Get ready to venture into the wild woods of turkey hunting with our good friends Robert Aiken and Preston Dowell. They'll take you through their experience of creating King of Spring, a winning blend of competition, camaraderie, and massive impact opportunities. Come join us as we uncover the strategies that could help you bag the biggest turkey, and how this unique event has transformed the hunting landscape.
We also take a deep dive into the impact of our fundraising efforts on the community, particularly on the Boys and Girls Club in Jackson. Hear about how our annual hunting event, through a partnership with the Club, is not just about chasing turkeys but also about nurturing dreams. Listen to Adam, a frequent guest speaker, as he unearths the significance of conservation and research in safeguarding the future of turkey hunting. Discover how our shared love for hunting has turned into a beacon of hope for the young members of the Boys and Girls Club.
Lastly, we shed light on the real-world impact of our work, from the sheer logistics of getting the donated water to the Boys and Girls Club to the deeply moving moments we experienced during our club visits. We'll share tales of turkey sandwich days, club clean-up efforts, and the joy of witnessing the positive ripple effect of our work on the lives of Mississippi kids. With a staggering $62,968 raised in the most recent year, we're poised to propel King of Spring to new heights. Join us on this inspiring journey of harnessing our passion for hunting to make a tangible difference in our community.
Get ready to venture into the wild woods of turkey hunting with our good friends Robert Aiken and Preston Dowell. They'll take you through their experience of creating King of Spring, a winning blend of competition, camaraderie, and massive impact opportunities. Come join us as we uncover the strategies that could help you bag the biggest turkey, and how this unique event has transformed the hunting landscape.
We also take a deep dive into the impact of our fundraising efforts on the community, particularly on the Boys and Girls Club in Jackson. Hear about how our annual hunting event, through a partnership with the Club, is not just about chasing turkeys but also about nurturing dreams. Listen to Adam, a frequent guest speaker, as he unearths the significance of conservation and research in safeguarding the future of turkey hunting. Discover how our shared love for hunting has turned into a beacon of hope for the young members of the Boys and Girls Club.
Lastly, we shed light on the real-world impact of our work, from the sheer logistics of getting the donated water to the Boys and Girls Club to the deeply moving moments we experienced during our club visits. We'll share tales of turkey sandwich days, club clean-up efforts, and the joy of witnessing the positive ripple effect of our work on the lives of Mississippi kids. With a staggering $62,968 raised in the most recent year, we're poised to propel King of Spring to new heights. Join us on this inspiring journey of harnessing our passion for hunting to make a tangible difference in our community.
I don't know how to process this. Sorry, let's kick this thing.
Speaker 2:All right. So this week we've got Robert Aiken and Preston Dahl. These are really good buddies of mine. Been able to get to know them through the King of Spring event that we have every year. This is basically what I want to do is get them on and let them kind of tell you more about King of Spring and the impact it's making in the Jackson community. So let's just dive right into that. Why don't you all real quick, just kind of tell, let people kind of know who you are?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Robert Aiken. I work at Aiken Insurance, been an independent agent for 15 years. My wife is Corey Aiken. I've got two kids, Allie and Rhett, and Preston.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my name is Preston Dahl. I'm in the financial services industry here in Rijlund. My wife and I, betsy Dahl, live in Rijlund and we've got a newborn son, michael, who is keeping us awake a good bit of the time. So that's what we're doing, we're making it through. Here you go.
Speaker 2:All right, so what's King of Spring?
Speaker 1:So what I want to start off first with is kind of tell how it got started. So I've got friends, some guys fraternity brothers of mine, from Memphis and then my friend Weldon Doe from Montgomery, alabama. These guys, every spring they were going back and rounded up a group of friends and having a turkey hunting competition. And I said, why aren't we doing this? Here in Jackson? I've got a lot of friends who are turkey hunters. We ought to do this. And so I called, rounded up a group of friends, Preston, jamie Nicholas to help me. Preston helped me on who else?
Speaker 1:Patrick Lampton, patrick William North and William Endeavour and some other guys who just I had them over to my house had cooked out some burgers at night and just said hey guys, here's an idea I have about starting this event. And we didn't have a name, we just threw out ideas. And so that's how King of Spring started was just actually in our dining room over just some hamburgers one night and a bunch of guys talking, and we tossed ideas around about the competition aspect and I said here's one thing I have on mind too I'd love for this thing to be a fundraiser. If we're going to get this many guys together, let's try to raise some money as well. And that's kind of how it started, and I think throughout this podcast we'll touch on a few aspects of that from here.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Yeah, and to add to that, robert, when you first rolled out the idea, I was like it's a competitive turkey hunt, and are we all in the same property? How does this work?
Speaker 1:I was like this is ridiculous.
