Sitting across from me, turkey hunting legend George Mayfield, spills a lifetime of wild tales and hard-won wisdom from the turkey woods that's bound to captivate both novitiates and seasoned hunters alike. As George unwinds his journey of a path to becoming a turkey hunting pioneer, listeners will find themselves riding shotgun through the ebbs and flows of a life dedicated to the pursuit of passion. It's a conversation that weaves together narratives of personal growth, the mentorship I offer the next generation, and the thrill of the hunt, all delivered with the warmth and wisdom only a storied hunter like George can provide.
Check out the SPRING LEGION YouTube Channel to watch the hunts referenced on our show, as they happened and as real as it gets.
New Bottomland Woodsman Series Shirts and Pants are HERE for Spring 2024 at spring legion.com
Follow us on Instagram:
@springlegion
@hunter.farrior
@austincsills
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Shop Spring Legion Online, using code PODCAST24 for 10% off your next online order! Limited time offer
Sitting across from me, turkey hunting legend George Mayfield, spills a lifetime of wild tales and hard-won wisdom from the turkey woods that's bound to captivate both novitiates and seasoned hunters alike. As George unwinds his journey of a path to becoming a turkey hunting pioneer, listeners will find themselves riding shotgun through the ebbs and flows of a life dedicated to the pursuit of passion. It's a conversation that weaves together narratives of personal growth, the mentorship I offer the next generation, and the thrill of the hunt, all delivered with the warmth and wisdom only a storied hunter like George can provide.
Check out the SPRING LEGION YouTube Channel to watch the hunts referenced on our show, as they happened and as real as it gets.
New Bottomland Woodsman Series Shirts and Pants are HERE for Spring 2024 at spring legion.com
Follow us on Instagram:
@springlegion
@hunter.farrior
@austincsills
@chasefarrior
Shop Spring Legion Online, using code PODCAST24 for 10% off your next online order! Limited time offer
What's going on y'all? Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkledge Podcast. My name is Hunter Farrier, and today I'm sitting down with what many would consider to be an icon in the turkey woods. It's a good episode. It's one that I look forward to record for some time. My buddy, blake, hollered at me over the past probably two years, talking about lining something like this up, and finally got time to make it happen.
Speaker 2:I'm going to sit down with a fella whose hand I long wanted to shake, and it was well worth an hour or two drive over there getting to see some stuff and hear some stuff from Mr George Mayfield, and we're going to dive into everything from stories to stuff he's learned along the way and it's pretty jam packed and we might have split this joker into two episodes I'm not sure yet, but it was worth the while and I want to jump right into it. Before we do that, I want to touch on a few updates and keep them pretty brief for you. One that our DMs have seen to blown up on over the past week or so. It kind of concerns something that we pre-released over at Nashville at the NWTF convention the Wismann series of shirts, pants, that we have long awaited their arrival. We just got notification day or two ago that they're going to be here supposedly on Thursday, so all the pre-orders will be shipping out Friday morning and on Friday at midnight they will go live on the website at springleagentcom.
Speaker 2:It's a project we've worked on for about a year or so, I'd say and I think it's going to be well worth the time and effort that we've poured into making these some good and high quality turkey hunting apparel and something that I'm personally looking forward to getting out there into the public. If you want more info on that, head over to springleagentcom and check it out. We got links and all that good stuff there.
Speaker 2:And if you listen to this that Friday, go check it out. You might be able to purchase one. We appreciate you listening. Once you sit down, listen to some of the advice and nothing short of wisdom with Mr Blake Dile and Mr George Mayfield. It's a lifestyle.
Speaker 1:No doubt I was blessed. You know, I never did worry about how my life was going to turn out. I wondered. But as far as oh golly I need to do, this or that. I never seemed like it was going to work out. And you know the concept of me. My dad kind of taught me a valuable lesson one summer. I was first year in college and didn't do that well in school and my dad was a research chemist for Shell Oil and he said well, you know, you need to come on back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1:It's hot in New Orleans in the summertime and you need to come on back. I'm going to hook you up. Get your job out here at the plant. And it turned out he did and I made some pretty good money that summer, but I didn't know what I was going to get to do. And I worked in the mixing plant, which is a big metal building that I don't think I ever went to the far end of it. It was so big and you get there just about the crack of day in the morning and they'd close those big steel doors. Oh why?
