Tommy Lovelace displays a couple of his trophy spurs. 

It’s not every day that you meet a turkey man in the duck blind, but that’s just how I met Tommy Lovelace – turkey man extraordinaire.

While we were taking a break from some fantastic Delta duck hunting, compliments of Robert Smith of Glass, Inc., the talk turned to calling turkeys and I found out that Tommy had not only traveled the country harvesting trophy gobblers, but that he’s also one of the top turkey taxidermists in the south.

“My family was cotton farmers and I didn’t want to do that so I went to work for the Corps of Engineers and saved my money and opened my doors to the taxidermy business in 1980,” Lovelace said. “I guided duck hunters and turkey hunters for 15 years in the Delta from some of Lee Wallace’s clients and had a ball.”

“I started my hunting career with Bobby Smith when I was 7 years old,” Lovelace said. “I became lifelong friends with his sons Robert and Greg and my love for the outdoors just grew from those early times. He really taught me a lot about hunting.”

A.B. Ainsworth and Danny Smith were Lovelace’s turkey hunting mentors and they passed on their knowledge and love of the sport to Tommy.

“A turkey will teach you a lesson every time you go out there,” Lovelace said. “You think you can beat him at his own game, but you beat nature when you beat him because all he gobbles for is to call in his harem and he lets the hens come to him.” And if you can call an old tom in you’ve really accomplished something.

“I loved it so much that I even killed a turkey on my honeymoon and then flew to Aruba with my new bride and that can only happen when you marry a woman who has grown up in a family of hunters.”

Lovelace has hunted turkeys from Kansas to Missouri to Texas and Florida just to name a few of the states besides Mississippi.

He also met a hunter from Florida who came to the Delta in search of ducks. The man offered Tommy a chance to swap Osceola turkey hunts in Florida for duck hunts in the Mississippi.

“We swapped out hunts so I got to hunt turkeys down there in Florida for a few years and had great success,” Lovelace said. “His dad was a fruit farmer and we hunted between the fruit trees in the palmettos and the surrounding pastures and pipelines that intersected the farm. And they really love to strut on cracked oyster shells, too!”

Osceolas are prized birds due to their scarcity and limited range. As most hunters know, turkey hunters must harvest an osceola from Florida in order to complete their grand slam of turkeys. Lovelace’s best two gobblers were osceolas and they each had spurs 2 inches and 2 ¼- inches long harvested on back-to-back mornings. 

Lovelace spent a solid week hunting a wise old gobbler near McCarley one season and it proved to be his most challenging, yet satisfying hunt of his career in hunting the tough Eastern turkeys.

“I did everything I knew to do with this old bird and just couldn’t call him in,” Lovelace said. “Every morning that gobbler would fly out in the middle of a big pasture and strut and gobble and take care of his hens. I finally asked Danny Smith what to do and he told me how to take him.

The gobbler had become an obsession and Lovelace couldn’t let him whip him again.

“I made me a Ghillie suit and swam a creek and went out in the middle of the cow pasture and laid down,” said Lovelace. “I stuck a fan on a stick, because we didn’t have decoys back then and stuck it in the ground, backed up a little laid flat in the grass.”

Streaks of lightning cracked across the sky and the thunder rolled and the bird gobbled over and over.

“As soon as the storm passed he saw that fan and it was all over,” Lovelace said. “He flew down and I put a load of 3.5s on him and it was all over. He had an 11- inch beard, weighed 22 pounds and had 1 ¾ inch spurs!”

Lovelace has turned his love of hunting into a thriving taxidermy business specializing in birds and turkeys. His gobblers are a thing to behold. For more information on Lovelace and his turkey mounts contact him at 601-941-5952 or check him out on Facebook.

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comcast.net.