Janis Gendron believes strongly that families should hunt together. "The whole future of the sport rests in getting families involved," she says.

So when she and her husband Wayne, a sales representative for Quaker Boy, have a chance to hunt together they take it. And they usually take along their 12-year-old daughter Tracy, as well.

Such was the case in 1990, when Janis and Wayne had an opportunity to go on a series of turkey hunts throughout the country. Since the hunts would cover a lot of territory, Wayne encouraged Janis to think about going for a Grand Slam. Janis called the National Wild Turkey Federation office and asked if any woman ever had taken a Grand Slam, and was told none was on record. (At the time, Lynn Boykin apparently had not registered her World Slam, which she completed in 1988. See the January- February 1989 issue of Turkey Call, page 63.)

A Grand Slam, of course, involves taking one each of four subspecies of turkeys: Eastern, Florida, Rio Grande, and Merriam's. Add the Gould's, and you have a Royal Slam. Add the Ocellated, and it's a World Slam.

Janis resolved to take her Grand Slam. At the same time, Wayne would try to get one also.

They started in Florida in late March, hunting with Al Hammond, a friend from Alachua, Florida, near Gainesville. Janis hunted for two days without success.

"The birds were tough," she says. "We'd call, and they'd take off the other direction."

But on the third day, her last morning to hunt, another hunter suggested to Janis that she move to a different area. She and Wayne set up in a dry cypress pond, with him behind her, and started calling.

Two gobblers flew right over Janis and Wayne and landed in a nearby field. They worked their way into range, and Janis had her Florida bird.

The Rio Grande was next. The first week of April, Janis and Wayne went to the Ford Ranch in Texas. They already were familiar with the ranch, because they'd hunted there the year before.

"On this ranch, there are so many birds," she says. "You get out there in the morning and owl hoot, and you can't tell which way to go!"

This time, she set up in a little clump of bushes. At first light, she could see something moving in the field in front of her.

It was a gobbler. As soon as Janis started calling, he came straight to her, and she got him. Later in the week, she took a second Rio Grande.

Then they went to South Dakota. There, over Easter weekend near the White River, Janis took bird number three, her Merriam's. Her daughter Tracy, then nine years old, called the bird in to her.

"It was real funny," Janis recalls. "Wayne and I would both call, and then Tracy would call. They wouldn't respond to us, but they just went crazy when she called. Two of them came in together. If I had timed my shot a little better--and it would have been legal to do it that way--I could have gotten two with one shot."

The last stop on Janis's tour was at the Unionville Sportsman's Club in north-central Missouri. There, Wayne dropped Janis off to hunt, and went back to the club to take care of some other hunters.

"That was the first time I had ever really hunted all by myself," she said. "Wayne's always been fairly close to me before. And that one's my favorite of the four, because I did it alone."

For quite a while, she could hear the birds working behind her, until the woods became completely quiet. Then to her left, Janis heard a tiny sound. Very slowly, she turned her head. There stood three gobblers.

Janis got the gun up as she turned, fired, and got one. "Then I had to carry it out by myself, and it was heavy," she says. "The easiest way I could carry was it like it was one of my kids--cradled in my arms. I thought, 'What if someone sees me carrying this bird like this?' When I started getting close to the road, I slung it over my shoulder."

That bird had a double beard, and weighed in at 22 pounds. So in just 31 days, Janis Gendron completed a Grand Slam, the second woman--after Lynn Boykin and her World Slam--to do so. What makes this story all the more remarkable is that growing up, Janis was a city girl. She doesn't have years and years of turkey hunting experience. She only began hunting in 1987, and took her first turkey in 1988. But since then she's taken a total of 16 gobblers, including the four in her Grand Slam.

And oh, yes. Wayne got his four birds, too. A double Grand Slam for the Gendrons.