Latest / Fist Full of Dirt / FFOD348 : Telling Shows ~ Remembering Colonel Tom Kelly

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FFOD348 : Telling Shows ~ Remembering Colonel Tom Kelly · Fist Full of Dirt

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Fistful of Dirt, the official podcast of Massy Oak Properties.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you own a small farm, lease land, or just love hanging in your backyard.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're all about the outdoor lifestyle and how to get the most from your time in God's great outdoors.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's your host, Ronnie Cuz Strickland.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_08: Semi-Live from the Camo Cave.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_08: Semi-Live.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_08: I think we talked last time about, you know, our predicted four inches of rain from hurricane, whatever it was that you can't pronounce.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_08: And we got four tenths, and it's still dry as a bone, but you know, life goes on.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_08: So it's uh all good.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_08: Only one more football game for cranky unless they make the playoffs.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_13: Which I knock on wood.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_13: I think that might be in the cards.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, good deal.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_08: It's it's good.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_08: They're uh everybody's through farming out there by our place, and uh uh all the soybeans are in.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_08: Everything was soybeans out there.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_08: That's a good thing.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_13: When they were out there working, it looked like they were doing tractor work on the moon.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_13: It was just dirt everywhere.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_08: The hay's gone.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_08: They cut hay on our place.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_13: Yeah.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_08: Sometimes twice.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_08: They only did it once this year, so I'm in the midst of bush hogging, so we can go all through the winter without knee high grass.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, life is good and uh everything's uh everything's moving right along, still a little hot.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_08: And uh, you know, I tried to get a climatologist.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_13: Oh man, how hard did we try?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_08: We did to just come on here and explain what is El Nino and what's it gonna mean and all that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_08: Cause I'm telling you, back to back last night I looked at one it said the so our region of the southeast was gonna be drier and warmer than next than ever.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_08: And I flipped or scrolled one thing and it had wet and cold for the winter.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_08: It's like clickbait, they don't know it's gonna be what it's gonna be.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_13: But how can the if your if your models are modelable and it's science, how is it how is it like 50-50 people saying it?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_13: I that I don't get that part.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_08: It's what it is.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_08: Can't control the weather.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_13: It's fine.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_13: Sometimes we get a fall, sometimes we go from summer to just slap winter, and I bet that's what happens this year.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_08: It's just uh weird time, a little bit of a funk.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_08: Been thinking a lot about Colonel Tom Kelly.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_08: We lost him a couple of weeks ago, and uh Man, I think about him all the time, and uh his family's gonna have a memorial service for him and they're gonna do it in Spanish Ford, although he was living with her, I think, in Virginia, but and uh so I'll certainly be at that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_08: But we just couldn't let it go without having some kind of tribute to the colonel.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_08: And uh Lauren's like, I know exactly what to do.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_08: I know where all the best sound bites are, and uh that's what I'd like to do, is just to hear from him.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Contrary to what some might think, Tom was not born in the woods and raised by old gobblers.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: He was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, just across Mobile Bay from his present home in Spanish Fort, Alabama.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then as now, southern Alabama was heavily wooded, endless trees bisected by a few roads and logging trails.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is where Tom was introduced to the woods in the days of the Great Depression.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he became a turkey hunter in his early teens, way back in 1938.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not a good time to start.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_06: There were almost no buds, there were almost no hunters, but at the same time there was a fascination to it.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_06: It was just, you didn't see, if you heard a turkey gobble, it was a success.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_06: You never, ever, ever walked away from a turkey track.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_06: You rubbed it out with your foot before you left it so nobody else could see it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_06: And then you had these stories.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_06: You know, uh young fellas love to sit around, unless they're kin to them.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_06: If they're kin to them, they won't.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_06: But young fellas love to sit around and listen to stories that old folks tell.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_06: And of course, I started hunting turkeys in 1938, and you still had a good sprinkling of people who had been here and had been hunting in 1900 when there were turkeys.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_06: We we really began to run out of turkeys in this country.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_06: The the uh when the lumber industry cut out of pine in the lake states in the 90s, the other nineties, not the ones that we just got through with, the 1890s, and moved south.