Speaker 2:the hell.
Speaker 1:They closed that place up. It was like an oven anyway and it was dark in there and it was smelled of grease and oil. And anyway I got to work at the end of a conveyor where five gallon buckets of oil would come off there about as fast as you could grab them, and I got to stack pallet after pallet after pallet all day long. That was interesting. I did that the whole summer and I really did better in school that fall. I mean, I'm serious. I thought, holy crap, there's no way. And it wasn't a job and it wasn't the people, because I was strong. I was a lot stronger after that and it was the idea of being confined in that building. It was almost like a prison. And so my life has been more about me knowing what I didn't want to do than what I did want to do. I knew I didn't want to do that or anything like that the rest of my life. So it was just. From then on it was pretty easy to follow a course of least resistance and what I had aptitude for.
Speaker 1:And of course everybody wanted me to be a doctor, because all my family's about doctors, you know, and my uncle and my aunts and you know, anyway, I didn't want to be a doctor, but I loved biology and that's where I ended up and of course I did pre-med just to keep my mom and dad happy. But I went on and studied entomology and wildlife and did a graduate.
Speaker 1:I went to Southern Miss undergraduate and LSU and graduate school and the wildlife I didn't ever think I was going to end up as a wildlife biologist and I really never got paid is that I ended up starting a commercial hunting business and that was the way I stayed out of those metal buildings. You know, in offices and everything else.
Speaker 2:Looks like it's been a pretty successful career by some of the stories and some of the things I've been able to see in this little office here. It's one of the things I trust somebody knows a thing or two because they've seen a thing or two and they've vouched that Mr George has seen a thing or two, apparently, because I think he knows a thing or two as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 2:You know years and years and years of doing this and obviously there's passion related to it and there's a competitive nature that's related to it and just the aspects and theories and every evolving you know ways of you know playing a game almost, but it ain't a game. It's hard to explain to folks who don't quite get it, but folks who do get it understand completely that it's something that takes you over.
Speaker 3:I mean it's Growing up hunting with him, and then all he ever, all he ever expressed to me more than anything in the world was go get your education, go finish your education and my family that I'm from love. My family got a great family. Nobody in my family has ever been to college yeah, no male in my family has ever been.
Speaker 2:And Mr George said if you want to be able to, hunt if you want to be able to hunt for the rest of your life, you know and and do these things that you get to see and the things that he got to do.
Speaker 1:you know, and just but first of all I wanted him to do If he wanted to be the hunter, complete hunter, then I knew from experience that you need to understand the bird especially when we're talking about turkeys or the deer, you need to be able to understand the biology of the critter you're after.
Speaker 1:And so many turkey hunters these days that I've met young, old and in between they really don't understand the behavior, the ecology, the how the bird lives, what makes him tick in terms of his behavior in particular. And just having that education was the way that I was able to give me the basis to put all that experience that I was getting every morning together to understand how to be consistent in hunting the turkey. Without that I would have struggled. Now, of course, I had a mentor that was as well known as anybody around in this part of the country, benny Zell. Benny Zell was good friends with Benny and everybody's probably heard of him, and they gave the first turkey calling seminars and schools or whatever at Westerville Lodge back in the 70s and anyway, that's Gulf States hunting lodge. It's about 14,000 acres on the Tom Bebe River right outside of Aliceville. But then well, he was a natural born turkey killer.
Speaker 2:I mean he just understood it.
