‘Purring Block’ combines slate, glass surfaces for seductive, soft calls

South Carolina call maker’s latest invention will pull toms in those last few yards

South Carolina call-maker John Tanner gets ideas for some of his custom-made calls from interesting places, but none any better than his deer stand.

Tanner’s newest call, the “Purring Block” showed up on his drawing board last December after an afternoon in the woods deer hunting.

“I was sitting in my deer stand, when a flock of turkeys came by, feeding up the edge of a cornfield,” said Tanner, who gained recognition in his home state when he started making calls out of ancient cypress that had been aged at 46,000 years. “I listed to them communicating, and they were making little quiet, soft purrs. I got to thinking, ‘I can reproduce that sound.’”

A couple of months of tinkering resulted in the Purring Block, a two-sided call – a slate trough on one side and a circle of bead-blasted glass on the other – made just for those instances when a hunter needs a soft purr or cluck to make a gobbler commit to those last few yards that might prove to be his undoing.

Tanner makes the Purring Block in red cedar and black walnut. The call comes with wooden and acrylic strikers: wood for the slate trough and acrylic for the bead-blasted glass.

“I played around with a few ideas, got out a solid block of wood and cut a slot for the slate with a router, and I could produce the low, quiet sound they were making,” Tanner said. “I did a little more cutting and finishing; the first prototype was just the slate, but then I decided to embed the bead-blasted glass on the other side of the call, just like I do on my other trough calls.

“My trough and water trough calls both make excellent purrs, but this call’s purr is much lower key.”

The Purring Block is drilled to accommodate the two strikers, and it comes with different friction pads to give the slate and glass the rough surface that produces the sweetest-sounding calls.

For more information or to see John Tanner’s complete line of calls, visit www.johntannercalls.com or call 843-373-8434.