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, we and we actually cut the original stand of pine in the south, in the southeast by by 1925.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_06: And so you had a period of between 25 and 50 when the type of timber completely changed and turkeys just went away.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_06: Uh uh then they began to come back to Bud as adaptable as hell.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_06: We got uh uh the we the states did a lot of good work in trapping stuff and moving it around.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_06: But you had a lot of stories.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, you could listen to your grandfather talk about killing turkeys here and killing turkeys there, and and uh, and of course, as a kid I hunted mostly squirrels and rabbits like everybody else, uh, and doves.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_06: There wasn't much else to hunt.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: Uh but as I got older they began to come back more and more and more and more.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_06: I don't, and I don't, I I question the numbers now.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_06: I don't see how the hell Missouri went from 300,000 Turkies to 600,000 Turkies in the five or six years that they've done it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_06: I suspect we got states now that are playing bidding laws with one another.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_06: If those ignoramuses across the line got 300,000 Turkies, we got 350,000.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_06: And then, you know, we're we're we're playing with numbers.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_06: Uh we got a lot.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_06: We got a lot.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_08: I still kind of gotta set it up.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_08: And if I start into this, if my bride, Miss Pammy, was here, she'd say, Whoa, this ain't about you.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_08: Well, it ain't about me, but it's hard to tell a story.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_08: We gotta set it up.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, you know, and uh here's the deal.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_08: I'm not a reader, never have been a reader.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_08: Got out of high school by the skin of my teeth.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_08: Only I read menus, that's it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_08: No, but I saw it, and this was way before social media, way before the internet and all this, and I can't remember where I was, but we were filming something.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_08: It could have been videos.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_08: I think it was probably before TV, but there was cameras involved, and I was at a hunting camp somewhere, not a camp, but like an old cabin.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_08: I don't remember if we were deer, I thought probably deer hunting, but anyway.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_08: Had a fire going, it's kind of chilly, and there wasn't no TV or anything in that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_08: And uh there was some books and magazines around, and that's where I saw the Tenth Legion.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_08: And anyway, I opened it and looked at it, and I got like two pages in, and I think I finished it the next night.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_13: Couldn't put it down.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_08: Could not put it down, and I was like, from that point on, I gotta meet Tom Kelly.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_06: All right, Tenth Legion.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_06: Note none of the characters in this book are in any way fictional or imaginary.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_06: All of them are real people who have been known to the author for years.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_06: Statements made herein concerning timber, people, or the physiological processes of turkeys are matters of opinion and are subject to discussion.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_06: Statements made herein concerning the thought processes of turkeys or of deer hunters are known scientific facts and are not open to question.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_06: The author declines to debate the accuracy of these with anyone.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_06: He is, however, perfectly willing to fight about them.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_08: Because he was saying things in there that it just so applied to me, I was like, man, this this fella gets it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_08: And he's so his his wit and his humor and his writing style was like it was just crazy.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_08: So he he was the probably the only author that I ever wanted to meet, and I really did want to meet him, and I got to meet him.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I made that happen, and uh and I think I don't know where I first met him, it was probably at an NWTF convention, and his little table was three or four not that many people were coming by to see Tom Kelly at the time.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_08: I went and visited with him, and I had it took me forever to persuade him to let me film him.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_08: Old school.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_08: Didn't get wasn't into that.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_08: Yep.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_08: And I had to prom I said, Mr.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_08: Kelly, I I know I'm a big guy, but I said I'm really quiet.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_08: You I promise you, you won't even know I'm back there.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_08: And he at the f the first time he was not for it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_13: I know.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_08: And uh met him over at uh I guess it was a deer camp here in Alabama and uh it was just the coolest thing ever.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_08: And I I can remember being nervous and uh I I just don't get nervous.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_13: No, you really don't.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_08: I really don't.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_08: I've been with whoever Supreme Court justice, pro athletes, actors, senators, governors.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_08: It's just hunting.