“My life has been enriched by the pursuit of wild turkeys,” writes Jim Spencer in the epilogue of his new book, Bad Birds 2. If you’re looking for a good turkey read, this book is what you’re looking for. Bad Birds 2 is Jim Spencer’s third turkey book, and it’s the best yet.

BB2 is a collection of the “Bad Birds” columns Spencer has written for Turkey & Turkey Hunting magazine since 2001. The turkey chasers who follow this column can only be described as cult-like.

In addition to 33 Bad Birds chapters, BB2 contains seven chapters that may be the best stuff Spencer has written, and that’s saying something. If you can remain dry-eyed after reading the three chapters titled “The Gift Bird,” “The Loaner Gun” and “Epitaph for a Turkey Hunter,” there’s something wrong with you.

It’s hard to describe the excellence of this book. It’s the closest thing you’ll find to genuine literature in the turkey hunting genre. And yes, that includes Tom Kelly’s Tenth Legion. This book is that good.

But describing it isn’t necessary. See for yourself. From the chapter called “The Homebody”:

“I clucked and purred a couple times on the slate, and when he gobbled again two minutes later he was closer. I kept mum. Two more gobbles and he was there, looking for the timid hen, coming through the thick woods in that jerky-headed way turkeys have.

“Andy had told me he thought the gobbler had a thick, bushy beard, judging from what he’d seen of it the week before. The old bird was still riding the invisible bicycle to nowhere when I called Andy and told him he was right.”

And from “Hunting on the Shady Side of 70”:

“And I kill some turkeys these days. Not as many as you, maybe, but I tag one every once in a while. Enough over the years, at any rate, to have dampened that desperate hunger for the kill that dominated my early turkey hunting. It hasn’t, though, lessened my desire to hear them gobble, to work them close, to converse with them in their own language on their own turf, to bend them to my will. That desire is still as strong as ever, and if that need to get inside their heads ever weakens inside mine, that’s when I’ll quit.”

Here’s hoping that day never comes.

Bad Birds 2 is $22 plus $4 s&H, additional copies are $18 with no limit and no additional postage. Copies of Spencer’s other two books (Bad Birds and Turkey Hunting Digest) are $12 each (also no limit) when ordered with BB2. Send checks to Treble Hook Unlimited, POB 758, Calico Rock, AR 72519. For PayPal orders, pay the appropriate amount to the account of modernmountainman@gmail.com. Include email for order confirmation.