Ole Fred’s Brother-In-Law Has Gone And Killed A Bigger Turkey

The start of spring is usually my favorite time of the year with turkeys gobbling, fish biting and even turning over a little fresh dirt for a garden patch. I just wish it wouldn’t rain every weekend, and it sure looks like we have plenty of rain in the forecast for the remainder of the week.

At least last week’s rain washed some of the pollen away. I heard a report Monday that the pollen count will be higher than usual in Mississippi and the pollen season will extend until late May. Oh joy!

I think last Thursday was the thickest pollen we have seen so far, I heard two different people talking about a cloud of yellow lingering in the air. Allen Rogers stopped by and said the pollen was so thick on the water at the Grenada Lake that he thought it affected the fishing and the catfish weren’t biting like normal. Allen,

Hal Vaughn and Larry Montgomery have been running a few trotlines to fill their freezers, and for few days the pollen covered the water and was several inches deep, forming an underwater cloud.
Allen also said that he heard some of the crappie fishing guides at Grenada Lake were struggling using their livescopes to locate the big crappie. Apparently the pollen makes it difficult for the livescope’s sonar to penetrate the water to find those big crappie.

Allen has started grafting watermelons and has five already planted. Grafted watermelons are used by most of the top growers in the nation. He attaches the watermelon plant to a bushel gourd vine. The gourd vine gives each seedling a bigger root system to draw nutrients to feed the watermelon. This is the second spring Allen has grafted melons and he is sharing a few of plants with other growers in the area. We should see some big melons later this summer!

Speaking of gardening, I heard a good story at the breakfast table last week. Charles Sharp told me about a trip a few guys made over to Pontotoc County to Amish country to pick up a few supplies from the Amish folks to get ready for the mater season. Sharp made the trip with Mike Edwards, Tommy Vaughn and Eddie Magee. Sharp said there was so much advice about growing big tomatoes during the road trip that if a Mississippi State botanist was listening, he would have to pull up his tomatoes and start over to do it “right.”

If you missed last week’s Herald, you missed seeing a picture with Fred Brown and a gobbler he killed. Fred is 83 years-old and was mighty proud of that big turkey and I can’t blame him. The story took a funny twist after Fred’s brother-in-law, Brother R.W. Moffett, killed gobbler that was even bigger than Fred’s a few days later.

Brother Moffett is nearing 75 years-old and, like Fred, admitted that he can’t chase them like he used to. He killed his first bird when he was around 12 years old. He is from Meridian and explained a nearby refuge in Clark County was stocked with turkeys when he was a kid making it an early hotspot in Mississippi.

Brother Moffett killed this bird a little north of Water Valley last Wednesday. He has been hunting several times this season and reported it has been slow until that afternoon when eight hens came out in a field he was watching. It wasn’t long before two big gobblers entered the field and came running, and he rolled one of them. His bird weighed 21 pounds, had an 11-inch beard and inch-and-a-quarter spurs.

Fred was outside cleaning fish and heard Brother Moffett shoot. He asked what he killed.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to rub it in, he was 21 pounds and had an 11-inch beard,’” Brother Moffett told him.

“Oh get out of here,” Fred replied.

The two men have enjoyed many turkey hunts together over the years. Brother Moffett shared another story from a Texas trip years ago when he accidentally killed two gobblers with one shot. When Fred pulled up to pick him up, he couldn’t believe his brother-in-law had bagged two birds, it had been tough hunting for both men on that trip. Later than night Fred shared a little wisdom.

“He told me, ‘my luck is rubbing off on you,’” Brother Moffett said with a chuckle.
There is nothing like a little friendly rivalry when it comes to turkey hunting – even among family members. And you have to get up early to get ahead of Fred.

I have a story to share about a bird I killed last weekend that also had an 11-inch beard, but I will save it for another edition. It was an amazing afternoon hunt, but I am going to have to hunt a few more decades before I can earn bragging rights like Fred and Brother Moffett.

And it will probably take longer than that before I have any meaningful advice to share about growing maters!