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_08: I I was stressing a little bit over this one just because I didn't want I didn't want to act like a wicker bill in front of the this guy was like the Encyclopedia Turkey.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_08: I was like, I was just nervous and uptight.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_11: Okay.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_06: Yelp three times and then take it out and set it down, and then don't yelp anymore.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_06: Wait a half hour, put it in your mouth, yelp three times, give it to the man and let him take it home so you won't be tempted to use it again, because you can't do nothing stupid if the yuppa's gone.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_06: And what Cuz does absolutely work, it is uncanny to watch him blow on that damn thing and make the only thing he makes Tucky's gobble so far off you weigh yourself out trying to get to him.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_06: I can shoot the first Tucky now.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_12: Man, I guess they work for him.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_09: Oh man.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_09: He's at least a three-year-old.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_09: Got them big old thick one that about an inch spur.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_09: Nice beard.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_09: Nice beard, about nine and a half, ten inches long.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_09: And uh man, I couldn't see I could not see a thing.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_09: Like I say, we got out of our we got out of our way just in time.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_09: Yes, we did.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_08: It was everything I expected.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_08: And I've probably told the story before, but you know, falling him in the in the dark and he walked so quiet, really good, slow pace, and he didn't have a turkey vest and all that kind of stuff.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_08: And we just s he sat down and I got way back behind him further than I should have.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_08: And uh there was a couple of turkeys when I gobbled maybe three or four times in a half an hour another, and I don't think gobbled but once, but and he never said a peep till the way and he yelped three times on that box call.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_08: I don't think he even answered him, and we sat and we sat and we sat.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_08: And got up and we moved around a little bit and he blew on his little crow call and then we were back at the camp.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_08: I he didn't care much for afternoon hunting, but the second the second morning we're back in the same place.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_08: Literally sat down in my butt cheek mold on the ground in front of the same tree, and I think he did too.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_08: And kind of the same thing, two turkeys, and he called a little bit.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_08: We and we made a move on, but you know, to to no avail.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_08: And then later in the morning he was blowing that crow call, and that's when I asked him, Hey, can I blow this tube call?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_08: I didn't take anything with me but that.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_08: The tube calls under my t-shirt and batteries and extra tape and stuff like that, because I so wanted to interview him and film him hunting and all that stuff.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_08: Anyway, I I I cut on the tube call and echo, second echo one gobbled, and he grabbed that thing and pulled it over.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_08: Why ain't you been tooting on anything?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_08: And the cutting and running thing he he just didn't I ain't saying he didn't know about it, but he hadn't never thought about it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_08: It's like he was fascinated with that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_08: He kinda ended up interviewing me and I told him how we hunt and why.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_08: Because I gotta get some footage and all that.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_08: And um it w we just struck up a friendship.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_08: Got to go with him a a few more times.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_08: It's not like he's Shakespeare, but to me he is.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_08: And I brought him two of my books and I had him never I forgot where we were.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_08: We were hunting somewhere else.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_08: And I left him in the truck.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_08: I said, I'm not giving him a book.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_08: I'd be like giving Michelangelo a paintbrush.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_08: It's like I I don't even want him to read.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_08: And I finally said, you know what?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_08: I'm gonna do it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_08: So I just grabbed the books and I said, Now, Mr.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_08: Kelly, this ain't nothing like the 10th Legion or Dealer, none of that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_08: It's not a John Grisher novel, but I wanted you to have them.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_08: Well, thank you, cuz.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I think it was the next day, the middle of the day, he brought him.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_08: I saw him walking back to me and I was like, Oh no, let's go get him back.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_08: He said, cuz I I really enjoyed those.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_08: I want you to sign them.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm telling you, from that point on, when we would sit down and visit, he he treated me more like a colleague than he did a cameraman.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_08: It meant the world to me.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_08: And at some point, he said, uh he said, Man, I was giggling about this and get he could read so fast.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_08: He said, and he and I'll never forget this, never forget where I was sitting, what it looked like and all that.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_08: He said, if you write a third one, man, I'd do I'd love to do the forward.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_08: And I had no intentions of writing a third book, and I went home and wrote a third book just just so he could write the forward to it.