Honoring a Legendary Turkey Hunting Mentor in West Virginia
The turkey population numbers in Wayne County, West Virginia were dismal until one day a man named Roscoe Spaulding led the charge to re-populate turkeys in the region, poult by poult until the hills once again sang with the early morning gobbling of healthy, thriving, turkey flocks.
Turkey hunter Roscoe “Poppy” Spaulding knew the turkey hunting around his hometown of Stepptown WV was not as good as it could be and wanted to do something about it. He was not the type to sit back and lament the bad luck of the times, so he decided to lead the turkey population recovery efforts. In order to accomplish this, he put up funds and together with his uncle Jesse Spaulding (who also went by the nickname Poppy) purchased several turkey chicks through the National Wild Turkey Foundation, his family said.
Roscoe penned the turkeys in his barn, where he fed them and watered them so they could grow strong enough to be released into the wild. He only interacted with them all under the cover of darkness, so as to never let the turkeys ever see him, because he did not want them to become domesticated. Gene Campbell, a longtime friend and turkey hunting partner of Spaulding, said the turkeys never once saw a human.
Once the turkey poults grew big enough, they had to be released into the wild. The first step was calling them into boxes. Spaulding paired the turkeys up, putting a hen and a tom together, and then loaded up his truck full of turkeys and headed into the hills of West Virginia. He drove old, winding dirt roads before daylight, stopping frequently to hop out, grab a load of turkey poults, and let them go in the cover of the misty woods.
Over time, his efforts made a difference and the hills of Wayne County, West Virginia once again have sustainable populations of turkeys. After that, Spaulding spent decades introducing others to his favorite hobby: turkey hunting. He guided new hunters, calling in turkeys, and helped folks learn the ins and outs of the sport.
Campbell, a hunting guide himself, spent thirty-something years and countless hours chasing birds with Spaulding, accumulating laughs and memories while creeping into the hills before sunrise, hunkering down in thunderstorms, and notching turkey tags. One time they were riding four wheelers in the woods before daylight, and as they zoomed along, Campbell’s hat blew off his head. He turned around and scooped what he thought was his hat off the road and plopped it down atop his head, before he suddenly realized it was not his hat at all; but rather, a roadkill possum.
“I had that smell on me all day long,” Campbell said, “Roscoe got a good laugh about that.”
The duo hunted rain or shine. One of their favorite times to target turkeys was after a rain, because that is when the turkeys seemed most active. That method is how they ended up smack dab in the middle of a quickly approaching storm one morning.
“Roscoe always wanted to be in the woods an hour before sunrise. A whole hour,” Campbell said. “We got up on the mountain when the wind started blowing. We were on an old logging road and it started thundering and lightning. We had nowhere to go. There was no rock cliff to get under. I remember standing on that old logging road and it was raining so hard that the rain came up over top of my boots. We hung there right there with it, and it was really dangerous being in the woods with the wind and lightning, but we did it, and after about thirty or forty minutes of it, the sun popped out, and we had birds calling.”
Spaulding passed away from cancer in 2022. After going through the a round of cancer treatments, he had been given a clean bill of health by his doctors. He called his friend while Campbell was in Florida and he talked a long time. During that conversation Spaulding expressed concern about his health, saying that although the doctors said he was clear, something did not feel right. Six weeks later he died from an aggressive resurgence of the cancer.
Now, some of the people who hunted with him and were mentored by him have organized the inaugural Roscoe Spaulding Memorial Turkey Hunt for the opening day of turkey hunting season in West Virginia, Monday, April 15. For a $50 donation fee, hunters are entered into the contest. Prizes will be awarded for first, second, and third place. Proceeds from this years event will go towards purchasing a headstone for Spaulding, who currently does not have one. Next years’ event will begin to accumulate funds for a scholarship at his high school in his name. More information about the tournament can be found on the Roscoe-Poppy-Spaulding Memorial Turkey Hunt Facebook page.
