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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 5 2 These and many other turkey encounters form a mélange of memories. Among them are a duel of wits with a gobbling jake accompanied by a half-dozen hens, spotting a treasure trove of arrowheads as a gobbler marched across a field, three delightful days with Jim and Sherry Crumley of Trebark Camouflage fame, and a solitary hunt where I watched enchanted as a pair of bobcats played a game of grab ass in what presumably was a mating ritual. Hopefully you begin to get some hint of what turkey hunting in the Black Belt has meant to me over the years. It has given me pleasure in more than ample measure, and along with the treasure cached in the storehouse of my mind, there is something more tangible. Across the room from where this is being written are decorative boxes filled with shotgun hulls. Each shotshell holds a turkey beard and a tiny scroll of paper on which is typed a brief account of that particular hunt—the date, gun and ammo used, weather conditions, type of call, and how the turkey behaved. By merely picking up one of the shotshells and reading the account, I am transported back to wondrous moments under the southern sun. Many of them took place in Alabama's Black Belt, where Dame Fortune has been kind to me when it comes to shaping memories to savor for a lifetime. n If yOu wANT TO GO The Alabama Black Belt Adventures Association (ABBAA) is an umbrella organization serving guides, outfitters, and plantations in the Black Belt. It lists a whopping 52 destinations in its membership, and well over half of them offer turkey hunting. In all likelihood, there's nowhere else in the country where you will find a comparable concentration of guided turkey hunting opportunities, and that fact in and of itself speaks eloquently of the region's first- rate sport in connection with His Majesty, the wild gobbler. Knowledgeable guides are an integral part of the overall picture, and here you will find seasoned hunters fully fluent in turkey talk and holding advanced degrees in that critical element of success in the sport, woodsmanship. Visitwww.alabamablackbeltadventures. com or e-mail the group's competent and congenial director, Pam Swanner, pam@ alabamablackbeltadventures.com for full details and trip-planning information. the landowner scrambled to get his gun from the truck, Eddie winked at me then whispered: "Aw, that bird doesn't sound like he'll come to a call. Let's just go get us a sausage biscuit." And we did just that, but only after setting up on the gobbler, which in short order came straight to the call. Another memorable hunt involved three days of frustration with Danny Hawkins on game-laden land near Eufaula that has been in his family for generations. On the last day, a turnaround lasting no more than 30 minutes wiped away every vestige of our vexation. It started with a mid-morning call, again on my trusty wingbone suction yelper, that brought a distant gobble. We scrambled to close ground and set up. Once positioned, three longbeards showed up almost immediately after we called. No sooner had Danny whispered "shoot the strutter" than the deed was done. This was a classic example—commonplace in turkey hunting—of something suddenly seeming so easy after being so difficult. Predictably, the tides turned on another occasion while hunting with Danny's brother, Craig. Amazingly, with winds whistling at 25 to 30 miles-an-hour, we heard a gobbler. Indeed, he came to us in short order, but somehow, despite Craig repeatedly whispering "there he is," I couldn't make him out. The upshot was the gobbler suddenly remembered he had urgent business two counties away, a decision that elicited a string of socially unacceptable portions of my vocabulary and keen disappointment. D isappointment, with soaring highs and abysmal lows, is an integral part of turkey hunting. The incidents I've relived constitute a mere sampling of my adventures with black-bearded toms in the Black Belt. There was the turkey that found salvation in a six-inch diameter pine, the only standing tree in a clear-cut, placed precisely between him and me. Or another one that spooked and was killed stone dead in flight only to have my mortified guide say: "We never shoot at flying turkeys." Or the time when I managed a singularly shameful miss at a strutting tom while Pam Swanner, director of the Alabama Black Belt Adventures Association, looked on in a mixture of anguish and disbelief. White, whose skills were a silent reminder that when it comes to success in the turkey woods, there's no substitute for local knowledge, we soon located another bird. Tes then brought into play an enviable blend of calling skill, bellying through broomsedge, and knowing when to move. The end result was a second Black Belt gobbler and one of the most satisfying mornings afield I can remember. That afternoon we fished a nearby pond where bream were bedding and bass were on the prowl, then enjoyed a fish fry—altogether the cherry atop our sporting sundae. As an aside, one of the real fringe benefits to turkey hunting in the Black Belt is that if you get a bird during your morning hunt, there are usually fishing opportunities close by to consume the rest of the day. Eddie Salter is arguably the finest hunter I've ever been privileged to accompany in the turkey woods, and like Ron and Tes Jolly, he's a product of Alabama's Black Belt. Eddie knows turkeys in a fashion reminiscent of the sport's icons from yesteryear, such as Ben Rodgers Lee and Doug Camp (both, incidentally, Alabamians). Somehow Eddie just BELIEVES—believes that there's a turkey just over the next ridge, down in the next hollow, or sure to answer your next call. Together, we've seen the last hurrah of a score or more turkeys, but the one that stands out in my mind was on a morning when Eddie was miserable and running a fever. We were hunting the property of a friend and over the course of the morning we must have stopped and called at 30 likely spots without hearing so much as a hint of a gobble. Clearly exasperated, the landowner finally said, "Let's just give up and go get a Hardee's breakfast biscuit." Salter agreed but indicated he wanted to try one final spate of calling before we threw in the towel. He called, and once again there was nothing but the sounds of silence. Turning to me, Eddie suggested that I venture a few yelps on my wingbone, which is my go-to call. To our amazement, a nearby gobbler responded immediately. Eddie may have felt rotten, but he hadn't lost his keen sense of humor. As BLACK BEARDS Continued from page 131