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_08: And it was like you know, other than my family and all that, that might be the coolest thing ever to have Tom Kelly write a forward.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_08: And he he in typical fashion, it took him you know, just a few minutes to lay stuff out that was just like, I can't believe that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm not bragging on myself, and I know it's not about me, but I'm just telling you.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_08: He was uh you know, you think of Tom Kelly, and he was the guy that wrote the Tenth League, and he was so much more than that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_08: Thirty something years in the military, uh fifty years in the timber business, just intelligent beyond belief, and just so humble about his writing.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_08: And uh he just did he his style was purely his style, but man, uh I am so glad that Moss Yoke and me got to hang out with him, you know.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_08: Toxie and I went to Texas and got him his first Rio grand, and I will never forget him uh talking about the Rio turkey before and after the hunt.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_08: It was the mo it was just the most priceless thing ever.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_07: Yep, soft thank carry a big stick.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_07: We have the man.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_07: My hero and cuz his hero.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_07: From from way in childhood.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_06: Rios are good turkeys.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_06: The bad rap at Rio is getting about the head a bit itching by people that never saw a riot.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_06: The story that I had heard before I came over there.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_06: You go over there and shoot those turkeys that roost on a fence post.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_06: The ones that don't roost on a fence post roost on a power line.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_06: They run in droves of at least 200.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_06: If you can find a place where there's water, all you gotta do is sit there and wait and pick out the fat ones on the long-bearded roof.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_06: And uh, it really oughtn't it really ain't took you a minute.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_06: Even if you go, you really ought not to tell anybody about it because it's sort of simple and you really don't, you know, your purity factors.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_06: They appear to me to be bigger than my turkeys.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_06: They clearly got bigger feet, but they are but they are just as wild as my turkeys, they just as you you can't make any more mistakes with them than you can without.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_06: Pretty good at him.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe a little bit of difference in the way a turkey acts if all his life he has lived in in great big droves of turkeys.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_06: These turkeys are a lot of fun, and they're just as hard to deal with as turkeys in Alabama, and they will have embarrassed me just as much as turkeys do.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_06: Every bit of 12 or 15, and I really couldn't tell because one would start and one would be gobbling before he stopped.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_06: And why I gotta drive all the way out there and go, you stay out there four days and kill four turkeys and then come on back.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_06: And I just didn't really want to do it.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_06: Turkey hunting, in my opinion, is supposed to be hard, which is why I object to a lot of people doing for me.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_06: And I sort of just took the opinion that I ain't doing that.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I know them folks, they're nice folks, and they, but they don't just don't know no better, you know.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_06: It's like like uh, and I don't want to stop anybody from doing anything.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_06: Like I didn't, I stole this line from King Edward VII when he said people can do whatever they want to as long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_06: And and and hunting the Rios didn't scare the horses, but I didn't really want to do none of it.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_06: Uh uh, I am sorry I waited this long, and if anybody is foolish enough to ask me back, I'm coming back again just as quick as they'll let me.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_08: He got Toxie got back behind us.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_08: I found him killing the turkey, it was awesome.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_08: And then the the ranch owner said, Taxi, you gotta get one.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_08: And Toxie's like, I ain't shooting anything unless Tom Kelly calls it up for me.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_08: And he did with the same box call, he called up one for me in North Dakota.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_08: And remember we had it tanned and it's hanging in your office.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_08: That's the turkey.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's the one I have hanging up.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_08: That's the one you had.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_08: He called up a turkey for me, and he called up one for Toxie.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_08: And he used that same box call, and it was like look, if you ever if you ever get confused looking at social media about, you know, what should I post, how should I act, what should I do, what's important.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_08: Go read the 10th Legion.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_08: And just that's what's important about turkey hunting.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_08: And and Tom Kelly got that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_10: And it's on the last page of his book, it says, the first turkey that ever came to me on the ground did it a long time ago.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_06: I sat there with my hands shaking and my breath short, and my heart hammering so hard I could not understand why he could not hear it.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_06: The last turkey that came to me last spring had exactly the same effect, and the day that this does not happen to me is the day that I quit.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_08: You know, Old Timer builds knives with durability in mind.