Turkey Cookout
Camp Wygant, OK, November '00

By Anthony R., Troop Historian

We had a lot of food and fun at the annual Turkey Cookout.

This trip I joined in with the Falcons.  We unpacked our gear and setup camp.

Saturday we got up and went by the fire because it was cold and windy.  We all talked about what was going on.  Later that afternoon, the Duds showed us how to gut a turkey.  In order to cook a turkey the Duds' way, you have to take all of the ice out of the turkey, wash and butter the turkey, add spices if you want, cover it with foil, and last but not least, put the turkey in the fire pit and cover it with dirt.  We cooked green beans, corn, and stove top dressing.  For desert we had pumpkin pie.  Before we cooked, some of the Scouts went to pick up cans for the Harvest Food Drive.  We picked up a lot of bags.  After campfire, we finished the night with a game of capture the flag.

We woke up bright and early the next morning.  We broke camp and left.

We would like to say thank you to Pack 599 for coming camping on our annual Turkey Cookout this year..

We always dig a big pit to build our fire and cook out turkeys. This year, Mr. Rose brought a ditching machine loaned to him by the Ditch-Witch Corporation, where Mr. Rose works, and he dug a very nice pit. He did such a good job that the Scouts had very little work to do in the pit. Some guys were disappointed that they did not get an opportunity to dig in the pit and get dirty.

After the Scouts went to bed, Mr. Luff, Ms. Kirkpatrick, Mr. Mingus, Mr. Rose, and myself went to bed to sleep a couple of hours and woke up at 2:15 and started the fire. While we were getting the fire going, we had a little excitement. The Logan county Sheriff showed up because he had received a call that someone thought with the activity at Camp Wygant, there must have been horse or cattle thieves working there. They quickly decided that we did not have any cows in our trailer, because whoever packed it up for the night had left it very messy (we need to work on our trailer neatness once it is unloaded).

The next morning was pretty busy. After breakfast, we started preparing the turkeys. We started mostly with guys who had never had this opportunity before. They learned about cleaning and preparing the turkeys. They also found out that the turkeys are VERY cold.  By the time the second group of turkeys .... I mean the second group of Scouts preparing turkeys were working, the first group went off to collect the 'Scouting for Food' bags. Mr. & Mrs. Manharth and Mrs. Jones joined us to help cover our area quicker. The turkeys all went in the ground almost on schedule. Since it started to drizzle, everyone put up rain-flies. When the families showed up, we had a pretty nice turnout. Most everyone thought that all of the food was good. Since we had several Scouts who did not show up for the campout, we had some leftover turkeys. We gave one to Mr. Wygant as a thank you for letting us use his land and the mowing and other work he does to make it a nice place to camp. Mr. & Mrs. Pearson took the other turkeys to the Jesus House to help those who are less fortunate than us.