Speaker 2:This will never work, but we're here, we'll support you, we'll see what happens and the funny part of your stuff, that is, how is how you left that meeting and that story of well, if we're going to compete, I'm here to win it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So the original. I think this is maybe where you're going with it, carter, but with your Robert. I think the original idea and this is to Robert's credit of being a giver and trying to get more people into the sport. It was going to be a competition, but the original intention was to get someone who is not a turkey hunter and bring them out into the woods with you that weekend. And in my mind I heard it's a competition and I want to win. So I called another guy that's on the board, patrick, and said if it's a competition, let's win it, let's go win this thing.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's a great turkey Hope you're having a great time and every year it's getting more competitive and more. You know it is not. It is not just go out and let's try to kill a turkey. It's planning out, you know where, where are these farms and how you're going to make them better. And you're in there and it's. It's. It's hard conditions, sitting in and under a tree or out in the woods all day long chasing turkeys and kind of wear you down.
Speaker 1:It's a grind. But then also to answer your question about what King of Spring is. So you know, we've actually just we figured out our, our identity over the years, right, and so Preston and myself and Grant Ridgway really sat down and said we're, we're evolving, we're finding our identity and we kind of made a pie chart. And on those, if you divide it three different ways, I mean it would divide up into turkey, hunting, fellowship and fundraising and that's who we are and divide those 33.3% three ways and we do a great job at balancing those three things out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that outside, looking in this, this organization, and the impact it's making and the actual, the real impact it's making on the streets, and so let's really get into kind of maybe what do you think, robert, where we get into, kind of the boys and girls club and how that Well, let's do, let's hit on kind of more of the competition first, and then we'll jump in the fundraise you want to do that yeah go ahead.
Speaker 1:So what it is is obviously it's a competition, and so what that looks like is there's kind of a member guest, if you think of it that way. You have to be invited and the member gets to invite a guest and they hunt together. On the weekend it's a all-day Saturday morning and afternoon, state rules apply, and then Sunday you have to be back into the way and we do a big way in a fish fry. On Sunday you have to be back in by noon. So it's a day and a half competition to people and you're trying to kill the. The biggest turkey, which we all know is not something you just like it, not like hunting a deer, where you're actually seeing what you're, what you're hunting.
Speaker 1:It's more of a hey, we're gonna, we're just trying to kill something, right, right yeah, right right, and so at the end of the weekend we have a judges, come score the birds and it's just, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and and the way that you win there there's four winning categories. You've got the king of spring, which is the largest turkey, which, to Robert's point about deer hunting, if you, if it, if it was a deer hunting competition, there's places in the state that repeatedly produced the largest deer. That's not really the same case with turkey hunting it's. You can go into any county and shoot the largest turkey that's harvested that weekend, so it really is a more balanced and fair competition in that regard. So that's, that's the king of spring and that's the biggest turkey, and it can happen to literally anybody. We've had guys that have been, you know, really great turkey hunters. When we've had new guys who have just shot a handful of birds when. So it's, it's really kind of luck in the draw of that aspect, the.
Speaker 3:The next award would be the team award and that is the most cumulative points scored throughout the weekend. And the way that you get points is the way that your, your birds are scored, and there's a, there's official metric for that. The National Wild Turkey Federation produced that metric and that's what we use, and so each sport bird scored, the cumulative points of all birds harvested is then put to their total, and whoever has the highest total wins the team. Then you have the early bird, which is the first bird harvested in competition, and and then what's become a favorite of a lot of people is the pulp potter. Sure so that that is the smallest legal turkey killed in competition. There's been some great laughs over the years I've got one of those.
Speaker 3:We had one guy go back to back he won't be named, but he does who he is.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right but but one thing I do want to point out is to is there's kind of been a misconception on you know where we're hunting, so there a lot of people said what it we're exactly, you're all going. They were thinking that all of these guys competing in this competition we're all hunting on the same property, and that's not the case. So everybody goes and hunts. You can go hunt public land if you want to. A lot of our guys in our group are going to hunt their own private lands across the state. So we're not hunting on the same property.
Speaker 3:Everybody's going and hunting different places across the state yeah, last year we had 44 teams compete, so 88 hunters. So that's just. There's not a lot of properties that can host 88 hunters right, right, that's a first-class event.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's, you know, at the Brattlewood it's got the primary of its mm-hmm yeah, we, we do a Thursday night kickoff dinner and that's really about just everybody kind of getting together hanging out. Logan Farms did all the the food for us this past year. Alex Eaton's been super involved in getting us a really good spread of food and feeding everyone and providing servers and everything that we needed along those lines. So you have a lot of involvement from the people who are actually competing. That helps make it a really good weekend. So that's Thursday night. Everybody is free Friday to go to work, be with family, go to the camp, do some scouting, whatever it want they want to do, but at legal shooting time.
