Have you guys kept track of what has seemed to be the best strategy for EARLY in the season - Being the Raspy, Old Hen, or the Young, Sweet Hen?? I was just curious if one might be better than the other for Early in the season?? Thanks for any input, and Good Huntin'
Yes.
Not the answer you were expecting, but that's the one you're getting. It all depends on the birds in your area, what they're doing as far as breeding, flocking up, number of hens to gobblers, to jakes, etc. There is no one answer... Just need to find what YOUR BIRDS want and give it to em, then give it to em! :OGturkeyhead:
I never put that much stock in it. Turkeys tones vary. Just cause its higher pitched is not a guarantee that it's a young bird. I run calls that sound like a hen turkey to me and let the gobbler decide. You can get different pitches from different spots on a pot call so I go with what I feel and let the rest play itself out.
TURKEYS DO WHAT TURKEYS DO
The hens are noisy early in the start of spring and they get progressively quieter as the season continues. One would think that he should call accordingly and for the most part, I agree. I will ooccasionally let fly with a loud and raucous call in late season, but only once. I think that one should call according to the season.
Quote from: Texforce on February 27, 2018, 12:01:44 PM
Have you guys kept track of what has seemed to be the best strategy for EARLY in the season - Being the Raspy, Old Hen, or the Young, Sweet Hen?? I was just curious if one might be better than the other for Early in the season?? Thanks for any input, and Good Huntin'
Yes, one of those will do nicely.
It never ceases to amaze me how random gobblers' tastes can be. One day it is one thing, another day it's another. Somedays they could care less.
Being with the same turkeys all season, I have to be careful. If I carry the kitchen sink out and try everything, pretty soon the gobblers are wising up to the fact that there can't be that many new hens around. I therefore carry a limited choice of calls each day, lest I get tempted to open my kimono and show them everything I've got. It's usually a fairly wide selection.
Chain smoking bearded hen gets my vote. :turkey2:
A little on the trashy side..... ;)
I think cadence is more important than tone.
Quote from: silvestris on March 02, 2018, 03:03:21 PM
The hens are noisy early in the start of spring and they get progressively quieter as the season continues. One would think that he should call accordingly and for the most part, I agree. I will ooccasionally let fly with a loud and raucous call in late season, but only once. I think that one should call according to the season.
I don't have the experience you do but I have "experimented" a bit. I honestly have had pretty good success calling pretty aggressively later in the spring. Sometimes you have to rekindle the fire of love in an old gobblers heart.
All of the above.
There is no "magic", all birds (hens) have a different "voice" and all (gobblers) like different voices at different times.
I carry a slate and a glass pot call with four strikers = 8 voices
I also carry six different diaphragms = 6 voices
(I like to carry calls that don't sound the same) = I have 14 different voices (hens) with me.
I also think knowing cadence, rythym, inflection and knowing what to "say" when and when not to say anything are just as important!
MK M GOBL
Quote from: Happy on March 03, 2018, 07:31:53 AM
Quote from: silvestris on March 02, 2018, 03:03:21 PM
The hens are noisy early in the start of spring and they get progressively quieter as the season continues. One would think that he should call accordingly and for the most part, I agree. I will ooccasionally let fly with a loud and raucous call in late season, but only once. I think that one should call according to the season.
I don't have the experience you do but I have "experimented" a bit. I honestly have had pretty good success calling pretty aggressively later in the spring. Sometimes you have to rekindle the fire of love in an old gobblers heart.
Silvestris is right. As the season progresses, I hear less and less of the hens. That's mostly because the hens have all bred and are now no longer interested. However, a gob is still out there searching. If he hears a hen calling, he may very well come from a long distance. Therefore, in the last week of season, I will let fly with a run of excited yelps. It needs to be done sparingly, and I usually do these well into the mid-morning lull so I am the only voice out there.
Sometimes turkeys just act like turkeys. They make no sense or have no reason for doing what they do. Listen to the birds and let them give you the flavor of the day.
I'll say YES as well. I never put all my eggs in one basket. I carry multiple calls and use the ones that get the gobblers going on that particular day. Tomorrow is a different day, so it will probably be something different. Good Huntin as well.
Silvestris is right. Most hens are quiet because they have already bred and nesting. They are keeping a low profile tor the security of their nest. A tom has little interest in them. He wants to breed and a hen that expresses that interest can usually still grab his attention. Remember it's closing hour at the bar so to speak.