Speaker 1:He understood the bird and he didn't go to college, but he was so perceptive, so intelligent and he pretty much self-talked and that's a hard way to learn anything. I mean, he would tell me about times when they would go up. He said he went a whole season and never heard a bird gobble. I don't know how much of that's true, but I don't think I made it past the first week, but I'm spoiling, yes, but anyway, you know he ran in a pretty tough crowd and he killed a lot of turkeys when most people didn't think he was in. You know they had and you're talking about. You know we're on the radio and TV and all that, talking about all our turkey hunting secrets. He said it was completely different. He was tight-lipped and he said if he found a track or a feather or something like that, he didn't tell anybody.
Speaker 3:He kept out in his back pocket all year.
Speaker 1:You know, and so times have changed, of course. And he was telling me one time about how hard it was to learn about the turkey, because everybody was an expert back then and, hell, they had never killed one. I mean, the truth be known, and if they had killed one it was on a deer drive and somebody flushed it over them, you know, and they shot it with a buck shot and a shot. But you know, listening to him tell his tales is really how I learned and got over that hump we're talking about. I mean, it's a learning curve.
Speaker 1:I grew up in New Orleans. I'm not from New Orleans, but that's where I grew up, went to high school. We didn't have many turkeys down there, you know. And so I was 21 years old before I came to my first turkey and I was struggling. And I came up to Aliceville, met Ben little Ben actually and got to be good friends with him and Ben he sort of like men Blake and we just hit it off, you know, and I guess he felt sorry for me. I don't know what he felt.
Speaker 3:but I mean, that's kind of how I feel sometimes.
Speaker 2:I don't know each other too, but he ended up with a nickname.
Speaker 1:I was up in New York hunting with Ben Leigh and Ezell and some other guys that I hunted with Ben Leigh, and I was kind of the boy and they started calling me Opie. That was my nickname. Hey, oh, go get me a beer, oh go get the firewood, you know, and that kind of stuff. I kind of liked it. I said, hell, I'm in, I don't. We're sitting in my office now and there's a megaphone. I saw that.
Speaker 1:Well, that came from my wife and I'd pick a lot, go to these antique places and she saw it and Ben bought it. But when I was up in New York that first time the afternoon, I don't think we didn't hunt the afternoons but we'd go riding in ruched in turkeys and there was a lot of beer involved in that and I was a designated driver and we'd go riding in New York back then. I don't know what it's like now. I hadn't been there in a while. Blake has, you've been up there recently. We were hunting Belfast, new York, not too far from Olean.
Speaker 1:It was Amish country. It was rolling hills, dairy like fields, and what was interesting about that? My first time I was up there. All their conifers, the pines grew low and hardwoods grew up on top of the hills Crossbow? Yes, completely backwards, but when we would go ruched turkeys in the afternoon, gary, the guy that owned the camp there, and David they had this megaphone and then Lee'd get out, he'd call on that megaphone, he'd get out.
Speaker 1:Talk about like the woods. I mean it did real good and the one that we could barely hear, that was across the little stream in the bottom and up on the next mountain. That's the one they gave me. Go get that one. Oh, they took the close ones, but that was. I think I'm going to try that megaphone issue. Yeah.
Speaker 3:When we walked into the door earlier, I was looking at it. I was like where does that come from?
Speaker 2:I ain't seen that I know it's been there.
Speaker 1:It's an addition, but I've been thinking about those old days. Maybe we'll have an opportunity up in Missouri or something like that, to use that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that'll be interesting. I don't know how that goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can put it up to year and listen. Yeah, that ain't bad idea either.
Speaker 2:Block the wind now, yeah.
Speaker 3:Georgia helped me get over the educational side of things and pressed me to go to Mississippi State and get that wildlife degree and I did, and it was the single-handedly best thing I did.
Speaker 3:As far as the wild turkey goes, I mean that and a lot of other things too. I've met so many people I wouldn't have met without it. But that in particular, though, obviously we did it. I did it for the turkey. My love of the turkey, thanks to him, was hard pressed, and I don't think he would have been satisfied. I don't think I'd be here with him today if I wouldn't have gone and got him.
Speaker 1:Well, you gave him my respect, because I don't know if you remember or not, we were sitting. I think I took you to Missouri.
