Well turkey season is about to wind down here, just one week left now I think.  Joe still hasn't gotten a turkey, but if nothing else we've gotten a great story out of the season.

Around here people enter hunting contests each season to see who can bag the biggest critter.  After they kill said critter, they promptly get someone to take a picture, weigh it and all that jazz and then run to go show it off in the local contests.  And once you get there to the wall of fame, men of all ages and sizes wearing camoflauge will admire your hunting skill and luck. Sometimes there's some money to win, sometimes you can win a free taxidermy mount, but mostly it's just bragging rights.  And that means a lot, apparently too much to some.

The other day my gang went to ooh and aah over the bulletin board to see what size gobblers people were bagging.  They were all pretty much in the 18 - 22 lb range, but then there was this one kid showing off this massive 30 pounder!!  My gang was commenting on how it didn't even look like the other turkeys so it was obviously domestic - meaning someone was raising it for themself. 

Well they got to looking even closer and sure enough, it was shot just down the road.  I got to thinking about it and remembered that one of our neighbors did have a big ol' Tom Turkey that grazed in her yard.  But we thought, surely not.

Well we thought wrong!  The next week my fellas were chatting with the gang at our local gun club and the subject turned of course to - turkeys.  Our son asked if they had all heard about that big 30 lb. gobbler the boy had gotten down the road and oh boy had they.  In fact, that gobbler had a name, Mr. Wilson. 

I wish you could hear my neighbor telling it with her deep country twang.  Her 2 1/2 year old Tom Turkey, Mr. Wilson was just like a big ol' dog.  He slept on her porch every night and grazed in the yards and in a nearby field with the chickens.  On that fateful day though, a local hunter apparently found Mr. Wilson to be more than he could resist when he spotted him in the empty cornfield next to her house.  They might not have known what happened except that another neighbor just happened to be sitting on her front porch enjoying a cup of coffee that morning. 

Seems as though, he saw that turkey, hopped out of his truck, shot him, and headed down the road with it.  All that was left behind of Mr. Wilson was a tuft of feathers.  Our neighbor just kept saying, "Poor Mr. Wilson." The men were just incredulous that this hunter wouldn't have a) recognized Mr. Wilson since he'd been around for over 2 years now and b) hunted from the road (very illegal).  At first they thought that maybe the man had been hunting in the field and had called Mr. Wilson in like a wild turkey.  "Nah," she said.  "All he'd have had to done, was acted like he had a piece of bread and said, 'Here chick, chick' and Mr. Wilson would have come runnin." "Poor Mr. Wilson..."

Now I'm not Paul Harvey and I don't know the rest of the story, but I'm thinking that ol' boy is probably one pretty embarassed hunter these days.  Stories like Poor Mr. Wilson go on and on for years.  I bet he'll think a little more clearly next time and not let the turkey fever go to his head!