Brush up on your calling techniques to put a big Magnolia State bird on the ground this season.
“One call, that’s all!” is the slogan used by a prominent personal-injury attorney on billboards and television commercials in the Jackson area. With a slogan like that, you can bet that Richard Schwartz isn’t a turkey hunter. Going to the turkey woods with one call would be like spending a day on your favorite bass lake and limiting yourself to a single lure. While success is still a possibility, you will greatly increase your chances by having a wider variety of offerings in your arsenal.
According to Will Primos, founder of Mississippi-based Primos Hunting Calls, you can never take too many calls with you on a turkey hunt.
“Gobblers don’t respond to a particular call the same way every day,” he said. “Some days a longbeard will respond best to the sounds of a box call, while the sweet music of a diaphragm mouth call may be what it takes to light his fire the next day.
“Because you never know which type of call will evoke a passionate response from a lovesick tom, having a wide selection of calls at your disposal is certain to increase your chances for success.”
Turkey calling is one of the oldest arts practiced in the continental United States. Thousand-year-old etchings on cave walls have been discovered that depict Native Americans luring turkeys with their voices. They were also the first to use wingbone yelpers and crude peg-and-slate calls, which are the predecessors to today’s modern turkey calls.
Turkey calls are much like musical instruments. They range in design from simple calls akin to a child’s toy to finely crafted works of art that would rival the sound of a Stradivarius violin. Although both extremes can effectively lure in an old gobbler, the quality of music they produce is reflected by the quality of the call and the amount of talent and practice time the caller has invested.
Basically, there are two types of turkey calls — those that produce sound by moving air over a diaphragm or through an orifice, and those that operate by friction. The variations within these two types are innumerable, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The desire to produce the perfect turkey call has driven call makers to experiment with every type of material known to man, including wood, metal, glass, rubber, plastic, stone, antler and bone.
“Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer the old tried-and-true red cedar box call,” said Albert Paul, one of the finest custom call makers in the country. “Cedar has more of a raspy tone, unlike the clear tone you get from woods like mahogany.”
From his home in Collinsville, Paul hand makes around 400 of his finely crafted calls for connoisseurs across the country. Although quality of tone is of utmost importance to Paul, most of his customers seem to be more interested in eye appeal than sound.
Based on the desires of his customers, Paul makes his Neil Cost-influenced calls from a wide variety of wood including red cedar, black walnut, yellow poplar, curly maple, mahogany, Brazilian cherry, holly, ebony, butternut, sycamore, snakewood, mesquite, pecan, orange, aspen and bald cypress. In addition, Paul personally tunes every call without chalk. If it won’t work without chalk, then he won’t send it to the buyer.
On the other end of the call preference spectrum are the likes of Primos, who believes in utilizing every type of turkey call at his disposal. Being the founder of one of the largest hunting call companies in the world, he has an abundance of call types to choose from. But the calls he makes and uses must meet Primos’ high standards of sound.
“We understand what makes a good sound and how to create that product, because we are our own customers — meaning we love to hunt and want to be successful at it,” he said. “Our calls add to our success rate in the field.”
And finally there are those turkey hunters who fall somewhere in the middle. Ronnie Strickland, senior vice president of Mossy Oak, is of the opinion that calling is always overrated.
“I have hunted with countless contest turkey callers, and each one was different,” he said. “While each had their strong points and each had their own style, none have any God-given edge over some old guy who uses a 50-year-old Lynch Fool Proof box call and hunts on national forest land. It’s all about the person.”
Even though Strickland uses a number of different types of turkey calls, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a favorite. He will readily admit that he never leaves home without his trusty tube call. In fact, Strickland once left the turkey woods and drove back 40 miles to his house because he had left his favorite “go-to” call behind.
Regardless of where you fit into the turkey-calling world, your degree of success will depend on the seriousness of your effort, the time you spend practicing, and the quality and amount of your calling instruction.
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