Hardcover Books

Tenth Legion

This is a signed Tenth Legion book 52 years in print—Tom Kelly self-published Tenth Legion in 1973. He created this masterpiece of Wild Turkey literature by recording into a portable dictation machine while working in the woods. His wife Helen transcribed his words into a book that has become the “Bible of Wild Turkey hunting.” The book has not changed in the past 51 years, even if the dust covers have had many different looks. Copyright Tom Kelly 1973Copyright Tom Kelly Inc 2012

Dealer’s Choice

Tom’s second book and one of his most popular after the “Bible of turkey hunting”, Tenth Legion. Delightfully funny and always instructive, this book is an iconic installment in the Kelly legacy of turkey hunting writing. Cover art by Tom’s grandson, John, painted when he was in 7th grade. The turkey portrait was given to Tom for his birthday and now hangs in his home.

A Few Loose Chapters

Tom says this about his 8th book, published in 2003, “What you have in this book are islands, loosely connected to the same kingdom, but islands all the same. Islands, if you choose, that can be explored singly.” You can start at the front and go through to the back. You can start at the back and come forward to the beginning. You can start in the middle and go either way. Feel free. Like we tend to say in backwoods Alabama, ”Pick your choice.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2003

The T. H. Kelly Handbook

Tom wrote this book in the 1980’s to give his 600-man Scott Paper woodlands staff a sense of commonality. The book is written for young first-line supervisors—those people who have just entered the corporate world. It is a common-sense guide to being a productive member of any organization. Buy it for your company and see the results immediately. Copyright Tom Kelly 1985

The Season

30th Anniversary Edition! This is Tom Kelly’s classic 1995 season, and his fourth book. It was first published in 1996, reprinted in 2019 and again in 2025 as a 30th anniversary edition. Kirkus Reviews originally described The Season as, “A genuine love song to outdoorsmanship as sharp-eyed, bawdy, and unbridled as a gobbler in full strut.” Copyright Tom Kelly 1996Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2019Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2025

Ol' Tom & Laura - Signature Edition

This edition is signed by both Colonel Tom Kelly and his daughter Laura A loving collection of essays that concern the raising a daughter in the Alabama woods— teaching and enjoying a special father-daughter relationship. (Stories from several  previous published Tom Kelly classics.) This book of Tom and Laura stories is a gift to dads and moms who have had the delight to raise their children in the outdoors. If you are lucky enough to have girl children, this book will bring tears to your eyes. Tom says this about Laura, “To put it in the vernacular of the upper Gulf Coast, “That there is one good kid.” There is a quotation from a play written by Mrs. Mary Shakespeare’s third child Billy, that covers the matter adequately: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale, her infinite variety.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2008

Infinite Variety

Tom’s title comes from a line in William Shakespeare’s play, Antony and Cleopatra. “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale-Her Infinite Variety.”  The phrase easily could apply to the honorable sport of Wild Turkey hunting. As all Tenth Legion members know, there is an infinite variety of birds, hunters, locations and… tricks a bird can play on a human. Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2019

With A Little Bit of Luck

When you come right down to it most of our turkey hunting, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise, is covered in the first words of that old English drinking song, “With a Little Bit of Blooming Luck,” I’ll take my share of it. Anytime. Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2018

Unfaded Roses

This volume of essays, is Colonel Tom Kelly’s 23 offering from his writing career. Tom helps us revisit a hard life lived to the fullest and takes us back to his earliest years in forestry. He shares a special discovery in a graveyard, his experience on a high school football team, and the harsh Southern culture of post-depression America. This book, Unfaded Roses also contains his journal of a unique 2012 spring turkey hunting season. Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2017

The Best of Tom Kelly Volume II

The success of The Best of Tom Kelly Volume I led us to create a second volume. Tom continued to write of course, and we found an additional 29 chapters of wild turkey essays. This Volume II was published in 2017 and is available in hardcover and e-book.  All of the stories in both Best of Tom Kelly volumes are about turkeys, turkey hunting and turkey hunters. Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2017

No Place to Hide

Tom Kelly gives us more 9 more chapters, continuing the themes of his previous 21 books. In this collection Tom explores the future of the Wild Turkey, the Hunt and the Habitat, which means the timber industry to Tom. Here is what Tom has to say, ” The mechanics of the turkey’s demise, the tactics used to bring him to bag, the actions of the turkey and the hunter while in the process of the hunt, all come from a single source, the hunter.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2015

A Matter of Context

“The definition of the word context is almost as mysterious as the word itself. Webster specifically defines it as ‘The whole situation, background or environment relevant to some happening or personality.’ It applies perhaps more to hunting turkeys than it does to most other forms of hunting in that turkey hunting is one of the most complicated of hunting endeavors.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2013

Point of View

“To be invited to a turkey hunt, especially a spring gobbler hunt, virtually demanded a relative with a very large heart and no children of his own, or someone with a very lean pocket book who owes the boy’s father a substantial sum of money. All of the above situations had some bearing on my own personal level of experience in the early days of my turkey hunting career.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2012

