Show Notes
We're continuing our 49 mini series on the Limbhanger Turkey Hunting Podcast this week with Bonce Stanley, of The Bayside Legion.
Bonce is an absolute animal when it comes to being a traveling turkey hunter. In fact, he just completed his US Super Slam last year in spring 2022.
In this episode, Bonce shares some of the practical things he had to do while trying to complete the slam. Things like: travel, state laws, packing, lodging etc. In all reality, this episode will give you insight on traveling to hunt, no matter what game animal you're hunting.
We hope you're enjoying the Limbhanger podcast! Thanks for tuning in!
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Limb Hangar Turkey Hunt podcast, brought to you by Grounded Brand and their new impact 2.0 Turkey vest. Get grounded@groundedbrand.com. The limb Hangar Turkey Hunt Podcast strives to bring opinions and discussions from all aspects of the Turkey hunting community. From legendary Turkey hunters who hunted in military fatigues to the modern day hunters embracing technology while maintaining traditions passed along for generations.
All are welcome at this round table conversation about one of the wart creatures in North America, wild Turkey. You'll stick around. It's gonna be a great show.
Welcome back to another episode of the Limb Hanger Turkey Hunting podcast. Every time I listen to that intro, I'm like, could you sound a more redneck. It's like welcome to the Limb Hanger Turkey Hunting [00:01:00] podcast. Today I got, if you want it sound redneck. You just should have had me read it.
Yeah, no kidding. We got Adam Cruz, Joey Bell, and our guest this week is Bon Stanley on the 49 Series Bons. How's it going? It's going pretty good about yourself. Can't complain one bit. We are one day closer to Turkey season today, and I'm fired up. Some states have already opened. Florida is Yes, sir.
Open right now and the Southern Zone. I'm surprised that you aren't there right this second. Vaz. I am not sure why I'm not, to be honest, but I'm not, I'm planning on the northern section of Florida. But I don't know why I decided that at the time. I just decided I was hunting the northern section this year and so it seemed responsible.
I'm not down in Florida now, but I'm kinda kicking myself. Yeah, maybe . It seemed like a responsible decision. That's how I would probably like package Florida to my wife. Florida [00:02:00] opens like actually really early, but I'm not going until a week later because I wanna spend one more week with you and then it's That's right.
The goal is to be able to hunt more in Turkey season probably wouldn't work. But today we're gonna talk about the the 49 state slam, the US Slam. Correct? Correct. Y'all, you guys have, y'all corrected me cuz there's all kinds of d there's more slams in the Turkey world than there are on like the Dang.
Denny's menu. . There's so many slams. I can't keep up with all of them. You got the Grand Slam, which sounds amazing. The Grand Slam sounds huge, but it's not the big one, right? Am I right? I'm looking at Adam to just correct me on something. I know you guys can't tell, but I'm looking at Adam to correct me on this now I know where I'm at on your screen.
No, this is the big one. So it's good to have somebody on the podcast who's willing to make the sacrifices. Go try to go out there and do it too. So this should be fun, dude. Yeah. And Vance, you correct [00:03:00] me if I'm wrong, either you're really close to completing it or you just completed it recently, like I completed it last May.
Last May on my birthday. May action. Wow. Nice. Geez, that's so cool. What was your what was your final state? Yeah, Pennsylvania. Oh man, that's really cool. Yeah. That's close though. Your house too, right? Where are you from? I'm from Delaware, so yeah. It, borders my state. So yeah, , wait, time out.
Pennsylvania. Where actually killed wasn't that close. Pennsylvania borders, Delaware. , we you map after it's my geography is so messed up for the northeast. Are there, it's all to me it feels like Delaware should be a thousand miles away from Pennsylvania. Jesus, man. I'm gonna have to. So now Pennsylvania, we're actually Go ahead.
Long, long story but I'll sum it up real quick. In short it was because I knew that. ? Pretty [00:04:00] much the entire time that I was trying to complete the US Super slam that I put a lot of effort into it. My wife and I were a kid, and I knew eventually that was gonna happen, so I wanted to try to leave some states that were close to home that I could jump to and hunt a weekend if I needed to.
And so it just ended up being, I had hunted Pennsylvania multiple times last spring before I actually killed my bird. I hunted Pennsylvania, left to other states, killed birds, came back to Pennsylvania, and then there was a couple weeks there where I was going up before work two to three days a week trying to kill a bird in Pennsylvania and just wasn't having too much luck until the end of the season, so Bob, what do you do for work? I'm always curious to hear what you know, guys that either complete the slam or deep into the process of the Slam. What do you do for work that allows you to hit multiple states every spring? I would not suggest doing what I do to anybody who wants to travel, to hunt anything.
The [00:05:00] only way that I've made this work is I've worked for my company for 15 years. I'm a store manager for AutoZone and so I've worked for them for 15 years. I've got a good amount of vacation time saved up. With me being a store manager, I can fluctuate my schedule a little bit. So like before I go to Florida this year I'm in, I'm gonna end up working the first four and a half days, but I have to work so many hours a week, but I can manipulate when I do that.
So I'm gonna have, probably four days of 14 hour days and then a short day, and then I can get out early and then I can book it to Florida so that way I can maximize my time hunting. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend it cuz it's a, it means you have to work, 14, 16 hour days sometimes in order to get those hours in to try to do that stuff.
But I've figured out a way to make it work. So I was sitting here thinking about I guess I got a two part question. Question number one would be, how long did it take you to [00:06:00] complete the 49? And question number two is to be able to do that, I know you gotta take off an extreme amount of days every year to get it done.
How many days off are you having to take a year just to make it happen? A two question. So the first part I, in the last five years I hunted 48 states. A lot of those were repeat states, but I did hunt 48 states in the last five years. The only state I've not been to in the last five years was Tennessee.
And I'm going back there this spring. The second part of that question 2020 really helped me and I could not have done it without that spring. In 2020, AutoZone decided that if you were out of the state, you had to quarantine for two weeks before you could come back to work. I was in Alabama when they issued that rule and because I was already out of state, I had to quarantine for two [00:07:00] weeks before I could come back to work.
There was no stretch during the spring season where I was home for two consecutive weeks. So my boss just said, I will see you when you can quarantine for two weeks. Cuz at the time I was not a store manager. I had actually just recently stepped down so that, I mean it was beautifully perfect timing.
Cuz I'd stepped down to try real estate. And long story short, I'm still a manager for auto design. But anyway, I had stepped down. I was given the okay to go travel for the entire spring. And so I told my wife, I said, look, I'm never gonna have another opportunity like this. So I'm sorry, but I have to go do this.
I'm never gonna have the entire spring off to go chase turkeys. And so I did. I drove back home, saw her for a couple days, and then I just booked it west and hunted pretty much every single day. So to answer your question, as many days as you possibly can get is what you need. I don't know how else to say you need as many days as [00:08:00] possible.
