For decades, the Birmingham News annually produced the Alabama All-State Turkey Hunter’s Team. It began with outdoor writer Walton Lowery and was passed down through several writers, and eventually to me.

Our readers made nominations and I followed up by doing the legwork and making the final decisions. Like all halls of fame, the great ones were included in the early classes and the pickings got questionable as the years went by. We picked 10 new members every year, and that was too many.

It all came to an end when I learned about the cruelty of man. That final year the nominations poured in for someone I was not familiar with. He looked like he would be a shoo-in. Several of the nominations claimed he had taken the biggest turkey in state history the season before.