On March 29, 2001, Mark Watson accomplished something that many turkey hunters dream of but very few have ever done. He shot a turkey with a 16 1/4" beard which is almost twice as long as an average mature gobbler's beard and will rank in the top 10 in the NWTF record book. The longest beard ever recorded was measured at 18 1/8" on a Virginia wild turkey.

He was hunting on the Eglin AFB reservation land when he was able to call in a group of 15 wild turkeys - including four males - onto a road and past two pickup trucks. He shot one of the gobblers and went back to his pickup. It was then he began to realize just how long the beard really was.

"When I loaded him on the front seat of the pickup, the beard was laying out the door," he said. Mark first tried to measure the beard with a normal 12-inch ruler and discovered the ruler wasn't long enough. At home, he verified the length with the measuring tape his wife uses for sewing. "I was like, I don't believe this," he recalled.

The turkey hunter's next step was to get a neighbor to video the beard with the tape measure along side and, later, his wife took a picture. Watson's goal was to preserve evidence of the beard's jaw-dropping length.