Editor’s Note: With turkey season opening in a month in Florida and then mid-March in some of the South, we need to remember that tough turkeys teach us difficult lessons. Let’s listen to some of the best turkey hunters in the country tell us about the tough turkeys they’ve tried to take.

Ronnie Strickland:

“I’d been hunting this tough-to-take turkey about 30 miles from my home in Mississippi for several weeks,” Ronnie Strickland, the vice president of Mossy Oak in West Point, Mississippi, remembers. “Because this tom would gobble at least 50 times at first light, I thought he’d be easy to take. However, every time I called to the tom, and he flew down from his roost, he had 20 to 40 hens with him. He would march with his hens out to a 50-acre pasture and stay out there most of the day. When the tom and his hens moved, they’d go up to a ridge on either the left-hand or the right-hand side of the pasture to roost. After hunting that turkey almost all season and getting no decent shot at him, I noticed one day that he had only 10 hens out in the field. When I saw the farmer who had granted me permission to hunt on this land, he asked if I’d had any luck. I told him about my war with the Pasture Gobbler. The farmer asked, ‘Did you see which way the turkeys walked out of the field today?’ I answered, ‘They went out of the field to the ridge on the northwest side.’ The farmer smiled and told me, ‘I’ll meet you in the morning before daylight and help you take that turkey.’

“The next morning the farmer and I parked, went across the field and walked up the pine-straw-covered ridge the turkeys had gone up to the day before. Reaching the top, we walked about 50-more yards before the farmer said, ‘Let’s sit down, and be quiet.’ Once the turkey gobbled, the farmer suggested, ‘Let’s move about 200 yards down this ridge, and get closer to the bird.’ I was afraid we’d moved too close to the bird and might spook that gobbler. The farmer and I watched as the pitch-black day became almost light. The farmer took his hat off and beat it across his knee, a sound that resembled a hen flying off the roost. The longbeard started gobbling. In 40 seconds, I saw this big turkey, looking like a giant WWII bomber, flying through the woods – straight at us. He hit the ground less than 30 yards from us, and I shot him. The 16-pound jet-black turkey had a 12-inch beard and 1-1/2 inches of spurs.”

To learn more about turkey hunting, check out John E. Phillips’ print, Audible and Kindle turkey books at https://johninthewild.com/books/#turkey. For a free copy of John E. Phillips’ “The Turkey Gobbler Getter Manual,” go to https://johninthewild.com/free-books/.