Far Beyond Scale and Measure

The turkey woods offer some of the great paradoxes of life. Hunters enter them carrying instincts as old as humanity itself, yet today they also carry a responsibility as stewards of wildlife. They pursue the wild turkey as hunters have pursued game for generations, while recognizing the privilege of doing so in the presence of their Maker and with respect for the bird itself.

For some turkey hunters, part of that experience is measured in pounds, beard length and spurs. Exceptional gobblers deserve to be recognized, celebrated and preserved in the historical record. Those numbers are not the hunt itself, but milestones embedded within much larger stories of mornings, places, people and remarkable birds.

For many hunters, the rewards reach considerably farther. They are found in the hush before daylight, a gobble thundering through the hardwoods, the fellowship of hunting camp, hard lessons delivered by difficult birds, old friends, lost honey holes and spring mornings that become more valuable with the passing years. None of those things can be entered into a score.

Far Beyond the Scale and Measure explores the sometimes uneasy relationship between record keeping and hunting tradition, between genuine pride and inflated ego, and between those who embrace scoring and old-school hunters who question how much attention the numbers deserve.

This is not an argument against records, nor is it an argument that simply participating makes every hunt successful. It is an examination of what records give us, what they preserve, and what they can never measure.

A gobbler's weight tells us something about the bird. His beard and spurs preserve another part of his history. The story of hunting him tells us something else entirely.

Through reflection on wild turkeys, hunting tradition, record keeping, ethics, fellowship, conservation and a lifetime of lessons learned in the turkey woods, Far Beyond the Scale and Measure asks hunters to look beyond the final numbers without dismissing their value.

Because when the measurements have been recorded, the pictures taken and the stories told, what remains is something hunters on both sides of the record-book argument should understand.

In the end, it's about honoring the hunt.