Pictured from left to right: Daniel Haas, Fox Haas, Vandy Stubbs, Toxey Haas, and Neill Haas
Jessi Cole Walters
Last Friday morning, April 24, Mossy Oak patriarch Fox Haas killed a wild turkey from a well-camouflaged golf cart that blended right in to the edge of a greened-up field.
After a few years of not feeling well enough to get out and hunt in the spring woods, Haas found the energy and enthusiasm at 94 to join his son and grandsons in the pursuit of a wild turkey. It was all very last minute--Neill Haas (his grandson) went to visit him the day before to tell him that there was a gobbling turkey and they were going to go try to kill it the next morning. Neill's strategy was to not even ask if Mr. Fox felt okay or up to it, he just told him there's a gobbling turkey and they ought to go get it. He didn't want his papaw to have a chance to think about how he felt--just about that gobbling turkey. And it worked beautifully!
The next morning, Mr. Fox was in high spirits and waiting on his son and grandsons to come pick him up at 5:15. When nobody had come through the door by 5:16, he was already on the phone with Neill wondering where everyone was--a testament to how excited he was to go out that morning. Mr. Fox's wife, Mrs. Evelyn, says he was up and ready to go around 2 am that morning, in fact.
The day before, after they had gotten the green-light from Mr. Fox, they worked quickly to prepare. Neill built an incredible camouflaged-in golf cart blind, designed to sit by a cherry oak tree by the edge of greened-up field. The golf cart was camouflaged above and behind, too, to make it really almost impossible to see unless you knew what you were looking for. Toxey Haas (Mr. Fox's son,) Vandy (Toxey's son-in-law,) Daniel Haas (Toxey's son) and Neill hung a ratchet strap across the front of the golf cart to give Mr. Fox a bit of a rest that was still flexible enough to let him move around and adjust easily.
Toxey took Vandy's new 28-gauge to Mr. Tony Rosetti to drop the poundage of the trigger, as when Mr. Fox practiced shooting, he couldn't hardly pull the trigger due to it being so stiff and new. They got it adjusted to still be safe but where Mr. Fox could focus on what he knew best. They knew his "blood in the eyes" instinct, as Toxey calls it, always came right back when he was looking down the barrel at a turkey.
Back to the morning of, everything got a bit chaotic once they parked the golf cart in its spot at the edge of the field and called. A turkey immediately gobbled back, and it seemed like things were going to go quickly. Toxey realized he forgot the hen decoy he'd brought to convince the gobbler to focus on, and Daniel ran, according to Legend, three miles to the truck and back in his full leafy suit and boots. Once they got the decoy in place and set up, everything happened fast.
Daniel and Neill called from a tree 20 yards or so behind the cart blind and Toxey and Vandy sat with Mr. Fox. Several hens came out to inspect the decoy and the gobbler did exactly as they hoped, he strutted patiently and slowly over to the decoy. Mr. Fox got in position, got the "blood in his eye," and pulled the trigger.
Click.
No shot went off. Vandy thinks he hadn't fully closed the gun when he was loading it and trying to be quiet, aware that the new gun was capable of being loud. Mr. Toxey grabbed the gun and ejected the shell out of the chamber to put a new one in, and the longbeard gobbled at the sound, though he did putt once and become a bit wary. It's a miracle it didn't straight spook them all off.
With the gun reloaded and handed back to Mr. Fox, he went right back to it and aimed the barrel of the gun down at the turkey's neck and head, the way he's done for almost 80 years. It's an instinct that always comes right back to it, no matter how shaky his hands are or old he may get. For a brief second, he'll steady right up and make it happen.
Mr. Fox made an excellent shot and "clobbered him," says Toxey. Neill and Daniel ran out to grab the flopping bird and bring him back to their papaw. It felt like several miracles happened in a row to get that turkey, they all reported. And miracle it was--at 94, Mr. Fox Haas killed another wild turkey. After three years of health scares, illnesses, and even one turkey missed last year, it truly felt like divine intervention. The family was all Facetimed in, great-grandchildren were shuttled out to see him and the turkey, and all was right with the world.
The youngest Toxey "T" Haas, Mr. Fox's great-grandson, runs alongside the cart-blind to greet them.
The gobbler was taken early that morning by Haas and celebrated by not only his family there with him that morning, but also by thousands of other turkey hunters around the country that have been inspired by and follow his legacy in the spring turkey woods.
To listen to Toxey, Vandy, Daniel, and Neill tell the story, watch or listen to the Gamekeeper Podcast episode below where they recount the morning and all the details, each one, you can tell, in high spirits.
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Podcasts
To learn more about Mr. Fox Haas, watch the 2024 documentary The Colonel and the Fox, a story about two great men, Fox Haas and Col. Tom Kelly, who worked to restore the wild turkey in their own ways.
