Burnsville man kills record turkey

BURNSVILLE – Jerrell Keele knew his turkey had a pretty good beard on him when he shot him last month. He could see the black hairs hanging from the gobbler’s neck when he shot him from 37 yards away.

But the 67-year-old Burnsville resident didn’t realize that the 17.28-pound turkey actually had seven beards and scored enough points to make it a state record in the nontypical division.

There were so many beards that the registration form had to be altered.

“The form only has room to write in six beards for each turkey,” said Keele, whose turkey scored 151.155 points. “Jerry Hazlewood (the Northeast Region wildlife biologist) wrote in the seventh beard on the side of the form.”

Nothing too unusual
Extra beards on Tishomingo County turkeys apparently weren’t unusual, Keele said.

“No, I hadn’t seen him before, but I knew there had been some up in there” in the hunting club property, he said. “I had seen one with three beards, and another one had four beards. Really, it’s just something that’s handed down from one generation to the next.”

Keele started hunting turkeys in 1994 after his brother, Denvil Keele of Russellville, Ala., introduced him to the sport. The Mississippi Keele learned the basics from his Alabama brother.

“A lot of turkey hunting I learned on my own,” Jerrell Keele said. “Mostly by trial and error. Now, my brother got into that trial-and-error thing back when Ben Lee was making turkey calls.”

Lee, of Coffeeville, Ala., was a five-time national champion turkey caller.

‘Hooked’
Jerrell said his brother warned him about turkey calling.

“He said when you go turkey hunting, you will definitely get hooked,” he said. “I knew it was going to take thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours out of my life.”

Keele, who said he has only 25 percent pulmonary functions after a heart attack three years ago, gave credit for divine support.

“That heart attack liked to killed me because I didn’t get to hunt turkeys that year,” he said. “A lot of people would have just sat down and whined. But I believe the Lord will help a fellow who wants to help himself. So I kept trying.”

So, armed with a Remington Super Mag 12-gauge pump shotgun – along with a defibrillator and a pacemaker – Keele found his record turkey early March 17.

“I let out a flydown cackle, and I heard a bird gobble on a ridge about 15 minutes to 7,” he said. “I did four or five more yelps and he jumped on that. So I put out the decoy. He saw that and had to come on.”

The turkey, however, had obstacles.

“He had to come across two ditches to get in range, and I knew he was going to get tangled up in there,” Keele said. “He never gobbled anymore, and I didn’t either. I didn’t wait until he got really close.”

Keele said he took the record bird to Belmont taxidermist Paul Witt for mounting.

BY BUSTER WOLFE
Daily Journal