“He was all about turkey hunting,” Campbell said. “When he was on his deathbed I went to visit him, and he hadn’t talked much for days. When he saw me, he asked if I had put one to roost that night.”
Turkey hunting in West Virginia takes place during morning hours. The turkey hunting tournament, which is sponsored by Elite Trophy Outfitters, concludes at 1pm.
At 1pm, hunters and others will reconvene for awards and an after-hunt reception with hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, chips, and pop. This may be the first year, but event organizer Wayne Williamson is hoping it is just the first of many years of honoring this local legend.
Thanks to our sponsors who generously donated products for the event:
Prize winner – Havalon folding knife
Mossberg – donated a Bantam 500 Youth 20 gauge
ALPS OutdoorZ – donated a small Impact Turkey Vest
Barnett Bows – donated a Vortex G3 Hunter Youth Compound Bow
Havalon Knives donated a Redi pocket knife
“We would like to keep it going year after year,” Williamson said. “We think it will grow. The ultimate goal is for our buddy’s name to never get lost. We want Roscoe Spaulding’s name to live on forever.” In the future, after Spaulding’s headstone has been funded, the plan is to establish a scholarship fund at the three local area high schools.
Williamson lived just down the road from Spaulding, whom he first met when he was around twelve or thirteen years old. Williamson remembers visiting Spaulding at his uncle’s house and getting to know him throughout the many years of friendship. Spaulding introduced Williamson to turkey hunting, before that, most of his hunting had centered around deer hunting and other activities.
“Roscoe and my cousin Herbie introduced me to turkey hunting,” Williamson said. “I never did care about turkeys. I was a deer hunter, and I wasn’t worried about turkeys. They talked me into going one day and Roscoe called me in a big old turkey. I just fell in love with it ever since then. I would go to Roscoe’s house, and we would sit around and play on slate calls, box calls, mouth calls, and other calls. He was a big part in teaching me what I know about turkey hunting.”
The old turkey hunting legend meant a lot to Williamson, who considered Spaulding family, or “holler kin,” as he called it. “He was a great guy,” Williamson said. “He had a great personality. He knew how to joke, and he was down to earth. He was just a fun and enjoyable guy to be around.”
Wherever Spaulding went, he usually had a turkey call on him, either in his pocket or his hands. He often brought a turkey call along or he created one out of available materials, friends said. He often fashioned them out of straws, wrappers, water bottles, turkey wing bones, or whatever was handy.
Campbell laughed as he recalled the time, he and Spaulding purchased two new ceramic turkey calls. His worked fine while Spaulding’s did not seem to work at all. When Campbell called with the ceramic call, turkeys responded. When Spaulding called with his, nothing happened. He sandpapered it down but to no avail. Finally, after a thorough inspection, Spaulding discovered tiny hairline fractures throughout his ceramic call.
“To our ears, you couldn’t tell the difference, but the turkeys could tell,” Campbell said. “He got so mad he threw it away.”
Spaulding’s identity centered around turkey hunting, but he also volunteered a significant amount of time to coach his local Tolsa WV high school football team. “He was all about turkey hunting,” Williamson said. “The only thing I know about that he loved more than turkey hunting was his family and the Lord.”
According to Spaulding’s daughter Ashlee Holyfield, that is exactly how his family remembers him, with high school football added to the mix. While most people associated her father to turkey hunting and high school football, he was even more than that, Holyfield said. He was an attentive and loving family man as well. He was an active dad who taught her to dig herbs such as ginseng, yellowroot and rattle weed. He played a significant role in the lives of his grandchildren. He kept up with his friends.
“Everybody knew my dad,” she said. “Whether it was from football, turkey hunting, or just from running into friends at the gas station.” Holyfield now lives in a town about thirty minutes from where she grew up. The school her children attend is known locally as the rival school in sports to her hometown’s school. Even there, she said, she runs into people who recognize her as “Roscoe’s daughter,” many of whom she doesn’t even know herself, but who recognize her from her association with, and likeness to, her dad.
