Many years have passed since I first met Kip. The man called me. He made box calls for turkey hunting and needed some simple ink illustrations to have lasered onto the calls. WE planned a visit to discuss such things and turkey hunting. We immediately became friends. I lost track of how many drawings I made but there were many.
These meetings quickly became more than business related get togethers. We would visit elsewhere as well, mainly his hunting camp near Crooked Creek Lake. We chased gobblers around covering several local hills and hollers. I removed wildflowers from my property and replanted absent flowers on Kip’s woodland acreage. We went to restaurants together. Kip held events at the camp with various other turkey call makers where I was honored to meet them. I began doing some art for other callers from such a time together.
Kip and I had a mutual friend named Kenny Crummett from Crummett’s Mountain, West Virginia. I had known Kenny for years via our two or three phone monthly calls. Every so often I would receive a package of some gift from Ken including his famous Buzzard Call which always brought about some laughs.
Prior to the Covid years Kip managed spring hunts with Kenny and another friend, Judge Galen Braddy from North Carolina and me. Laurie had all of us to the house for a meal. She loved their southern accents and the politeness of the men.
Kenny had had a bad stroke a few years before this hunt, so Kip set up a blind for him to set in. I stayed with him all morning where we talked and laughed and, to be honest, we didn’t care if any gobblers came to us or not. Our friendship was such. Galen did get a nice gobbler.
The following year Kenny and I were set up in a blind this time along the wood’s edge about a hundred yards from the camp. I mentioned to Ken that I was going to go for a walk and see what I could find. I located a gobbler and would in time maneuver and get the bird to come to my calls. (That is the bird in the photo with the four of us.) A month or so later I was hiking at Buzzard Swamp in the northern Pennsylvania area when I received a call that Ken Crummett had died in a car wreck. Some believed he had a heart attack or another stroke leading to the wreck. So ended a great friendship. Sad.
Kip raised turkeys and every spring a hen would nest on his porch. I had Laurie down one day and she was frightened some for fifty or more turkeys were gobbling and aggressively strutting and coming within feet of us all. She didn’t know exactly what to think of all of this commotion. But she learned to enjoy the birds!
Kip was an avid trapper and traveled a lot to check traps and local counties. He stopped at the house one day and gave me a turkey foot back scratcher that hangs from my key rack as a conversational piece. It works.
A couple of years ago I entered the woods below Kip’s camp to hunt fall turkeys. As the morning sky began to lighten, while I eased along a gas line, I could see a couple of darkened masses high in the trees. I waited and once I was sure, I texted Kip at the camp and asked if these birds could be possibly some of his tame birds. He said his birds were roosting in the coops. I broke the birds up and an hour later called in an adult gobbler. I was maybe around a quarter of a mile from the camp. Kip liked to call me a “Turkey Magnet.”
Sometime in late September Kip called me seeking prayers. He was obviously emotional for he was sick and scared. He said he couldn’t keep the weight on and was very tired. I invited him to a gospel concert I was playing at the following Friday if he was up to it. He told me he was getting bloodwork. Interestingly, when I called the following week, the doctor believed he was having issues from a tick-born illness. I sent him some emails featuring a few of my comforting Bible studies. I don’t know if he ever was able to read them.
I received a message from a mutual friend telling me Kip had Stage 4 kidney cancer. WOW!!! I left Kip a message and later his mailbox was full. He became so very weak, not eating anything for six days. he wasn’t able to answer or retrieve messages or call anyone. My friend, Kip was in hospice care and a few days later he would be gone. I am very much devastated with his passing. This all happened so fast I couldn’t gather my emotions and thoughts together.
Also, back in September I was asked to play lead guitar at Emlenton, Pennsylvania with two friends, Ted Duncan and Donnie Clark. A month later he would be hospice, and a few days would pass and he would succumb to his cancer. Another friend, Shirley Grenoble passed away a couple of days after Donnie. I feel overwhelmed with all of these deaths to say the least.
Here’s to my friends Kip, Kenny, Donnie and Shirley.
Larry A. Smail's Blog 