• Before there was an official turkey season.
• Before there was a state wildlife agency.
• Before there was camo.
“I know for sure back then we didn’t have a lot of turkeys, nowhere near what we are blessed with today,” he said. “When I started turkey hunting, there’d be years when we didn’t see a track, much less a turkey. But we did see some around, especially when squirrel hunting.”
That was enough to pique the curiosity of a youngster growing up in the country near Mize, where developing an interest in hunting came natural.
“I started hunting when I was a little guy, about 8, I guess,” Tanner said. “My daddy would give me a .410 shotgun and turn me loose in a swamp behind our house that was about a mile wide and eight miles long. He’d tell me I could hunt that swamp as long as nobody was around, but if anyone was to come in there I had to quit and go home.
“I guess he thought I was safe as long as I was alone.”
Tanner became a pretty good squirrel hunter, killing enough bushy tails to eat, and, eventually, to buy his own shotgun.
“I saw a gun in a guy’s store, a single-shot 12-gauge Southern Arms shotgun with a 32-inch barrel,” he said. “Wanted $4 for it. I bought it on credit, and paid for it by killing and dressing squirrels and selling them for 15 cents each.”
It was on one of those squirrel hunts in his late teens that he encountered his first turkey. Tanner doesn’t remember exactly the situation, but he remembers knowing that he wanted to learn about them.
“There was this one guy down there around Mize that hunted turkeys and was pretty good at it,” he said. “He let me go with him, and he taught me a lot about (turkeys), but he was kind of funny about it. He’d let me call and do everything except shoot. When there was a gobbler to be shot, well, he shot him.
“I didn’t get to shoot until I started hunting them on my own; I guess I was between 22 or 24 years old when I finally killed my first one.”
Many would follow, beginning with a trickle and eventually becoming a three-bird limit for the past 30 or so years.
The latest, this year, came in the first three weeks of the season and ended April 5 in a field in Scott County on a wicked weather day
“We didn’t do no good that morning, and then that front came through with a big wind and a sudden heavy rain that passed pretty quickly,” Tanner said. “We let it pass, and then we knew what to do. Turkeys don’t mind the rain that much; they go right on, and I knew this field they like to go to.
“My buddy and I went to this field that turkey like, right next to this old dirt road. He came up the road and let me shoot him. To get to that field, they near about have to walk that, road and that’s what he did.”
The veteran hunter shouldered his Remington 1187, and filled the gobbler’s head with No. 5 shot from a 3-inch magnum shell.
“Put him down,” Tanner said.
Limit accomplished, he returned to his home in Jackson to tend his garden, which includes 47 tomato plants, 80 feet of okra, watermelon, cucumber, cantaloupe, blue berry, muscadine, squash …
“Always have a good garden,” he said.
It will keep him busy through the summer and into the fall, when he will begin preparing for another hunting season. He’ll hunt a few squirrels, and then prepare for his annual tradition of spending the opening weekend of deer season with his grandson and great-grandson, who drive over from Texas to hunt with Tanner at his Issaquena County camp.
“I’ll pull my travel trailer camper over there, and we will hunt for three days,” he said. “It’s our annual deal. My grandson will hunt, and I take my Great Grand with me. He loves to ride the four-wheeler with me, him up front driving and me sitting behind him.
Tanner refuses to slow down.
“Oh, no, he hunts whenever he can,” his wife Kathryn Tanner said. “He rides his four-wheelers, gardens and all. I don’t worry about him going hunting and doing all that stuff, but I don’t like him out in bad weather because of pneumonia.
“But he’s tough. He came from Smith County, and that makes him tough.”
Bill Tanner’s secret to longevity?
“Good dirt and good genes,” he said, referring to his Smith County roots and a dad who lived to be “98 years and one day.”
Tanner realizes he can’t hunt forever, but plans to keep at it until he can’t.
“I know I got two or three more good years in me,” he said. “I plan to keep hunting as long as I am able.”
A goal of four years was suggested! Imagine killing a turkey at 100.
Tanner certainly can imagine that.
“That’d be nice,” he said. “Why not?”
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