I do one or the other till I get the response that im looking for.
In duck and goose hunting, I have noticed that "higher-pitch" calls often get a better response... I have always tended to favor high-pitch calls for turkeys as well...
However, with a couple years of drought, and very poor production, I often found that the more raspy old hen often produced better (or more) responses...
That being said, if the woods are noisy with turkeys, I pay far more attention to the noises that the hens are making than the gobblers. Later in the morning, I will try to emulate those hens that seemed to elicit the most excited responses in the morning...
I will also address those hens with their own sounds in the morning, and try to challenge a dominant hen to come in (as I have had very little luck pulling toms off live birds).
Everyone else tends to focus on those toms gobbling, I tend to focus on the hens, and which ones the birds are gobbling to... Are they yelping or cutting, or clucking??? What is the cadence, pitch, and rasp of the birds those toms seem to like???
VERY good stuff here, gentlemen !! Thanks for all of the responses. I love this site !!!
:icon_thumright:
Quote from: Kylongspur88 on March 02, 2018, 11:15:35 PM
I think cadence is more important than tone.
:icon_thumright:
I lean pretty heavily on raspier calls. If they fail to produce a response I will try a higher pitched, clearer call. For whatever reason it's worked for me. One minute swear there's not a gobbler in the woods, switch calls and one lights right up. Made the difference between working a bird and heading to the truck on more than one morning...
As others have already stated, it is best to be versatile and have calls on hand that you can make a variety of different sounds with.
I will say that, from my experience over the years in both my own calling and from that of others, the back end of the yelp seems to be what gobblers key on. I have seen it time and time again. For some reason, calls (and callers) that can reproduce a certain tone, rasp, and inflection on the lower end just seem to get consistently more positive responses than any other.
We always talk about turkey yelps having a high front end and a lower, raspier back end,...which very often they do. But again, as others have pointed out, turkeys have different voices. Some will have a very obvious high end/low end distinction,...and some will have hardly any. The key is hitting on the sound that will attract a gobbler's attention and make him come take a look.
From what I have seen, the one constant that seems to attract their attention over other sounds is the lower, back end of the yelp. In my opinion, get that sound right, and you will call gobblers more consistently than with any other turkey sound, regardless of the time of the season. Then again, there are exceptions to every generality, so be prepared to be versatile.
Sometimes it takes loud raspy calls for toms to hear calling in the wind. In super tight spots it may be best to use soft calls. I often try to imitate hens in the area. It seems like toms and hens sometimes get bored if they hear the same call...time after time....especially when hunting from a blind. It often helps having a wide selection of different calls (clucks, purrs, etc).
The turkeys I hunt here in Colo hardly call once on the ground. They learn they get eaten by coyotes, mtn lions, bobcats, etc if they make much noise. I actually hear gobbling toms in the trees well before daylight and they even quit close to sunrise. It's tough locating mountain merriams in trees and hills when they are so quiet! Once in a while I can get toms to gobble with hen calls.
As mentioned several times above it is good watching the reaction of toms and hens...and adapting to their reaction.
This is just an observation from a couple decades on online forums and sitting in the middle of my property and listening to other hunters. It's not meant as a comment on anyone here. A lot of guys tend to get overly sold on the idea of calling in general, and beyond that, they get sold on whatever hyperbole there is and take it over the top.
Raspy, Ultra-Raspy, Super-Ultra-Raspy, Cosmic-Super-Ultra-Raspy.
Somebody way back in the late 70's put two reeds together and made a raspy mouth call. Here it is in the 20-teens and we're up to . . . how many reeds? Cuts, slashes, viper tongues? I can remember when my favorite turkey call was made out of the same material as my favorite condom, and somebody was calling it the state of the art because it had golden ribs.
The same is true with pot calls. It used to be you had slate, then glass, then. . ?
Ultra-this, ultra-that. Pretty soon every new turkey hunter is going out on his own making himself deaf with his ultra-loud ultra-raspy ultra-whatever calls. I can hear them perfectly from two ridges over. Normally you can tell the age and experience of a turkey hunter from a half-mile off from:
1) How loud the call is
2) How fast the call moves about the landscape
3) How piercing it is.
4) How relentless the calling
5) How unnaturally raspy it is.
