“Johnie Wood Hunts Turkeys with ThermaCELL All Across the Country”
Part 2: My Adventure into Mosquito Heaven
Editor’s Note: Johnie Wood of Montgomery, Alabama, teaches classes on turkey hunting and another class, the Total Hunt, for the non-profit organization, Outdoor Women Unlimited. Wood, who hunts turkeys all over the nation, has taken more than 200 birds and has put together a World Slam of wild turkeys. Wood has hunted with ThermaCELL for 3 years but was one of those hunters who initially resisted this new technology in insect repellent. However, today Wood is a ThermaCELL disciple and teaches everyone he meets about ThermaCELL.
 Question: Johnie, yesterday you told us about getting snake bit, but because you had snake boots on, the snake didn’t penetrate your boots. How did your turkey hunt for the Osceola gobbler go after your encounter with the snake?
Wood: After I got over the shock of being snake bit and thanked the Good Lord for snake boots, we continued to hunt. In this area of Florida, there were fingers of dry land that stuck out into wet swamps. There was so much water that we had the unwanted opportunity of seeing alligators up-close and personal. When we finally sat down to try to call the turkey, we were about 20 yards from the edge of the swamp. The only bird we heard gobble that morning was about 1/4-mile out in that swamp. I looked at my guide, who owned the property but was not a turkey hunter, and said, “Scott, we’ll never get that turkey to walk through that water and come to us.” Scott said, “That’s the only turkey we’ve heard gobble this morning. Do you want to try and call him?”
So I dug in my pack and got a quill call that I use from time to time. It’s made similar to the old wingbone call that hunters used years ago that they made from turkeys’ wingbones. I learned to use this call many years ago.  I started yelping on it really loud, and I called a lot. I called louder and called more than I would call on any other turkey hunt. But I knew that there was nothing else I could do to get that bird to come to us. If I didn’t call loud and long, the turkey wouldn’t hear me. We had no other chance to get the turkey to come to us or for us to go to him. I also called to the bird with a Lynch World Champion box call that I’d had for many years. Most people probably would think I was calling so loud and so long that I’d spook the turkey.
As soon as we sat down, Scott, pulled out his ThermaCELL and fired it up. We sat there for an hour. And, as many mosquitoes as there were in that swamp, I knew Scott and I would have been sucked dry of blood if we hadn’t had his ThermaCELL. But I couldn’t believe how comfortable I was in that 70-degree weather in the middle of the swamp with no bugs to fight. Finally, after the bird hadn’t gobbled in 30 minutes, I looked at Scott and said, “We might as well leave. I don’t think the turkey’s going to come. He’s either found him some hens or decided to go another direction.”
However, when Scott started to move, I heard a gobbler drumming. I told Scott, “Don’t move, don’t move. I don’t know exactly where the turkey is, but I can hear him drumming. I know he’s close to us.” Scott sat back against a tree.  Because there were so many palmettos in this swamp where we were hunting, we only could see about 15 yards around the place where we were sitting. As the turkey got closer, although I couldn’t see him, I could hear his wings dragging the ground as he strutted. “Scott, he’s close, he’s close, he’s really close,” I whispered. Scott leaned back to give me a better field of view. I could see the gobbler’s white head as I looked under Scott’s chin. A little road came from Scott’s side of the tree around in front of me, and the turkey walked that road and came out of the foliage about 20 yards in front of me. I took my first Osceola turkey.
I know that without the ThermaCELL, Scott and I would have never been able to sit in that palmetto swamp for the hour required to let that Osceola turkey come to us. So when I remember the first Osceola I ever took, I think about my snake-proof boots, my introduction to ThermaCELL, and how long we sat mosquito-free. And that’s the day I became a ThermaCELL disciple and began telling everyone how effective this little bug device can be.
Tomorrow: What Happens When You Don’t Have a ThermaCELL
Part 1: Thank God for ThermaCELL and Snake Boots
Part 2: My Adventure into Mosquito Heaven
Part 3: What Happens When You Don’t Have a ThermaCELL
Part 4: Taking Mr. Leonard’s Tom
Part 5: Mr. Ed Takes His Tom |