Speaker 3:On the golf cart that morning and it is yeah, I know, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:You know he had gone to East Mississippi over here and finished a two-year degree in forestry and I think he took a semester off or something like that.
Speaker 2:Almost two years.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:All right, my memory fails me.
Speaker 3:Well, it flies, it goes, it went fast.
Speaker 1:But it had been weighing on me pretty heavy and Blake's, like one of my boys, you know, and we're sitting there that morning had a beautiful morning. I just missed one off the golf cart. I get one up on the golf cart and missed him.
Speaker 2:I don't know what else. Oh yeah, All right.
Speaker 1:I jumped in and said this before he did you know tell that story on me.
Speaker 3:It's backwards. The only turkey I've ever seen, this man miss was that day and that was. It was very sudden, I shot over.
Speaker 1:But anyway, we're sitting there, you know, and had a great morning and I just looked at him in the eyes and said what you afraid of?
Speaker 3:I remember it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 1:I mean, and that was in 17.
Speaker 1:I think I knew you was afraid because I was too, and you know, and basically what he said he was afraid of a failing, and I was too, and you know I understood. But you can always come home, you know. And then you, you really made me proud, you went over and did real good in school and and, but you learn something. And and you know, that's that's what I my, my youngest son, Alex, went to Mississippi State and also, and he almost didn't go and I told him I said something you got to get out of this comfort zone. You're in you got to.
Speaker 1:You're going to be fine one way or the other, but you need to do it because for yourself, because there's so much that you're going to come away with and it's not all going to be what you learn in school, where it's the people, it's the, it's the whole essence of the experience that you're going to miss out on. And it, and just like you, just like I did, I had to admit at one point in my life to my parents that I really appreciated your encouragement to finish my education.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it's not for everybody and I'm not trying to preach, I don't. You know, everybody needs to follow their own path. But if you, what I have done is I followed my heart and my heart was in the woods, my heart was in staying in those metal buildings and kind of following my own path in life. And you know, you have to prepare yourself for that and I think I've never been, I've never regretted having that education in that regard, because I've used it. I've used it more than than I would have ever imagined. And so, anyway, the biology part. And if you're, if you, you know whether you've gone to school or not If you are struggling with wild turkey, if you have inconsistencies in your ability to kill wild turkeys or yep them up or whatever you're trying to do, then I would suggest that you spend the time and you read. There's plenty of material out there these days where they used to not be. That's what he's always telling me.
Speaker 1:It was hard to learn back then because most of the people that talked about it and they didn't know, and the other people wouldn't say a word. If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't tell anybody because turkeys were scarce then. A sacred thing and I mean they'd almost been eliminated, I mean during, you know, the turn at the turn of the century. I mean people ate them. You know, like deer and subsistence hunting was like that, you see, in Africa. Now I mean it's like they killed them all and down near it. So but you can learn the biology there's several. I've got a book right here on my desk, right there it's. I think it's up under that stuff right there, Blake, I'm going to see if that's it. I mean it's everything you ever wanted to know. You know about the wild turkey and there's so much research going on these days that's out there. That can be you know, very helpful.
Speaker 1:A lot of telemetry studies and all kind of stuff, all kind of research. But that's the right there I'll get the basics, get the biology. Understand why turkeys do what they do when they do it and why they do it. They do what they do when they do it and why they don't, and that's the best advice I can give anybody. Check that out Honestly.
Speaker 1:Then the next thing I think what a fellow needs to do is spend every, take the whole spring off and turkey hunt every day All right, people are going yeah right, Well, and I get that too, not everybody's, you know can do that but the only way you're going to get better at killing turkeys is to sit to a lot of turkeys. Once you have the information and you have a basic understanding of what's going on, then you there's never going to be too alike. There's never going to be two situations. You can't cookbook turkey hunting. You have to learn how to handle the variations from day to day. You know I mean when you look at the turkey season.
Speaker 1:And you you know, open in day, whatever they're doing, then the springs never fall just alike either. So there, at some point of the reproductive progression, you need to be able to identify what, where they are in the reproductive progression, and then stay up with it, because every week things are going to change by the day. Yeah, really by the day. But I mean, if you're you get to hunt on the weekends, you go this weekend.
