Ben Oddo is a Nashville resident, a writer and the former co-host of The Ben & Morey Show. In his recurring feature Conventional Wisdom, he’ll explore the many conventions and trade shows that Music City plays host to, from the esoteric to the mundane.
Gobble gobble. Yelp yelp. Kee kee. Purr.
If you’re anything like me, when you attend the Grand National Gobbling and Owl Hooting Championships, you are going to become woozy. It’s not the contestants’ fault — they’re just doing their job, which is to exit their earthly body and turn into a full-blown turkey. But there is something about watching a grown man’s jowls as he makes squeaky, staccato, high-pitched gurgle noises that just ruins the appetite.
I am here at the 44th-annual National Wild Turkey Federation Convention & Sports Show, posting up as the convention’s self-appointed writer-in-residence. Over the course of five days, nearly 60,000 turkey enthusiasts will descend on the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center to buy outdoor gear, listen to seminars, engage in workshops, discuss conservationism, catch up with old friends and, yes, gobble and hoot.
One of the first things I do is attend a workshop called How to Make and Use Tube Calls and Strikers. It is taught by an older gentleman named Don Bald, who owns Bald’s Calls in Lebanon, Ill. Almost immediately, I can tell I like Don. He has a grandfatherly way about him and says things like “Missourah” and “my brother owns the topless joint.” We cover topics ranging from double-latex reeds to the ergonomics of the call, and I comprehend none of it. Then, he gathers the seven of us into a semicircle and does the very thing I don’t need him to, which is toss me one of his custom calls.
“Give it a try,” he says.
I look down at the small cylindrical device, then up at the other men who are now staring at me. “This is kind of awkward,” I begin, “but I’ve never actually hunted before.”
Which is not completely true. I’ve gone hunting twice: One time was dove hunting in Virginia, and the other was duck hunting in Mississippi. In the first instance, I felt so bad about killing the doves that I wrote a short story about it. In the second instance, a hole in my waders caused them to immediately fill up with water, making for a long January morning.
There’s more. As a child, when wild turkeys would occasionally show up in our backyard, we would gather around the window as a family and go, “Someone get the camera!”
So I don’t want to blow into the call. But Don tells me to try it anyway, and when I do, it is sad. As in, “Yo-Yo Ma handing me his prized cello, and me trying to play it like a guitar” sad.
“Don’t feel bad,” a nice woman from South Dakota leans over and tells me. “We all had to start somewhere.”
I retreat to the taxidermy awards to lick my wounds, because I know nothing will be thrown at me there. Inside the roped-off area, I sidle up to judge Chip Hayes as he silently inspects 13 ornately stuffed birds. “What are you looking for?” I want to know.
“Right now, I’m focused on grooming.” He points to an almost imperceptible dark spot on a hen’s right breast. “See, right there a feather is missing. At the Master stage, that’s going to cost them.” What else is he after? “Other than grooming, the most important thing is anatomy.”
I nod solemnly.
If you’ve never seen a wild turkey up close, it is a resplendent animal. It has beautiful, iridescent plumage and tail feathers that, when fanned out, call to mind a Navajo headdress or Elizabethan ruff. But frankly, the turkey is a total butterface. It’s as if it tilted its head back and said, “take me, God,” but had hot wax poured down its snood, wattle and caruncles instead. All of which, by the way, win the award for “Most Appropriately Named Body Parts.”
“They can be dog-ugly,” Andy Gagliano tells me. “Until they don’t want to be.” Andy is a Birmingham-based mortgage broker and host of The Turkey Hunter Podcast. For him, hunting is a way to get back in touch with our deepest roots; of being outside, in the woods, and watching the world wake up. “That old question, if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? I can tell you it does.” We chat for more than an hour, and he helps me make sense of a lot of things.
Are turkeys stupid? They are wary. Perhaps the wariest creature in the country. It is a humbling experience getting beaten by something with a brain the size of an almond.
These people seem possessed. The interaction with the bird is what people love. It is the chess of the hunting world, a battle of the wits.
I don’t get it. You don’t have to. It’s not for everyone. But you’re welcome to come turkey hunting with me down in Alabama any time.
At some point Andy’s wife walks up, and she doesn't look like a lot of the attendees here — think more Southern Living than Camo Weekly. We chat, and after a little back-and-forth, I get the sense she does not love me. She is savvy and questions my motives. “You’re not trying to make fun of the people here, are you?” I think she may think I am trying to pull a fast one on her husband, though Andy is no fool. She laughs when I ask him whether he himself ever feels like a turkey, but cautions me that other people may be offended by what I am writing. It’s a fair critique, not just for humanistic reasons, but because you typically don’t want to offend people who love the Second Amendment.
After three days, I know more about turkey hunting than I will ever need or care to. I can tell a box call from a striker from a wingbone, and a tom from a jake from a poult. I can list off the “Three R’s” of the all-important R3 initiative (recruitment, retention, reactivation) and tell you how much a J. Purdey & Sons 20-gauge shotgun with engravings from Giancarlo Pedretti runs ($140,000). I have seen trucker hats, and trucker hats, and more trucker hats. I want to tell them there are other hats — bucket, cowboy, Asian conical — but it’s no use.
The last thing I do before leaving is stop by booth No. 1631 — Pittman Game Calls.
Preston Pittman is a legend in the calling world, having been on Letterman, Leno and Regis & Kelly, among others. He emerges with dip in mouth, and I ask him whether he will gobble and strut for me, as you do (it was Andy’s idea). Without hesitation, the 66-year-old approaches a group of people, drops down, and then springs up from behind them, purring in their ears.
Now that man feels like a turkey.
