History Is Lunch: William C. Lester, "A Historical Look at Mississippi Turkey Hunting"

On February 10, 2021, William C. Lester presented “A Historical Look at Mississippi Turkey Hunting” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Turkeys are native to North America and were one of the most important birds to Native Americans and later European settlers. But as those settlers cleared land for farming, changes in the bird’s habitat decimated turkey populations. By 1920, eighteen states had lost their turkey populations completely. Conservation efforts through the twentieth century saw a return of the bird, with some seven million estimated nationally and a quarter million in Mississippi alone.
“Turkey hunting began in Mississippi with the Indians, who used the turkeys’ own wing bones to lure the birds close enough to bring to hand,” said Lester. “The Europeans that came to North America improved on the Indians’ methods, and their success in hunting helped these new arrivals survive.”
Lester has made turkey trumpet calls for decades. “About forty years ago when hunting in the Mississippi Delta I met a very old man coming out of the woods with a wing bone call hanging around his neck. He played it for me, and from that moment I knew I wanted to learn how to make that sound,” Lester said.
William C. Lester was born in Memphis. He earned a BA and MFA from the University of Mississippi. From 1974 to 2008 he worked in the art department of Delta State University, serving as chair from 2004 to 2008. He has been executive director of the Dockery Farms Foundation since 2004.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building in Jackson. MDAH livestreams videos of the program at noon on Wednesdays on their Facebook page, / mdahofficial .