Turkey Calling: What Matters Most?
Turkey calling is an art. There are many different types of calls out there, and they all sound very different to a trained ear, and to a turkey’s ear. You have mouth calls with varying numbers of reeds and types of cuts, pot calls with slate, glass, crystal, aluminum, and ceramic surfaces, box calls made with all types of domestic and exotic woods, tube calls made from snuff cans or plastic tubes, trumpet calls made of wood or plastic, and wingbone calls, to just name some.
Each of these types of calls can be the tool that helps bring a tom into range for you, or it can be the tool that pushes that tom over the next ridge to get away. Often when a tom heads over the next ridge to get away from us, we think we messed up calling him in. That could be, but often it’s not as simple as that. Let’s look at three common misconceptions about turkey calling.
1 - “To be a successful turkey caller, you have to sound like a competition caller.”
This is a common misconception that many turkey hunters, this writer included, have fallen for over the years. In my earliest years of turkey hunting, I devoured tapes and CDs of competition turkey callers to try to learn how they talked turkey so good. I practiced for hours and hours, much to my family’s chagrin, to those tapes and discs. I would go to any calling competition I could go to so I could learn at the feet of the masters. To be sure, I was a turkey calling junkie.
When I would go hunting, I would mimic some of those master’s routines, down to the note. I had some success, but I also had some failures. Each time a tom would head away from me I would scratch my head and wonder why, inevitably settling on the fact that I had messed up the routine. Over the years, as my confidence in my own ability to call grew, I started getting more bold in trying new things. I began to listen to the turkeys around me, and I started focusing more on their rhythm and mannerisms. I bought a trio of wild turkeys from a breeder and began using them to practice my calling with. I found that the sounds I made were much less important than my cadence and my understanding of what the birds were doing.
I stopped worrying so much about never hitting an off note and started focusing on my rhythm and attitude with calling. The difference in my success rate was huge! I began to realize that turkeys, like people, are a creature of moods and attitudes, and by matching those moods and attitudes, and not worrying if I was hitting the exact right note each time, I was more and more successful. This is not to say that tone and pitch don’t matter, because they do, but even a wild turkey has times when their voices crack, or they get a frog in their throat. I’ve seen it and heard it myself. So, don’t worry so much if you hit a wrong note. Keep your rhythm and work that bird.
2 - “Overcalling is an automatic ticket to a bowl of tag soup.”
This misconception is another one that has really hung on over the years. Back in the day, many of the old guard of turkey hunting lived by the rule of “yelp three times and wait 15 minutes”. When I started out turkey hunting, as a lad who had a wicked case of ADHD, this was almost enough to cause me to stop turkey hunting before I ever really got started. Running my old Lynch box call was the only thing that scratched my itch to move and I couldn’t hardly wait 15 minutes before calling three times again. I gave it my best shot, but over time I got impatient and would call a little more often. I found that in many cases, when I called a little more often, I got more action.
Over time I learned how to read the birds I was working and how to base my calling on their mood. I have learned that there is a time to take it slow and easy, often times not doing anything more than clucking and purring. But I love those times when I get a hot bird, or an unhappy lead hen, who I can talk to aggressively with yelps and cutts, manipulating their mood to bring them in. If you can get an old boss hen worked up enough that she comes in to whip you, that gobbler will be not too far behind. So, while overcalling can be bad, it can also be the ticket to punching your tag. As always, read the birds mood.
3 - “Hen yelps are the only calls to bring in a gobbler in the spring”.
This misconception is, on the surface, a no-brainer. Spring gobblers are looking for love and hens are what they love. You rarely, if ever, hear about using gobbler or jake yelps to bring in a spring gobbler. I know I never had until a hunt in the spring of 2003. It was one of those days when every gobbler in two counties had a seemingly unending harem of hens with them. Every time I would strike a bird, I would call in vain as he gobbled at me and then I would hear his hens lead him away. Three times this happened that morning and we were quickly approaching the 1:00 PM cutoff time for Missouri spring turkey hunting.
I struck one last bird that day and he was non-committal at best. His hens were leaving him to go to their nests and he was trying to keep them interested. My yelps and cutts would elicit lusty gobbles from him, but he took nary a step in my direction. Knowing that my time was about up, I thought “What the heck” and decided to practice my Jake yelps thinking if I could get an answer or two to them, I would know I was doing them good enough to use in the fall. So, after the next round of hen yelps, I immediately threw in a few rough awkward jake yelps. He boomed back at me, using words that I could only imagine were not complementary. A minute or two later I let out a few jake yelps with my mouth call again followed by some hen clucks and purrs on my slate. He cut me off mid-call and was definitely closer! Long story short, that day I learned that love alone is not the only way to entice a spring gobbler to your calls. In the right situation, jealousy and pecking order can cause one to come in with some rough raspy jake yelps.
So, to summarize all of this in as concise a manner as I know how, the key to spring turkey success is not perfect calling, but rather to know the birds. Learn all you can about wild turkey behaviors and social structure and use that knowledge to know how to talk to the birds in each situation. There will be hits and misses, but the more you know about these magnificent wild turkeys and their ways, the more you will get out of your hunts. Oh yeah, and practice your rhythm and cadence in your calling! Good luck this spring!
Stay obsessed!
-Heathe Pendergraft, Fall Obsession Field Staff