To my turkey-hunting brethren, for that matter, deer hunting buddies, upland game hunting friends, and the hordes of fishermen I know: Take the time to capture a memory.
It is not the goal of incessant social media posting or creating shrines to one’s self.
Take the time to write in a daily journal, take the time to set up your camera to capture your hunt, and take the time to capture anything that attracts your eye. Sure, it might take ten to twenty minutes. Sit back down and write in your smartphone if you have to. Sometimes, it is a productive habit to write out your thoughts while waiting for the sunrise and the birds to gobble. Don’t like to write? Make a voice memo. The eggs and coffee at the diner will be there when you get there. Trust me, they’ll make more.
Attend to the trophy parts, ensure a clean harvest of the meat, and cool it properly, and ready to cook or put away in the freezer. The collections of beards, tail fans and spurs, along with the enjoyment of a hunter’s bounty, are all part of the hunt and your memory of it.
The emphasis here is to have the captures available years from now, as decades later, and if you put enough days afield, the stories and recollections merge, bits and pieces become one until you think long and hard and sort it all out. I can assure you from real-world experience. I started chasing gobblers in 1993. Since then, between spring and fall seasons in New York and add in out of state hunts both spring and fall it is fair to say that I’ve been afield somewhere north of a thousand mornings, and a lion’s share of all day hunting or combined with scouting and roosting over three decades. I can kick myself for not burning through rolls of film before digital cameras were cheap enough and all the rage. Had I not written out my story books as I have, starting in 2005, I would have much of it now as distant memories and so glad I captured them.
You’ll thank me many years from now should you adopt this as part of your hunt. It has never been easier with smartphones to quickly capture your thoughts, your story, and photos. You may not fancy yourself as a writer or photographer, but I can guarantee you that over time, you will find your skills, voice, and style, and it improves greatly with practice. I can tell you that as I age, officially entering the retirement years with no signs of actually retiring, that without the photos from my good cameras or smartphone, the note taking, and the story captures I incrementally do with each hunt, I would have far more difficulty in separating each hunt, as I have been blessed with so many fantastic days in the turkey woods. I know so many of you that are afield as I am, and there are hundreds of stories to tell. It would be my goal to encourage more of you to keep a journal. Turkey hunters as storytellers do not play second fiddle to any fisherman, and I encourage you to share those stories.
What I hope to strongly impart with each of you is that having these captures is instrumental to having vivid recall of each of these hunts. As time passes, this becomes an essential habit to enjoying these memories. Think of this arm-twisting as my gift of hard-earned wisdom. As we are soon to embark on the 2025 Spring Turkey Season in New York, I wish you all the best in your days afield.
© 2025 Mike Joyner- Joyner Outdoor Media
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That is good advice Mike. I have been chasing them since the early 1960s. Back then we only had a fall season but it’s still turkey hunting. Record the ones that got away too! Those memories are often more entertaining than the ones you got to carry out!