I wanna hunt as many days as possible, so I'm glad more than I have. It just depends. Some states, , some states take a long time. I forget the exact number of days I hunt in Pennsylvania, but. close to 13, 14, 15. Connecticut was right there. 13 days at opening in Connecticut. Both of those states took me, I didn't kill until my third year going to those states.
Other states, I walked into the state, found the Cherokee, and walked out of the state within a couple of hours. So it just depends. But going and doing this slam it obviously takes a lot of planning, probably a lot of in the moment type planning. You can't ever, you can't ever really like you just said, some of 'em take you days, some of 'em take you hours to com to complete that state.
What, when did you first decide that it was something that was like, that you wanted to do? Obviously you probably killed some turkeys before it was e even a thought in your mind to try to complete this. How long [00:09:00] ago was that when you were like, okay, this is my goal to complete this till now when you're finally done.
Thousand and one to be exact. So my dad has been a traveling Turkey hunter for forever, way before, and he always used to go to South Carolina to Turkey hunt. And that's where I grew up Turkey hunting. And my dad came back home from a South Carolina trip and he talked about this guy that he had met.
His name was Doc Weddle, and he said that Doc was trying to shoot a Turkey in all 49 states. I had never heard of such a thing, but I grew up also as a competition, duck and goose collar. So we traveled the country competing in all the different calling contests. I've competed at the world at Stuttgart in in east of Maryland a bunch of times.
So I was used to traveling and used to playing. Back then, we didn't have TVs and cars and all that stuff, so we, we had an, and so we played the the state game and we played the state capital game and all that stuff. So I'd always wanted to travel to all these states. And then when he [00:10:00] told me about that, I was just like that's mind blowing.
I remember right where I was standing in my kitchen when he told me that. It just wasn't until recently that I had the vacation time saved up, that I could actually, the vacation time and the money that I could afford to travel the way I wanted to bons. Do you know how many US Slams Dock has?
I know he's got multiple, he's got three. Is that right? Or do you know? I think he. He's at four and I think he said he's close to getting number five. Wow. That's incredible. So my my follow up question to that, do you have plans to get a second one, or, I know you just completed it last year, so maybe it's a little early in the game for you to decide, whether or not you want to actively pursue another one.
But is it something that's sitting in the back of your mind like, Hey, I wanna do this again. Maybe not in five years or something, but maybe maybe you stretch it out a little more the next time. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean [00:11:00] it's, there was a bunch of states that I really wanna go back to and want to revisit and that's my plan is for those states to go back and visit them first.
And then there's some other states that I. Really want to go back to, but if I wanna do it, someone to need to Rhode Island, it's one of those states, I'm gonna have to go back to Rhode Island at some point. It is what it is. But yeah, I do wanna get at least two. But really I, at this point, I just wanna travel and Turkey hunt and if I get two, great.
If I get five, great. If I get 10, great. I'm not, I don't really care about the number after that. I just wanna travel on Turkey hunt. That was my question. Next is just like, how important, is it to, are you ranking like the experience versus the accomplishment? So the ex the experience would be like going to those states that were your favorite experiences and getting on birds, or just the accomplishment of knocking something out again?
More of just the experience. I would say, at this point I just [00:12:00] wanna. I just want a Turkey hunt. , especially now when it hasn't happened in a long time, I just want to be back out in the woods and I want to hear a Turkey gobble. So Vaz, how old are you? 35. 35, man. So I wouldn't consider 35 to be an old guy.
Definitely not old enough to be like even questioning, being able to pull off doing it a second time seems not even a question. Like Sure freaking go do it. Yeah. I'm just not gonna hit it with the same intensity that Yeah. I did before and really, that it goes back to.
I knew at some point my wife was gonna get pregnant. And so that kind of was a big motivating factor. And it was like, all right, I gotta try and get as many stays down as I can while I can. Cuz I knew once I had a kid that was gonna slow me up. And I did, I had my daughter in August of this [00:13:00] past year in 2022.
So right after I finished the Slam I had my daughter. So that was a big motivating factor in that last season to really try to, get it done. But yeah, it's, it's still there just. It's different. I don't have that same drive to, I have to go, at least I say this now, come the day that I shoot a Turkey, then, whenever that might be.
Again, hopefully it's this spring. Hopefully it's this month. But whenever that happens again, hopefully I'll have that same drive to, to keep pushing like I done. But right now it's I just wanna slow it down a little bit more. Did you plan that August birth, because I planned my August birth
Not really it, no. Without getting into too many details. Like I said, we've been trying for a couple years, so at that point it was whenever at first . I might have been trying do, like intentionally . But after a few months, I was like, okay, now we just need to let things, let nature run a score.
So yeah, my wife was pretty, I think she [00:14:00] was, had to have been extremely annoyed with me. Cause I was, looking at my calendar, I was like, okay, nine months, these three months here, March, April and May. We don't need to be going away for be locked at home for a week and a half or, however many weeks at the hospital and after the hospital and so on and so forth.
Yeah, she was over me trying to plan out of birth. But good timing nonetheless. Congratulations on not missing a weekend. Congrats to that swimmer. Yeah, , that one knew its knew its job. My, , my actual Turkey hunting into question was How do you go about planning, something like this, like for a season or for a spring when you're gonna hit X amount of states?
Are you trying to hit, states that are close together where you can knock a handful out or a few out in a week or a little over a week? A little under a week so you don't have to travel so far between 'em or what's what did your quote unquote war room look like when you were mapping all this stuff out over the last few years?
I don't know if you can tell, but behind me here, [00:15:00] there's a map. And yeah, I look at that thing all the time and I look at on and x and every other aerial map, and I do, especially in the beginning stages, it was more okay if I can come to this location and try and knock out two or three of these states, and get it into a cluster.
Once you've, and I know a lot of people don't decide to start hunting or pursuing the slam until they've got 15, 20 states or so. And so that complicates things. Because now you have to try to, you've picked, these states across the country, now you've gotta try to figure out how to group a couple of 'em together.
And sometimes it may not be that easy to group those states together. Like for example, Nevada last year, Nevada was the only thing I had at West for me to hit. So there wasn't a way for me to group that into another, into a swing. I was able to do it though with my dad and my brother who didn't have California.
So when we were able to check Nevada, then we went to California and they were able to hunt. Unfortunately they didn't get a bird in California, so now they both [00:16:00] have to go back to California. But we were able to do it that way. To summarize though, just the planning. , a lot of it was, I want to go hunt this one, lo this location.
And so let me do the research on that location and figure out what it is that I need to know to hunt that the birds in that state, whether it was a Miriam's, whether it was a Rio, whether it was whatever. And most of the time I didn't really care what the subspecies of the bird was, just for a while it was, I didn't have white tips, and I wanted to hunt turkeys with white tips.
So then it was like, all right, what turkeys have white tips? Let's go hunt there, and that was, I just wanted that bird and planned it out that way. And then, like I said, 2020 was a huge year, and a totally that year changed everything because of Covid states were shutting their seasons down. They were not selling tags.
