To earn the tell-tale smiles, you’ve got to walk the miles.

New Iberian Armond Schwing realizes that’s what it takes after hunting wild turkeys April 8-11 on several wildlife management areas in southwest Oklahoma. He hunted the feathery ghosts of the woods with his son, Saint Schwing, also of New Iberia, who has developed into a successful wild turkey hunter since he took up the sport four years ago.

“After a day-and-a-half walking in the field trying to keep up with Saint, my heart was beating hard,” Armond, 55, said a few weeks after killing the first turkey of his life.

“I don’t know anything about turkey hunting. I’ve benefitted from my son’s experience being a turkey hunter. Saint George is ate up with it. He knows.

“Really, what’s so great about it, he was really excited and he wants to take me. There’s something very exciting about that. Father-son bonding. It was wonderful.

“It was doing something with my son. He did all the work, all the heavy lifting. All I had to do was shoot. Shooting the turkey was just the icing on the cake.”

Armond, chairman and CEO of Schwing Insurance Agency, has enjoyed beaucoup special hunting trips with his son for about 15 years. One of the most notable outings recently was a sandhill crane hunt Dec. 29-30 in Texas.

Saint, who celebrates his 23rd birthday May 20, works for a medical supply company in Lafayette. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

In a nutshell, Armond said, Saint knows when and where to look for wild turkeys and, most importantly, knows how to get them to come to him. Most impressive, he said, is the fact his son doesn’t have access to private property, so has learned to satisfy his love for turkey hunting on public land.

Saint scouts as often and as diligently as possible, his dad said. Putting boots on the ground paid off last year when his son filled out two turkey tags in Kansas, then went and filled out two turkey tags in Oklahoma.

Feathery ghosts of the woods? Wild turkeys’ senses of sight and hearing are ultra-keen and they rely on them to avoid four-legged and two-legged predators. Saint said he enjoys hunting them because “they are the smartest animals in the woods as well as the hardest to hunt.”

“Hearing one gobble in the woods is enough to say it was a good hunt,” he said.

Patience, persistence and walking many miles are vital to getting at a glimpse, or, even, a sound, of a turkey. As for his Woodhaven Custom Calls Mouth Call, which he used to bring in the big tom for his dad, or Woodhaven Custom Calls Slate Call, it isn’t all about calling perfectly but knowing when to call and what call to use.

Since Saint began hunting wild turkeys, he has bagged six and called in approximately five for others. And, he said with a laugh, “Not to mention I’ve missed a few.”

On April 10, late in the morning, his dad didn’t miss. Armond shouldered his 12-gauge shotgun armed with a turkey load mix of 5 and 6 pellets. He was calm, cool, collected and confident.

“Ah, no, I didn’t get ‘buck fever.’ To me, the bird was so close … shooting a shotgun … no nervousness,” he said.

He was spot on. It was a clean kill with one shot.

The heavy tom he held in his hand minutes later was a Rio Grande, one of six subspecies of wild turkeys resplendent in its 5,000-6,000 of iridescent copper, bronze, red, green and gold feathers. The other subspecies are Eastern, Osceola, Merriam’s, Gould’s and South Mexican.

Armond said, “The Rio turkey’s coloration is a little different than the Eastern turkeys that we have in Louisiana and Mississippi. It’s really a beautiful bird.

“Saint was pretty excited. It was his mission to get me on a bird. We celebrated a little bit — fist bumps and high-fiving — just celebrating.”

The occasion called for documentation for posterity purposes, of course. After all, it was a true trophy.

Saint showed him how to hold the wild turkey to show off its fan of tail feathers, to display them properly, to do them justice. Saint has learned and practiced enough taxidermy to mount the turkey’s tail feathers.

“I’m anxious to display the fan when he’s done putting it together,” Armond said.

The Schwings arrived April 8 and looked for wild turkeys morning/afternoon April 9 on Lake Waurika WMA. They saw and heard a hen and two toms.

On Saturday, the following day, they started where they heard gobblers on the roost but coaxed only two hens within range. Later that morning, they went to a nearby area, then left and drove for an hour to a public hunting area west of Tipton, Oklahoma, where the turkey was bagged. They scouted new places Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Saint contracted turkey hunting fever while attending Louisiana Delta Community College in Ruston following graduation from Catholic High School. Hunting wild turkeys was something to do after the waterfowl hunting season, which followed the dove hunting season.

“Whenever the waterfowl season ended, he had friends up there” who began showing the younger Schwing the turkey hunting ropes, so to speak, Armond said. Saint took it from there and hunted wild turkeys in North Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

Wild turkeys make many different sounds. They do more than gobble, a distinctive sound that can be heard a mile away. They cackle when they fly and otherwise cluck, purr and yelp.

The day his father shot the tom, the wild turkey was decoyed to their concealed location in a patch of woods by highly audible “chirps” emitting from Saint.

“Every time Saint would chirp at him he’d gobble,” Armond said, noting the Rio Grande moved closer and closer with each exchange.

“Saint said, ‘Pop, you see him yet?’ I’d say, ‘No.’ Then I said, ‘Wait.’ He was hiding behind a tree about 10 yards away. It just came right in. That’s when I shot him,” Armond said.

And another diehard turkey hunter was born.