Tuning Up My Turkey Calls

My turkey hunting vest hangs in one corner of my office. The pockets bulge with box calls wrapped in soft brown wash clothes, and secured with stout rubber bands to prevent an accidental sound at the wrong time.

The back of my vest has a couple of decoys and stakes, and there is a turkey wing I slap against trees to imitate a hen flying down to the ground from her roost tree.

Other pockets contain slate and glass calls, another pocket has a bunch of diaphragm calls, and scattered here and there is a crow call and an owl call although I rarely use them. There is a gobbler call that I've used perhaps twice in 30 years.

Most of my joy about turkey hunting is calling the birds. The idea of a big gobbler strutting his way to the call is a magnificent feeling. It is a wonderful sight, watching that bird react to soft clucks and purrs, and to watch a long-beard sneak through the woods, stopping and going into a full strut followed by a booming gobble. It's something to be experienced.

The hen is looking. Don't move!

Now me, I am not a good caller. Never laid any claim to being good. Guys like Greg Abbas, Bob Garner, Bruce Grant, Arnie Minka, Phil Petz, Al Stewart and many others are good callers. Not me. I was tone deaf as a youngster, and never could sing a lick. Couldn't carry a tune in a picnic basket.

Countless records have been listened to, and there's no way the sounds that come from my calls sound anything like those on a record or tape. The tapes have true sound quality, and the notes are crisp and sharp like the ringing of a bell.

My sounds tend to run together. There are calls I can't make, and I never try, but no matter how bad they sound to me, it matters little. It doesn't bother the gobbler, not one bit!

One of the secrets of turkey calling that I learned many years ago was that gobblers and hens, like men and women, have different voices. They don't sound the same, and humans are not meant to sound the same. So if my turkey tunes are a little off key, it doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother the bird.

I've argued back and forth with hens, and on more than one occasion, my squabbling with a hen brings her to me. Where she goes, the gobbler will follow, and more than a couple gobblers have met their fate by following a snarly old hen to my call.

I've read books on turkey calling, and the author often advises leaving the diaphragm home if a hunter can't use it right. I always let the turkeys determine whether it is right or wrong, and even when it sounds wrong to me, the birds seem to accept it.

Never practice calling outdoors.

Turkey calling, to my way of thinking, is not so much about what you say with a call as how and when you say it. There is a certain rhythm to turkey calls, and if a hunter has the sense to know the string of sounds and can put them together in the right order, the gobblers may come sneaking in, dancing in little circles, dragging their wing tips, all fanned out as pretty as a picture.

There is much good to be said about never calling too much. A hen that stays in one spot, and squawks at the gobbler may not call a long-beard to the ground anywhere nearby. Call a little bit, perhaps answer one gobble to let him know where you are, and that may be all it takes to lure a big Tom to the gun.

However, having said that, I've long experimented with using two calls at once. If a gobbler sounds hot on the roost, and is gobbling and double gobbling, but won't move in your direction, try using a box call and a diaphragm at the same time. It sounds something like two hens scrapping with one another, and sometimes it will cause the gobbler to come to investigate.

This may be all you see of a gobbler in heavy cover.

Nothing ever works 100 percent of the time, and I've seen world champion turkey callers mess up. Too much calling at the wrong time is a dangerous practice, and hunters must have the experience needed to know when and how much to call.

Shooting the gobbler isn't why I hunt gobblers. I chase this long-spurred bird because I thrill at seeing a snowball-white head bobbing through the woods as it comes to my call. I've been known to let the bird come in, look for the hen and wander off, just so I can catch the buzz of having a gobbler up close. Shooting the bird is anticlimactic.

It's a thrill I hope never to lose, and I'll be practicing my calling for the next three months. Perhaps the practice will help but it's nothing to worry about. I know that with time I can call in almost every gobbler that wants to come.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors