Remembering Turkey Hunting Legend Col. Tom Kelly

The hunting and conservation world has lost a giant. Colonel Tom Kelly passed away this week, according to a video posted by his daughter on Kelly’s website. Kelly was 99.

“This weekend, we lost one of the greatest of the greatest generation,” said Laura Kelly Bates. “The Colonel, Daddy to me, Old Tom to his grandchildren. No words can express what he meant to me, to our family and friends, or to his troops and his loyal legion of followers in the turkey hunting community.”

Col. Kelly was born in 1927 in Mobile, Alabama. He enrolled in the U.S. Navy as an aerial gunner and international Morse code operator at the age of 17 to fight in World War II. He later fought in the Korean War before retiring as a Colonel.

Afterwards, he worked as a forester, during which time he made a name for himself by writing about his escapades in the turkey woods. The stories were collected in his book, Tenth Legion, which became a cult classic among turkey hunters, particularly in the South.

“I do not hunt turkeys because I want to, I hunt them because I have to,” Col. Kelly famously wrote. “I would really rather not do it, but I am helpless in the grip of my compulsion.”

In addition to his famous book, which became known as “the Bible of wild turkey hunting,” Col. Kelly also wrote for the likes of Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, and Sports Illustrated. Writer Jim Casada called him “the Poet Laureate of the turkey woods,” and the moniker persisted.

In addition to his storytelling prowess, Col. Kelly was also known for his conservation work in restoring the species. And this story was well told in relation to his friendship with Mossy Oak’s Daniel Haas in a feature-length documentary dubbed The Colonel and The Fox. It’s well worth the watch.

“You have to pay for every bird you kill,” Col. Kelly writes later in Tenth Legion. “And the coin you use to pay for them is time.”

“This spring, the frost will finally begin to fade. The dogwoods will wake from winter with thoughts of blooming. The wise old owl will call good morning to the woods around him. And an old longbeard will stand tall on the limb and stick his neck out. For the first time in 100 years, he’ll shout to the woods the return of the season without Col. Tom Kelly around to feel it,” wrote Mossy Oak in a Facebook post. “We’ll miss you, Colonel.”