The Tenth Legion is a book on tips, tactics, and the insights on turkey hunting. I don’t read many books throughout the year but if someone asked me to tell them of a great book to read on hunting or wanted to find out more about the insights of turkey hunting I would gladly tell them to read the Tenth Legion. Starting the first of February every year I read this book over. It gets me ready for the upcoming turkey season in Alabama which usually starts the second week in march and will end the last day of April.
I have been fortunate enough to talk on the phone with the author of the book Tom Kelly about two or three times a year. I have read most of his work and in my terms they are the best books to read on his life’s situations. Tom Kelly is a native of Spanish Fort, AL located near Mobile. He does many siminars on turkey hunting every year. I have six of his books in my collection so far and each and everyone of them are signed by him to me and my son.
In this book Tom takes you on a journey to the life he has lived in the past talking about how much turkey hunting has changed not only in Alabama but all over the United States.
Other books by Tom Kelly iclude the Dealer’s Choice 1979, Better on a Rising Tide 1995, The Season 1996, The Boat 1998, A Year Outside 2000, Faces in the Crowd 2002, A Few Loose Chapters 2003, Take Back in Fancy 2005, A Hat full of Rabbits 2006, A Fork in the Road 2007, Old Tom & Laura 2008, and his latest book Absent Companions 2008.
My son and I have a little prayer that we came up with after I read the Tenth Legion to him for the first time. ” Dear Lord bless this day and guide me the turkey hunter’s way.” My son call’s this the turkey hunters prayer. Tom has put forth so much passion and outlook on life in the Tenth Legion. In the book on the finale page he wrote about something used in his video called The Afternoon on the Handles. It is my most passionate part of the book. I would like to share that with you.
Last page of the book states these touching words. The first turkey that ever came to me on the did it a long time ago. I sat there with my hands shaking and my breath short and my heart hammering so hard I could not understand why he could not hear it. The last turkey that came to me last spring had exactly the same effect, and the day that this does not happen to me is the day that I quit. The last one that ever does come to me will call forth the same emotion that the second one did. I will sit there waiting, gun up and heart thundering, and say to myself what I have said on every single occasion since the second one.
“I’m glad I lived to see it-one more time.”
“There may be people -maybe- who know more about wild turkeys than Tom Kelly, but none writes better about them. His widely acclaimed books… have become sporting classics, as the Spanish Fort, Alabama, resident has single handed created the genre of turkey literature.”
— Sports Afield.