Turkey hunter
October 27th, 2005 by Administrator
Turkey hunter , 10, bags first grand slam - You sit and listen as Taylor Kinard talks about her accomplishments, not only in the classroom at Hutchison School, where she is an honor student, but also in the field as a hunter, where this year she possibly became the youngest girl ever captured on video with one of wild turkey hunting’s most sought-after accomplishments.
It’s hard to believe you’re talking to a 10-year old fourth-grader.
Even her grandfather, Memphis Realtor Jackie Welch, is amazed at Taylor’s abilities as Taylor, all wide-eyed and thoroughly into the conversation, relates how she killed, starting March in Florida and ending in May in South Dakota, all four subspecies of the wild turkey native to North America.
And the man behind the camera at each and other one of the kills was Taylor’s granddad, or “ganfafater” as she calls Welch.
So it was on a recent day that Taylor, along with her aunt and Welch’s daughter, Dayna Welch Luckett, who served as Taylor’s “guide” on the journey to possible wild turkey hunting history (no records are kept on such an accomplishment), sat in Welch’s office off Wolf River Boulevard and Germantown Parkway and talked about their amazing three-month journey from central Florida (Inverness) to southwest Texas (La Pryor) to southwest Tennessee (near Memphis) to southwest South Dakota (Fairpoint).
With each word, Taylor’s eyes and her grandfather’s smile gets wider and wider.
Through it all, Luckett just nods her head, smiles and says, “She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?”
That she is.
Talk about a Collierville-based family who believes in doing things together, this is is one at the top of the list.
From Welch’s father, the late W.H. ‘Waymon’ Welch, to Welch to his daughters, Dawn and Dayna, and now to Taylor, hunting has been, is and will be a family tradition, a tradition that will be carried on by Taylor’s younger brother, Ty, 6.
“It’s just something we do and we do it as a family,” said Welch, 62, who operates one of the area’s most successful commercial land development/investment property companies (Germantown-based Welch Reality). “I never pushed either of my daughters. It’s something they wanted to do . . . and it’s something that Taylor wants to do. It’s just our time to bond together as a family.”
There obviously was a lot of bonding time in Welch’s quest to get his granddaughter’s wild turkey “grand slam,” as it’s known, on video. There were hours and hours and hours of time spend not only filming each hunt, but also making sure it was done safely and without Taylor missing too much of school.
“Her mama let her miss four Fridays,” Welch said. “We utilized every spare minute on the weekends we could find. We’d travel on Fridays, hunt Saturday and Sunday and get back Sunday night. We wanted to keep missing school to the very minimum. A couple of times we had to come on Mondays.”
After all, school comes first for Taylor, who this year was a part of a team that competed in Destination Imagination competition at Germantown High School. Destination Imagination is an international creative problem-solving competition that promotes thinking outside the box and teamwork. All five of the competitive Hutchison teams placed in the top three of their challenges and age divisions in the tournament.
One of the first people Taylor showed her 2004 video was her math teacher.
Her newest video was only recently completed. In two years of turkey hunting, Taylor has killed seven birds.
Some hunters go a lifetime without killing that many turkeys, which are among the most challenging of all hunting pursuits. “If a wild turkey could smell.” you’d never kill them is an often-heard comment among turkey hunters.
Taylor, who like all of the Welch family members lives in Collierville, admits she has done her share of talking about her wild turkey hunting abilities, which runs in the Welch family. Consider that over the past six years Luckett has accomplished — on video — the grand slam twice, along with a double slam (killing two of each bird) and the royal slam.
For the grand slam, a hunter must kill an Osceola, Eastern, Rio Grande and Merriam. The royal slam includes the Gould sub-species, native to Mexico.
Welch was the cameraman and Dawn was the guide in 2004 when Taylor killed five mature gobblers in a “fair chase” setting all within one spring season. After that, it was decided for 2005 they’d go for the grand slam and do it all on video under the same label — Turkey Girl Productions.
It turned out to be a labor of love for Welch, his daughter and Taylor.
Surprisingly, the hardest subspecies to kill, Welch and Taylor said, was the one closest to home — the Eastern.
“That one came down to the last weekend of the season,” said Welch, who admitted that he’d just about given up on the getting the fourth bird on film. He had to get the OK from Taylor’s parents, Dawn and Bill Kinard, to give it one last try. Once they’d told him to “go for it,” the final chase was on.
Taylor killed her Eastern on April 30
By Larry Rea
Special to East Memphis Appeal