EVENSVILLE — When your turkey season lasts only one day you have to make the most of it, and a one-day season is what Kevin Mays is looking at.

Why one day? Because when Mays isn't taking care of business, he's taking care of family responsibilities.

The founder and chief executive officer of Check First, Inc., Mays has 25 stores in Tennessee and Virginia. The father of two sons, 7-year-old Cade and 6-year-old Cooper, a big chunk of his free time is spent watching and/or coaching youth sports.

So Thursday was turkey season for Mays.

"When I played ball I would hunt in Middle Tennessee and kill a couple of turkeys in a couple of days," said Mays, who has killed between 30 and 40 turkeys. "I just don't get that many chances to go any more."

Most people remember Mays as a standout guard with the University of Tennessee football team. A four-year lettermen, he was named All-SEC in 1994 and only a freak knee injury during a workout session kept him from being a high pick in the 1995 National Football League draft.

But Thursday, business and ball played second fiddle to birds. Mays admits he sacrificed time he could be turkey hunting to hunt ducks in Arkansas this past winter, but the hunting was too good for him to stay home in Kingston.

"There's 120 acres of corn that is left standing in the field and flooded," he said. "It was a great season."

Mays' turkey season had a roughly 14-hour window. The clock started at 6 a.m. at the gate of the Rhea County farm he was hunting. If things didn't go well, he could still be hunting until a few minutes after 8 p.m. at the end of legal shooting.

At 6:45, he was on the backside of the farm and heard a single gobble to the west. A few minutes later a mature gobbler and several jakes started up in some woods to the north.

Mays' turkey season was officially on.

He walked about a third-of-a-mile to get into position to hunt the turkeys he was listening to, but found the gobbler and jakes and several hens already on the ground and in the middle of a plowed field.

"I think we should be able to kill one of those turkeys," he said.

The turkeys couldn't have been more disinterested in his calls. When the birds disappeared into a small patch of woods Mays decided to circle around and try to set up in front of them.

Another hike of 600 yards or more and Mays was in front of the birds. The cackling and yelping turkeys were 70 yards away, hidden by a hump in the middle of the field.

That was at 7:45 in the morning. That's as close as the birds were going to get.

For the next 12 hours Mays tried every turkey-hunting trick he knew. Except for a short break to eat lunch, he was in the woods or on the edge of a field the rest of the day.

Occasionally, he would see a bird in the open fields. Hearing them was close to impossible as winds that roared through the woods at nearly 30 miles an hour drowned most other sounds.

Mays' afternoon plan was to set up a hen and strutting gobbler decoy in a low, wooded area where he thought turkeys might go to get out of the wind. It was a good idea, just a little late: As he was walking in to the woods two gobblers were in the exact spot he wanted to be.

Dropping to the ground he set up the decoys as best he could and made some calls. The gobblers weren't spooked, but worked their way through the woods in the opposite direction.

Ninety minutes later he was set up in the low spot. He would sit on the spot for another five hours.

"I thought the turkeys were sure to come back through there because it was a good place for them to get away from this wind," Mays said. "The only thing I saw were four jakes that came by me at about Mach 5."

The jakes had been spooked by a pickup truck on an adjacent piece of property and never noticed Mays as they ran through the woods.

Despite knowing he might not be back in the turkey woods this year, Mays passed on a shot. He did something similar last year elk hunting in New Mexico, passing up on 42 bulls because he didn't see one he thought was big enough.

"I don't shoot jakes," he said. "The jake you shoot this year is next year's mature bird."

At 8:05, Mays picked up his decoys and called it a day and maybe a season. As he walked out of the woods, he made an owl call to see if a gobbler may have been hiding nearby the whole time.

Nothing answered but the wind.

"I'm glad I didn't hear anything," Mays said. "Even if he was just right there it's too late to do anything, so what would be the point?"

There's always next year.