Speaker 1:Saturday morning is when the competition really starts and it, when it starts, it starts, boy, it is a. It is a day and a half and I'd love for us to get into that of what it looks like and how it's different than kind of normal hunting weekends like. Throughout the year I hunt a really good bit and the reason I do that is because I can. I'll go and before work and try to, you know, test a bird's temperature on the roost and if he's, if he's wanting to play and gobble, I'll hang with him, maybe a little bit, but if not I'll take it on into work. Right, and then the weekends I've got your kids are in soccer and other sports and stuff, so I'm not out there till noon. I usually shut it down early and take it back to the house.
Speaker 1:But on hunt, on King of spring weekend, and we're guys, a lot, of, a lot of the teams are out there all day grinding Sun up to Sun down, sat all day Saturday and then hitting it hard Sunday. And you know we're getting text messages and pictures. It's really cool. We've got a. Everybody who's in the in the group has a, you know, group text and one of the things we do to kind of keep the inner, the excitement up through throughout the weekend is, you know, we encourage everybody to send a picture of the bird when it's harvest, and so we're getting text coming through at 10 in the morning, noon, 2, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 5 pm, of guys who probably, on a normal hunting weekend scenario, probably would have been back to the house on the couch by then. But because it's a competition, the level is that nobody wants to show up empty handed.
Speaker 3:We've done it plenty of years and it's not fun to show up without a bird, and so it's an all-out grind on King of spring weekend, yeah, and you start getting to like that a, that mid-morning lull and whatever bird that you thought you had a shot with maybe didn't work out, and you're, you're starting to get your head in your hands and then someone posts a picture that they just, you know, harvested a bird and they could get right back in it, man it fires you up. You're let's go.
Speaker 3:They are moving, yeah, but let's move let's go to a different farm, let's make a change in our strategy, let's do something exactly.
Speaker 1:I mean we're packing turkey sandwiches in our vests and Gatorade's in our vests.
Speaker 3:I mean we're, we're in it for the long haul, yeah and and when you get to that you know you have that whole Saturday where you just got, and especially those first couple hours, because you know as most y'all everybody I was assumed he's listening, as a turkey hunter has some kind of experience but those first couple hours are the most crucial of the day, just statistically. And so once you start getting into that nine, ten o'clock window and nothing's happened, you really start to think like man is it? Is it gonna happen for us this year?
Speaker 1:and one thing we can't control is the weather and like the first three years it was.
Speaker 2:Nobody really would have been out there hunting if it wasn't for the competition, and birds were still killed and that was cool to see that's the cool part about pressing being a, you know, financial guy, being able to keep up with the data of of the weekend, the stats you know. Yeah, always, always enjoy, yeah, stuff.
Speaker 3:I I really enjoy it. I like keeping up with the amount of hunters and the amount of birds killed and what's really interesting is that our success rate among our hunting groups so the amount of birds harvested by the amount of hunters it fluctuates between 20 and 30% of the field. So it's for the most part, these guys are really good hunters. You may have a couple kind of slip in there that are, you know, popping tags off of all their stuff and going, but for the most part these are guys that hunt a lot. They're the great woodsmen very smart, very talented, and 20 to 30% of them are having success and some of those guys are that are having success or killing multiple birds. So it's still it's really not even indicative of the entire field, so it's a hard thing to do yeah, and it's to me it's like watching the weekend.
Speaker 2:You're, you're, these guys are hunting the best farms in the state, man's bottom line and and we're still not, we're only getting 20, 30%. I would think it would be higher, but it's not. It's. It just shows you what happens when you put term. It said I mean, I'm, I'm just, I'm thinking that last Sunday morning, this past tournament, I just I choked up, I didn't pull the trigger. I telling you it just when you, when things are on the line, it's a lot different yeah and it looks it looks.
Speaker 1:The weekend looks different for everybody like Carter. What's y'all's game plan going into the weekend?
Speaker 2:so I definitely don't want to like give up all the secrets. Yeah, now we, we try to locate. What we try to do is we try to locate our best chance of killing. We which hopefully we have a, you know we take a few farms and we say, our friend, can we, can we locate a double, can we locate two birds that we can jump on early Saturday morning? If we, if we capitalize on the double, which last couple few years we've been able to do, that, it sets us up for Sunday morning. We've just never been able to go to produce on Sunday. So it's to me it's you can have a good plan and cut and execute it, but you still might not execute on Sunday, and that shows you just these guys that are winning it. You know, let's just use the foreman like Justin Maloof, right, justin is one of the most. He put so much effort into his properties as far as planting stuff, planting chufa and it's, I see it pay. I think it pays off.
Speaker 2:I think that they're seeing. We're seeing the consistency. We're seeing the weight gains of the turkeys. We never thought we'd. I mean, are you really wanting to concentrate on growing a heavier bird? But a heavier bird, I mean, this is a real. There's real money in this thing, you know.
