Humble Strategy, High Rewards

Considered a dream of many turkey hunters, the NWTF’s U.S. Super Slam is the slam above all slams, requiring a harvest in all 49 states that the wild turkey inhabits, no doubt a trial of determination and persistence. Just over a dozen people have put their names on the board as Super Slam accomplishers, officially registering every bird in the NWTF’s Wild Turkey Records. Billy Barnett is the most recent entry on that revered list.

Barnett taught himself how to hunt turkeys when he was a teenager, but traveling the country in search of gobbles and adventure never occurred to him as a possibility.

“I never even dreamed I could do something like that,” Barnett said. “It just didn’t even seem real to me to go after anything like that.”

After kicking around the idea of pursuing the NWTF Grand Slam, Barnett decided it was time for some adventure. In the spring of 2016, he harvested the Florida Osceola, a Merriam’s in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a Kansas Rio Grande and an Eastern in his home state of Kentucky, as well as Tennessee and Alabama. The fire was lit.

“I was like, ‘You know, if I hunt the states around those states, maybe 50 years from now, I could get a U.S. [Super] Slam,’” Barnett said.

Barnett, a lineman for a local electric company in Kentucky, would begin diligently planning out each of his spring adventures while taking the frugal approach – meticulously saving funds, sleeping in the back of his truck with an air mattress, often hunting public land, packing a cooler full of food and hitting the open road with his Benelli Super Black Eagle II, a couple decoys and a box call.

“I would make envelopes and write the state’s name on the envelope,” Barnett said. “I would find out how much it would cost for the state’s hunting license, how much it would be for travel and how many miles it was from my hometown to the particular area I was going to hunt. I would start saving up money and putting it in each envelope, and whenever I had enough money in there built up, I would put an ‘X’ across it. By the time turkey season came around, I had all my money saved up for each state.”

In 2017, Barnett’s second year pursuing the Super Slam, he harvested birds in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Virginia, Indiana and Michigan.

“That second year is when I thought to myself, ‘Maybe this really is possible,’ and I kind of got obsessed with it,” Barnett said. “As soon as that season was over, I was already planning for my next season.”

Year after year, from his Grand Slam in 2016 to 2022, Barnett saved up money and vacation days throughout the summer, fall and winter and spent months researching where he was going to hunt.

“I would look at a state’s harvest numbers and see what county would have the highest harvest rate and then look for public land in that county,” Barnett said. “I would always have backups, too, ‘cause you never know what you’re going to get into or what it’s going to look like when you get there.”

The cross-continental hunter also utilized the kindness of strangers, often using mapping apps and asking landowners for permission to hunt.

“I’ve knocked on doors to ask for permission, and when you tell someone you’re trying to shoot a bird in every state, it shocks them,” Barnett said. “They’re like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ They’ll say, ‘Yeah, hopefully you can get your bird here; you are more than welcome to hunt our property,’ so that kind of helped me as well.”

Barnett’s 2022 hunt in Nevada was the 49th state and the conclusion to what he once thought was only a dream.

“Anybody can do it,” Barnett said. “I really believe that. Even if you don’t, just enjoy the hunt. It’s a good excuse to get to go hunt more. There’s a lot of those places I would never have gone to if it wasn’t for this, and I am thankful for that.”