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Officially Selected for the Festival Season
April 2024
The Colonel & The Fox
Director:
Nathaniel Maddux
Producer:
Nathaniel Maddux, Daniel Haas, Neill Haas
Writer:
Selected for the following category(s)
Best Documentary Feature
The untold cultural story of North America's greatest wildlife conservation success story and the generation who saved wild turkeys from extinction.
By the 1940s, both wild turkeys and the way of life of those who hunt them were on the brink of extinction. In what would become known as America’s greatest conservation success story, wildlife conservation’s greatest generation decided to do something about it.
With wild turkeys extirpated from nearly every state, these last remaining turkey hunters started a revival that wouldn’t stop until 49 states were home to millions of turkeys. Two men remain from this cultural core: Col. Tom Kelly, author of the 1973 cult classic Tenth Legion, and Fox Haas, the "grandfather" of outdoor brand Mossy Oak. Col. Kelly earned the title of "poet laureate of turkey hunting,” Tenth Legion became known as the "turkey bible," and Mossy Oak became the uniform of passionate turkey hunters everywhere.
The Colonel & The Fox chronicles the revival of the wild turkey alongside the lives of these two woodsmen who grew to become icons of turkey hunting, conservation and outdoor family tradition. This film aims to inspire all to leave the land and the wildlife that call it home better than they found it and to carry on a way of life that almost vanished.
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