Donald Trump Jr. Finishes His Grand Slam With a Wild Turkey Hunt in Florida

Donald Trump Jr. completes one of six recognized wild turkey slams by harvesting this subspecies, only found in Florida.

Donald Trump Jr. Finishes His Grand Slam With a Wild Turkey Hunt in Florida

Donald Trump Jr. with Mike TusseyDavid SichikSam MooreDavid McCleaf and Mark Moore at Osceola Outdoors. Photo: David McCleaf (Osceola Outdoors' Facebook page)

Less than a two-hour drive from Donald Trump’s famed Mar-a-Lago Club, the U.S. President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., completed his wild turkey Grand Slam by bagging an Osceola turkey in Moore Haven, Florida. 

Osceola Outdoors, the Florida-based guide service Trump Jr. used on his hunt, and Nomad Outdoors posted photos of the successful hunt to their Facebook page and Instagram pages, respectively. 

Osceola wild turkeys, rare when compared to the widely distributed Eastern subspecies, are only found in Florida and their numbers are estimated at around 100,000. These birds are distinguished by dark-brown tips on their tail feathers, mostly black wings with very small white bands, long legs and very long spurs. They typically have shorter beards than the Eastern birds. They’re also considered the toughest subspecies for hunters to call in.

The National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) recognizes six slam combinations in turkey hunting, including the Grand Slam Trump Jr. completed, which is defined by harvesting all four U.S. wild turkey subspecies: Eastern, Osceola, Rio Grande and Merriam’s.

Here’s the distribution of each subspecies:

Map: NWTF
Map: NWTF

Here are all six Wild Turkey Slams:

Grand Slam — All four U.S. Subspecies (Eastern, Osceola or Florida, Rio Grande and Merriam’s)

Royal Slam — The Grand Slam plus the Gould’s (found in Mexico and limited areas of the Southwest)

World Slam — Royal Slam plus the ocellated wild turkey (found in Mexico and Central America)

Canadian Slam — Harvesting the Eastern and Merriam’s in any Canadian province (Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta or British Colombia)

Mexican Slam — Rio Grande, Gould’s and ocellated wild turkey harvested in Mexico only

U.S. Super Slam — Harvest one wild turkey subspecies in every state except Alaska

Trump Jr. is well known by hunters and non-hunters alike for his love of hunting and spending time in the outdoors. For a kid who grew up in Manhattan whose father does not hunt, this passion for hunting is unusual. But many accounts of Trump Jr.’s boyhood trace his love of the outdoors back to summers spent in Communist Eastern Europe with his maternal grandfather Milos. 

Here’s an account published in GQ magazine of Trump Jr.’s summers in rural Czechoslovakia:

Don's reprieve from the glare of Manhattan had always been the summers spent with his maternal grandparents in rural Czechoslovakia. But between the separation and divorce (of his parents), his grandfather Milos died suddenly of a heart attack. It was yet another blow to Don, for whom Milos was a sort of father he never had. “Being in Czechoslovakia with my grandfather was the most memorable time in my life,” Don wrote in an aside in Ivana's book. “My grandpa would say, ‘There's the woods. See you at dark!’ He taught me how to fish, rock-climb, camp, shoot with a bow and an air rifle. Czechoslovakian summers were my introduction to ‘the great outdoors’ and an era that lives in me that I hand down to my children.… I miss him. I will always miss him.”

Both an avid angler and hunter, Trump Jr.’s Instagram account is a running log of just how much time the President’s son spends hunting and fishing. In just the last month, he’s been to Wisconsin ice fishing where he landed his personal best brown trout before heading south where he helped his daughter catch her first shark from the beach. Those two fishing trips preempted the recent wild turkey hunt to complete his Grand Slam.



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