 In 1986, Danny Faulkner’s doctors told him that he was going to die. Soon. If the cancer did not kill him, the chemotherapy would. But a death certificate requires a body, and Danny, who can be stubborn, fought the diagnosis and the disease.
Once he could draw his bow again, the former archery pro shop owner took up turkey hunting. He arrowed his first bird not far from his country home south of Atlanta.
Then the cancer came back. Hard. Near death, the bowhunter made up his mind not to worry. What gave him a right to worry? Plenty of people had tougher lives than his, and how could worry help?
Discipline, he decided, and the grace of God were going to get him through the disease and back to his life. "By the grace of God and a lot of guts, I licked the Big C," John Wayne said. If Big John could do it, Danny Faulkner could do it.
During endless hours in hospital waiting rooms and retching from chemo-induced nausea, he focused on the good times. Times outside with his bow. And in the fog of chemo at one of the many doctors’ offices one inhabits during such a prolonged and personal battle, Danny thought, "If I have something special to look forward to, something I really want to accomplish …." As if coming to an accommodation with the Big C was not accomplishment enough.
Discipline, plus a challenge.
Danny had already taken a couple of Eastern wild turkeys with his bow. Why shouldn’t he take them all? He would take the Grand Slam, all four species of American gobblers: Eastern, Osceola, Merriam’s and Rio. But that left the Mexican birds, the Gould’s and the Oscellated. Danny supposed he ought to take them also… and do it in a single season.
No bowhunter had ever taken a World Slam, all six North American species, but Danny figured if anyone could, he was the man. This may have been what doctors call "chemo thinking," delusions grounded in the pain and the nausea and the presence of death. Delusional or not, it gave the Georgia farm boy something to look forward to.
When he mentioned it to Patty, his bride of 35 years, she said, "You hang on to that, Danny. If I have to take a second job to help you, I will, but you’re gonna do it."
Well, now he was stuck with it -- the discipline and the challenge and the dream. He had to go through with it. So he held on and in 2000, when he could once again sit up, take nourishment and draw his bow, it was time.
Eastern - March 26
Danny thought his first bird would be an Osceola. After a few days hunting with a guide near Lake City in north Florida, and missing a big tom, it occurred to him that he was not hunting in the Osceola zone!
"These aren’t Osceolas," he told his guide. "These are Eastern birds! You should have known that."
An Osceola is similar to the more numerous and widespread Eastern, but is smaller and darker in color, with less white veining on the wing quills. The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF: www.nwtf.com) says that by coloration and behavior, the Osceola is ideally suited for the flat pine woods, oak and palmetto hammocks, and swamp habitats of central and south Florida.
Danny drove home, perplexed and unhappy, but then recalled the chufa patch across the dirt road from his country home. The Eastern bird was his neighbor! That very afternoon, he set up a blind and was comfortably inside it before daylight the next morning.
"I heard birds come down from roost and gave a soft ‘yelp’ on my slate call," he remembers. "They walked dead away from me. But I’m patient and would tickle the slate gently every half hour or so. A couple hours later, three gobblers came strolling along and one of them walked right toward my decoy."
Danny’s Eastern weighed 21 pounds with an 11 1/3-inch beard.
Gould’s - April 6
The little-known Oscellated inhabits the thick jungle of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. This tiny turkey does not gobble, although it does make an unusual clicking-style call. Although their sharp spurs may be two inches long, males do not grow beards. Both sexes are more brightly iridescent than their northern cousins and, because of the beautiful spots or eyes of color on its tail feathers, the Oscellated is called the "peacock turkey."
"Don’t bring your gun," the outfitter advised. "Import and export duties are expensive and paperwork is a hassle. Use one of ours."
The man was incredulous when Danny said he was planning to kill an Oscellated with his bow.
"You mean, archery stuff?" the man asked. "Can’t be done. You’re wasting your time. The jungle is too thick. We shoot ‘em off the roost in the dark. That’s the only way you can kill one of these birds. And don’t even think about whether it’s a male or a female. Hell, biologists can’t tell the difference."
Danny speaks no Spanish. This handicapped communication with his guide, and he left the Yucatan without a bird. Disappointed, but undeterred ("I’ll be back."), he flew to Sonora in northern Mexico to hunt a Gould’s.
