MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Noted West Virginia turkey hunter Chris Walls has a lot of experience with spring gobbler hunting in the Mountain State, but of all the turkeys he has killed or helped others call in and kill, he never brought down a bird with a 12 inch beard.
“I’ve been to 11 and a half, 11 and a quarter, and even 11 and three quarters,” said Walls
But in the latter half of the 2023 spring gobbler season, on a solo hunt in Preston County, Walls finally crossed the elusive12-inch beard off his list of accomplishments.
“All turkeys are different, but that was turkey number 102 that I have either killed or been there when it was killed and that was the first one that went over the 12-inch mark,” he explained.
The beard on the turkey he took in the early morning hours of Mother’s Day was actually 12.5 inches long.
The bird wasn’t extraordinarily big, in fact it was probably on the lighter side for a West Virginia gobbler. According to Walls, the turkey was older
and probably past his prime, but clearly he was a creature of habit.
Walls’ first encounter with the gobbler came on a Sunday two weeks earlier when he took a youngster and his father hunting on a piece of property in Preston County. It was rainy, so they had set up a blind on a power line right of way the night before and slipped in well before daylight.
“He let us walk right by him and walk to our blind, then about 45 minutes later he flies down and never gobbles. The hens hook up with him after they come in from behind us and they all vanished,” Walls explained.
With no luck, they returned to the vehicle, but on the walk out Walls spotted extremely fresh turkey droppings and realized what the birds had done. Instead of walking toward them as he had expected, the flock had actually walked the opposite direction and back toward their vehicle.
“They were doing the opposite of what they used to do, for whatever reason. I just kept that in my mind,” he said.
Two weeks later, Mothers Day Sunday, he returned to the same spot alone.
“It’s a beautiful morning and I told myself I’m going to treat this turkey as if he’s in the same tree he was two weeks ago. I figured he might be two miles away, but I was going to treat him as if he was in the same tree. Turns out, he was in the exact same tree,” Walls laughed.
Walls walked halfway to the turkey’s roost, jumped into the woods on the opposite side of the right of way and yielded the power line opening to the gobbler. After a couple of early clucks, the turkey gobbled on the roost and his second one echoed five times louder that the first. It was an indication he had turned and gobbled toward the direction from which he had heard the call.
“That’s usually a pretty good sign,” said Walls who had selected a setup point which gave him two open shooting lanes through a thicket of greenbrier.
“I had one at eleven o’clock and another opening at two o’clock. I sold my soul to the one at eleven and figured I’d have to come up with a backup plan to get him in the other one if it didn’t work out,” he explained.
Turns out, the turkey waltzed perfectly into the eleven o’clock hole, stretched out his neck, and the hunt ended with a shotgun blast at exactly daylight.
“I checked my phone, it was 6:07. Sunrise that morning was 6:07. I killed him right at daylight. It was one of the most perfect turkey hunts I’ve ever been involved with,” he said.
The discovery of the 12-inch beard made it all the more sweet and now Walls plans to mark the milestone by getting the bird mounted.
“After I killed it a lot of my buddies all over the country said they were in the same boat, they’d come close, but never killed them with a 12 inch beard. There’s just something about that odd number,” Walls said.