Speaker 3:It's not going to be the same next weekend.
Speaker 1:You know, and having an appreciation for, for the high they, their behavior, changes from week to week or day to day will have everything to do with your success. You know, as a, when I started guiding I wasn't really ready to be guiding. I mean I wasn't experienced enough to to be. I mean I knew more than the guys that I was taking. So I guess that's enough. But as far as being, you know, complete, my education hadn't really begun yet, but I noticed that there it didn't take long for the way that the birds responded to me or what they were doing, the habit that they were in, how much it changed and where I was hunting them and hearing them or not hearing them at the beginning was it was on the other side of the place. In the end of the season, you know, and I, you know, I started trying to understand and find out what I needed to be doing. You know that would work. I didn't come in back without a turkey. What an option.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:Now I don't mean that. I mean I wasn't. It wasn't me. I had a sport with me and if I was building my business and if I wanted to stay in this hunting business, I had to kill the dirties man and all this stuff, well, ain't gobbling, you know.
Speaker 1:I mean that don't matter, I mean to the guy who's paying money to hunt and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing. And well, sometimes we had to do we could, we could actually call them sometimes we couldn't like it or lumpy, you know, I mean that's the way I fed my children and but I learned so much, you know you, you keep pressing and keep pressing and you find out where that razor then edges of success and failure.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean, if you're not, if you're sitting back waiting for everything to come to you, you're going to kill a couple every year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a couple, yeah, that's what I mean when the turkeys get ready to run over you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mm, hmm, you know, and the rest of it, what you're going to do then you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you get close enough to the turkey and you can hear other sounds of communication that turkeys use, that's when you start to learn things about turkeys that most people aren't going to learn about, because they're sitting on a tree 200 yards away from them and they can hear the turkey drumming at this little hand that they can't even hear making noises, but you know and it just makes a lot of sense once you get up there and you get to where you're listening to them and get tight with turkeys, then you, you understand, you, you got to.
Speaker 3:You got to put two and two together.
Speaker 2:I mean, if there's something that's not working here.
Speaker 3:Let's try to let's try to get a little closer and see what we can learn.
Speaker 1:You know that brings to mind. I've got a couple of pictures and actually Carrie Wicks he's one of those pictures out there the first call that I had success with was actually named the success call. It was made out of Leeds, alabama, anyway, I think Lyles making some now and I'm the one that took. I had a call from Ernest. Black Jr is the one that invented that call and he, in matter of fact, mr Ernest, gave me that call and several others, but that particular call. I've never seen a call designed like that and it's the first one I could ever get up a turkey up with.
Speaker 1:But before I could run that call I towed it because I knew one day I probably could be able to drink a turkey with it. I mean this was in the beginning years when I had come to Alabama, but I was still going to school, you know, and I was back and forth. But I remember one morning Turkish was gobbling. Good that morning I didn't know which way to go, but one started gobbling pretty close and he was on the ground and I got up there and I had that call in my coat pocket. I didn't have no sense to have a rubber band on it. Keep it quiet and it started making noises and I got frustrated, I took it out and I set it on, stunk and I went on up here and tried to kill that turkey, which I didn't.
Speaker 1:But, that's how much I, how good a caller I was back in the day. I mean I'd put my call, lay it down so it wouldn't spook the turkey.
Speaker 2:I can relate to that.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, the call is is everything in a way, but it's not. I don't know now that I really even want to kill one if I hadn't called him up.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean, I've changed so much and and the turkeys change with us. You know, as we get better at killing them, they get better at not getting killed and they evolve and they develop patterns of behavior that make it harder to don't fall for the hint in the bush trick too much. You know so, and that's a good thing because you know the populations will be sustainable, you know, if you, you know they, they evolve, the dead ones die and the ones that aren't is susceptible to being called, will live, and there's some a genetic connection to that too. But for me, the calling part is just it is so much fun to interact with something so wild, it's such a thrill. Their voices are unique you want to, you want one, you want to cut you. That's cool, you know. But I've said it before to Blake and I don't know if I've expressed it to a lot of people, but you know what really makes a turkey come. It's not the call, it's the silence.