Speaker 3:The very first year that we did this, patrick and I, we doubled on Sunday. We doubled, actually on Saturday and then we doubled again on Sunday, which is probably the best two days of turkey hunt I've ever had in Mississippi. It just it doesn't happen like that. But the bird that I killed had some of the biggest spurs in the tournament but because he weighed like 16 or 17 pounds and that's what I think, he was the third biggest turkey in Q-Linux points. So that was one of the things that that you know knocked that turkey out that year. So, to your point, every little when you have, you know, 20 or 30 turkeys that are coming in to be scored, every little point counts when you're, when you're trying to win, yeah, and we can't.
Speaker 2:We can't grow spurs and beards. That's not something we can do genetically. But we can put weight on them and that's you know. You see, the, some of these, the guys that are and I'm not going to get into details of the farms, but some of these guys that are always up at the top, a lot of times you look at those weights and they're top weights in the, in the, in the state, and it's because they're putting so much effort into their food program.
Speaker 1:Right, They've got a diversity of timber and they're doing the things that you preach, Carter, with Habco is, you know, controlled burning and doing that in the spring and planting crops year-round, having clover, having the chufa, having a lot of different foods for them to eat throughout the year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And, and you know what a lot of those guys are doing too is they're controlling pressure on the property. Some of those properties aren't hunted until King of Spring weekend, so you're not having somebody, some ye, who just blow through on a side by side every couple of days and it's letting those birds really get in there and get comfortable. And so that way you know nothing is a given. But the less you can pressure them, the more they're predictable, the better chance you have of harvesting that turkey, because you're really trying to. I mean, everybody hunts all season to kill one, two, maybe three turkeys and you're trying to get two of them in a weekend per person. It's just statistically. It's very difficult to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're just seeing, we're really starting. We're a few years into this King of Spring and really starting to see some fine tuning as far as how we can really take our farms to the next level for the turkeys and produce like when that's. I think that's. There's so many. There's so much impact of this King of Spring for me, even in my business. I learned so much from hunting on this weekend. But anyway, let's let's that's.
Speaker 3:And I'll add to that too, carter, you did a thing with some of your reels where you are looking and seeing what turkeys were eating after they had been harvested, and one of the things that I thought was really interesting was the amount of bugs, and that's something that you know. I don't know how to manage for bugs, but it's a huge part of a turkey's diet, and we had guys on our board that were joking joking about going and throwing caterpillars out, you know, in the woods but it's just one of those things that when you really start focusing in on it, there's so many different factors these birds are using for food, using for habitat. It's just very interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, you know that's bugs are. So I mean, if you're going to get that weight up, I mean that's the fastest ways because you know the vegetation is, you know you might have some protein levels that are good, but the balance of that is going to be some some high protein and some lower protein. But a bug, I mean a grasshopper it's. I don't know what the percentage there, but it's a lot, and I think that you know, having a turkey myself, I got it, I got young.
Speaker 1:Terry Terry.
Speaker 2:Terry is. My wife loves Terry.
Speaker 2:By the way crazy story my neighbor yesterday told me that he's been seeing a hen and four poults in the yard. They go up to Terry's pen or get kind of get over there and he's gobbling at them. But anyway, managing Terry's nutrition is a big thing. In our house we are, we are meal, meal prepping, all these things, but we had to pull him off of meal worms because he was, he was blowing up and I was putting weight on, and so that's a. I think that we undervalue insects in our in our, in our turkey.
Speaker 3:That's kind of funny. Mill prep for a turkey. Most people prep with turkey. The listeners, what are we?
Speaker 1:talking about here, talking about a pet.
Speaker 2:I got a pet. Turkey that is just a legend. He is. He is such an awesome little animal, little pet, and he's not mean. He always wants to be beside us, he always wants to hang out with us and I've been able to watch him and get to know his behaviors to be able to really do that. You know, learn, I mean anytime you can be around turkeys. Anytime you can be around it, you're going to learn something from it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I will say, whether you like the the topic of habitat management or not, yours is worth a follow, just for Terry content.
Speaker 2:That's right, you know and I've never really I haven't really thrown Terry into the Habco scene yet, but he's, he is such a. Our animals are such critical parts of our, our lives, and even the turkeys that we hunt I know y'all can speak for this Our turkeys are so important. Even you know killing them, hunting them, but we really want to grow them.
Speaker 1:That's right. Everybody in our group has a major respect for them, and that's that's so cool. Which is you?