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_08: They also want it to be a tool that is comfortable enough to work with day after day.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_08: Since the beginning, Old Timer has made knives for those who don't rely on others to get the job done.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_08: I love that.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_08: Old Timer built for generations.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_08: You know, there's nothing I love more than teaching my grandkids how to be better woodsmen.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_08: The Onex app helps me do that in a way that makes sense to them.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_08: They're all about apps and that phone.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_08: Using Onex to set optimal wind on stands that should or shouldn't be hunted on certain winds makes it easy for them to understand that, hey, a north wind blows from the north, not to the north.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_08: Using that little slope angle layer when teaching them how to read topographical maps, but the color-coded shading makes it a lot easier to explain to them what tightly stacked tofo lines mean.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_08: Bottom line Onex Hunt makes learning fun for those young ones and still helps me find success in the field.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_08: It's an easy to use platform.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_08: Hey, even I can do it.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_08: I suggest it for any age outdoorsman.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to Fist Full of Dirt with Cut Strickland.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Presented by Mazio Properties.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_06: I am convinced that your mind is a muscle.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_06: If you don't do something to keep your mind active, you age all over, not just in the mind.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_06: And Tucky Honey absolutely demands that you think all the time because they are the model line in Shakespeare.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_06: It says it cannot with a hub custom state of variety.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_06: Make the hood in the two activity.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_06: This is my 7050 70 and 30.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not gonna left to get to 16 because I'm not.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_06: But if I left it to 150, I would still be doing those things.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_06: You never learned it and in my opinion that I'm gonna.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_06: It was about 1968 because it was a the year after my door was born year after that.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_06: And never heard a turkey gamble now.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_06: I call people up that's gonna be something if it's something I have no idea what comes.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_06: If I didn't, I wouldn't be sitting talking to you.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_06: I've been able to eat with three four folks in the world.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_06: Then I would bother the talk to after it's supposed to be for I am not a professional writer.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_06: I know less about the placement of cameras and semicoders than any man who ever lived in the world.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_06: My grandma is a frocious.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_06: I think people like to read something that's done by somebody who is not interested in trying to impress them, is not trying to instruct them, and is not being moralistic.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_06: Here's a guy who had a good time doing something and he wants to take you back.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_06: And ever since you were that big, and somebody we used to call it telling shows, the kid he went to the picture show would come back and tell the show to the kids it wasn't I'm a show teller.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_08: You know, one of the greatest things about turkeys is you don't have to score them.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_08: You don't have to measure this and measure that.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_08: And uh it's just it's just special.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_08: And and his timing to me coming along during that and getting introduced to all these young people and all that was just nothing but divine intervention.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_08: And uh man, he he will be missed.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_08: And I can tell you this, I'm so grateful that you and I both got to meet his daughter.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_08: Laura Laura, she is a sweetheart, and she is so much like him.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_08: It's just crazy.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's fun to watch.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's fun to be around her.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_08: Oh look, I hung out with her in her booth at the NWTF.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_08: They were doing the the reintroduction of the 10th Legion, whatever it was, and she she is just as quick witted.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_13: That's a little firecracker, sharp-tongued as he is.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_08: And it's like, that's cool.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_08: We she's gonna keep that legacy going, and we're gonna we're gonna help her because uh I'm pretty sure there won't be another uh Colonel Tom Kelly.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_08: You know, everybody that watched the thing with uh the Colonel and the Fox.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_08: You know, there's generational people that come around every so often and uh doesn't take a defining moment in a sit down looking going, well that that that's a generational person right there.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_08: So anyway, just uh Lauren's got some uh some cool sound bites.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_08: That's what we're here to listen to.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_08: Just kind of sound bites of the colonel, along with his unbelievable skill for putting words to paper, his voice.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: And storytelling and the combination of his voice and his storytelling.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's just kind of magic.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, we sat him down.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_08: I think we were I don't know what where we were.