Speaker 2:It's the silence.
Speaker 1:It's the quiet. You know, I've made this, I've commented, made this analogy many times. You're okay, you're sitting there and you yep, turkey cut you and you know you got it going on. You feel like you're getting somewhere and you're really at that point.
Speaker 1:You're in a calling contest and you know you get stimulus response going on and if the turkey chooses to hush on you, well, normally I get my gun up. I get my gun up on my knee because he's going. You know he's hushed and he's, he's moving, he's, he's up there, he might be running.
Speaker 2:Who knows?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, I get, I get ready, you know and then you're sitting there and I don't know how patient you are. I'm pretty patient now. Hell, I sit there all day.
Speaker 3:He's got all day.
Speaker 1:I've always had all day, created it for yourself I can't name any more important things.
Speaker 3:I can you know?
Speaker 1:that's. That's one thing that I do, and Blake knows it, he's seen it. I can lock in, intellectually, lock in and I'll be there.
Speaker 3:I was telling Hunter, we were over there at that place. We hunted the turkey that stayed below the road bed and we didn't even know it was there.
Speaker 3:And uh, and you know, turkey, we sat there for an hour and a half, I know, I mean we sat there all morning, just about, and that turkey stood in the same spot. He gobbled every 30 minutes and we were like yep, he's still there and he would. If I even tried to make a call, it was too loud, you know. But the the scratch spotting, that scratching around up there and us sitting there and he finally got curious. And next thing, you know that Turkey broke spit and he was right.
Speaker 1:I mean we call him up. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, I mean we we didn't kill the Turkey and no, because we had never been there before and we didn't know that he was in a road. Had I known that road, we've been looking down that road, but uh yeah but that's okay. We get that Turkey up. I don't know, yeah, I think you killed him later on or somebody did over there.
Speaker 2:But I mean, yeah, that was, that was, and he went right by us drumming and I mean he was in gun range the whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but hey, turkey went for.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's great. I love it. We sat back like I was telling you he said just see if he comes up here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, if he don't make it simple, yeah.
Speaker 3:If he don't, he'll be here tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll, he won't.
Speaker 1:And the same guy sitting here, george Mayfield, used to run three or four off the limb in the morning before I ever sat down to one. Okay, okay. So that's the beauty of the sport. Uh, we, we all have been under the hill looking up at the home and not knowing any better, and still having a great time.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. But I, honest to goodness, hey, oh, Johnny, bishop Johnny, and he helped me. He did he, he taught me a lot. Now, you know, we didn't go a whole bunch, but uh, he was so patient he's he's L was to, but he was more, or he was less patient than Bishop and uh, you know, he got it for me.
Speaker 1:Carpenter's live, johnny, did you know I was at least, when I started in the hunting business I was at least smart enough to know that I didn't know nothing and I hired a bunch of old gray-headed turkey murderers to keep me going. But uh, you know, in in that process that we're talking about. Silence is what moves that turkey. But if you're, if you're, I'll go back to that because I think it's an important point Uh, if you're making a turkey go, making a turkey go, and he hushes on you and you sit there with your gun ready, you know, for 30 minutes and then you sit there, hell, you sit there an hour and you know I'm looking for the head. I mean, I've so many times I've looked over to the left of right and there he is and he's. I don't know where he come from, how long he's been there, but he's looking dead at me. He got to drop on me.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm dead.
Speaker 1:But uh, you know if, if he doesn't come, what you gonna do? You gonna stand up and turn around and walk straight back to the truck. I probably not, you can't help it, it's like a magnet. I mean, if nothing else, you just want to see where that song gun was.
Speaker 3:I want to see what you're going to go forward.
