Doris Forrester

Shortly after Whit Forrester of Cordele married his beautiful young bride Doris in 1948, he approached her and said, “I want us to be able to do something in our spare time that we can share together so we’re never apart.” That suited Doris just fine. The two lovebirds were inseparable, and they wanted to be together every waking minute. But the only real hobby Whit had was hunting and fishing. He had grown up hunting doves and quail, and he had developed into an outstanding wingshot. 

“I love hunting quail and fishing the many farm ponds around Cordele,” Whit said. “But I don’t expect you to want to go hunting with me.”

“Why not?” Doris asked.

Doris Forrester of Cordele smiles broadly as she shows off two of the three gobblers she shot in Worth County in four days of hunting in 2015. She was 89 at the time.

Whit Forrester was a promising young attorney and hunting had been a big part of his boyhood. Originally from the Macon area, Doris had graduated from the University of Georgia and planned to become a school teacher. 

“I love being outside and you can teach me how to hunt quail,” she told her husband. 

And learn she did. Like many women, Doris was a natural with a shotgun—especially on rising quail and fast-flying doves. It wasn’t long before she was out-shooting most of the men on the dove field or embarrassing some of Whit’s good friends while hunting behind some well-trained pointers in the quail woods. A popular attorney and later a judge, Whit received a lot of invitations from local landowners. Pretty soon he and Doris were celebrating the opening of dove season every year and hunting quail throughout the season. Doris quickly earned a reputation as being a gifted bird “huntress” and this made her husband very proud. 

Over the years, Doris made friends with the wives of several of Whit’s hunting companions. One of those women was Alene Walton, of Cordele, whose husband’s family owned quite a bit of timberland on the Tombigbee River near Demopolis, Ala.. Alene had been turkey hunting on the property for several years with friends and family, and she invited Doris to accompany her in the spring of 1970. Sadly, Alene’s husband had recently passed away, and she had to go over to Alabama to check on her property.  

“Please go with me,” Alene said. “We’ve got some great guides, and you’ll love turkey hunting.”

“Why I can’t sit still for two minutes,” Doris said. “I would never make a good turkey hunter.” 

Whit had no interest in turkey hunting, but he encouraged his wife to go. Once she found herself walking in the beautiful hardwoods of central Alabama, it was a life-changing experience. Doris’s guide was Billy McAlpene, of Myrtlewood, Alabama, one of the caretakers of Alene’s property. 

“Billy was an amazing turkey hunter and a skilled woodsman,” Doris said. “He called in turkeys with a leaf that he picked from a certain plant. He always seemed to know right where the turkeys would be. That first day he took me out in the woods and started calling with his leaf. Suddenly I heard a turkey gobble, and I was enthralled. I had never heard anything like that in my life. From that day on the sound of a turkey gobbling was music to my ears. I was captivated.”

Billy called in several large gobblers. 

“He told me to get ready to shoot,” Doris said. “We were sitting on the ground in the woods and when one of the gobblers stopped and raised his head, Billy whispered, ‘Shoot!’”

Doris squeezed the trigger and her first gobbler went down and started flopping. The others milled around for a few seconds. When a second big gobbler stopped and raised his head, Billy said, “Shoot him, too!”

Doris fired again. After the smoke cleared, she had two fine gobblers on the ground.  

Thus began a 7-year odyssey for Doris of hunting with her good friend Alene in Alabama with Billy McAlpene as her guide. 

At a spry 95 years young, Doris Forrester poses with her beloved Browning shotgun and several of the turkey calls she accumulated over the years. The cherished shotgun was a surprise Christmas gift from her husband Whit given to her many years ago.

At a spry 95 years young, Doris Forrester poses with her beloved Browning shotgun and several of the turkey calls she accumulated over the years. The cherished shotgun was a surprise Christmas gift from her husband Whit given to her many years ago.

“We killed lots of turkeys,” Doris said. “I’ve always said that if you ever go turkey hunting one time, you are hooked. And I was thoroughly bitten by the turkey hunting bug. Whit supported me in every way as long as I hunted with my friends. He never wanted me to go in the woods by myself.”

Sadly, Doris’s friend Alene died. Shortly after that, Billy McAlpene died. For several years, Doris continued hunting in Alabama with Billy’s grandson Holt Barkley. 

“I had spent seven incredible years hunting with Billy and I learned so much from him,” Doris said. “Holt was also wonderful to hunt with.”  

During her first few years of hunting with Billy, Doris was determined to learn how to become a good caller in her own right. She experimented with just about every call on the market as of at that time—mostly box calls and slates. None of them really worked that well for her. 

“One day when I was hunting with Billy I told him I wanted to become a better caller and that I hadn’t really found any calls that suited me. He immediately said, ‘I know just what you need.’”

We drove over to an old country store where they sold everything from fresh produce to country hams to shotgun shells. The store also carried a small, well-crafted push call made by a local turkey hunter whose name has been lost to posterity. It was the first push call I had ever seen, and it had a wonderful sound. It was just what I needed. I think I bought every kind of call you could buy back than and none sounded as good as that push call. I can’t tell you how many turkeys I’ve called in with it over the years.

Doris, with a beautiful bird over her shoulder, had numerous successful hunts with master turkey hunter and outfitter Danny Singleton, of Buena Vista. She hunted with Danny in Marion County during the 1980s and ’90s. Danny died of cancer on July 8, 2010. The hunting community lost a great friend with his passing.