“My dad loved turkey hunting, but he also loved Alabama football,” Holyfield said. “He and I had that in common. We watched a million football games together. He loved baseball, and he loved his grandkids. He helped me raise my kids until he passed. My dad was loud and funny, and he was a comedian. And he cut his grass every day. We still laugh about how he cut his grass every day.”
Spaulding’s widow Jacalyn Spaulding remembers him as charming, handsome, athletic, and full of life. He played baseball for thirty years, she said, until he just couldn’t play anymore, and loved watching softball games because of the girls’ determination and spirit. “He had so many friends,” Jacalyn Spaulding said. “He had a great personality. He was very funny. Everybody loved him.”
She also remembers him as a hard worker who never gave up, even when he was crushed in the mines while working in 1990.
“He was on life support, and our daughters were so young,” Jacalyn Spaulding said. “It was scary, but he came through that. He had a lot of faith.”
The turkey hunting tournament being organized by those who hunted with Spaulding seems like an appropriate way to memorialize this man who was taken from his community too soon, Holyfield believes. “It means a lot to me and it means a lot to my mom,” Holyfield said. “My mom had no way of organizing something in his name. This is a really small community that steps up for each other.”
Jacalyn Spaulding is grateful to those who are working to ensure her late husband’s memory lives on. “This is an awesome event that is taking place in memory of my husband who was an avid turkey hunter,” Spaulding said. “He loved everything about turkey hunting.”
An avid turkey hunter, indeed, who managed to make it into the hills, with the help of his daughter, to hunt turkey in the last season he was alive even while his body was ravaged with cancer. Before becoming sick though, Spaulding was the one helping others into the woods, including his oldest grandson Trevor, who is now 14, and his sons-in-law.
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many people he trained to turkey hunt,” Jacalyn Spaulding said.
He mentored friends, neighbors, family members, and whoever wanted to learn, she said. She takes comfort now in his memory not only as an expert and enthusiastic turkey hunter, but in the love he left behind in the people he knew.
“He was a very religious man who loved the Lord,” Jacalyn Spaulding said. “And he loved his family. He loved everybody. He loved his children and grandchildren. He wanted them to do the right things and be good people. He was very proud of them.”
The Roscoe Spaulding Youth Turkey Hunt happened on Monday, April 14th in West Virginia. There were a number of young kids who signed up to get out in the woods at dawn and hunt with their mentors. There were three birds submitted for scoring at the end of the morning hunt, and the winner was a 20-pound, 64 ½ inch bird. The runner up was one of Roscoe’s grandsons with an 18-pound bird.
The event was a success, and plans are already underway for next years’ Roscoe Spaulding Memorial Turkey hunt. Roscoe’s widow Jacalyn said she is incredibly grateful at the outpouring of enthusiasm and for the opportunity to honor her husband. An amazing number of folks attending the event all pointed to Roscoe as having taught them to hunt, how to call a turkey, how to improve turkey habitat, or how to raise young birds and release them into the wild. He was involved in every aspect of the West Virginia Turkey scene and impacted both young and old. People had stories of Roscoe coming into school classrooms and teaching about wild turkeys, how to hunt safely, and getting kids interested in the woods.
He was really quite a man, and I was honored to get to know his family, and to hear about his legacy. We are so happy that we could support the memory of Roscoe and help continue the work that he started, which is getting young people into the woods and enjoying the opportunity to hunt turkeys. Preparations are being made for the second annual Roscoe Spalding Memorial Turkey hunt, which will happen on opening day in WV next year. The founders of the event are incorporating into a 501C3 and setting up a Go Fund Me campaign to create a scholarship at the local high school in Roscoe’s name, a very worthy exercise to memorialize a terrific man who’s much beloved in that part of the world. Keep in touch with the event through the Facebook page, and for more information about the opportunity to contribute to the event.
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