The Spring Legion Podcast
Welcome to a year-round discussion on the wild turkey and those who hunt them. Hosted by Hunter Farrior, founder of Spring Legion and author of Ballad of a Turkey Hunter, the weekly podcast is geared for all outdoor communities and dives deeper than the usual tactics and calling tips. Holding true to the brand, topics are built upon respecting the heritage and challenges of hunting, with a never-ending appreciation for all that the spring season provides. Enjoy insight from special guests like Dave Owens of Pinhoti Project, Cuz Strickland of Mossy Oak, our friends at NWTF and Muscadine Bloodline, and so many more widely known for their impact in the turkey hunting community, as well as the deer, duck, and waterfowl realm, who exhibit the obsession of which only a real turkey hunter may truly understand. Thanks for listening.
The Spring Legion Podcast
Hunting Turkeys in the Pine Belt with Pro Bowler Logan Cooke
Join us as we chat with our good buddy, Logan Cooke, fresh off his Pro Bowl selection, about his love for hunting turkeys in the southeastern U.S. Logan shares his insights into the complexities and challenges of hunting thicket hopping longbeards, reflecting on the humbling yet rewarding experiences that keep hunters like us coming back for more. We also delve into exciting updates, including some amazing giveaways, new apparel lines, and a special edition book launch at the NWTF convention dedicated to supporting turkey conservation.
But the tale doesn't end there. Our stories take a wild turn as we recount some unforgettable experiences in the hunting world—from successful escapades and land management triumphs to awkward and unpredictable encounters. You'll hear about our strategic habitat improvements, some humorous mishaps, and a particularly tense episode involving a questionable character under the influence. This mix of adventure, humor, and unpredictability captures the essence of turkey hunting and promises to keep you intrigued and entertained throughout. Join us for this captivating ride as we celebrate the sport and the community that makes it so special.
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Realism is all that matters in the spring turkey woods, and the guys over at Houndstooth build their turkey calls with the consistent realism as the number one priority. Cut, stretch and press right down the road. In Tuscaloosa, alabama, a Houndstooth turkey call has become a familiar addition to a many-year turkey vest across the southeast. Learn more about a variety of friction locator and mouth calls today at houndstoothgamecallscom and be sure to use our special discount code slp25 at checkout for 15 off your next round of pounds. Two turkey calls. All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Spring Leisure Podcast. We are in the frigid days of January this week and I actually have a real guest this week, and a good buddy. Logan Cook is joining us today. He is, I would say, probably the first pro bowler I've had on here. Yeah, go ahead and get the elephant out of the room, dude, pro bowl this year, so big congrats on that oh, I do appreciate it.
Speaker 2:It's uh yeah, stay in the league long enough, they'll start handing out stuff to you, so I guess it was my turn. I guess.
Speaker 1:Um no, that's awesome and that goes. Can't put in much more on a mantle besides something like that, especially, you know, in a career, that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Oh, dude, appreciate it, it's cool. It is cool, it's. You know, I said for a while that I would play it for league minimum forever, whenever I think.
Speaker 2:When I first got drafted I told my dad that, and that statement's changed recently for sure, but you know accolades are kind of cool and all, but I've never been about them, really kind of focused on them. But at the end of the day it's, you know your kids are going to look back and there are certain things you want them to be able to say, so that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:That's awesome dude. Well, aside from playing in pro balls and stuff like that, logan's an avid turkey hunter. So, and pro bowls and stuff like that, logan's an avid turkey hunter, so we are going to get into a bunch of turkey hunting discussions here in the next few minutes. And, um, he's good at it and he's a mississippi boy, so he hunts a lot like we do, and we've had some uh some good, good days in the wood, so we had a little bit to talk about, wanted to get a knock, a few updates out of the way. Um, before we we dive in, though, first one's going to be a giveaway winner we mentioned last week was going to happen. That's going to go. It's going to be one of our new turkey hunting hats.
Speaker 1:I think there's six of them online right now, and a guy by the name of John Hedgepeth is going to be getting him a free one if he will respond to us some way form or fashion, in the form of DM, email, podcast, springleisurecom, anything of that nature. He left an Amazon review on Ballad of a Turkey Hunter. We're kind of going sporadically on how we're picking these giveaway winners, between sharing the podcast on social media or leaving good reviews on website or the podcast or, you know, in this case, amazon. He wrote kind of concerned.