Payback

“From time to time, at one function or another, people will ask me when I began to hunt turkeys.  When I tell them the truth, that I started in 1938, I often get the same look I would expect to get if I had answered, “As soon as I got back from Appomattox.” My deceased friend, Jim Andrews, whom I consider to be the best turkey hunter I ever saw, went through a 0 for the season one year in the last decade of his career. A 0 for the season did not happen to me this past year because I did scratch one down in the first twenty minutes of opening day, but if I had gone to the last two weeks with my virginity intact, the pressures would have become damned touchy.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2010

A Hat Full of Rabbits

“In the fall of 1933 I was in the second grade of St. Joseph’s School in Mobile, Alabama. Classes were to end early one day for the arrival of a traveling magician. He held up his empty hat, reached in and took out a white rabbit. He reached into his hat again and pulled out a live white dove. To our surprise he then pulled out another white rabbit with a little hat on and when the trickster took the hat off a yellow canary flew out. It has been nearly three quarters of a century since this initial misleading occurrence with rabbits and, at the time of that betrayal I had never met a turkey. What I was to learn later was that magicians were rank amateurs when it comes to instances of surprise. Turkeys are professionals.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2006

[PRE-ORDER] Faces in the Crowd

PRE-ORDER: This new hardcover edition of Faces in the Crowd is coming soon. Order today to make sure you get yours when it is available. New hardcover edition of a favored classic featuring the touching story “An Afternoon on the Handles” about Tom’s dearly departed best turkey hunting friend, Jim Andrews. As Jim Casada wrote about this book, "Faces in the Crowd, is vintage Kelly in every sense. Irresistibly irreverent, tinged with touching turns of phrase, and evocative of the sport’s deepest meanings. If the story, 'An Afternoon on the Handles’ doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart and make your hair stand on end, then I recommend that you hasten to make an appointment with a psychiatrist. The story is a true classic, one destined to take its place among the finest pieces ever written on the sport.” Cover photograph courtesy of Westervelt Lodge archives.

The Other Seven

A turkey hunter who hit .300 would carry home a turkey on about every third hunting trip and the only way to do something like that, over a period of time, would be to use bait or ambush two hundred yard turkeys with rifles, or shoot anything in feather regardless of its sex, or all of the above. What this book talks about is not the recorded three successes out of ten a .300 hitter has in baseball, but the things that happen normally to turkey hunters. That’s the rest of us, the people  who spend their entire careers operating in “The Other Seven.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2014

Their Old Inhabitants

“You should understand that as far as the Southeast is concerned, I am only familiar with the conditions that were in effect after 1900. The old inhabitants I refer to were those people and their descendants that occupied the lands after the colonization of North America by Europeans. The really old inhabitants, the ones that were here between the year the last glacier receded and the arrival of DeSoto and his 600 pigs in 1539, were a different breed of cat altogether. It is interesting to note, however, that indications are beginning to suggest that there were many more of these truly old inhabitants than we thought there were, and they had much more of an effect on their surroundings than we have given them credit for having. The so-called trackless forests have very likely never been trackless.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2011

Absent Companions

“Every night of my life, nearly, I close the day with a drink, a habit I picked up from one of the characters that will appear later on in this book. The first toast is to the United States, while wishing confusion to her enemies. The second is to the individuals who constitute the title of this book, Absent Companions. These companions are all absent and they are not restricted to persons. There is a dog in the group, and some turkeys, and a military organization. There is also a southern woodlands division, and a couple of locations in the woods that stick in my memory.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2008

A Fork in the Road

A Fork In The Road, 2007 by Tom Kelly is the 11th edition of Wild Turkey essays. This time Tom has written a “how to” book about Wild Turkey hunting. He wanted to get down on paper and in audio his methods of hunting. The book includes, setting up in the woods, equipment, calling, map reading, the mosquito machine, patterning your shotgun and… so much more. Tom wrote the book for young people who are just getting into the sport. However, old veterans of Wild Turkey butt whippings will learn a great deal from the Colonel and his 70 years of hunting experience. Tom wanted to help the boy or girl who is let out of the pickup truck at dark thirty and is told by their dad, “Go down and sit by the big oak. I will be back at 9am.” The kid has no idea what to do while sitting there for 3 hours, what to listen for or where to look. Tom Kelly knows and tells you how to do it in 124 pages. Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2007

Ol’ Tom & Laura

A loving collection of essays that concern the raising a daughter in the Alabama woods— teaching and enjoying a special father-daughter relationship. (Stories from several  previous published Tom Kelly classics.) This book of Tom and Laura stories is a gift to dads and moms who have had the delight to raise their children in the outdoors. If you are lucky enough to have girl children, this book will bring tears to your eyes. Tom says this about Laura, “To put it in the vernacular of the upper Gulf Coast, “That there is one good kid.” There is a quotation from a play written by Mrs. Mary Shakespeare’s third child Billy, that covers the matter adequately: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale, her infinite variety.” Copyright Tom Kelly Inc. 2008