Speaker 1:You might go obliquely, but you're not going to go back. You can't, unless you just know that land of that turkey, so intimately that you just don't want to bugger it. You might go, but that's not usually the case. So you're going to move forward. Well, he just called your ass up and he did it with silence. That's what you got to do. Stimulate the turkey, yeah, and hard to stimulate. One is strutting for six ends. That's that timing thing, that progression we're talking about. Gotta know what you're dealing with or what. The likelihood of what you're dealing with is Based on the time of the reproductive progression that you're hunting, okay, but when you understand that you know what the percentages are, that will work. This will work. Highly probable. This might not, or the time of the day, you know, is he end up? Still, you know, yeah, he's, he 'll. I mean the, the population dynamics. Are there a lot of two-year-old satellites running around?
Speaker 2:That's not gonna say a word, but they're gonna slip in, you know I mean?
Speaker 1:you see, I mean this understanding of the dynamics of your spot and your bird's not mine, yours.
Speaker 1:That's what you need to know, and it gives you the information to make better choices. It's all about your choices. Mm-hmm, you know. Oh so you know the calling, calling the turkey. I, if you had to make it simple, less is more. Now, I have been in situations where you know you've had, you had to, you had to cut them To the point, all the way to the shot. I mean just a, I mean they just hammering and coming, and all that, you know, makes you feel like Thank you, dollars, you know especially when you got somebody with you that's enjoying, oh yeah, and then you act like I wouldn't.
Speaker 1:But that's, that's not the reality of it.
Speaker 2:But you hit on patience and this is something that is I've in the past recently years. I've kind of come on and if I'm ever talking to a veteran turkey hunter more than the, it always seems to any kind of advice Kind of revolves around the word patience and for the longest time I'd really honed in on patience being how long you could sit at a tree without moving, and then the more I kind of Progress through it. I was sitting this happened, I'd say, probably the past year or so something with somebody and Still there for like eight minutes just waiting on a turkey to go up again. We heard him a couple times and had move, hadn't done anything, and I wanted you know his next girl to be uninfluenced.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to you know move him to make him do something that he would be you know Not what he would want to do anyway, so to speak. And I'm just waiting and waiting, and waiting. And you know he was wanting to do something make him go up again and whatnot and I finally got him a mouth. Be patient, but I wasn't being patient on waiting, I was being patient on letting him make a move, because I don't know what I'm on doing next, you know exactly you can pass, guy.
Speaker 1:That's. That's a good point. The the gobbles that you solicit and the gobbles that you don't solicit, they're more telling.
Speaker 1:You know, you can slam that truck door, get a gobble, but if, if you listen to a turkey gobble on his own, then you can tell more about what what you need to do then. When you're making a gobble People love to make them gobble Do it again. Want to make him gobble, you want to make him come. You know, you gotta realize that there's a big difference in that and you know I like to hear him gobble too, but I ultimately, you have a narrow window of opportunity to to stimulate this turkey.
Speaker 1:Keep him walked in on on you and then, in Ty, seem to to Leave his spot. You know, most of the time, if he's on the ground and he's where he wants to be, I Mean he might be traveling, going somewhere, and if he is, then You'll probably get a gobble, but you're not gonna come.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:You know, you got to realize that. You know I've had a few turn around over the years, come back, but a turkey that flies down and you don't say nothing for a long time, you've got a way off. Well, buddy, you better get your ass up. He probably won't gobble again till he our start gobble until he gets where he wants to be and he might hook up with some hands and not gobble much at all. So you need to be over there and read, be able to read the land and say, well, okay, look, there's a bench up here, there's a. You know, you know the land well enough to know at least, or have heard other turkeys Got, or him even gobble from these spots. They, once they start moving, you know, at first they're pretty. You know that I call them focal points and this was a whole another subject kind of.
Speaker 1:But Turkeys don't live everywhere. I mean they. If you got a thousand acres, there's gonna be 250 of it is where spring turkeys are and pretty much gonna gobble from the same basic ridge or whatever they always do and they're gonna end up, you know, in a spot pretty close by that. They, you know, will gobble on the ground is where they have had success. Goblin hands up, and now I'm gonna hook up. Sometimes it's right there under the tree where they fly down, and sometimes it's not, but they end up in a spot that's a focal point.
