The Wild Turkey From Inside The Federation

“I’m 89 now, so don’t hold me to dates, just stories,” Smith said with a laugh. And stories he has.

Smith, who worked for the Florida Game and Fish agency in the early 1970s, was contacted by NWTF founder Tom Rodgers to see if he could get the NWTF’s first wild turkey stamp image and information into Smith’s Florida publication. Soon after, Rodgers called and offered Smith the editor’s position for Turkey Call magazine.

The NWTF was newly established, but Smith jumped at the chance to move to South Carolina to lead the magazine. In the fall of 1976, he went to work for the NWTF, and as 1976 turned to 1977, he moved his family.

“The church and the community and the wild turkeys welcomed us with open arms,” Smith said. “We never looked back. We were there until 1995 when I retired.”

When Smith, who now resides back in Florida, arrived at the NWTF, the organization was still in its infancy, as even its 501(c)(3) status was still pending.

“Tom was excited when that came through,” said Smith, recalling that the designation helped give credibility to the fledgling organization.

With the stamp print program already underway, Smith remembers the NWTF renting mailing lists for direct mailings, and putting stuffers, or NWTF promotional material, in all the new turkey calls and other gear packaging they could manage to get into. With a $5 membership as an introductory offer, memberships poured in.

Smith said the 1980s were a time of significant growth for the organization. A new office was constructed, and the technical committee formed.

“We learned how to network with state agencies, put aside some jealousies, give credit where credit was due,” Smith said. “When we got the chapter system developed, the needle moved again.

“One of the things I pushed for when I got there was outdoor writers. They helped us tremendously.”

Writers who included information on the NWTF in their stories lent credibility and, maybe most importantly, helped spread the mission of the NWTF to people who had not heard of the organization.

At the time, outdoor writers’ organizations were few. The Outdoor Writers Association of America was one Smith engaged with. South Carolina did not have an outdoor writers’ organization, so Smith helped form the South Carolina Outdoor Press Association. This helped grow the pool of available writers and increased news about the organization and the outdoors in general. The South Carolina Outdoor Press Association would later honor Smith with a Lifetime Achievement Award, now aptly named the “SCOPE Gene Smith Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Not only were writers lacking, photographs of true wild turkeys were rare.

“In the first few years of the Federation, there were few books on turkeys—and fewer photographs,” Smith said.

Smith took every chance he could to find good quality photographers and photographs. One of those early photographers was Tink Smith, who would later present Gene Smith with a notebook containing 30 to 40 8-by-10s of wild turkeys and asked, “Are these any good?” They were indeed, Gene Smith recollects.

Tink Smith, having success photographing turkeys in the wild, did a seminar at the NWTF National Convention in Orlando, showing the setup he used to capture the iconic images of wild turkeys. The setup included a pit blind in his home area of Harrison County, West Virginia. The blind, reminiscent of the pits soldiers dug during times of war, helped conceal the photographer.

Gene Smith, an exceptional photographer himself, would visit Tink Smith in West Virginia on occasion, recalling it was a little “eerie” sitting in the homemade earthen blind.

“That is how things developed in the industry,” he said.

There were also times, Gene Smith said, when he had to laugh to avoid crying. At the second NWTF Convention in Kansas City, he remembered carrying all the original artwork that was submitted for the next stamp print in a U-Haul truck escorted by an NWTF Oldsmobile station wagon. They used walkie talkies to communicate rest stops and any emergencies.

Unfortunately, the truck carrying the artwork leaked, and some originals got wet during transport. At the hotel, they had to dry the artwork without a secure facility. Not wanting the paintings to disappear, they used the hotel’s basement, which had a fence but no security patrol. So, Smith stayed inside the enclosure all night to keep the artwork safe.

While he was getting coffee the next morning, the hotel staff threw away some of the artwork. Realizing the mistake quickly, Smith climbed into a dumpster to retrieve them. He said they had to clean macaroni, coffee grounds and other trash off each piece. Thankfully, none were permanently damaged.

“One of the things that impressed me about the NWTF from the beginning is the makeup of its membership,” Gene Smith said. “People from varying socioeconomic backgrounds participated. From ditch diggers to welders to doctors, they all were turkey hunters.”

But because information was lacking in the early years, he and Mary Kennamer, Dr. James Earl Kennamer’s wife, started building a list of turkey literature to send out to regional directors and other staff. It was one of many ways he and the staff helped spread the word on wild turkeys. Gene Smith was inducted into the NWTF Grand National Calling Championships Hall of Fame in 2019 for his decades of media influence, sharing the story of wild turkeys and turkey callers nationally.

“I’ve had fun with this career,” Smith said, adding that he’d “had it with deadlines” upon retiring in his early ‘70s.

“I’ve been blessed. I think the Lord was in this whole thing. From start to finish, even the bumps. I’m proud of what you all are doing. It’s a blessing to the conservation community around the country.”

Editor’s note: Editor Gene Smith’s early handwritten records documented the costs and other facts associated with each issue of Turkey Call beginning with the November/December issue in 1976 and ended with the advent of computerized recordkeeping after the July/August 1995 issue. The 1976 press run of 14,300 copies of a 24-page black-and-white magazine (cost: $4,770.12) swelled to 99,949 copies of a full-color, 84-page magazine in 1995 (cost: $72,029.18).

By 1977, Smith had introduced three new regular features to Turkey Call: “News From The Flock,” intended to keep members abreast of state and local chapter activities that later became its own publication under the title The Caller; “Biologically Speaking,” written by biologist Fred Lynn. It covered wild turkey biology and the activities of the Technical Committee. “Talk’n Turkey,” a potpourri of topics related to turkey hunting, biology and conservation, was written and illustrated by former NWTF CEO Rob Keck. The latter two columns would go on to become two of the outdoor industry’s longest running regular features authored by the same person: The run of “Talk’n Turkey” columns ended with Keck’s departure from the NWTF in May 2008; and Dr. James Earl Kennamer, former NWTF chief conservation officer, penned “Biologically Speaking” for more than 30 years beginning in 1980.