It was pandemonium. And trying to figure out how to plan around all that stuff was tricky. But that was a [00:17:00] very good year for me.
You're talking about traveling around, man, like how what percentage of the time were you trying to fly? Are you one of these guys that, that you mind to get on an airplane or would you rather drive, like what does that look like for you? Especially going somewhere, say like the middle of the country, Kansas, Oklahoma.
Where's your preference at? Oh, I absolutely prefer to drive a hundred percent this year. I'm planning on heading back to New Mexico and I'm going to drive from here to Tennessee and then from Tennessee to New Mexico. And then I might hunt Colorado. I haven't figured out the tail end of that trip yet, but it's probably gonna be somewhere out west and then I'm gonna drive 30 some plus hours straight to come back to work.
So I would absolutely prefer to drive. I only flew to two states, and that was to Arizona, the three states, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. And I would drive every single time if I could. I don't have anything [00:18:00] against planes and planes, especially if you are trying to work around a work schedule and you can only group together a handful of days.
Flying is absolutely mandatory, but I just prefer to have my stuff with me while I'm hunting. My truck is set up, it's got a cotton in the back so I can sleep back there. I've got a drawer system. All of my stuff is there. I know no matter what I encounter, everything I need is in that truck when I pack it in springtime.
So I would prefer to drive, but I will fly if I need to. Bon I think everybody's probably wondering the same question, like it, it's such a good starter question too for a lot of this podcast. Do you have a favorite and a least favorite state,
favorite state? And I hate to blow it up even more because I have a bunch of friends that are there right now and they say that the amount of hunting pressure is ridiculous. But [00:19:00] Hawaii is my favorite state. My least favorite state is probably Rhode Island. If I had to break it down, what makes Rhode Island your least favorite?
It's tiny. And I know that's coming from Delaware, that's saying something, but it's, it just feels tiny. Whereas Delaware's got a lot of, Fairly decent sized ag field. It's just open. We've got a lot of open ground. Rhode Island feels small and it feels claustrophobic to me almost because there's not a lot of really big ag fields, at least not in the places that I hunted.
And it just feels tiny. It just the way that the state's figured out. It just it's just tiny and the wildlife areas are small. I didn't find a whole lot of turkeys on the state wildlife areas. You can hunt on private property that's not posted in Rhode Island, so that does help a little bit. But then I ran into some guides that, thought that they own the entire state and it [00:20:00] just, I did not enjoy the state of Rhode Island.
I want to get back to your flying and tips on flying because I have flown for a handful of trips and as far as efficiency goes, when. Getting somewhere in a half a day or even a full day versus two full days of driving and you're zapped by the time you get there. My situation is different cuz I fly a lot for work.
I get a lot of airline points. I haven't paid for a personal flight in 10 years probably. So I know I, my situation is different, but it's so easy to accrue points like through Southwest. If you have a Southwest credit card, and especially if you have one for business, I've got a farmer friend of mine, he gets like companion pass every year, which involves getting like a hundred thousand points on on that Southwest credit card.
But he buys like equipment and stuff like that with his, so he can rack it up pretty easy, but Just [00:21:00] like everyday Joe Blow like us, if you have a credit card and you pay off that credit card every month, you can build up, 20 something thousand points easily and that'll get you out west and back.
Now you might not be able to get your, your super slam in a handful of years just taking a one trip like that. But it, I think people are intimidated to fly and I don't think they should be because it is super easy to check a shotgun on an airplane and go somewhere. It's super easy to get Turkey meat and Turkey pelts fans, whatever, back in a carryon bag.
Now you say that didn't, it didn't you not get Turkey fans and pelts. On a flight. Full disclosure, , that was from Mexico. Okay. In the Quick Story we'll tell that story real quick. My buddy Jacob and I went down to Mexico and shot some gold turkeys last year. And on the way back so we had to cross over the border down there in Douglas, Arizona.
And US [00:22:00] Customs had to inspect the birds or inspect the pelts or whatever. We caved 'em out and everything. And we basically had 'em in a little, in a garbage bag that was probably eight inches wide by, I don't know, 16 inches, long. Super tiny. By the time you cape 'em all out and everything, they're pretty compact.
And so they inspected them. We had 'em wrapped up in black garbage bags. They inspected them. They wrapped 'em up in bright yellow US customs labeled tape. And so we just had 'em in this cooler. We taped up the cooler, checked the cooler at the airport. Up in the Phoenix is where we flew out of. And a TSA for some reason.
We had my bird, Jacob's bird. My buddy Chris Jenkins had two birds in there and his son also had two birds. So we had six birds in this cooler, and they misplaced three or four of them TSA did. They kept, they found, they left my bird in there. They left one of Chris's birds [00:23:00] in there and they lost basically the rest of them.
Now, how, I don't know, because ours our Chris and I's birds were like on the top of the cooler. So they would've had, when they inspected this cooler TSA at the airport, they would've had to remove Chris and I. Birds take all the other ones out and just put hours back in. So yeah. Long story short T S A lost a handful of birds, but.
that was tsa, that was customs. That I think that was an off, the off chance that happens. Normally when Jacob and I travel, when we've traveled the last handful of years, we haven't really had any issues, knock on wood. Our guns have made it unscathed. We haven't lost any, meat or anything coming back.
And it's, like I said, it's a lot simpler than people think and people shouldn't be intimidated by it. So do you have any particular tips for, [00:24:00] flying or anything that maybe somebody doesn't really think of when they go to fly to go hunt somewhere? , I'm always worried about not having my stuff with me.
So in my carry-on, I will carry, like my, I use a leafy jacket generally that will be in my carry-on with me, or a camo shirt, and then maybe a thin pair of camo pants or something. And then with the gun I put some camo clothes as well, so that way if my other check bag doesn't show up, I'm gonna have some type of camo clothes that I can go hunt and my Turkey calls are gonna be on me.
Really, I, it would. It would suck to not have the other check bag with my vest and all that stuff in it, but I could get by with what's in the gun case and what's on my person. So I could make that whole system work if I needed to. So if I lost one bag, I'd still be good. And just try to make everything be nice and easy for the TSA agents.
I've always gone in there and been like, even if it's early in the morning, I'm not necessarily a morning [00:25:00] peron where I want to talk to people, but I try to put on a smile and I try to talk to 'em and I'm just ask 'em how their day is and I just try to be nice and friendly. And then generally they have given me no issues.
Actually I think the errors, no, the Nevada trip, my gun case was actually over 50. and she saw, put it on the scale, saw that it was like 51 or 52 pounds and just pushed it up with her toe a little bit to where it didn't read 50 pounds on the scale and then said, here you go. And I was good to go.
Just trying to be nice and friendly is probably the biggest the biggest PI piece of advice that I can give you is just be nice to 'em and, understand that this is just, they're doing their job and they're trying to get paid for it and go home at the end of the day.