The large Gould’s bird is abundant in the Sierra Occidental Mountains of Mexico. For Danny, a man of quiet strength of character whose body would never fully recover from the cancer and chemo, hiking the mountains was exhausting.
"The day I killed the Gould’s," Danny says, "I set my decoy and blind on a mountain slope that was so steep I had to wedge the blind behind an oak tree and hook one foot around the tree on the inside to keep from sliding down the mountain. There were plenty of birds, but coaxing one into shooting range wasn’t easy. A tom finally came in to my decoy the last day and, after I shot him, he rolled 36 yards down the mountain."
Danny’s Gould’s turkey weighed 21 pounds with a 10-inch beard.
Rio Grande - April 10
Danny’s hunt for the Rio Grande turkey ended quickly. Set up on the Solana Ranch near Bell, Texas, Danny scratched softly on his slate and interspersed the soft yelps and purrs with a note or two from his box call. "They have different tones and sound like different individual birds," he explains.
Late in the afternoon, several birds came into view. Apparently headed for his decoy, they hung up when, without warning, a coyote suddenly loped across the field. For an hour, the birds remained well out of bow range. Eventually, a gobbler moved hesitantly forward.
It was small, but Danny was ready to shoot. Holding at full draw, a large gobbler charged unexpectedly from behind the blind and pounced on the smaller bird. In an eye gouging, feather snapping, wing beating, spurring and biting instant, the larger bird laid claim to Danny’s rubber decoy. Danny gave the lovebirds time for one brief kiss and shot the gobbler.
Danny’s Rio weighed 21 1/2 pounds with a 10-inch beard.
Osceola - April 16
Avoiding the spring break crowd, Danny drove to south Florida for an Osceola, but when he called, they ran away. After two fruitless days of hunting, he realized the birds had already been hunted hard. Failure loomed large, so on the third day he changed tactics.
He had noticed a neck of woods through which turkeys moved from their roost to the south Florida fields to feed. Danny moved his blind and decoy to the center of the woods. The move gave him a 40-yard shot out either side of his blind to the edge of the woods.
The morning of the third day, Danny rose again to go hunting and, before dawn, he was sitting quietly in his blind. Suddenly, turkeys were everywhere. They were so close that when he picked up his bow, they spooked. Fortunately, the most curious member of the flock returned to scratch only 15 yards from his blind. This Osceola would not be the largest gobbler Danny ever arrowed, but by the end of his season’s quest, it would not be the smallest, either.
Danny’s Osceola weighed 12 3/4 pounds with a 5-inch beard.
Merriam’s - May 4
It does not seem plausible that an intelligent bowhunter would volunteer for sadistic punishment, but after the Osceola lay at his feet, Danny returned to the Yucatan. Unfortunately, his Spanish had not improved, and neither had his guide’s hunting techniques.
"Look, Danny," the outfitter interpreted, "the guide wants you to leave your tent at home. It spooks the birds."
"It’s not a tent," Danny replied. "It’s a blind. And if the guy would quit sticking his head out to look around, we’d have had a bird on the ground by now."
The guide’s newest strategy was to walk through the jungle and shoot at any Oscellated bird crossing a trail or perched in a tree. Predictably, Danny went home empty-handed and frustrated. Again.
A few days later, he was set up beside a farm pasture not far from the hamlet of Meade, South Dakota. He did not feel well, but realized that only two birds separated him from his goal. Still, the continual traveling, the physical exertion, and the early mornings were weakening him. It had to come together soon.
The second morning, Danny saw a flock of Merriam’s immediately… at 385 yards, according to his laser rangefinder. He yelped and the largest two of these Western birds flew off in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, a gaggle of 26 birds soon began shuffling in his direction.
When they were less than a hundred yards from him, a blur shot by the window of Danny’s blind, startling him. Déjà vu! That blur was a big gobbler, of course, and it proceeded to attack the jakes in the advancing flock. The jakes scattered and the victorious bird returned to claim its prize, Danny’s decoy. Danny, of course, killed the lustful gobbler and that left only the Oscellated.
