Review: Mossy Oak’s “The Colonel & The Fox”

Mossy Oak released its feature-length documentary, “The Colonel & The Fox,” to a national audience April 3, retelling the story of two men who may be the last of the greatest generation of conservationists.

Col. Tom Kelly and Fox Haas were born only blocks apart in southern Alabama, but they wouldn’t meet until more than 90 years later after decades of hunting and conservation engagement that was part of the great game bird’s resurgence. The story completes a circle of life-long dedication to the wild turkey and its vital habitat.

“The Colonel & The Fox” narrates the lives of Kelly, a colonel in the army and a career forester, and Haas, the father of Mossy Oak founder Toxey Haas, recapping their upbringings and fiery passion for the wild turkey through the early years of low populations and throughout the restoration era.

Kelly got his start in 1938 with his first wild turkey harvest and recalls the secretive nature of the sport, saying, “Nobody left a turkey track in the woods. You rubbed it out with your foot.” He has famously said that he went turkey hunting every day of the season in 1953 and never heard a turkey gobble. In 1973, Kelly wrote Tenth Legion, one of the most iconic pieces of turkey literature ever published, and later became known as the poet laureate of wild turkey hunting.

The NWTF presented Kelly with its national Communicator of the Year Award in 2009 and later renamed it the Tom Kelly Communicator of the Year Award to honor him. A space in the NWTF Winchester Wild Turkey Museum was dedicated to Kelly in 2019 and his Short Spurs column still runs in Turkey Call magazine.

Haas made his own mouth call in 1944 and shot his first wild turkey that year, and has harvested a bird every year since (save for two years in 1949-50 when he was hospitalized with tuberculosis). He was a staunch conservationist and a member of what may be the oldest turkey hunting club in the country – Choctaw Bluff founded in 1926. Haas’ passion for the outdoors and the hunt inspired his son to create the Mossy Oak camo brand and company. The documentary recounts the work of Choctaw Bluff members to establish a wild turkey sanctuary, becoming a central point for wild turkey conservation in the Southeast. With no wild turkeys back home in Clay County, Mississippi, Fox Haas recalls the story of helping get a flock of 10 turkeys released there in 1979 and seeing populations take off.

The documentary also includes the importance of the NWTF and its founding in 1973, taking local and state efforts to restore the wild turkey to national prominence. NWTF’s Turkey Call magazine became the first dedicated magazine for turkey hunters and the inaugural NWTF Convention in 1977 featured the first Grand National Calling Championships – its guest speaker was Kelly.

“A community of turkey hunters like the world had never seen before was cultivated,” said narrator Nathaniel Maddux, whose Slate + Glass company produced the film.

Speaking with multiple influential individuals in the growth of turkey hunting and conservation, the documentary captures the impact of the NWTF as turkey populations began to explode.

“I knew then that anything that helped the wild turkey, I was for,” said Harold Knight, founder of Knight & Hale with David Hale, who started the third NWTF state chapter (Kentucky). “The National Wild Turkey Federation was there to help restoration (efforts) and try to live trap and put turkeys all throughout the United States.”

Dr. James Earl Kennamer, former chief conservation officer of the NWTF for nearly 30 years, added, “The Federation was the catalyst to bring all that together. That’s when we were able to make a tremendous change throughout the country, not just in the Southeast where we started.”

Brent Rogers, noted wild turkey historian and collector, said, “I think we still have that special thing that (NWTF founder) Tom Rodgers gave us, which is a community of turkey hunters. We’re above average people, and we can do a lot … and I think it’s made a pretty good success story.”

“The Colonel & The Fox” weaves in Haas and Kelly’s upbringing and impact throughout the history of the wild turkey and tells the remarkable story of the two men’s connection despite having never met – until a fateful hunt camp in 2021 when they finally shake hands for the first time in their 90s and hunt together.

“The greatest conservation success story in our country's history manifested by a generation that chose to give back more than they would take,” Maddux narrates in the film. “A generation that truly left this world, and the American wild turkey, better than they found it.”

View the 80-minute Mossy Oak exclusive documentary here.