So why make it complicated for them? My consent. Go ahead. Go ahead Joey. Yeah, I was gonna say, when when you roll up there and you're on to check a gun too I basically, I don't want to degrade those people because they don't know about guns, but you basically have to, or I [00:26:00] almost take the gum up, take the gun apart, and then put locks on the gun parts, just to give that the person at the counter, the peace of mind, they.
Who knows? When you fly into, like California for instance, or in some of these states that have pretty crazy gun laws, like a gun may be intimidating to those people. And as much as we want to, stick out our chest and not really worry about what everybody thinks, those people can just, like you just said, bounce.
They can just basically tell you to about face and go home and just not let you on the plane. , they have all the power to do that. So yeah, I take, I take the bolt outta the gun, I put gun locks, the cable locks through everything. I make it to where when I open up that gun case, somebody that doesn't know anything about guns, firearms, or anything can see, okay, I know what a lock looks like.
It's running through there. That looks like where maybe some kind of ammunition might go in. I don't know. I just try to like, make it as safe looking as possible. And then yeah, like you said, just [00:27:00] be super patient. Don't be that guy at five in the morning when you're trying to catch a flight.
Just do whatever they say and just deal with something else later. You just have your goal is to get on that plane and go, so just do whatever they say. Yep, exactly. I was gonna say, my, my nightmare story last year was I got to the airport, got my gun case out, I looked up on the counter and automatic says, man, I'm sorry, you're gonna have I didn't even open it up.
And he said, you're gonna have to turn around and go get some new locks. And I was like, what? So I, I tried opening my case and basically you could open my case maybe a quarter of an inch with those locks on there. And he's that's just not gonna work. So I literally had to get all my crap, go down the stairs, get back onto a bus, hit the long term terminal.
Cause I was gonna be out there almost a whole week. Go to a Walmart, man, I you talking about I'm sprinting through the parking lot, sprinting back to my truck, sprinting back through the airport, get back there. And [00:28:00] honestly, the locks I bought, I don't think they were any shorter, but the guy's it's fine.
Just whatever. So this year, like I'm already stressing out cause I'm getting on a plane in about a couple weeks here and I'm thinking about the same thing man, I need to go find, procure me some locks that locks this thing really down tight. Which I don't know if anybody out there has some suggestions on that.
I'll take 'em. But I don't really wanna go buy a new gun case with the locks built in. I actually have a similar story. When I was flying back from Arizona I dropped off the br so I killed my bird in Arizona, drove to the Grand Canyon, watched the sunrise through the Grand Canyon, it was absolutely gorgeous.
Changed my flight so I could come home a day early cuz I had killed earlier than I thought I was going to in Arizona. Changed my flight. Get to the airport, I'm thinking everything's good. I'm there, hours beforehand, I'm not stressed at all. I go into the through the airport after I dropped off the rental vehicle, go to check in the bag, and I just happened to look at my gun case and there's [00:29:00] no locks on it.
And then I remembered that the locks that I had were in the rental car that I had already dropped off. So I had to run back to the rental car place they had immediately. And I don't know how they did this because I brought them back, a very dirty truck, a very, it was a suburban or something, and it was very dusty, very dirty.
But they had immediately turned around and reissued that vehicle. So they didn't have that. Is that vehicle anymore? After I finally got a hold of somebody, we're talking like two hours after I had dropped it off. I was back in there still waiting for them to give me an answer as to where this vehicle might be.
Then Fi somebody finally told me, oh no, we already had issued that vehicle out and that's why we can't find this vehicle anymore. And I'm like I need the locks that I had left in that vehicle. And so one of the people that worked there was like I'll take you to an auto parts store or something, or down on the street and we can buy locks.
And I'm like, okay, do you have an AutoZone? I work for AutoZone. I know we actually have the lock that I need [00:30:00] for my gun case in order to, for this to work. I'm like, do guys have an AutoZone? And she's yeah, we have an AutoZone. So we go to Napa, which is not AutoZone. Napa does not carry these locks, right?
So I'm like, alright, can where? Where else can we go? And she's there's a Dollar General. And I'm like, I don't think a Dollar General has it, but okay, so she takes me to the Dollar General. Nope, they don't have it either. I'm like, do you have a Lowe's, a Home Depot or something? They have a Lowe's, I think it was.
We go to Lowe's, I go running through the Lowe's and I'm like, do you guys have padlocks? And the woman that was, waiting on me, she's What's a padlock? And I'm like, , a lock and a T, and so she goes, oh, it's down this aisle, right? So I go down there and it's just the door lock. It's not acting like a door handle lock, not a act.
So I'm running through Lowe's now at this point, at Full tilt, finally find the locks by the locks, come out, put 'em in, go running over to back to the airport. I jump out the guy that originally takes my gun, he goes, yeah, we can just push it right through. And I'm like, no, we need tsa. T SSA's gotta be here [00:31:00] to check this thing.
And they're like no, we don't. We can go. And I'm like, n no, this isn't gonna work. But he takes the gun, starts to go off, somebody finally stops him. And that guy goes through, and now I'm talking, there is minutes to my plane leaving the airport. We're down to just straight minutes, right? They finally do all that stuff.
And I've got my backpack. The gun, I had another check bag, and then I had a cooler that was with me that had Turkey meat in it. So I finally get up there, go through the through the metal detector section, and they pull apart my cooler and I'm, and I've got all the Turkey meat wrapped in a bag, with the ice in it.
And I'm like, look, you can open it if you want, but it's two Turkey breasts, two wild Turkey breasts. Feel free to open it, but I guarantee that's what it is. That's why it's cold, because it's in the water, it's meat, that's what it is. So she finally says, fine, you can go. I haul butt running through the Phoenix airport, trying to get back to my gate.
Get to my gate, and there's a woman there who's trying to scan her boarding pass with her phone. [00:32:00] And she'd been trying for 15 minutes and she was the second to last person on the plane. I was the last person on the plane. If she hadn't have been trying to get her phone to scan, I would've missed the flight.
Wow. Divine intervention. Oh. And then they lost my gun on the way back. They lost my, oh, they did get it back to me. Like a week later. But it was an adventure. Everything you just said further confirms that I'd probably just rather drive everywhere. And it seems like that's the choice that you've chosen as well.
Yes, but that was self-inflicted. Had I paid better attention and taken the locks that I had already previously bought, that I had flown with, they worked great. Had I just put them on the gun case, I wouldn't have had any issues. I was there at the airport like four hours earlier or something. I had all the time in the world, but it was all self-inflicted.
So to me it feels like I, I definitely understand flying if you have like just one place that you're gonna go to, these [00:33:00] hunts that you're talking about, you went to Arizona, right? That just to do Arizona, they went to Nevada pretty much just to do Nevada. But you talk about driving for most of your hunts.