“When I first started trying to call in and shoot my own birds, it was so frustrating,” Doris said. “I made every mistake you could make. But it was also exciting. When I finally called in and killed my first gobbler, there was nothing like it in the world!”  

Doris still has that original old push call. 

“Back when diaphragm calls first came out, I bought several along with a record on how to make different turkey sounds. Whit and I had three wonderful daughters. None of them ever hunted, but they were all thrilled their Mama was a turkey hunter. They loved for me to go hunting.”

One day when Andrea, one of the Forrester daughters, was just starting to date, a young man came over to the house to visit her. 

“Mom was in the back practicing with a mouth call, and my friend thought that was so neat,” Andrea said. “He loved the sounds she was making, and he wanted to go turkey hunting with her.”

Later on, when all three daughters were old enough to get married, Doris made it known to everyone in the family there would be no spring weddings among the Forrester girls. 

“We kidded a lot about it, but Mom was absolutely serious,” Andrea said. “She wasn’t about to miss a day in the woods because of a wedding.” 

Holding a fine gobbler, Doris poses with her first turkey hunting guide, Billy McAlpene, of Myrtlewood, Ala. Doris hunted with Billy in Alabama for seven memorable years starting in 1970.

When Doris first started turkey hunting in the early 1970s, there were many areas around Cordele where turkey numbers were still quite low. In 1973, the entire population in Georgia was estimated to be about 17,000 birds. Most of those were in north Georgia, a few pockets around Augusta and in extreme southeast Georgia. Thanks to restocking efforts, more than 4,000 birds were trapped and restocked in more than 300 locations around the state. By 1990, the statewide population had increased to about 375,000 turkeys. As the population increased around Cordele, Doris started finding places where she could hunt closer to home.

In 1973, the National Wild Turkey Federation was established in Edgefield, S.C.. That same year, Dennis Palmer, of Washington, Ga., and his friend Gary Bell started the first Georgia chapter of the NWTF in Wilkes County. Originally intended to be more of a club that conducted calling contests and promoted turkey hunting, the Georgia chapter soon became a devoted conservation organization that took on many of the important issues of the day involving wild turkeys. Doris Forrester was asked to serve on the first board of directors. This was quite an honor for a school teacher from Cordele. 

Whenever we had a board meeting Whit always went with me,” Doris remembers. “While I was engaged with the other board members in the business of the organization, Whit would sit in the back of the room studying his law books and working on his latest case. Everyone always got a big kick out of that.”

All that studying paid off. In 1980, Whit became a superior court judge serving the four-county area of Dooly, Worth, Ben Hill and Wilcox counties. He served as a highly respected judge for the next 24 years. He retired in 2004. 

One of the issues of the day back in the ’70s was whether or not Georgia hunters should be allowed to hunt turkeys with center-fire rifles. Doris was adamantly against legalizing rifles, despite the fact that a number of prominent politicians were using their political clout to allow the use of rifles. 

“Anyone can kill a turkey with a rifle,” Doris said. “But to call one up within shotgun range takes a certain amount of skill and a hunter gets a lot more satisfaction. I fought it tooth and nail, and we finally defeated the rifle advocates.”   

For a number of years in the late 1980s and 1990s, Doris hunted every season with outfitter and master turkey hunter Danny Singleton, of Buena Vista. Sadly, Danny passed away after a bout with cancer in July 2010. Danny was a gifted turkey and deer hunter and well respected in the industry. Doris also hunted numerous other places in the Cordele area. She and Whit bought 175 acres with several good fishing ponds, but up until very recently the property had no turkeys.  

Up until about three years ago, Doris hunted with her good friend and neighbor Kim Barnes, of Cordele, for a number of years. Kim took her out and set her up in a blind. Doris did the calling and Ken did the shooting.

Over the years Doris used a variety of shotguns and always hunted in U.S. Marine issue green-and-brown camo. Years ago, while she and Whit were at a NWTF turkey banquet, a beautiful Browning 12-gauge automatic shotgun was being raffled off. She fell in love with the shotgun but did not win it. Later that year, Whit surprised her by putting one just like it under the Christmas tree. She has cherished that shotgun ever since and killed numerous turkeys with it. That old Browning has served her well over the years.  

Instead of slowing down as she got older, Doris’s passion for turkey hunting only grew each year. She got great satisfaction in calling up turkeys for other hunters and she did it often for friends. 

As she reached her 70s, Whit made sure that she hunted only with trusted friends who would take her out in the woods, help her set up a blind and make sure she got home safely. Once in her 80s, her good friend and neighbor Kim Barnes started taking her out and hunting with her. During those “golden” years, she called in a number of turkeys for Kim and herself.

Sadly the love of her life and husband of 67 years passed away in 2015 at age 91. That same year, Doris killed three turkeys in four days of hunting on a friend’s farm in Worth County. She was 89. Shortly after that amazing season, her doctor told her it would be very risky shooting her powerful 12-gauge shotgun because her shoulder bones had weakened and might not be able to withstand the recoil. Kim Barnes took her out several more seasons, but she did not carry her shotgun. 

“I did all the calling,” she said. “And Kim did all the shooting.” Kim almost always came home with a bird.”     

Today at age 95, Georgia’s “First Lady” of turkey hunting is no longer mobile enough to get out in the woods. As you might expect, she misses it terribly. But she has 50 years of incredible memories. 

“Every hunt is different,” Doris says. “No two are exactly the same. I only wish I could hear a turkey gobble one more time…”