Speaker 1:Both Ball, a turkey hunter, and any given spring morning, said that it quickly became two of his favorite books after a decade of turkey hunting. Both of these books and the Spring Leisure Podcast have validated his growing belief that he will never have it all figured out. Fortunately, he believes that's his favorite thing about chasing these birds and I could not agree more, which is awesome. You can kind of tell folks who are cut from the same cloth is when they appreciate the humblings that come along with turkey hunting. But aside from that, I've got a ton of new shirts, casual shirts and these new hats, as I mentioned on the website. A lot of old school stuff, a few new school stuff.
Speaker 1:I think there's a deal half off all of those new turkey hunting hats, uh, with every pair of gator that's purchased through january 31st, as well as a free face mask, a half mask for, uh, everybody who buys a pair of pants until 31st. So I want to let you know about that. Make sure you add it to your cart, that's not like a tossed in thing, you gotta you. Just it knocks off the whole price at checkout and then, um, the only other thing we really mentioned was, um, a combination copy of belt of a turkey hunter and in the given spring morning that's going to be a thing officially and I don't know when I said last week is going to release, but I have hit audible on that and it's going to release february 13th all over the place. So no early releases on Amazon, no more. That's going to release only on Amazon, online-wise.
Speaker 1:And then the only other way you can buy it is at the NWTF convention in Nashville which opens that sports show opens February 13th, I believe, and we'll have them there and then, after the convention, we'll have some online, if there are any left. But there is also going to be for the first, like 100 copies, like the literal first 100 copies of the first run. It's like a first run edition. It's going to include a limited edition dust jacket that little paper thing that goes on the outside of books, an official marking with a number, you know, x out of 100, and then a special barcode to kind of certify, slash, register that copy. They're going to be at the NWTF convention as well and 10% of that is going to go directly back into NWTF. So that's just something we want to do for conservation and kind of utilize the special occasion, the special edition, for a little bit of good for the turkeys. And copies 101, you know throughout.
Speaker 1:However many we print are also going to be available at a regular price at our booth at NWTF in Nashville. February 13th through it's three days. So what does that make it 16th, maybe Something like that. That's it. And we've got YouTube videos coming out starting on sunday, so a full hour of mississippi river bottom turkeys we're going to be hunting and it's pretty good. One might be the I'm not gonna say it's the best hunt we got, but it's what chase was filming, so you know it's better than any of the ones I'm going to be filming. Um sunday at 3 pm, and that's hopefully going to be a weekly thing. Every sunday at 3 pm, and that's hopefully going to be a weekly thing. Every Sunday at 3 pm we'll have a new one, but this one's going to be a really long one. It's got a lot of hunting going on in it, so it's not just one specific hunt.
Speaker 1:Logan what did you think, too, about filming hunts?
Speaker 2:A little bit, a little bit, I've dabbled in it, you know, there's uh the end of the day.
Speaker 1:I like killing turkey, so it's kind of the priority in some of them. He, uh, his, uh, his show, uh, off days, that's right off days, yep, yep, off days is on youtube. Um, it's one of my favorite channels or shows. I guess I don't know what they call them officially, but I have like three. I'm like subscribed to like three, three things, and that's one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we used to. We used to. We kind of got the idea. I've always had a YouTube channel.
Speaker 2:I feel like just growing up, like getting into college and me and some buddies made some turkey calls in college and sold them at some local stores and duck calls, so we kind of dabbled in that. So we filmed a little bit. But, yeah, whenever I got, I guess, in the NFL, I kind of started obviously just doing something of my own just because you're away from all your buddies now. And so, yeah, I've always enjoyed filming. Even when I go back to like shoot 14, 15 years old with my dad's old camera Somewhere, I have a ton of just dumb hunts probably of us just whacking does and stuff and yeah. So we used to film a ton of that and uh.
Speaker 2:But now we got off days and I think it was going into my third year in the league. I talked to cuz with masio, telling him I kind of wanted to. Um, that was kind of about the year masio go kind of got going and um told him we wanted to want to do a show with them and I kind of agreed to an episode a week in that little turkey window from with the turkey lives.
Speaker 2:I guess that would be, whenever it started into february, through through may, and um man I, I will never agree to episode a week, ever again it was it was cool at first, but I think it was after 2020 and 2020.