What does your like truck camp setup look like? I have a cot that's in the back and I have a memory foam mattress that fits on top of that. I've got a drawer system that I put a cooler on top of. And so yeah, I've got everything that I need in the back of that truck, in the front of the truck. I've got one of those clothes bar things.
That way I can get most of my clothes hanging up. So I've got a cooler, I've got a to a tote full of food. I've got a grill, one of those. They're all small burners, so that way I can make soup or whatever and coffee in the morning and yeah, that's about it. I live fairly deeply when I'm on the road and I'm assuming that's your, that's like your go-to way of lodging for these hunts.[00:34:00]
Oh yeah, absolutely. I that caught, I sleep great in, absolutely. And I have sun shades that go up on the sides of the truck cap and then on the back glass. So that way when I'm in there it is completely dark and , I can sleep really good in there. Bon, I don't know if you follow Parker man, but he dirtbags it like he sleeps in the most sketch places.
like boat. And I don't know if you've been to many boat ramps down south, but like the boat ramps, that's where all the drug deals and like weird transactions that you don't want to be a part of happen. That's where Parker likes to go in camp, which it freaks me out a little bit. I told you the last time we were together, I was like, man, can we like go to a Walmart or something?
We still ended up at a boat ramp. Yeah. My question is, man pitch black dark. How do you know I'm not just wanting to go there for the. Dude, , I don't know, but it freaks me out a little bit. The thing that freaks me out more is park. Oh, I shouldn't tell on him. Me and him talk about handguns all the time.
Like I'm always carrying a hundred percent of the time if I can legally carry, I am carrying. Are you carrying on [00:35:00] all these trips or is it just like too much of a hassle with state laws or you just got your shotguns, you feel like you're good? For most of it, I did have a shotgun. I do have a permit to carry in my estate so that, that gives me a good number of states that I can legally carry in.
So if I know that I'm going to stop an estate that does not allow me to carry in, for example, New Jersey. New Jersey's. Gun laws are crazy. I can't even begin to understand them all. I know what the gun, what the laws are for a shotgun, so I'm good there. Outside of that, I am not carrying a pistol anywhere near the state of New Jersey because I don't, I just don't wanna get in trouble for it.
And like I said, in a lot, most of the country I can carry, so I will carry in most of the country. But again, if I know I'm going to a state that does not allow me to, then no. I'll just sleep with a shotgun or something. And there's some weird rules you gotta pay attention to. Like Virginia has a rule that you can't, you can legally open carry in the state of Virginia, but you can't [00:36:00] have a a pistol at a rest area.
Wow. Which is weird to me. Did you find that out the hard way? No, I was researching it because I was gonna be driving through the state of Virginia and I wanted to sleep at a rest area, that was, I was just traveling through Virginia, but I figured by the time I got outta work where I, when I would get tired, that kind of stuff.
So I look ahead to see where I would be, spending the night and it was Virginia and I'm like, okay, lemme just real quickly look up the rules, have the U S C A app. And so I looked it up and it said that you can't carry in a breast area. And I'm like, that sucks
I'm, that, that sounds like I say what I did, it's it makes you think a little bit and it's, that sounds like meticulous plant, like very, sorry Joey. I know you got your hand raised over there, but just on that, it sounds like super meticulous planning. Yeah, like there's not a chance in the world that I would be planning a trip and think I wonder if I can carry.
At this rest area, , like just to look to [00:37:00] research or to research just that subject matter in the first place. I've got so many other things that I'm trying to research and think about that has to do with turkeys. Is that a pretty good scope of, are you getting that meticulous in your planning?
I tried to my dad is a, is very particular about all the rules and regulations of a given area that he is going to. And he wants to know every minute little law that he can so that way he's staying on the right side of the law. And, I try to do the same thing and there's a lot of weird.
Laws out there with some of the states. Delaware, for example, is one of the weird ones because you can't use a actual part of a Turkey while Turkey hunting. So you can't carry a Turkey wing in your vest. You can't, if you're gonna use a de decoy, you can't put a real Turkey fan on a decoy. But I'm gonna be honest, you'll be hard pressed to find that in the regulations.
Like it's not one that's they advertised, but a game wart [00:38:00] here absolutely will give you a ticket for that. Just trying to learn all those rules. That's just what I've grown up learning to do
out of out of all the states since you've completed your slam or when you completed your slam, how many of those states were you self filming in? I know the Bayside Legion's been around for a little while now. How far into the slam did you start filming everything? From the beginning.
I have filmed Turkey hunting in 48 out of the 49 states. The only one is Tennessee, because the last time I was in Tennessee was in 2008. And yeah. But every other state I have filmed from. So you don't have to start filming in Tennessee, just by the way. That's fine. . Oh I'm going, I'm not sure it's gonna do anything, but I'm gonna, it's part of who I, at this point, so don't I know one of my other, one of the other slams, you were talking about all the [00:39:00] different types of slams.
One of the slams that I came up with and that I wanna do is, film a Turkey kill in all 49 states that I did. And so there's a handful of states that I don't actually have the kill on film. So Tennessee being one of them. Rhode Island being another one. Another reason why I'm dragging my feet to go back there, but I want to have to there's, a couple that are like that.
So Hawaii actually is one that I have to go back to cuz they don't have to kill on film in Hawaii. So this self filming for But don't worry won won't mention. Yeah, say that again. I was gonna, yeah, I don't, you don't have to mention Tennessee again and we don't want to see you here. Stay the part Geez man, as possible.
I'm just kidding. Hey Vaz, I know a great sketchy boat ramp that me and you can camp out at in Tennessee and we'll find you a white Turkey. How about that?
No, man. You're sounds good. If you're welcome anytime, like [00:40:00] if you've got to Tennessee and you couldn't find a bird, which I don't think that's ever gonna be a problem, but you got here, you could look me up on Instagram, I'd. We'd go together and I'd send you to a very sketchy boat ramp and we would at least be carrying that night
Now, trust me, I have no intention to ever blow up a state that I visit. I try, Derek and I both try very hard with our filming to make sure that we don't share that. And I've even gone so far as to show film from a different. just to try to throw people off a little bit. It doesn't happen often, but there's sometimes when, I filmed something that was a dead giveaway and I cut the whole thing out and I maybe had to substitute, like hearing a bird gobbling, striking a bird.
I might have had to substitute that from a totally different state sometimes, because where I had filmed where I struck the bird, it might've been by the gate and it might've at a gate or a very easily identifiable landmark. And I'm like, I'm not going to use that. And you try to still tell the [00:41:00] story, but try to cover your tracks as much as possible.
So how often do you wanna just give up on the cell filming? Man? It has to be tough, especially Turkey hunt. It has. That? It depends on your level of dedication to the camera. My level of dedication to the camera isn't great. Which is why I always say our footage is mediocre at best because I'm there to kill a Turkey if it's on camera.
