Sporting Classics - Alabama Black Belt Adventures

March/
April 2016
JackVandenHeuvel/
thinkstockphotos.com
BLACK
BEARDS
IN THE
BLACK
BELT
From a turkey hunter’s perspective, this
23-county region in Alabama is an earthly
backside of Heaven. By Jim Casada
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Lightwriter1949/
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ecades ago a corner
of my soul was hopelessly lost to America’s
big-game bird, the
wild turkey. Over a
marvelously misspent
period of some four
decades, it has been my great
good fortune to pursue gobblers in roughly
40 states and two foreign countries. Those
years have been filled with an abundance
of miscues, missteps, misfortune, mistakes,
and misses, but in a way only a fellow turkey
hunter can truly appreciate, all of the
misery has been pure magic. And nowhere
has that magic been more manifest—has
the bird’s allure pulsated through the fiber
of my being with greater strength—than
in Alabama’s Black Belt.
If you want a detailed geological and
geographical account of the Black Belt,
that information is readily available on the
Internet. For present purposes, suffice
it to say that it embraces 23 counties,
all distinguished by rich, dark topsoil,
stretching border-to-border across south-
central Alabama from east to west.
The Black Belt is a region of stark
contrasts. Among the most notable
of these is human economic hardship
counterbalanced by an abundance of
wildlife. From a turkey hunter’s perspective,
it is an earthly backside of Heaven. Words
don’t suffice to capture the Black Belt’s
sporting glories seen through the eyes of a
turkey hunter, but perhaps sharing a medley
of personal experiences there spanning
more three decades and some three dozen
separate hunts will give you a glimmering.
acuity had turned me into a quivering
mass of uncertainty. Finally, at a pace that
bid fair to make an unhurried turtle seem
a 100-meter sprint champion, the gobbler
came in range and a load of high-brass No.
5s ended his career. Not two minutes later,
as if lamenting the death of this magnificent
creature, the heavens opened up.
Another time at a different location
in the Black Belt, a protracted session of
listening to what I deemed to be drumming
had a quite different outcome. I first heard
it almost immediately after a few yelps
on my wingbone brought a resounding
gobble that had me scrambling to set up
against the nearest tree. The drumming
continued, seemingly at close range just
over a ridgetop, for an entire afternoon.
Finally, my patience exhausted, I resorted
to crawling instead of calling. After cresting
the nearby hill, I realized the “drumming”
that had held me captive so long was the
bass beat emanating from a boom box in a
sharecropper’s shack a quarter-mile away.
On a foggy morning sometime in the
1980s, one of those days when ominous
clouds hugged the horizon and a drenching
downpour seemed certain, I found myself
listening to a drumming turkey for well
over an hour without seeing the bird. That
sound, difficult to course and one even the
keenest of human ears likely cannot detect
at distances much greater than a hundred
yards, had me on red alert. It went on for
so long that second-guessing my auditory
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ildlife photographer Tes Jolly killed this
WAlabama
gobbler on her hunt with the
On this occasion, we were just sharing
time together as friends who had all fallen
victim to the grand obsession. It was one
of those times—and they are exceedingly
rare in a sport where the only real certainty
is constant uncertainty—when everything
went pretty much according to plan.
I roosted a bird in the gloaming of our
first evening together, and come daylight we
were set up in a likely spot with Ron videoing
while Tes and I called. All seemed well
when at first light the gobbler announced
his presence from his lofty perch. And other
than a mad scramble to reposition when
the tom started to approach us from an
unexpected direction, all went as planned.
To be sure, excitable as I always am when
a gobbler comes within range, my shot
likely came a bit quicker than Ron would
have preferred. Nonetheless, there was a
flopping bird, followed by high-fiving and
hugging aplenty, within a half-hour of our
first setting up. From that point forward
things only got better.
With some astute advice from guide Joe
Among all of my turkey-hunting
recollections, the only time I can recall being
more nonplussed was when I spent an entire
morning dealing with a bird that responded
lustily to my calls but never moved my way.
Once again, after hours of exasperation, I left
my position only to discover my seemingly
irresistible notes of seduction had been
directed at a penned-up domestic tom.
I’ll always cherish delightful two days
afield with the prettiest turkey hunter
I’ve ever been around, Tes Jolly, and her
husband, Ron. Both are highly experienced
and exceptionally skilled when it comes to
taking turkeys, whether with a gun, a still
camera (Tes is an award-winning wildlife
photographer and to my knowledge
the only female ever to work as a turkey
guide), or a videocamera (Ron has been
doing stellar video work since the days
when such efforts involved lugging around
60 pounds of equipment in the field).
author. Below: The author and Eddie Salter,
host of the television show Turkey Man, with
a big longbeard.
Continued on page 152
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BLACK BEARDS
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.
Continued from page 131
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.
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
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.
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
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 firstrate 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.
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.
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