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_08: We s I've interviewed him seven or eight times, five or six, and you'll probably hear some of them.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_08: And the first time I said, and I had some pick some patches out in the book and uh I said, Mr.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_08: Kelly, would you just read this from here to here?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_08: And he looked at me and said, Won't you read it?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_08: I said, People want to hear your voice, and he said, No, they he said, I'm the wordsmith, not the VO guy.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_08: And I but I I talked him into doing it, and uh thank God we did.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_06: When the alarm clock went off at half past three, he shut it off with an instinctive snatch and lay in bed for a minute, gathering his juices.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_06: He got up and padded barefoot to the window and saw a thousand stars above and between the red oak tree and the lumber pile in the backyard.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_06: He walked down the hall and through the den into the kitchen and with a minimum of noise started his pipe in the coffee pot in that order.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_06: Then he went in and woke up the child by kissing her on the back of the neck as usual at quarter to four.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_06: She was sleepy and subdued, and he offered to leave her home, but she declined.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_06: She dressed in her room while he dressed in the dim kitchen to the sound of the coffee pot, and when he came back into the den, she was sitting in the chair struggling with her bootlaces.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_06: He offered Napoleon's remark about four o'clock in the morning, soldiers, was rewarded with a pained look, and went back into the kitchen and poured the coffee into the thermos.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_06: He took his gun from the corner where it stood behind a basket of miscellaneous sporting equipment belonging to the child, picked up a box of matches from the top of the refrigerator, and walked back into the den.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_06: She was sitting in the big chair, fully dressed, with her boots cross-laced over missed holes, and with one side of her collar tucked under her shirt.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_06: Her cap was in her lap and she was nearly asleep.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_06: They walked down the front steps on the way to the car at four o'clock.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_06: Nine-year-old girls do not drink coffee and are therefore unaware of one of the most marvelous accomplishments of the Confederate Army.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_06: This incomparable organization fought the war without coffee.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_06: They fought it, in fact, on a miserable substitute of ground parched acorns, which must have been infinitely worse than total abstinence.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_06: Heroism comes in all forms.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_06: Nine-year-old girls breakfast on a package of dusty-tasting donuts, thickly coated with powdered sugar, accompanied by a can of remarkably sweet and sticky orange drink.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_06: They eat and drink these horrors at five minutes after four in the morning with every indication of enjoyment.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_06: Heroism, as had been previously noted, comes in a variety of forms.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_06: After she had finished the donuts, the child put the remnants, half a can, of the sticky orange drink on the floor of the car so it'd be sure to tipped over later and slept quietly with her head on the man's leg.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_06: The early morning radio poured out its normal stream of farm news and livestock bulletins interspurched between mournful ballads of broken dreams and hopeless loves.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_06: The child woke up when he turned off the highway onto the dirt road and set up when the car bumped across the first of the two log runways on the way in.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_06: When he got out to unlock the gate, he left the car door open, and the cool morning air coming in at the open door completed the process of awakening her.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_06: It was quarter to five when he stopped the car at the edge of the woods and switched off the lights.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_06: He ministered to the child there in the dark, spraying her hat and her hands and legs with insect repellent.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_06: He dabbed some on her ears and neck as well as on his own, slid the gun out of the case and loaded it, and walked northwest across the pasture with the child holding his hand.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_06: Nine is still young enough to feel the need for physical contact in the woods at night.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_06: It was getting light out in the pasture.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_06: He had stayed out there to make it easier for her to walk, but it was still dark down in the woods when they came to the northwest corner.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_06: He stopped and leaned his gun up against a tree and knelt down to listen.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_06: The child knelt beside him, facing in the same direction, with her cap turned up in imitation of his own.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_06: There had been a chug Wheels water calling constantly ever since they had left the car, and he debated telling her the story of the man who chopped up his wife because she wouldn't stop the whipperwheels.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_06: He could tell the story in whispers, but there was no way for her to giggle in whispers, so he decided against it.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_06: The first cardinal began, then the two dozen odd bird calls he couldn't identify.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_06: Two warblers flying in close line of stunning cut across the corner of the pasture and flew between the man and the child, making them both flinch.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_06: At a range of three feet, even a two-ounce wobbler's wings make him sound as big as an eagle.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_06: He had raised his hands to his mouth and inhaled, and was just at the point of hooting like an owl when a turkey gobbled at the extreme northeast corner of the pasture, three quarters of a mile from where they knelt.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_06: They came up instantly, the girl classifying the sound as quickly as he, and he collected his gun and started down the north fence, still out in the pasture at a fast walk.