I'm not throwing stones. Lord knows I used to do the same thing. However, now in my 60th year, I've slowly realized turning everything up to Eleven is not usually the best way to find a turkey. I'm not saying a clean sound beats raspy or that turkeys run away from a loud call. I'm just saying moderation is something that comes with experience. I will also say that when I hear a totally gonzo caller, I can usually be certain I won't hear a shot from that quarter that morning.
I have heard ultra-raspy hens. In fact I've heard a hen that called in gobblers that sounded so unnaturally raspy, I would not have believed a turkey (or a turkey caller) would make that noise. However, it was an older hen, and her volume was waaay down. The old girl was just outside my blind and I doubt you could have heard her at 50 yards. She brought a gobbler out of a cedar thicket, though, and right into my gun.
I've heard a raucous hens moving about the landscape so fast, I was sure it was a human caller, and was ready to confront a poacher, but they did not call constantly as they moved. I heard them only once per every ten to twenty minutes. Normally, hens that get agitated like that stay put to sound off. I've never heard a hen get wound up and stay wound up and then keep moving. When I did finally catch sight of them, it was a group of 5 hens that obviously had dominance problems. They were fighting more than feeding. The funny thing was no gobbler was coming near them, nor honoring their calls. I guess the gobs saw trouble and stayed away.
Bottom line on all this: My advice is to keep the superlatives in their place. I spend most of my time calling from the middle-- let the gobblers know I'm there and then let them make a move if they're interested. I do bring out the big guns and go over the top at times, but it is never my main strategy. That goes for volume, as well as sound quality.
I like the sound of a raspy hen but it really depends on the individual bird. Sometimes they go ballistic over a raspy call and other times they get tight lipped soon as they hear a peep from it.
Quote from: daddyduke on March 02, 2018, 04:48:37 PM
Chain smoking bearded hen gets my vote. :turkey2:
Raspy usually gets it done for me also
Most of my calls don't have much rasp and are higher pitch. I tend to call less than most of the guys I've hunted with. I cutt loud and aggressively when I first strike a gobbler, then tone down the volume and frequency to tease him into coming my way. Breeze also help dictate volume. Late season is generally when I have the most success, when the majority of hens are on the nest. Lots of guys call too much, too loud, or don't vary their call type, rhythm, and location, no matter what time of season it is.
I'll call just enough to keep them interested, no matter what call I'm using. I want them to gobble way more than I call back to him. I believe in keeping them guessing. I'll also quietly gather up loose leaves in a small pile beside me to scratch. I want the leaves crispy, as they help me seal the deal as much as any man made call does.
Jim
Quote from: outdoors on February 27, 2018, 08:20:47 PM
TURKEYS DO WHAT TURKEYS DO
This might be the truest statement I've ever heard about turkey hunting.
I carry both raspy old hen and clear young hen calls in my vest in the fallowing , mouth,box,tube,pot calls... that way i can change it up if what i'm doing isn't working. surprisingly i have had great success the last few years with a matt mclaine tube call. another thing i been doing is using box calls with different woods that most people don't use. Don't be afraid to use gobbler call's either, some gobblers are more comfortable coming to other gobblers. Either that or they've gone the other way :o...
After many seasons behind me. My approach is to be versatile.
Quote from: mightyjoeyoung on February 27, 2018, 04:37:34 PM
Yes.
Not the answer you were expecting, but that's the one you're getting. It all depends on the birds in your area, what they're doing as far as breeding, flocking up, number of hens to gobblers, to jakes, etc. There is no one answer... Just need to find what YOUR BIRDS want and give it to em, then give it to em! :OGturkeyhead:
Yep.
I only use one Boxcall...and I've had a lot of success with it. It's has a high pichted sound no rasp to speak of. I've had more gobblers answer this call than all the others I've used combined. Couple years ago two hens walked up to my calling. One hen kept walking the second smaller hen stopped and yelped a few times it sounded exactly like the Boxcall. I waited till she walked off and yelped a few times the little hen came right back and answered I messed with the little hen for about 45 min letting her walk off an call her back. Her yelping and cutting sounded just like the boxcall. So I guess the reason it works as well as it does ,it sounds like a young hen.
