Thursday, April 10, 2008
A Grand Slam is a grand adventure
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Most hunters will be happy just for a chance to bag a big gobbler when Virginia’s spring turkey season opens April 12, but some long to go beyond that.
They dream of a Grand Slam.
That involves chasing turkeys in the spring woods across a large chunk of the United States and tagging one each of the four major subspecies: Eastern, Osceola, Rio Grande and Merriam’s.
You can stop there and be proud, or advance to the next level and add a Goulds turkey to your Grand Slam. That gives you a Royal Slam. Add still another subspecies, the Ocellated, and you have a World Slam.
Gary Arrington with one of his trophies.
Garry Arrington of Bedford completed his Grand Slam last year, and this week is in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico pursuing a Goulds. Some day he would like to go after an Ocellated, another Mexican inhabit.
Only a handful of Virginia’s have achieved World Slam status: Gerald Austin of Buchanan; Michael Bailey, Keesville; Herman Rorrer, Pulaski and Mark Shaw, Christiansburg.
The Slams are registered by the National Wild Turkey Federation and can be found on its Web site. You don’t have to collect all the elements of a Slam in a single year, but some hunters do that and more. Carey Quarles, who lives in Fort Collins, Co., but grew up in Buchanan, killed three Grand Slams in 2006, giving him a total of 18, including 12 Royals.
Quarles’ brother, Carson, completed a Grand Slam during a 60-day period in 1995 while on hunts in Florida, Alabama, New Mexico and Texas. All the toms are mounted and displayed in his Roanoke home.
“I have never had the desire to do it again,” said the former board chairman of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
The father-son team of Richard and Michael Pauley, from Botetourt County, are committed to taking a Grand Slam this season. Recently they both scored with Osceolas in Florida. The next leg will be a hunt in Texas, which they successfully bid for at last year’s Hunters for the Hungry banquet in Salem.
Arrington, who calls himself “a redneck country boy from Franklin County,” developed a passion for spring gobbler hunting at age 16 when a friend, the late Billy Wright, introduced him to what Arrington calls “the thrill and joy of the spring woods and the hair-raising thunder of an old spring gobbler.”
After pursuing Eastern gobblers in his native Virginia, the desire to take another subspecies began to blossom. Arrington has been a Virginia Game Warden, a regional director of the National Wild Turkey Federation and now is special events coordinator of Hunters for the Hungry.
Here are the elements of his Grand Slam:
MERRIAM’S
“In 2004 I got invited on a hunt to Montana. I was completely at awe in the shear beauty of this place. We went out the first evening and heard a couple birds gobble. It seemed like the weather would be good and the birds would cooperate.
“We roosted a bird that evening and upon awakening the next morning found the temperature at 28 degrees and about 2.5 inches of snow on the ground. Well, the bird gobbled the next morning and when he flew down led us on a chase for the next five hours until I finally bagged my first Merriam’s at around 12:30 p.m., April 26, 2004.”
RIO GRANDE
“The following year I traveled to Texas where I learned to dodge rattlesnakes and see a rougher side of our world, not to mention a totally different kind of turkey. A Rio might fly down from a roosting spot on a windmill or telephone phone, because there aren’t a lot of trees around, and he might travel miles in a single day. I bagged two nice Rios in April of 2005.”
OSCEOLA
“After two unsuccessful ventures to Florida we found ourselves out of several dollars, stood up and still holding no Osceola. I am not sure why the folks I got stuck with were called guides.
“We waited a year, did some research and found at outfitter that seemed to be top notch -- like, he returned your telephone calls and emails. He gave us the first two days of the 2007 season. We traveled through tornados to get there. It was scary, but we made the 904 miles in about 15 hours, tested our guns and had dinner. The next morning, opening day March 2, 2007, we enjoyed watching about 10 hens and four jakes fly right into our decoy setup. Boy, did that get our heart pumping! About 7:30 we began to work a bird that was gobbling in the distance. An hour later he was in full strut 15 yards away.
“After the shot, I had to just sit there and ponder all the years, the hunts, the people in my life and the events that had gotten me there that day. Then I knelt over that beautiful creature and thanked God for that blessing, just as I had all the others He has brought my way.”
EASTERN
Arrington has yet to register his turkeys with the NWTF, but when he does the Eastern candidate likely will be a tom he killed when he was 17 while hunting with his mentor Billy Wright.
“The bird weighed 17 pounds, not a trophy by today’s standards, but he felt like about 50 pounds carrying him out of the mountain. I had E.K. Carter, a taxidermist at the time in Vinton, to mount that bird and it always will be a trophy hanging in my home.
“As for registered my birds I have applications to submit for the NWTF record book, but it has never really been that important to have my name there as it is to just know in my heart that God blessed me with the opportunity and the success.”