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_08: Out of all the books and all the writings, not everything's a turkey store.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_08: Do you have a favorite passage or a favorite page or favorite title?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_08: And I know that's a tough question, but do you have a a favorite passage or paragraph that your dad wrote?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's hard.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_05: It's like saying, you know, you know, pick your fate favorite child.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_05: Um you know, there's there's one that that I love, and and he wrote a lot of um stories with with me and him about the time we went and had together, which was really fun.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_05: And um you know, I when I was younger, I think I truly appreciated all of it now that I'm older.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_05: I kind of look back at the story of the time that we had together in the morning.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um and we were in there.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my word.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's not it's not necessarily learning, but it's humanity.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, what a uh what a absolute national treasure was uh Colonel Tom Kelly.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_08: God bless his soul, God bless his family.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I'm not gonna say I'm gonna miss him because I'm gonna think about him all the time.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: I always read the 10th Legion again before spring, but uh I'm always surprised how many times we quote him during turkey season on episodes.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: We'll we'll quote it, and you're like, Oh, that was a Tom Kelly quote.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and uh, you know, I made a post the day after he passed, and it was just a clip from uh our Macio Hunting the Country episode, an afternoon on the handles.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_06: And uh I thought that was fitting because he was talking about his good hunt, his good hunting buddy Jim Hart Andrews, and I was like, uh he was talking about the funeral oration back in the day, and uh and the way he ended that, and he said, he's talking about all those turkeys gobbling and the relationship I had with the guy that I was talking about in there was was was was a long one.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_06: Uh it was 40 years long.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_06: We got along together great.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_06: For most of that time he worked for me, but that didn't matter.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it was not it was not boss and worker, it was two human beings.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_06: And I think everybody, somewhere in his memory, has got a human being that it may have been a relative, it may not have been, somebody that he was really a kindred spirit with, and when that kindred spirit goes away for a while at least he's half a man.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_06: Some of the people that come up in front of me at the thing, at that thing, and say, I saw that show, and they say that you and Cuz made.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_06: It ain't you and Cuz, it's cuz ain't me, but that's the way they say it.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_06: I saw that show that you and Cuz made, and I cry.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_06: I believe he could scatter one in BMW Square in downtown Mobile.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_06: The second service was called the funeral oration, and at this moment the preacher informed the congregation as to what direction, in his opinion, the soul of the deceased had gone.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_06: I would have been willing to bet that there had not been one delivered in this state, even in one of the backwoods serpent-handling congregations since 1910.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_06: But I am pretty well convinced that last Easter Saturday morning in Pickens County, Alabama, I heard one.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_06: There was a first-class natural blind in a clump of buckeye bushes at the base of a two-foot ash, and all I had to do was sit down and get comfortable.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_06: There were positively four turkeys.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_06: I am morally certain they were five, and they gobbled at every sound but one.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_06: All of these turkeys flew down on the ground within five minutes after I got there, and the gobbling on the ground was unlike anything I have ever heard.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_06: They gobbled at crows and owls and a pair of red-shouldered hawks, they gobbled at wood ducks, they gobbled at each other, they gobbled at every single sound but me.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_06: I never got an answer, I never made any turkey stop gobbling.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_06: I was treated from beginning to end completely as a non-person.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_06: No sound I made or didn't make had any effect upon the proceedings whatsoever until they all finally shut up and walked off.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_06: The thought occurred to me on the way back home that it was just as if I had been attending a performance.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_06: And then I was struck with the thought that maybe I had been.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe it was a funeral oration handled from the other side.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_06: It was never written that the oration had to be delivered in the English language.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_06: Nobody ever said the orator had to be wearing black broadcloth rather than feathers.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe when these things are handled from the far side rather than the near, they do them in a different way, and that this was simply a collection of his new friends sent down here to tell the world they had welcomed him through the gates.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_06: As far as I was concerned, the untie oration, if there was one, was conducted simply as a matter of confirmation and only served to convince those persons still in doubt.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_06: There was no need for it at all if it was being done for my benefit.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_06: I already knew which way you went.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_08: He said nobody ever said that it had to be delivered by somebody in black cloth, and if it was done for me, I didn't need it at all.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_08: Already knew which way he went.