IN THE BLACK HILLS, S.D. - These many decades later -- more than 40 years after coming west from Indiana -- Guy Tillett remains one wild guy.
He might not seem it, soft spoken as he is. But how else to explain someone who could be forgiven if, at his age, he were on a beach somewhere, fat and happy in retirement?
Or sleeping a full night's sleep?
Instead, a few mornings back, Tillett was up with the rest of us, shuffling in the half-lit dining room of a lodge just west of Rapid City.
This was just before 4 a.m., and thoughts of those gathered with Tillett and other guides and hunters at the Turkey Track Club were most fowl.
"Yes, I'm still guiding," Tillett was saying.
But he's is more than a turkey-hunting guide. Trained as an educator, and for 40 years a professor at National American University in Rapid City, he has evolved over that time, and now might best be described as a naturalist, wildlife artist and wildlife photographer.
To put it another way, he's gone native, and now, living outside Black Hawk, S.D., he surrounds himself with songbirds, deer and turkeys.
All wildlife, really.
"I grew up interested in wildlife," he was saying. "But in Indiana, we didn't have anything near the wildlife we have in the Black Hills. I fished a lot as a kid. But for wildlife, we had squirrels and rabbits, and not much else."
A graduate of Butler University in Indianapolis, Tillett had a fraternity brother, John Hauer, who lived in the Black Hills.
One summer, Tillett came west to visit his college buddy.
Tillett never looked back.
"The volume of wildlife in and around the Black Hills is amazing," he said. "Not only turkeys and deer, but bighorn sheep, bison, two kinds of mountain goats; everything."
Fascinated foremost by the turkey, a strange bird indeed, Tillett each year thrills hunters at the Turkey Track Club with his photographs and insights, not just of toms and hens, but all manner of wildlife.
"I've guided at the club for 32 of its 33 years. The guiding is what got me into photography, and into my wildlife programs," Tillett said. "I'm still an educator at heart. People look at my photographs, and they think they're being entertained. But there's a lot of teaching going on, also."
Tillett met Ron Schara through Hauer.
Wacky about turkeys, Schara first traveled to, and wrote about, the Black Hills more than 35 years ago. Hauer read some of Schara's stories and one day called him, confessing to a similer turkey addition.
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