Danny’s Merriam’s weighed 20 pounds with an 8 1/8-inch beard.
Oscellated - May 12
Danny did not particularly want to see any more jungle. Without the Oscellated, however, his quest was not complete. With five of the six birds to his credit, he was one of few bowhunters to earn a "Royal Slam," and he was bone weary, and seasons were closing. He had earned thousands of frequent flyer miles and had driven another thousand. But a Royal Slam had never been his goal, and so Patty drove him to the airport again.
"You’ll do it this time," she said. "I believe in you."
Maybe that was all it took.
This trip, he was going to hunt his way, with a blind, and if the guide did not like it, he could wait back at camp. He gave up on every other hunting option: fighting his way along overgrown paths to surprise a bird crossing in the open, stumbling through the jungle in the dark of morning behind a guide he often could not see and could never understand, to shoot an Oscellated off its roost.
The guide humored him, and Danny set up at the edge of a damp thicket several hundred yards from the nearest trail. They had heard one of the birds sing near here on a former trip. Then, Danny took the guide’s machete and tried to clear shooting lanes. In the jungle heat, that effort was almost too much.
In sign language, Danny asked his guide to imitate the Oscellated bird’s whistle. Somehow, the Mayan man understood and mimicked the bird’s thin, half-choked chuckle. Every half hour, Danny asked him to repeat it and, an hour later, a bird answered. Both men were stunned and excited. That had never before happened on any hunt, with any hunter.
The sixth and final bird in Danny Faulkner’s quest for the first wild turkey World Slam with a bow, the Oscellated, barely weighed 8 pounds.
Was it all worth it? The endless travel, the exhaustion, the expense? Living on the edge as he had done for 37 days while he hunted his dream? Was having the first World Slam by bow worth all that?
"I believe it was," he says. "It saved my life."
Bowhunting World Extra: Where to Shoot
Danny Faulkner of Milner, Georgia, became the first bowhunter to take a World Slam of wild turkeys, four subspecies in the United States and two in Mexico. He believes that accurate shot placement often spells the difference between wounding and recovering a gobbler. After all, the kill zone of a big turkey is only about the size of an orange.
When he attempted in 2004 to duplicate his World Slam with a film crew, he bragged to the cameramen and designated caller that if they could "get a bird within 25 yards, I’ll kill it." After missing several birds, Danny gobbled down a little slice of humble pie, but he laughs at himself now. Turkeys just are not that predictable… or easy.
Nevertheless, Danny recommends specific aiming points for each turkey profile in relation to a bowhunter. If the turkey is facing you, he says, aim for the top of the beard. If the turkey is standing sideways, place your broadhead at the wing butt. If it is walking directly away, aim for the top of the tail feathers, and if it is strutting and fanning, shoot for the center or base of the fan.
In spite of what you may sometimes read, Danny believes that a strutting bird can be difficult to kill with a bow. The feathers of a strutting tom are fluffed out, and it is hard to determine exactly where to shoot, as the bird appears to be larger than it really is.
Notes: On Hunting Wild Turkeys
1. Chufa is excellent in food plots for turkeys. Similar to a peanut, it grows a nutritious underground nut that is high in fat and protein. Chufa is hardy, grows well on poor soils, responds well to fertilizers and can last for years.
2. Hunters know that if you fly Delta Airlines, you must fly through Atlanta. Danny Faulkner discovered that wherever he went and in whatever sequence, a round trip ticket out of and back through Atlanta -- he lives 45 minutes from the airport -- was always least expensive, even though it often doubled the time and inconvenience.
3. A jake is an immature male turkey. Normally a jake will not have a beard, and its spurs will be relatively short, less than an inch long. As with button bucks, experienced hunters usually let jakes walk by so they can concentrate on larger, mature toms.
4. At the time Danny Faulkner took his Oscellated, the record weight was 13 pounds for a gun-killed bird. Today, with increased publicity, understanding and hunting options available, the heaviest recorded peacock turkey is 17 1/2 pounds.
5. Today, Danny Faulkner estimates that a bowhunter can accomplish a World Slam of all six turkeys for about $18,000-$20,000, including travel, food, lodging, and guides or outfitters.
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Archery's First Wild Turkey World Slam
