“Johnie Wood Hunts Turkeys with ThermaCELL All Across the Country”
Part 3: What Happens When You Don’t Have a ThermaCELL
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, is there another time that you’ve used your ThermaCELL?
Wood: I don’t want to tell you about that, but instead I want to tell you about a day that I would have used a ThermaCELL if I’d had one, and why I always carry one with me now, regardless of the type of hunting I’m doing. I was duck hunting at Sweet Lakes, just south of Lake Charles, Louisiana, before Hurricane Rita destroyed all that property down in that area. Although a duck-hunting and goose-hunting place, we’d primarily gone there to hunt ducks. The company I was working for had brought a number of their customers on this hunt, and of course, we’d given them all the good duck-hunting places. When our guide asked if any of us would like to hunt geese, I immediately volunteered. That morning, I went out in the middle of a rice paddy and lay down in the middle of some coffee weeds.  The coffee weeds would serve as a makeshift blind. I was literally lying on my back in the mud, hoping to shoot geese.
We had thousands of geese – mainly snow geese and white-fronted geese, also known as speckled bellies because the chests of the birds had black barring on them - flying over us. But most of the geese that were flying over were snow geese. This was the first time I’d ever really been on an official goose hunt. And I’d never seen such a spectacle of waterfowl before in my life. However, although there were thousands of geese in the air, almost all of them were at least 6 feet out of gun range. So we only took three that morning. So-many geese were in the air, and these birds were so awe-inspiring, that for 30 minutes I photographed them with my camcorder as they flew by. I had sprayed-down with bug spray, but the mosquitoes were so thick they must have licked it off. I wore a half mask that I used for turkey hunting, but there was a gap between the net and the top of my cap.
The mosquitoes bit me so bad that I looked like I had chicken pox. For the next 2 days, everyone in camp felt really sorry for me and commented on how bad my forehead looked. Although I put all types of lotions, anti-itch medicines and stop-the-sting medicines on my forehead, I still looked like I had stuck my head in a hornet’s nest.  I know now what I didn’t know then. If I’d had a ThermaCELL with me and cranked that ThermaCELL up just before I laid down in those coffee weeds that morning, not only would my forehead not have been chewed-up by mosquitoes, I probably wouldn’t even have been bitten by a mosquito anywhere. This was the most-horrendous day I ever had in my war with mosquitoes. And on this day, the mosquitoes won, and I lost big time.
Probably most people don’t think about using a ThermaCELL when they hunt geese. However, geese live where mosquitoes live, and if you hunt in the southern states, the border states like Maryland or any swampy areas during the first half of goose season, you better not go to your blind, your pit or your field without a ThermaCELL. I did, and I certainly regretted it.
Tomorrow: Taking Mr. Leonard’s Tom
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 |
