My host and guide, Jeff Hinkle, was sitting just 3 feet away, watching the rearmost swamp road that I couldn’t see. My shotgun was pointed toward our two turkey decoys positioned at the intersection of two sandy trails. We were jammed close, too close, to the decoys because of the thick Florida brush that was impossible to see through for more than a few yards.

Suddenly the gobbler was there! Right there within spitting distance, inspecting our fake hen and jake. He looked at me through the small opening I had made to shoot through. My Mossy Oak camouflage was up to the task and the Osceola tom saw nothing untoward. A lot happened in the next two electrifying seconds.

The Osceola is by far the most difficult to bag of the four closely related wild turkeys in the United States because it exists only in central and southern Florida., in contrast with its cousins, the eastern, Rio Grande and Merriam’s turkeys. Eastern wild turkeys inhabit most of the eastern part of the United States. The Rio Grandes are found in Texas and the plains states as well as Hawaii. Merriam’s are birds of the Rocky Mountains, high plains and the Northwest. Hunters who bag all four of these related birds are said to have taken the grand slam of turkey hunting.

Bagging a grand slam is less a turkey hunter’s accomplishment than a measure of the opportunities he or she has had to hunt these marvelous birds in their various habitats. My work took me to the vast stretches of mesquite, live oak and prickly pear of Texas where I had taken a fine Rio Grande gobbler. Later I would be stationed in Colorado where I bagged the beautiful Merriam’s, taking several of that sub-species in Wyoming and New Mexico as well. And I took the crafty eastern birds in the Appalachians as well as the Deep South.

I wanted to complete the grand slam as a celebration of my good fortune in hunting all four of these great game birds. Applications to hunt public lands in Florida had failed to gain a chance to bag an Osceola. I didn’t know how to gain access to private land in the counties where the Osceola thrived.

My break came when the city of DeLand, Fla. and the West Volusia Tourism Advertising Authority hosted the 2002 annual conference of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association. Our hosts offered numerous hospitality activities to SEOPA members to introduce us to the many outdoor opportunities there. Among them was a limited number of hunts for the cherished Osceola wild turkey.

As soon as I learned about the opportunity, a year before the hunt, I telephoned the Florida hosts to get onto the list. Thus I was at the top of the list for the Osceola hunt. This would be my first, and perhaps only chance to bag this exceptional bird and complete the grand slam.

As the 2002 Florida spring turkey season approached the news was not good. Floods in Florida had closed the Osceola hunt areas where hunts for SEOPA members were to take place. However, at the last minute local members of the National Wild Turkey Federation would take the SEOPA hunters to their own private hunting leases. These “brothers of the hunt” were not only excellent turkey hunters, but were willing to share their secret spots with outdoor writers they had never met.

On St. Patrick’s Day 2002, my guide, Jeff Hinkle, and I took off for the woods near New Smyrna Beach. We talked gobbler hunting all the way to the huge swampy lease. Though I had hunted wild turkeys some 31 years, I asked Jeff to do our calling, deferring to his experience with these special gobblers.

That settled, he filled me in on the many flooded sloughs in the area (with moccasins and alligators), thick undergrowth (with cougars and lots of bears) and a good population of Osceolas. I asked about the giant rattlesnakes I knew lived there. “Not to worry,” was Jeff’s reply. I wondered what this meant exactly. Maybe he thought I didn’t need anything else to worry about. This was going to be exciting.

I walked in the dark in Jeff’s footprints as he whispered various cautions. A long walk on a sandy road dodging some puddles and sloshing through others brought us to the crossing of two woods roads that provided our setup location. At dawn, Jeff’s calling produced answers from a distant gobbler, but the bird had gone silent for a half hour when Jeff suggested we move. “Let’s just wait here a little longer,” I urged, and so we sat in silence broken only by the calls of nearby songbirds.

Then the gobbler was suddenly there! I pushed the tang safety forward on my double 12 gauge. It made the slightest click that I didn’t hear but which Jeff’s younger ears detected, causing him to involuntarily turn his head my way. The tom turkey’s X-ray eyes saw the movement through the thick brush and took off.

I shouldered my gun and my TruGlo sights lined up with my shooting eye and the retreating gobbler’s bobbing head. The big three inch magnum roared and the turkey flopped into the water which stood in vast puddles everywhere..

Jeff jumped to his feet and shouted, “You’ve got your slam.” He immediately went into a Preston Pittman turkey strut, including gobbles and yelps and an added leap or two into the air! These sudden antics, coming from a young man I had met less than two hours before startled me and frightened every living thing nearby. Jeff’s merriment was the mother of all celebrations, my shouts and whoops paling in comparison.

It struck me just then that Jeff wanted the slam for me as much as I wanted it myself. I sensed a depth to this new friendship. On our way out of the woods, we talked of the meaning of this shared moment. Though I always seem to be the sentimental one in any group, it was Jeff who said, “You know, we will always be tied together because of this hunt.” Just what I was thinking.