Speaker 2:Obviously we weren't working. No one was really working. And dude, we were. We were hunting. I think I hunted 21 days straight and it was. It was we killed a lot of turkeys in 2020. I was taking buddies, taking family members, just like, hey, come on, let's go. And yeah, so the next year I'm like, hey, let's start a show. We had a great turkey season.
Speaker 2:We might as well start a show, and that was one of the toughest turkey seasons I've ever had when. I agreed to an episode a week. So we kind of of you know, we still kind of upload some stuff through masio go sometimes, but uh, mostly youtube, just because I don't want to agree to I'll have this and with kids. You know how it is. You might film one one turkey hunt a year, so uh yeah, it's just a place to put it.
Speaker 1:I've I've eaten my words very quickly, you know. However you want to put it, just I should not have done that. I'll agree to this and that it sounds like a really good idea at the time, but it's almost like I'm not going to tell everybody. We're batting 1,000 on turkey hunts because that's going to jinx you. So I didn't say that. But we do have a lot of fun in the turkey woods and sometimes we wind up seeing turkeys and we don't MISS them.
Speaker 2:Well, talking about batting 1,000, me and you got a pretty good track record. I'm not saying we are batting 1,000, but at this point, if me and you go turkey hunting together, there's a lot of good vibes, I'm scared to say it but our wives are going to get a little disappointed if we come back without one, is all I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, we'll leave it at that. Cut that comment right there. They're going to wonder what happened.
Speaker 1:But also we've gotten to get hunted a few times. And then we've actually we're about 1,000 on blowing up beaver dams as well. Yep, pretty good at that. But I don't know how much credit I can take for the success of this past year for sure, because, as a longtime turkey hunter, a good rule of thumb this is a secret for everybody out there when you see someone who's batting 1,000 about halfway through the end of March you know, on every freaking hunt he's going on, you hop on, you know, you find a spot where you can get your foot in there.
Speaker 1:You're like hey, let me just, let me just, uh, let me just hang out with you for a day. How about that? Let me rub some of that good luck off on me um, that was, uh, that was a good day, man golly so logan started off hot, and when I say hot, I mean like you almost start laughing. You're like no way he just shot another one like, or whoever he's with, shot another one Like. He has the mojo going, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean a lot of. It's a test to the places we're hunting to. I mean, at the end of the day, location's key especially turkeys.
Speaker 2:Yes, you can go anywhere in the state, find 100 acres and you can find a deer to shoot, but turkeys is is obviously everyone listening. This knows it's, it's regional. Uh, um, and this, this block of timber right here, can have turkeys and you go over two properties where I grew up and we ain't got a single turkey and you just you have the habitat for it, but you just don't, and it kind of is what it is. But yeah, I mean, you know the farm we've, we've got uh, just out the here, it's uh, um, whenever we got it, it was it was uh, you know it's, it's.
Speaker 2:I guess it's a bigger piece of property. It's not huge but it's, it's big enough to manage a little bit. We first got it there were a couple turkeys on it. Uh, that's kind of the main reason. We we looked, looked into it and uh, and yeah, it was uh, I guess the first year we did some burning. Then first year we did some cutting, a lot of and a ton of just creating roads where there weren't roads, creating plots where there weren't plots and a big destination field in the middle of the place, and through a lot of that the next spring was a little bit better, and then last spring was just I mean dude it was.
Speaker 2:I think we had had just turkeys we had seen in the fall and winter. We were kind of had our mind that you know just turkeys we'd seen in the fall and winter. We were, uh, um, kind of had our mind that we, you know four turkeys was kind of what we wanted to shoot on it and uh, and three, three would be okay. But if, if, like, my mama killed the fourth one, or my brother-in-law hadn't killed a turkey, killed the fourth one, that was cool. Um, so we, that was kind of our goal and um, man, it was just I don't know the way. I guess the property was set up and the turkeys were acting that year. The first couple days we killed a few and then we locked the gates and we said, well, no more yelping out here for a little while, but you got to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to. So then, heck, I think me and you got together. It was like, hey, we can go, we can't hunt out here.