Speaker 2:know kind of with Adam Butler part. What do y'all want to talk about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Adam Butler is the program Turkey program coordinator from Mississippi and I cannot say enough good things about him. Our state is so lucky to have him and he's really cool too because you know, when you think of those guys who were the biologists, you know the before I met him I was just, you know, thinking just the guy who was just science driven and more of a, you know, a bookworm type. But man, adam, he loves to hunt turkeys and he's so passionate about it when he is not going and studying them and I mean he's actually going and hunting them and taking his, taking his family with him and enjoying time in the woods. But Adam's been our guest speaker multiple times, you know, in Mississippi. One of the things that's new is the mandatory reporting. He used to be volunteer, now it's mandatory after you harvest a bird and he has collected so much data because of that and he has shared this, all of the data, with our group and our group is, you know, full of avid turkey hunters, obviously.
Speaker 1:And the first time he came to speak we were all kind of chest puffed up like what's this guy going to tell us that we don't already know Everything he said we didn't already know. I mean he came in with these cool charts and graphs and aerial videos, aerial photos of turkey patterns and their movement and all these statistics on predation with the, with raccoons and bobcats and nest predators that affect the population, and anyway, it's been cool and he's been so. He's been a part of our group since day one and we've just said, adam, how can we help you? And he's come in and done some really cool things with our group, like we. Obviously last year we had, you know, 30 harvested turkeys sitting in one spot. He came and took DNA samples from all the turkeys that he's using in his research to help them in the state of Mississippi out. So hopefully our kids and grandkids can continue to, you know, continue this wonderful sport that we enjoy so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And another way that we've interacted with them is, you know, at the end of every tournament we'll send specifically his group funds that were raised throughout the tournament weekend, and this past year we were able to with those monies. They were able to take a group to I believe it was a national maybe double check me on that but it was a national Wild Turkey research symposium and so they were able to go with two other departments from other states, share their research, get information from other states how they're going about managing the population, and a lot of that was funded through this group. So it's great to be able to hunt and harvest all weekend, but it's also great to be able to help at the state level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it when you can do things that you want to do but then have impact down the and you know other areas. All right, so we invest in Adam and his program and believe in what he's doing. I think that's real important, that we always support our. I think that I was talking to Adam at the way in and I think there's just such a misconception of kind of who he is, what he does. A lot of times people think he's going to police and we'll, you know, we're giving that data to kind of find out if you're baiting. No, he doesn't care, he just he cares about the turkeys and he's helping us, you know, be able to conserve the turkey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, without conservation, this thing is gonna it's gonna end. I mean, there's too many people out there doing it the wrong way and we need guys like him, who are, who care about the turkey and help us research it and share that data and tell us how our kids and grandkids and generations to come can enjoy it.
Speaker 2:You know my neighbor on our farm and from King of Spring Okay, my population has gotten better, really has and I think my neighbor seeing the growth. Now we're doing some habitat things, there's no doubt about that. But I'm also not hunting my farms until King of Spring weekend and by the time I'm done with King of Spring weekend I'm so worn out. I take a little, literally take a few days, yeah, break from turkey and I know there's some guys that hunt every day. But it's really cool to be able to see that impact of the poults and the population growing, and I think that it has to do with King of Spring.
Speaker 1:You're not the only one. There's a lot of people who will not step on their property. Like Preston said, they let everything rest. They don't ride ATVs through it. They wait until our event is usually the first weekend in April, somewhere around April 1st. And so they, your turkeys, have got two weeks between the time that season opens and our event to breed and rest, and when they're breeding, that sustains the population.
Speaker 3:Yeah awesome.
Speaker 2:So we're making it. We're we're investing in Adam and his program. What else? What else are we investing in? Yeah go ahead Preston.
Speaker 3:Well, I was gonna say so a couple years ago we kind of we kind of realized we had something going and we wanted to put in a little bit more formal process of what we were about, because originally it was, you know, it would be great to have a turkey hunt and raise money.
Speaker 3:And then, when we actually started raising money, we were like, well, let's, let's really formalize this. So, more formally, we're a group that shines a spotlight on in-state charities, and that charity that we've chosen for the last several years has been the Boys and Girls Club and they just do a phenomenal job and downtown Jackson and the Jackson Metro and they've got places in Canton and they've got places in south of Jackson where they have children that are predominantly low-income families that are going there for either their their in school or after school and summer needs. So maybe the parents are working, they're not at the house and these kids need a safe place to go, and that's what Boys and Girls Club is providing. They provide meals, they provide education, they provide a safe space, and so we it's been a great partnership with them it really has.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you just like you said, safe space. You know a lot of these kids come from families with man, just broken homes and to have a place like the Boys and Girls Club, who the man when we I hope everybody gets a chance to just visit a Boys and Girls Club at some point. It's really eye-opening and humbling. But the, the staff there, man, they love those kids and that's so cool to see that they love them like their own and they support them. They want them. They want all these kids to succeed their. Their main goal objective over there is for every kid who enters those doors to is to obviously feel loved and they encourage them to go to college. And man, the statistics from over there are really cool about, you know, the chance of a female being involved in a Boys and Girls Club. The chances of them getting pregnant is almost zero.
