Photo by Ralph Hensley

A sinus infection, an ear infection and bronchitis in one lung laid Tracy Phillips low, but it didn't knock him out of his favorite pursuit of hunting wild turkeys last spring.

He first started feeling bad when he was out hunting. It got worse later when he was at work and then at home.

"Three shots, a breathing treatment and five prescriptions later, I was sent home from the doctor to rest," Phillips recounted. "The doctor told me to take it easy for the next five to 10 days, and of course I agreed."

One day later, Phillips was back in the woods.

"The shots and drugs had given me a false sense of security that I was well enough to go hunting," he related. "My body failed me about a third of the way up the mountain. I toughed it out but didn't have anything to show for it except a fever."

He ran into his brother-in-law Chip Troy on the way out of the woods. Troy had seen some gobblers and suggested that he and Phillips try them a few days later.

When he went back to their farm in Jackson County that time, Phillips carried inhalers, antibiotics and cough suppressants, as well as his regular turkey hunting gear.

It was pouring rain.

"I'm talking buckets," Phillips said.

He and Troy had a long pre-dawn walk through a newly plowed and muddy field to get to where they were going.

"We finally got to the very back corner of the field at the base of the mountain where the turkeys were last spotted," Phillips said. "By this time, I was sweating profusely and hoping that all those drugs were going to do their job."

The hunters set up in a fencerow below where they thought the gobblers were roosted. Phillips put out a whole flock of decoys, three hens and two jakes. It was a new tactic for him. The turkeys he'd seen had been hush-mouthed and ganged up, so he figured putting out a flock might give him his best shot.

The paint had been peeling off his decoys, but he'd worked to repaint them the night before.

"It was going to be an April Fools' Day hunt, and I had told my wife I had a trick for those gobblers," he said with a grin.