Hunting Icons Bring Countless Stories to NWTF Convention

Strickland kicked off the seminar by saying the NWTF’s convention and sport show is the perfect place to tell hunting stories.

There was no shortage of laughter as they recounted trying to hunt with unwieldy cameras, pranks they would pull on each other and even the nicknames they assigned hard-to-hunt gobblers, like the “Rodney Shuffle,” named after Rodney Dangerfield because the bird would give “No respect!”

Just as funny was when Strickland tried putting a well-known outdoor writer on a gobbler. “Hearing” his alarm was going off and excited to put this writer on a bird, Strickland woke everybody up, got them in the woods and prepared for a classic roost hunt. However, it wasn’t too long after being in the unusually dark woods that they realized something was amiss. It turns out Strickland dreamt his alarm going off, and it was 1:20 a.m. All they could do was go back to camp, laugh, drink some coffee and wait until it was actually time to hunt.

As much as the beloved hunters made the crowd laugh with their comical misadventures, they also told tear-jerking stories highlighting how powerful and healing the outdoors is.

Strickland mentioned taking a young boy hunting through the Catch a Dream Foundation, a program that provides once-in-a-lifetime dream hunting and fishing trips to children across the United States and Canada, age 18 and younger, who suffer from life-threatening illnesses.

All the boy wanted to do was turkey hunt with Strickland. Strickland brought the boy and his family to Texas to chase some Rios. After some rain and other challenges, divine intervention would materialize two strutters in front of them. 20 years later, Strickland and the man who was that boy were able to harvest birds in that exact same spot.

The iconic hunters’ seminar underscored one ultimate truth, turkey hunting is all about the stories we get to treasure throughout our lives.