Speaker 3:That's unbelievable yeah, last year they had 18,645 years come through their doors yeah. I mean that is making that.
Speaker 1:They're making a big impact right and you think about, you know, and they're feeding a meals. So if they're feeding 18,000 kids a meal a day, I mean that's a big budget that they have to, they have to sustain. And so our group, we're raising a lot of money, but it really scratches the surface. So we were trying to continue to grow our numbers so we can do some cooler things over there that's awesome.
Speaker 2:You know, lila and I, getting you know, been going to the shower power, the charity in Jackson, and we've been able to get to know some of these high school kids that are homeless, that are going to school. I mean, they're, they're, they're great kids, but it just it's such a conviction on me that you know he doesn't deserve that like he. And how do we get him out of that? And I think that, out of all the, all the things that I've researched and gotten to know and seen the impact, it's hard to deny the facts of what the Boys and Girls Club is doing in Mississippi and and, and the, the, the people that are loving on them. They're not. They're not just loving on them, they're also holding them accountable and I think it's a big part of that helping them holding them accountable and helping them see their future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, their opportunities that's right. Yeah, I mean and that's one thing too is that we can. It's great that we write a big check to them every year, but if we're just doing that, I think we're missing out too and we're trying to be better as an organization about being more involved there on the the different Boys and Girls Clubs campuses, some things that we've done in the past. We have a had a club cleanup day down at their Raymond Road location and we had just guys scattered through air. I mean, carter, I think you and I were working in the gym painting. We had people replacing ceiling tiles in there. My friend from Memphis, mark Utley, drove down and helped. We had some guys building up an entrance, a gate in the front of the property, cleaning up the gym and being in the club. That's. That's when it really becomes more real and it makes you want to become more involved and help this organization right, that's that, you know.
Speaker 2:For me I've always kind of, you know, have a lot. I'm scared to go downtown. I mean I'm scared. I've got, you know, single parent, so I got to make sure that you know I gotta take care of myself, I gotta take care of my child. But when I went to these, that, when we went to that event, that that that serve opportunity, it's so safe it is and we're going, we're going in groups, which we're going in groups and we're taking our kids and and that was.
Speaker 2:You know, that was such a fun time because everybody's laughing, everybody's joking, everybody's doing work. It was a cold day, yeah, but it's everybody that left their left with a different perspective, I think of the boys and girls clothes right now.
Speaker 1:What are we doing next? When are we gonna go to another campus and help clean it up? Right, and seeing Hunter?
Speaker 3:Barlow on a post-old digger was was worth the price of admission. Yeah, that's right. Right, you talking about?
Speaker 1:bringing kids, ryan eating brought his son and they were raking leaves and working in a in a bed over on the side of the property and, yeah, it's just so cool to see and we've done other cool things to press and talk about the the turkey sandwich day that we did over there, yeah, so capital clubs.
Speaker 3:So we actually partnered with, with some of our our local corporate sponsors, some individual sponsors, and we were able to get I can't remember the figures, but it was it amounted to a ton of turkey sandwiches, chips and candy that we took to the capital club right before Thanksgiving, and so that was a time where a lot of our group came together as really served the kids. We put all the sandwiches together. We made sure that each of them got some, but got the candy they wanted. Some of our guys kids came to also help, so that was just another way and they're small things, but it's. It's like you said, robert.
Speaker 3:It's getting guys into the club so they can see, you know what it is that they're supporting and you know we've raised our funds for the club and I think we'll go over those numbers at some point. But what we've also seen is guys who maybe didn't have experience to the club are also giving independently of us. Yeah, and so it's. We've raised money directly, but there's also been money that's been raised indirectly as well and there's been a lot of cool stories that have come of it.
Speaker 1:I know that Naughty was at been Naughty with Environment Masters was at the turkey sandwich day. I remember him passing out turkey box lunches and interacting with the kids. It was really, really fun to watch and that was, I think, his first time on a boys and girls club campus and maybe not shortly after that the boys and girls club I think the same campus, the capital unit had a air conditioning unit stolen off the side of the building and they called me and said you know, we don't know what to do. Who do we call? I said, call Ben Naughty and I mean, and he heard about it and they just said, look, we're gonna handle it, don't worry about it. And just, he would never have done that if you wouldn't have gone and volunteered his time now Ben is with who?
Speaker 2:Environment Masters? Yeah, so he's, yeah, it's great. You know, I think that that's the cool part of our group is we, we they tell us their need, yeah, and then we locate the, the guy in the in our group and really serve that need yeah and, and I think that you know, starting this thing off, the cool stories we were talking about the other day.
