Driving a country road last week, I spied two wild turkeys.

They resurrected Childhood, Georgia, where I worked for a grocer, Clifford M. Goolsby.

Each spring The Lincoln Journal ran a photo of Mr. Clifford with a wild turkey. Mr. Clifford would pose on one knee with his shotgun and bearded bird, and be quoted thusly: “I shot it somewhere down yonder.”

Now “down yonder” is a fine, Southern saying that means “at some distance,” and I like it. “Yonder,” in Mr. Clifford’s case, meant, “I ain’t telling you where my turkey heaven is.”

Mr. Clifford set the gold standard for hunting turkeys. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police always got their man, and Mr. Clifford always got his bird.

I hoped to follow in his footsteps. I got permission to hunt land where Dad always saw turkeys in a hollow, “holler” in the Southern vernacular. After finding me a spot, I made a blind of hog wire with pine branches woven into it.

Inside the blind I wrapped up in Uncle Joe’s green goose down sleeping bag. It was US Air Force issue, and Uncle Joe had tested it in the Aleutian Islands.

“It was so cold in the Aleutians,” said Uncle Joe, “that I could toss a glass of water into the air and lumps of ice would fall to the ground.”

Sleeping in that bag was like being wrapped in an electric blanket. With that bag under my arm, I stole away to the holler one morning in pre-dawn darkness. I shook from the cold.

Y’all know how a March morning likes to give you one last icy jolt. Well the frosty morn set my teeth to chattering. I wrapped up in that sleeping blanket and fell asleep beneath a million stars.

A noise broke my sleep. Gold daylight lit up the frost, which glinted like amber, and 10 yards away a gobbler was pulling up wild onions.

Each one squeaked as he had at it. I scarce moved as I aimed. I clicked the safety off Dad’s 12-gauge Winchester 1911 Widow Maker. A “clink” sent that wary gobbler a flapping. He must have flown off down yonder somewhere cause soon I heard a blast.

Mr. Clifford’s photo made the Journal the next week. Thus did I miss my one chance at a gobbler, but it was for the best.

The Winchester 1911 Widow Maker is among the more dangerous guns made, and it was the first firearm Winchester Repeating Arms Company lost money on. It’s a wall hanger today.

Still, I wanted to bag a wild turkey. I bought a cedar box scraper from a talented fellow who made a crossbow from a buggy spring. Albert’s cedar box scraper worked beautifully.

I didn’t hunt much longer, though. Failure took the wind out of my sails.

Mr. Clifford? He never had any problems. Each spring the Journal ran his photo with a bronze gobbler he shot “somewhere down yonder.”

When Mr. Clifford departed this world in 2003, earthly turkeys breathed a sigh of relief. If there’s such a thing as hunting for heavenly turkeys, then that’s what he’s doing. And if Heaven has a newspaper, then he’s on the front-page each spring.

By now you know what the caption will say.

“I shot it down yonder.”