Yes. If it's not on camera. Yep. No that's just how that one went. But I have tried to get a lot better at, getting birds on camera as. matured as a Turkey hunter and as a videographer, tried to be better about it. Like Arkansas, I had that bird on camera for, it felt like 30 minutes, but it was probably like 20 seconds.
And I remember Derek looking at it and going, why were you waiting so long in that bird when he was standing right there? And I'm like I was trying to like, [00:42:00] get good footage for once, . And so it was maybe 10 seconds, but in my head it felt like 30 minutes before I pulled the triggers.
So one thing I've I've started asking guys like you that have either completed the slam or. Getting pretty close to completing it is do you ever have any desire to go up into Canada and Turkey hunt? That's something I never hear anybody talking about, and I'm probably gonna wish that I'd never even mentioned it now.
But I've been to Canada Oodles at times for work and it's absolutely gorgeous up there. For the same reason that I would go hunt Miriam's turkeys, I'd go to Canada and go hunting just to see the country and just be a part of that landscape. Has that ever crossed your mind? Or even New Zealand or something crazy like that?
It's funny you mentioned that because here's my Ontario hunter carton. I'm hunting Ontario for sure this year, and if all goes well in Ontario, I'll be in Quebec. [00:43:00] And then next year I hope to go to British Columbia. So are those Rios three provinces that. Where are they, is it Rios?
I know Rios are what they have in like Hawaii, so I just assume that's like distribution. Is that the type of turkeys they have in Canada? No, in Ontario and Quebec it's Easterns. Okay. And then in British Columbia they might have some Easterns because there are some Easterns in Montana.
But most of them are Miriam's. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense right there. Also, I don't know my Canada geography, so you said Canada, I wasn't even thinking anywhere close to Montana. might as well say Japan, talking to Yeah. Oh, Canada put another shrimp on the Bobby, Ooh. That's so cool to me though. People go to all 49 states and they go do the os, they get the oscillated Turkey down there, but man, I never hear anybody going to Canada. That's so cool to me. I'm for sure gonna keep up with you. [00:44:00] Just with that. You just blew it up, Joey. Yep. Sorry.
Sorry. All our all our Canadians that are all a boot up there, They're they just blew up their whole spot. . I can tell you this, it doesn't, from my research, it really doesn't look like there's a whole lot of public land that has turkeys on it in either providence. And it's complicated, and it seems like a lot of the public land in Ontario, you've got to buy and be part of a member of a club in order to it's public land, but you've got to apply to be a basically you donate money, but then are a member of whatever society.
And so now you're allowed to hunt this society's land. And so it's still public land, but it's, to hunt it, you've gotta pay a little bit of extra money. It's the Kings land frigging French. Yeah. Queensland, but yeah. . Yeah. Quebec is even more challenging. Quebec and Quebec is weird. Ontario has normal kind of rules and regulations that I'm used to Quebec.[00:45:00]
it is still a mystery to me and I'm planning on being there in a couple months, but it's still a it's still, it's a different, a little bit different. They seem very relaxed about their roles and that worries me because I'm thinking I'm just missing stuff and I can't find it. Yeah, man, that's awesome.
I'm super excited for you. I'm stoked now cuz I can't wait to see what all you'd stir up, up there. I'm super excited about that. Bons, just talking about different subspecies and things. I asked Shane this question last week, Mr. To hear your answers. What is, do you have like a subspecies of Turkey that like for me, when I think about Rios, I get giddy.
Like they just make me happy when I think about going hunting. Rios Miriam's is pretty close to Rios too, but I just love hunting Rios. It's so much fun. Do you have one of those, one subspecies that you're just like, ah, I wish I could do that every day. , Easterns any of them really. There's not really any particular [00:46:00] subspecies.
I like them all for different reasons. Yeah. I love Easterns because of the way they gobble. There's nothing that gobbles like a hardwoods eastern period. That's right. Especially a southern hardwoods, gobble. There's nothing like it. And then the way that they drum down there, they just drum so freaking loud.
They are just a whole different breed almost. . And then I love Florida because it's hard and it's challenging. And those birds, I swear to God, God will softer so they can be a lot closer than you think they are. And they're just, they just gobble quiet. Miriams are tough just because of where they live.
Rios, I'm not that attached to 'em. They're still fun to hunt. It just, they are like a subdued kind of Miriam's to me. They'll still run, they don't run through the same type of terrain that a Miriam's will just go just straight up. Just like the birds in New Mexico that I was at, or after that one bird, he just decided that he wanted to go up.
So he just went 2000 feet of elevation change. And then we knew it was like this, just straight up. He just took [00:47:00] off. So I think, and then I like them because of that, because that's I think the reason I like the Rios so much, and probably this maybe even for a lot of Turkey hunters, this is, it's this way.
Like it's the attachment that I have to where they live. I like West Texas, that's where I was born and raised at. So going to any part of Texas and hunting Rios to me is just really a f I appreciate it a lot Bec just because I love that terrain. I love, like I, I took a shot r last year in central Texas and I just couldn't stop taking pictures of it with a cactus.
Like for whatever reason, I just this is cool. These are cool pictures. I like this. And then of course you got the mountain, you get beautiful views chasing Miriam's around. So I definitely understand what you're saying. But you are correct in what I've seen, like traveling around. There's not a lot that beats a southern.
Eastern that gobble is, first time I ever heard of Miriam's, I was like, [00:48:00] what in God's name is that? What is that terrible sound? Because we're so used to just these hard gobbling birds. But that's cool, man. That's a, that's neat. Do you have a I guess a favorite terrain feature, like talking about that, like swamp hill country, hardwood hills, anything that you prefer?
Not, I like not really. Wherever a turkey's gobbling. I grew up in Delaware. It's not pretty here, but I also grew up hunting South Carolina river bottoms, so I, yeah, all right. I'll say that. South Carolina River Bottoms are probably one of those places where I just feel. I feel home.
I got to hunt there again last year, and I hadn't been there since 2001. So in 2022, so was it 11? 21 years? 21 years. And it was just like, oh yeah, this is what I've been missing is being back down here in these river bottoms, here in these birds gobbled. It was tough for hunting. I [00:49:00] got extremely fortunate and lucky.
And, it was great to be back to where I had cut my teeths, but outside of that, wherever a turkey's gobbling doesn't really matter if I had to sculpt like the most perfect Turkey hunt experience for me. So like when I get to heaven and Jesus and I go Turkey hunting for the first time, so we're gonna, there's gonna be like eastern birds in Miriam territory.
that respond to calls like Rio Grande Turkeys. , that's my perfect Turkey hunting experience right there. Hard goblin Eastern in the mountains that run into calls like Rio Grande turkeys. I love it. That would be a good one. . I wanna know about and I don't wanna blow up Hawaii necessarily, but the thing about Hawaii is like, it's a pretty strong commitment to go and do that.