Speaker 2:Robert is seeing, really seen some really really cool, impactful stories that have liked the chase, the story, yeah, which I guess you know. I don't know who you want to share that, or yeah.
Speaker 1:And another one that I want to hit on too, was it just came to mind, was Alex Eaton. You know, we've had, we've lost water which is just wild, and in Jackson, multiple times and have been declared like a, you know, a national federal need area. And Alex Eaton got a call from World Central Kitchen and they said hey, we're bringing in resources, you just need to help us identify who we can serve. And Alex called me and we've got the Boys and Girls Club, multiple campuses, we've got got them connected to make sure the kids had bottled water, healthy drinking water, and you can't prepare food, healthy food, without healthy water and without clean water. And so they were serving meals and this wouldn't have happened without Alex's involvement in King of Spring. But back to the the chip.
Speaker 3:I was going to add that too. So Alex was able to get the water there, and but then you had an issue of how do we get it off of the truck.
Speaker 1:That's right, because you can't handle it. I mean, these are pallets, palettes, that's right. It's not just a case of 24. Right.
Speaker 3:I mean, we already run over the amount of kids that are coming through there. You got to have. It's a substantial amount of water and it's coming every day and so, and so we were truckless. So Naomi Naomi, you know reached out to us and said thank you so much for the water. How do we get it off? You know?
Speaker 3:and so and so we sent a message out to the group and said if anyone has a forklift, we are in dire need of a forklift right now. And Josh Thrash with Thrash Construction answered the call every time he was asked and it was. It went on for a while and he would come down there with a forklift to take a guy off of a job someplace with a forklift and they unload water in downtown Jackson all day, and so, anyway, to your point, it's a network of guys and we're always just trying to leverage the network that we have to better help out our community.
Speaker 2:I got a Cajun buddy that we. He's a. He has a fishing charter down in the South Louisiana. He always says Ducks fly with Ducks. And that's what this group is. It's not that guys are just trying to come and hunt for the weekend. It's guys that that have the desire to impact their communities and they're coming together. And when that all happens, and when you get guys that are doing that, yeah, this, this, that's the power in this group. That's right.
Speaker 1:You know, from day one, every year we have we've kind of fine tuned this, but we knew we wanted to be a fundraising group and we knew we wanted to have a good time and the competition. But the tone was set early. It's year one on the way in day on Sunday, the guy who won King of Spring. Our original idea was that, hey, it would be cool if you know all this money that we took in from our, from our participants, what if we cut them a check for $750, which is about the price to get your bird mounted and we could do that every year for to give the winner his bird mounted, right? Well, year one, chase Thompson won it and he said, man, I'm not worried about it. He said, give it back to the boys and girls club. And it was like year one boom out of the gates when that happened. That helped give our group a sense of identity and who we and who we wanted to be and it took it to the next level.
Speaker 1:It took it to the next level and everybody saw that. And I don't, I don't, I don't think I'm just speculating, I don't think our group would be here to like where it is today without that moment happening and that was really cool to see. That set the tone for kind of who we are and who we, who we want to be.
Speaker 2:It's always someone makes takes that step, yeah. So, preston, you want to give some of those stats which you yeah yeah, so we started in 2018.
Speaker 3:So we're still very I would consider us a fledgling group. We've I feel like we've accomplished a lot and very short amount of time, but we're still figuring it out and there's stuff that that happens every year, that just how are we going to address this? But to give an idea of, maybe, where we all started as a group and where we are now, in the very first year, we raised $4,750. And we were ecstatic. I think that blew away any of our expectations. You know, I'll just fast forward to what we did this past year. We raised $62,968. Unbelievable, Unbelievable, yeah. And cumulatively we've raised nearly 160,000. That has all gone back into the community. So you know, again, we're we're figuring it out. We don't. There's a lot of questions for the future and what it could be, but we do know that we're successful to this point and it's kind of what does the future hold?
Speaker 2:And I think another thing is how stable this group is. So you know, on the board you have it, you'll have it where you turn over guys to, where you're always getting fresh right, that's right.
Speaker 1:And I mean we can't you can't go without being mentioned about how much work it involves to put this event on. I mean, we do an event Thursday night and there's a lot of logistics to work out to make this thing possible, and each and every person who has served on the board has done a phenomenal job of getting this thing to where it is today. I know Preston had put in so much work for the last few years he's been there since day one but yeah, it doesn't. This thing didn't happen overnight. It takes a lot of individual effort and super grateful for everybody who has put in the work to get it to where it is today.
