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DUD 1KAI iiUK
Rappahannock Newt Special Writer
It was two days after one of the biggest early November snowfalls in Virginia in recent memory, and Jim Clay and long-time hunting partner •Neal Weakley should have been ^plucking a turkey instead of discussing the relative merits of Theresa Clay’s apple and cherry pies (Jim is an apple man), when I arrived at the Clay castle in Winchester Friday evening.
“There was still enough snow on the ground that we should have seen some tracks,” Clay explained in reviewing their dawn-til-dark day of “wonderful” frustration. “But we didn’t. All we found were some scratches real late in the day, and they were maybe a day old.”
Jim Clay is one of two people he knows of in the United States who makes his entire living in the wild turkey business. He has a small plant in Stephenson that cranks out turkey calls, a wide assortment of , devices, ranging from 50 cents to $100, for communicating with nature’s wiliest bird. He also produces and sells audio tapes and video casettes on turkey calling and turkey hunting, and occasionally somebody pays him $250 a day for a long walk in the woods.
Clay has a degree in English from West Virginia University. He taught school until his first son was bom. That’s when he told his wife he didn’t think they could live the way they wanted on a school teacher’s salary. So he turned an avocation into a profession.
“I’d been hunting turkeys since I was 14. I’ve been at it spring and fall for 27 years now,” says Clay, who concedes that his sport’s fanatic faithful are dam near a cult.
“People say golfers are fanatic,” says Clay, “but when was the last time you saw a golfer get up at 4 a.m. to tee off?”
According to the National Wild Turkey Foundation, a gobbler group roughly comparable to Ducks Unlim1 ited, there are about 2,000 dyed-inthe-wool turkey hunting fanatics in this country. Weekley, who drives up from Chapel Hill, N.C., every spring and fall to walk in the woods with Jim Clay, admits to being one of them.
“Some people say turkey hunters are elitists, but I know if anybody had tried telling me when I was 30 or 35 that I would find most of the people I consider the best Mends of a lifetime after age 40, I would have said they were crazy. That’s when I got serious about turkey hunting and that’s when I met Jim and the others who are now more than just the best hunting partners a man .could have.
“I see Jim just twice a year, but when I come in here it’s like I’d just left yesterday. There’s a lasting bond between turkey hunters,” says Weakley. Which doesn’t mean they can’t play pranks on one another. , • Clay recalls a fellow who used to hunt with his group in Pennsylvania.
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