Turkey Chasin'

This is another story from Ronnie, this one is about him when he was younger.   Apparently those turkeys were really good at outsmarting him.   :)  Also if it reads funny, just remember that it is a transcript from the recording of him telling the story.

We used to raise turkeys when I was in high school, 6000 a year.  Well when the turkeys got about 6 or 8 weeks old you’d move out of the brooder house out into the pasture, just build a fence around em, you know.  And it was always my job to haul the water to them, if you took the water away from them on a hot day, they’d die because they had to have water.  So we’d take the tank to the pond at night, just about the time the sun went down, when they was about to go to roost, and take it back to them before they got up the next morning, then they was never out of water in the daytime.  I went to the turkey pen one night after the tank and there was one turkey on the outside of the fence, and if he stayed on the outside of the fence the foxes would usually get him so I decided I’d get that turkey back inside the fence. 

Now a bunch of tame turkeys will follow you, they don’t run from you like a chicken.  So I decided I’d raise this fence up and tie it up on a post and then I’d crawl through there and I’d lead the turkeys to the other side of the pen and this turkey on the outside he’d run under there then I’d run over there and let the fence back down.   Everything went well until I started to the backside of the pen and  this stupid turkey, and by the way turkeys are stupid, they’re the stupidest thing on the face of the earth, but anyhow I went to the backside of the turkey pen and this one lone turkey went all the way around the outside of the pen to get around there to me.  So I said ok if you wanna be that way, now since I’ve got the rest of them over there I’ll just chase this one turkey over there and he’ll run under the fence and i’ll drop it down and good enough.  It was kinda hot and sticky that day as it usually is around here in the summertime, but when you’re chasing a turkey he’d stick his beak straight up in the air. Well I’d get him right up to that fence that I’d raised up, and I wasn’t very big and I’d raised that fence just as high as I could get it, and that turkey would catch his beak on that bottom wire and he’d turn around and run the other way.  Course by now the rest of them was coming back this way, so I’d go to the other side of the turkey pen again and here’d come the turkey outside of the fence, so i’d chase him back around there and we went through this about three or four time,  I was getting a little warmed up in more ways than one and on the side of this water wagon we always kept a steel rod to measure the water in the tank so we knew how much was in there  and about the third or fourth time around the turkey pen after that turkey I grabbed that measuring rod off that water wagon and I swung it at that turkey and it hit him right  square on top of the head, and he didn’t squawk, he didn’t flop he didn’t do nothing he just laid down there and died.   And we had to have turkey for supper.

*According to Grandma Sobotka they didn’t actually have turkey for dinner that night.  She said it might have been the next night.   :D