The Gifts We Have

Jason Powell wakes up and goes to sleep with the wild turkey on his mind. Given what he’s been through and seen, it’s better than the alternative.

Powell is a disabled veteran and avid wild turkey hunter and caller. He competes in the NWTF Grand National Calling Championships and has won several regional calling competitions. The passion he has for America’s greatest game bird is clear, and it comes naturally from what he’s done to protect the freedoms we have in this country.

“I wake up and it turns on,” Powell said on Veterans Day from his home in Pennsylvania. “Sometimes before I even get coffee, I have a turkey call in my mouth. It’s the first thing I think about. I wonder what’s wrong with me sometimes, but I don’t think there’s anything really.”

That wasn’t always the case. Powell, now 43, served nearly 10 years in the U.S. Army, mostly as a combat engineer dealing with C-4 explosives and clearing IEDs. For 15 months straight between 2010-12, he worked close to 500 route clearance missions, creeping through war zones and clearing paths.

“We were the tip of the spear,” he said. “There was nobody in front of us because we were clearing obstacles for others to get through.”

On Sept. 5, 2012, Powell was in the middle of an ambush in Baghlan Province in Afghanistan.

“They pinned us down, and we fought our way out of it,” he recalls, but his vehicle hit an IED, and his life instantly changed. Powell’s left hand was mangled, and he had extensive injuries from shrapnel to his face, leg and eye.

He survived, but the damage was life-altering. Powell was awarded the Purple Heart.

“I don’t think it can get much worse than that and you still be alive,” he said. “And I would do it again. I would pack my stuff and go. I can’t explain that. The bad times were still some of the best times of your life.”

After returning home in 2013, still recovering from wounds and trying to find some normality in civilian life, Powell attended an NWTF-sanctioned calling contest.

“I had nothing but bad things eating at me,” he said. “For me to be able to go to a turkey calling contest and focus on nothing but making these sounds, it was therapeutic in a way.”

He then got involved in a local NWTF chapter, assisting with banquets, and started working with turkey calls. Today, Powell builds about 10,000 turkey calls a year for different companies, including his own, Jason Powell Custom Calls.

For the past 13 years, he has focused solely on the wild turkey. And that, he says, has been a gift.

“Some take that for granted,” Powell said. “You can’t just go hunt a turkey in every country. That’s one freedom we take for granted. To have an organization like the NWTF, and various others, which continues to fight and help preserve that right to go hunting, that’s awesome. It’s crazy we don’t realize that freedom alone could be at risk at some point.”

On Veterans Day 2025, Powell has to think about what has happened, what that sacrifice meant and the people who helped him through it. He pauses, given the enormity of those actions.

“It’s tough … you think about everybody you served with, everything that happened. You think about the little things you missed, like kids’ birthdays, holidays, hunting seasons. You appreciate the people that led you and that you led. They had an impact on your life.”

Thanks to those who served our nation to protect these freedoms, the NWTF has a place to make an impact — a mission to conserve the wild turkey and preserve our hunting heritage, and a vision to unite a nation through the life-changing power of the outdoors. That’s something Powell has seen firsthand and won’t ever take for granted.

“People don’t realize the gifts we have,” he said. “We really do have gifts that nobody else does. The opportunity we have to do anything, that doesn’t exist in most places.”