Speaker 1:A focal point is a place that they can see from Cover their butts. You know, from predators. You know it's just a genetic Tendency to see and to be seen and heard. And it's gonna be pretty much the same every year. You know, it's like when you're walking through the woods and you hadn't hunted there much but you see this little glade or some little natural Opening in the woods and you say I'll be a rubber to around here, I'll be a scrape right over there, you know, and dang if there isn't. Well, those focal points are pretty much the same. Not that they look the same, but they offer the same quality. They have the same qualities that a turkey. He's in a vulnerable position when he's in a full strut.
Speaker 2:Now you've got other trickies around him and you know they're watching out, there's always one hand got her head up, you know.
Speaker 1:Or if he's got a running buddy, they'll be. You know what I call old four eyes. He's standing there looking for him. You know, I, the old one, wound up, but there they stay in areas where they can control the surroundings with their eyes and.
Speaker 1:The hens know where these places are and they particularly identify a long up in the morning. If you here at turkey go to goblin on, say, a bench or a hill or something like that, regularly, that's how I kill the professor at last day, but anyway it that's, that's a focal point and they go from these From one to the next when they start walking, looking for trouble. That's what they do. That one that leaves and he's gone, he's going to, he knows where he's.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, you might not know, but he knows where he's going and if you do know where he's going, I just he's around there and sit down and wait for him to gobble. I don't, I Used to. I can cut pretty good. I don't. I don't yep Good Blake a lot of people but I can cut pretty good and that's usually how I can make a turkey gobble when I needed a turkey. But I have learned that it's better for me and I don't claim to be a big-time caller or anything like that.
Speaker 1:But oh you, if I'm gonna call to a turkey, I want him to gobble on his own first, and I cut him. And that I mean, I just wait, I Don't go in there, and try to make you gobble up on his focal point. I know he's in there somewhere and he's gone gobble. It might be two hours from now, but he's gone Gobble, he gets there and gobble. Crow hit flies over something he's gonna gobble when he does.
Speaker 3:You know that's the natural way of it happening.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a hen and she's coming through and Just heard what she wanted to hear you know, and I guarantee he's gonna hear me. He might not cut me. He might most of the time he does. But I mean, but it's all in it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:When I mean and I and I don't say another word until he, I get ready, but I don't say another word till he got was sometimes I'll make it so gun gobble three or four times before I go you know, I mean you know, and, and that way, being a poor caller has a Lot. You know, it's kind of taught me to be judicious with my calling.
Speaker 1:I'm not on the stage and I ain't trying to get no trophy, come on over here, I'm over here, and I ain't trying to impress him, I'm just trying to yep him up.
Speaker 3:Let him do that's right.
Speaker 1:You know, and so a lot of that stuff might seem Anti-thesis, but people make these videos from the very beginning to get the turkey up there and they milk them right there. You know I saw what's the name and he called at him right there and made him go yeah, he's milk in the turkey. He's already got him up there and he's got the gun on him. He's just trying to make him make TV.
Speaker 2:Mmm-hmm, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, he struck more and he got one all that you know dumb two-year-old, but that's I mean. I don't like I said I gone broke.
Speaker 2:Alright, guys, appreciate you all listening to round one of some turkey hunt conversations with mr George Mayfield and her buddy Blake dial. I cannot split this one up into two. Fortunately, I say that Got a chance to sit down and dive into these stories and of course we're gonna dive down some rabbit holes and stuff like that. So I want to just want to say appreciate y'all listening and keep an eye out, keeping the air out for Part two as we dive into a little bit more in depth into some tactic stuff and or know some storytelling. So it's just as good as part one if you enjoyed it. We appreciate the rating review, all that good stuff and you tell a friend shared on your socials. That's not a bonus. We certainly appreciate them. Again, we'll sign off on this one and we'll see you on the next one here and I'd say an hour or two.