What was it, did it almost feel for you like you were hunting turkeys in another country? It [00:50:00] felt like I was hunting turkeys on another planet. Yeah. Hawaii is so different. , and I cannot stress this enough to anybody that goes, and I've talked to now quite a few people that have gone or are currently in Hawaii.
And it is so totally different than what you think and especially, and I think it's more apparent than anywhere else I've ever hunted, is the difference between public land and private land. There is such a huge difference upon, so the state of Hawaii and the big island of Y, which is the public land that you can hunt turkeys on, has a ton of public land, very little of it.
Can you actually hunt turkeys on? And when you look at OnX and you look at the acreage of the maps, it's oh my god, that's a huge place of, huge chunk of land. You can hunt forever, but it's, it hunts so much smaller because the air is so much thinner at that high elevation where the public land is and that the turkeys are at that you can hear a Turkey for two, three miles away.
And so yeah, you hear [00:51:00] this Turkey, he's way over there, three miles over there and it might be a couple thousand feet of elevation change in addition to miles in a straight line. And then you've got all these ridges and valleys and gullies. And then the rock. The rock is unlike anything else I've ever been.
Every single footstep wants to roll your ankle, every single footstep. So you're just constantly like on edge trying to make sure that you don't trip and roll your ankle or fall down. I mean it's, I've never hunted a place quite like that. It's brutal and I want to go back every single year. Parker was really wanting to know is what kind of sketch boat ramps they really had in Hawaii.
I'm sure. I'm sure they have 'em, but I didn't see any boat ramps that not up on the mountain. Anyway, that's the ultimate water access Turkey hunt. Hawaii volcano. Yeah. Yeah. Heck yeah. That's [00:52:00] awesome. Vance, you you got other guys that are a part of your crew doing the things that y'all do doing this, chasing these states down.
Is there like a tension with, I, I noticed that you hunt a lot solo, especially while you were completing your slam. When you hunt with other people, is there this like kind of awkwardness of bons is gonna be the first shooter because he's trying to complete this, or did you ever have, you know what I'm talking about?
Did you ever have situations like that? Yes. So if you guys will go back through all of our videos in 2019, Derek and I hunted together. We went to South Florida for the first time together and hunted down there. And then we came back from there. We headed out west for our first ever western swing and we hunted Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, and in Oklahoma.
So Derek shot a bird in South Florida. Great. I was happy for him. I didn't hear a single Turkey gol in seven days. So we go to Oklahoma, he finds birds. I was not finding birds. I [00:53:00] admitted I was getting a little salty. The Turkey I ended up shooting was one that he had roosted for me because I was throwing a little hissy fit.
We both shoot birds in Oklahoma. things are back. Things are back fine. And then we decide, cuz we finished up in Oklahoma fashion than we thought. So things we were trying to de, decide what to do. So we go to Colorado, which is where Derek's father had hunted a few years previously. And he said, oh yeah, there's birds here.
He walked in, shot a bird by 10 o'clock on his first morning. So I'm thinking, all right, cool. He is done some research, he knows what he is doing. So we get up there and there's a lot of snow and by a lot of snow, like feet of snow. And I was not prepared for feet of snow. And so we go hiking up through these mountains and we're looking at OnX and I'm like, dude, there's no way we're doing this.
This is like straight vertical and this is, miles back in there and there's no like ridge line to get off. It's just up straight, up, down, up, down. I'm like, this isn't gonna work. And so again, I got a little salty. Derek myths a bird. I forget what day it was or the trip. , [00:54:00] I called across a river for him.
So was I, was a little salty. So really it comes down to me again and just being, I'd like to be sober, I like to hunt by myself. I will hunt with other people. But being on an extended trip like that just cramps myself. I out. And then when Derek shot a bird in Colorado, we were trying to decide, okay, do we stay in Colorado and hunt and try and get me a bird or do we continue to our main plan, which was New Mexico and go to New Mexico.
We ended up going to New Mexico, so I had to go back to Colorado the following year. So yeah, I think for me cuz I, I know the reason I ask you that question cause I've had those situations where I hunt by myself so stinking much. And you just get into your own routine. And also when you're creating content there is that that self-inflicted pressure of.
Trying to create. And so one of the things that I'm doing this year, which is gonna, I'm actually really looking forward to it, is I'm just gonna take [00:55:00] backseat on every team hunt that I go on. The year is gonna be dedicated to trying to get the best quality footage that I can. Whether or not I'm the shooter, it doesn't really matter, I'll shoot next.
But I have found that when I go and hunt together, we never actually have me and whoever I go with never actually have the conversation of, Hey, I'll shoot first, you shoot second, you shoot first, I shoot second. That's a hard, awkward conversation. So I say all that to say to people planning this.
That's definitely something to think about. It sounds really fun to go and do this with your buddies, do something like this with your buddies. But there are definitely gonna be times when. , you don't shoot one or your buddy doesn't shoot one in the state that y'all are in. And so man it's just, it's almost easier just to say, okay, I'm gonna be second shooter.
That way whenever it's your turn to be shooter, you get to be shooter and your designated shooter because I think there's a lot more value in that. [00:56:00] I would agree. And I would also say don't put a timetable to it and don't, maybe plan like the state, the first state that you go to plan that state, and so okay, this is the state that we're gonna hit.
This is one, the one that we're gonna focus on. If everything goes right, we'll hit state B If somehow state B goes right, we'll hit state C when Derek and I did, and I think we would do things different now. But what we had done is we're like, okay, we're gonna. Oklahoma, we're gonna be there for a maximum of, three days.
And then we're gonna go to this date and we're gonna go to this date. So we have a timetable. So that puts in unfeasible amount of pressure on yourself to get it done in that time period for two people, and it makes it a lot more stressful than it really needs to be. You should be having fun.
And, we were both green, it's only a couple years ago, but we were both a lot greener as far as traveling to Turkey hunt. We hadn't learned as much as we do now. And that's something that if I could go back in time and change as it would be to [00:57:00] just pick state a, you guys both, we both go there, we hunt that state.
If we are good enough to kill birds in that state, then we'll go and look at the next state and kind of do what you said. Choose one person, who's the first shooter, choose the second person who's the second shooter. And then if you get to the next state, maybe rotate it, so yeah, man. Alleviate some of the pressure that we had run into.
Yeah. And I think the hardest part is actually having the conversation with your buddies, cuz everybody wants to it's really easy to go in and say whoever gets the first shot opportunity, take it. But then you spend the whole trip hunting that way. And that's not a fun way to hunt.
It's just not, it's not fun at all. And so I think, talking to people like you who have experienced it in 49 of 49 states, like you've had situations. There's just a lot of value in learning from guys like your experience. You're not very old, but you've got a lot of Turkey hunting experience under your belt.[00:58:00]
I know you've at least killed 49 birds. Is a pretty nice pat on the back. That's a big accomplishment. And so that's one of the things with this podcast too, like with all of the Southern ground podcasts, but with limb hangers specifically we talk about with Turkey hunting is like, it's so scenario based.