Speaker 1:But it's been so cool just to see it grow and I'm I think it's cool where we are now. Yeah, and the sky's the limit. I think one of the things that's helped us grow too is that King of Spring is kind of everybody's more familiar with it now. In the early days, Like the just the friends of the friends, was like what are y'all doing? And kind of like where we were at the beginning, when we didn't know what we were doing. People are understanding it now and they are seeing the amount of money we're raising and the impact that we're having in the community and that's helping these corporate sponsors and individuals, you know, write donation checks to our organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean don't, I mean corporations, stuff they want to help. They just want to know where their money is going, is, is is making impact in your, in your being good stewards of that, of that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and you know we're the same way in our business Anytime that we're giving money to an organization, we want to make sure that the money's getting to where it's supposed to go, and I think we've got really good legal advice along the way to where we're set up. And this may be a little bit too in the weeds, but we're set up as a not for profit LLC and so when we raise money, if you give through our website, which we've done a pretty good job of streamlining, it actually is just a conduit to the fundraisers that are the charitable organizations we're fundraising for. All that to say, it goes directly to that club. So it goes straight to the boys and girls club. Yeah, so it's. It's not going to the group, it's not. It doesn't even really go to put on the event. The event is funded by the participants Entry fee. Yeah, entry fees pay for the event and in its entirety. So any corporate sponsor goes directly to the group that we're supporting so good, so streamlined.
Speaker 1:How it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:All right. So I think, man, I appreciate y'all giving us coming in and allowing us to really get to know that King of Spring and Boys and Girls Club. If people wanted to get involved and want to know more. I mean, how do they do that?
Speaker 1:I want to point out two things. Our website King of Spring Jackson is kingofspringjxncom. That's a new website Preston help created last year with the new board and it's it's got a lot of information on there and there that website actually has a link that we were talking about earlier about how you can make a contribution to the Boys and Girls Club there Also. Another website I want to look at is Boys and Girls Club's website, which is the Boys and Girls Club of Central Mississippi. The website address is bgccmorg and it has more information there, pictures of cute kids and the faces that we're raising funds for.
Speaker 3:Right, and if you want to follow us on Instagram, we, carter, I think you were really helpful in creating this Instagram page and also putting out content here. It's kingofspring, underscore JXN, and so we'll put the businesses that are supporting us, we'll put updates on the charities that we're supporting, and then I think the funnest time of the year is is during the actual event, when we're just posting pictures and videos and all sorts of great turkey hunting content and it really helps to kind of boost, you know, the just the everybody's, you know, outlook and morale and everything along the way Awesome.
Speaker 1:Anything else. Last year was the year of the jakes, so we'll see what this, this next year, holds. It's going to be. It's going to be a fun year, a lot of people excited to see what spring 2024 holds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I tell you, what's become really fun too is we've been doing this long enough to where there's stories that have emerged from year to year and there's things that you look back on. That's just things to laugh about, things to you know, remember, things to you know epic wins and epic losses and everything throughout the years. And I think you mentioned, robert, we had a guy who won the pulp punisher and back to back years and that's something that always gets brought up. And then you've got guys that miss on video and they have a beautiful turkey at 20 yards and just a pop shot and they whiff, and you know that gets brought up every year. And so a lot of that has become stories within our group and it's kind of brought everybody closer together. But it's always fun that when that King of Spring weekend is coming up and you can lean over to your friend and be like remember last year when you had that turkey at 20 yards and you missed you know, or didn't take the shot?
Speaker 3:Yeah, or didn't take the shot, but that happened to me last year too, I had, I had them and they just were a little bit to my right and I couldn't quite get there and and I think you and I talked about this at the tournament last year it becomes a game of inches, you know, did I sit?
Speaker 3:did I sit two inches facing the wrong direction? Did I not get on the other side of this tree? Did I not get in the high ground? Was I, was I too high? And so you start playing it all back in your head. Where did I make my mistakes from the weekend? And so it makes you very analytical about your weekend hunting, which I think makes you a better turkey hunter.
Speaker 1:But if nothing else I mean for the listeners there's a lot of turkey competitions, I guess, out there now and you know we have our own identity. I think we're doing such a phenomenal job of just balancing it all out. We're not just out there just to kill, we're out there. We actually care about the sustainability of the wild turkey and the generations to come, of continuing to enjoy this sport, and just our fundraising with the Boys and Girls Club, I think we have a good thing, a good balance of it all.
Speaker 2:I did too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's well said.
Speaker 2:I think that, look, I appreciate what I want to do with this podcast is really just spotlight people in the community that are making impact and those and those nonprofits, those places where people can say, ok, I want to get involved, I want to because so that's, that's a big deal to me. So, man, I really appreciate it. If you're looking to looking for a good organization to invest in highly recommend King of Spring We'll get that information to you so you can. If you, if you want to get to know these, these, the Boys and Girls Club more, will be more than happy to help you. I'll get get, get plugged in in the right places. Appreciate it, guys. Yeah, thanks, thanks, carter, all right.