Speaker 1:Let go. We can't hunt out here, let's go, let's go to another place. Yeah, but um, yes, he called me. I was like heck, yeah, which? He's like, you got a youtube right, you know how to run a camera. I'm like you think that, buddy, he, you ain't, you ain't been watching much of them. You think I'm wearing that, probably chase or maybe seals or brick probably. But um, but I like not. I know how to turn it on. And um hopped in the truck with him and got to ride down to South Mississippi and at this time I forgot about this until right now this was on probably 23rd day of March. No, it wasn't 23rd day of March, might have been 22nd, I don't remember. Um, it had been almost three or four days into the season, at least, which opens on March 15th in Mississippi, and I had yet to hear a gobble. Remember that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like dude I haven't heard a gobble yet.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you really want to do this.
Speaker 2:Had you had that story yet with the guy, the sketchy guy, on the truck. Was that before that or was that after?
Speaker 1:That was. That might have been after. No, that was before, because that was opening weekend.
Speaker 2:I thought I remembered that story when we were headed down there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Chase and I we had a drive to WMA. We didn't get in a tight spot, but it was an uncomfortable spot for sure. And I might have told this on here. I don't remember Because, apparently because somebody which I've told multiple times in person, but somebody I talked to knew who I was talking about. I don't know how he knew what we were talking about. I either told him on here or I haven't. But regardless, this dude knew this guy's name and everything.
Speaker 1:So he'd been out there. This fella that we're talking about, I want to say his name was John. I don't remember had been out there for multiple seasons doing kind of the same Hagelin shenanigans stuff, dude, I mean, he was just kind of pulled up beside him. I'm leaving I think this is the last day of the draw maybe and I'm hunting a spot that I know turkeys are at Just from the season before. It's just we drew some sporadically placed thunderstorms and clouds and wind and stuff, and just everywhere we went on this big place just seemed to be getting drenched, and then where we just left it would be sunshine, almost, you know.
Speaker 1:So me and Chase, finally we split up and hunting here and there and stuff, and I'm leaving, chase pulls out one way and I pull out the other way and and black trucks parking the other road, kind of not moving or anything. I'm like all right, you know, I'm trying to get around him, whatever, and he kind of lets me just enough by him to talk to him and I can tell he's definitely, uh, under the influence of something you know. But, um, but I pull up, he's like I went down. He's kind of like I feel like he's always known me like what's you know what's going on? And um, pretty much says, like you won't kill turkey. I'm like, yes, sir, like I don't care what influence you're under, like I'm your friend now, um, where at and what do I got to do? How much you know? Because I like two days in the season you ain't heard a goblin.
Speaker 1:you're like, yeah, yeah, what you need, yep um, I'll cut your grass for two years, build your house, what, what? Um, I was hoping it'd be like a six pack of ponies or something, but he wanted me to like come over to his house and stuff, and I'm thinking that's pretty dumb of me to do.
Speaker 1:But what if he's serious, you know like he's wanting to show me where these turkeys are and stuff, like I'm pretty sure he has a gun in the truck. Then I see him like actively drinking, like just some long necks, at 9 am. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go check out and make sure he's done. Then I'm gonna leave because this is not a good situation. I felt I heard a podcast lee ellis did one time on the sequel one podcast and it was like one of the first ones they've done. Um, and it was a story kind of like that wind up but they, I think this dude kind of and quote unquote take them hostage but was like oh gosh, behind them in the vehicle and like really insisting on them, come check out his place or something, and like I think they already knew he had a gun, but they had to kind of oblige enough to get. You know you don't want to be in front of him and really piss him off. And then you know bad things happen.
Speaker 1:But they had a way sketchier story but but pretty much Chase and I go over there and he is, you know, borderline, obliterated, and we get in a tight spot and of course Chase pulls up behind me, so I pull up on a pond dam. So he's pulling up onto his pond dam, so there's water on my right and then like a big you know dam on the left, going down into some stuff. And he's pointing to spots where I know there's turkeys, because I can hear them from, you know, the public land. I'm like, yeah, that's the trickiest. I've heard those before, you know years prior. If that's really his land, I can get through from the other way too, you know. So as long as I got the okay.
Speaker 1:But chase pulls up behind me and parks his truck and gets out of trouble. Oh hey, what's up, buddy? Like didn't, didn't, you know, didn't understand the assignment of like don't box us in here. He parked on. So now I have nowhere to go. Chase has nowhere to go. We have to hit reverse and all kind of stuff. But long story.
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