Like hearing experiences from Turkey hunters. We haven't really talked about tactics at all today. It's all been in logistical planning type podcast. But hearing it from a guy who's experienced it is a pretty big thing. Joey, I know you and I both have traveled a little bit. You've done more like far out traveling for Turkey hunting and so you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And I know Adam does too with some of the Adam you've mostly traveled in the south, right? I just not done much traveling for the Turkey hunt. Okay. I know you did a little bit last year. Got your story. Yeah, I went to Florida last year and then, yeah, I hit Texas on a different [00:59:00] type of hunt.
I'm gonna do Texas for Rios this year, so it'll be, I'm starting to spread my wings a little bit. But Joey, you've got a lot of you do have a lot of experience. I know you and Jacob go out every year for a hunt that's not close. Do you have any any final questions to ask Vance and wrap up this podcast?
I don't know. Vance really hit, he hit a lot of really good points and I think. when when you talk, traveling and hunting, I mean for anything, deer hunting, turkeys, whatever. I think the travel aspect is what's intimidating to people because you see all the time especially on social media, and I hate to bring this up even more cuz it seems like we do it so often, like people asking about, X Y Z W M A in whatever state.
I've never been there. What are some tips? What are some what? I don't know. I'm not looking for any holes, any honey holes. I don't want your honey holes, but I don't want your honey holes, but I need to know [01:00:00] where I need to go to find Turkey. So it's intimidating to people and so often the piece of advice, that's the probably the first comment that pops up on one of those posts is get out there and do it.
And as , as simple as it sounds, as, and it sounds like somebody is just trying to blow the dude off that that's asking for advice. That's exactly what you have to do. You just have to go do it. And Jake, but I traveled for the first time back in 2019 to Nebraska, and man, we just went and did it.
I just I just wanted, I was like, Hey, I wanted to go kill Miriam's. We're the closest place I can do that. Okay. It's Nebraska. Let's go. And of course, we did our homework and I've talked about it before. I'll probably say it again throughout the course of this podcast series.
But I just love doing that detective work beforehand and trying to find turkeys on the screen before you find 'em in the woods. But yeah, bonds you you really simplified things for you [01:01:00] to be, you said you were 35, mid thirties already accomplished. , such an amazing feat and you have a lot more time to do it however many times over.
I think it's a, it's very inspirational, for somebody like you I'm not gonna call you average, but you've got just a regular job. You and you've found time in the last handful of years to get this done. So major kudos to you for getting all this accomplished. Congratulations.
Thank you. But I do wanna bring up a point that a story really, if you guys have a few minutes for it. So I was talking to my brother this year who is one of the people that's on my YouTube channel and he's filming with us as well. And he's also trying to complete his claim. And so him and I were sitting there talking looking at the state of North Dakota this year, cuz.
Wanting to get up there to Standing Rock. And I'm not name dropping anything. There's only two Indian reservations that you hunt can hunt as a non-resident. Standing Rock is the closest one for us. It's a pain in the butt to hunt. It's a nightmare to hunt. It can be downright scary at times [01:02:00] to hunt, to be honest.
But so we were looking at it and I wasn't necessarily giving them any pointers exactly where to go. And he was just trying to figure out where some turkeys might be. And he was like, man, I don't know how you can just pick a spot on a map and go here. And he showed me another state and he is yeah, this is the state I'm hunting.
Where would you go? And I'm like, you g you just build, you gotta build that up. And he's had some bad luck and a few states he went to Oklahoma and missed, he went to Mississippian missed and he went to Ohio last year and didn't have success. And so he's trying to grow his wings.
I'm like, look, you just gotta get out there and do it. Don't worry about whether you have success in that state or not. Just go and if you can learn something, , then that hunt was a success. So if you go to Ohio and you don't find turkeys, guess what? You get to go back to Ohio and now you know something about Ohio.
You know that there are not turkeys in this location. Okay, great. So now at least you know that at this time of the year there aren't turkeys in this [01:03:00] location. So you've learned something so great, now you've got knowledge. Right now you can go back the next time that you go back, you've got knowledge that you didn't have before.
So the trip was a success. That's what I've always tried to, when I plan a trip, if I can learn something about the terrain, if I can learn something about that state, if I can learn something about anything about hunting there, then that hunt was a success. Whether I actually killed a bird or not. That's my goal, is just to learn something about where I'm going.
Learn something about that different terrain, cuz every state has a little bit different. Feel to it. And if I can learn something about it then great. That's awesome. And the state was a success? Yeah. The one piece of advice I'll give to anybody that's traveling for Turkey hunting or deer hunting or whatever is if you don't know how to do anything else you know how to walk.
And if you walk enough, you're gonna find something. You will stumble into a Turkey, you'll stumble into a deer. And that's how Jacob and I found [01:04:00] success. Over the handful of years, if we didn't know nothing else about a place, we knew how to walk to one end of it to the other and we would find a Turkey.
So when they say get out there and do it, that's what they mean. Get out there, get to walking and you'll find some within a couple days, more often than not. So Parker, Adam, you guys got anything else for bonds before we let him go for the evening? No, sir. Appreciate you coming on, man. Yeah, man. It's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. And again, I am super excited about the Canadian swing up there. Like I said it's super unique. I don't think you'll hear of anybody else doing that this spring either. So no pressure, but make some good things happen up there, . Yeah, I can see that. Again, if I can just go up there and learn something about Canada.
I hunted in Alberta for ducks, never hunted in Ontario or Quebec. . So if I get to do that and I get to learn something about it, trip was a success. Yeah. So as long as I can get through and I don't get put in a Canadian jail then I'm [01:05:00] good. I would imagine the Canadians are super nice even with their jails.
I've, but like I said, I've been up here a bunch of times for work. I absolutely love Canada. As far as the scenery the people are super nice. You'll have a blast up here. I'm pretty confident. All right, guys. Hopefully yeah, we'll we'll let Bobs get get to get in his his canoes in order for his Canadian trip up.
Bear . And in the meantime, y'all stay tuned. I think this Parker and Adam, y'all are gonna be Turkey hunting here in the next couple weeks. Shoot. Shall we are? Yeah. Won't be together. Parker said he's gonna video me. Yeah. He didn't wanna shoot. I just tell exactly what he just said. I just said that Now everybody who hunts with me is gonna be like, I thought you said in that podcast like, you're gonna be camera guy every single time.
No, we start I get to go, I get to go down to South Florida on the 14th and then meet up with Walter and Adam and Joey. Unfortunately you're not able to be there on this hunt like you were. No. But no, it's gonna be a good time. I [01:06:00] can't wait to get after some osceolas. Yep. I'm excited for you guys.
All y'all boys. Y'all good. Have good luck this spring and we'll catch you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to the Limb Hanger Turkey Hunting podcast. Hope you tune in next week for another great conversation about our favorite bird of woods as the Wild Turkey. We'll talk to you guys next week.