Each gobbler is different an not all will answer any one call so it's good to have an be proficient with more than one call. The first time I hunted Texas I was surprised when I never got a single response from the old Boxcall the whole hunt. The Rios really liked the slate and ceramic but not the Boxcall. Last year In Texas I used a trumpet an had a hen come straight from the roost an got so close it almost cost me a shot at a gobbler, she got to about 5 yards an non stop yelping looking for the hen she heard. I don't know what she thought the trumpet was friend or foe but she was sure interested. You just never know from one turkey till the next or even one day till the next which call will strike something in the individual bird.
The 2018 season marked the 10th season that I've used the same mouth diaphragm calls. At the end of each season, I rinse them off and place them in a small plastic squeeze-type coin container inside a zippered plastic bag. A couple of weeks before the next season, I'll pry the latex reeds apart with toothpicks after soaking them in a solution of mouth wash and water. They have a very raspy sound and the gobblers respond to them. I also use friction calls to give the impression that there's more than one hen in my location and a gobble tube to challenge the peck order that an intruder tom would present. The combination often results in a bagged bird.
I prefer nasty and raspy. However there always seems to be one hen that the gobblers respond to more than others. I identify that hen if I can and I will use the call that sounds as close to her as I can. I also have so many calls that I change them out constantly throughout the season. It works awesome for me.
Multiple calls with various amounts of rasp have worked well for me! I like to sound like more than 1 turkey..
I like a sharp sound on the front with good volume and good bark on the rollover .. I don't care for that bark on the roll to sound like a big hound on the tree barking ... I always chance up my calls during the season , i don't care to run around all season sounding like the same hens... Agree turkeys are turkeys and no 2 days are the same ... cadence , patience's and time in the woods ... you also have to have turkeys to hunt ...
Like others have said it depends on the Gobbler. One might like to hear one call(sound) better than another. Just like one woman's voice might perk one guys ears up more than another.
When I first started hunting years ago I had only 3 calls. A pot call,a boxcall, and a little lynch jet slate. I had the most confidence in my calling with the pot call so that's what I used on my brothers farm most of the season. Between missing,a few bad setups,etc it was towards the end of the season and was still trying to kill one. I was not getting any response toward the end of the season using my pot call so I got frustrated and pulled out my boxcall after trying to get one to respond with my pot call. I had 3 different Gobblers answer from 3 different directions and called one in. It was like turning a light switch on. Believe me I learned alot that day.
Like the others have said, the turkeys preference for sound can change day to day. I like to have several calls from high and clear to 3 packs of pall malls a day for 20 years. That way you are bound to have something that gobbler likes unless it's a day he won't responde to anything.
IaGobblergetter you are right about the woman voice. If I hear the pall mall I'm running. I prefer the higher, sweet voice preferably with a drawl. ;D
I figure turkeys are like most men, some normally prefer blondes, some brunettes, me, I prefer redheads but just the same every now and again there may be that occasional brunette that will come around and turn my head. We will not even discuss my fetish with Japanese woman.
Quote from: Sir-diealot on February 08, 2019, 04:40:57 PM
I figure turkeys are like most men, some normally prefer blondes, some brunettes, me, I prefer redheads but just the same every now and again there may be that occasional brunette that will come around and turn my head. We will not even discuss my fetish with Japanese woman.
:TooFunny:
As others have said, the answer is yes. However, if I have to choose, give me the raspy.
I like to go loud and raspy most of the time. If I have hunted a bird with no luck then I will switch over to the low and sweet sounds.
No matter what cycle of the season I am hunting, I always set up with at least two different sounding calls, many times I have used three simultaneously. Maybe it wasn't necessary but, it has been very effective.
I think if you listen to real hens use either sound there is a edgy high pitch right at the beginning of most yelps raspy or clear. Guys are going to rely on what has worked in the past but you should be ready to change whether your calling to a hen or tom.
I prefer a slightly raspy caller.
I'm finding on public land that it's something different that makes birds sound off. Tube call, wing one, etc.
I use raspy old hen and sweet young hen calls in the same series of yelps. Doesn't matter if it's early or late season.
I'd have to say I call too much and too loud. I want to be the boss hen...
You don't have to sound like a real turkey as most say, but it sure helps too.
I use clear soft yelps that explode into loud raspy yelps and maybe back to a clear soft yelp at end. I'm a cutting yelping fool at times. I may get up and move 5-6 times on a bird also if I feel he's educated.
Experience will tell you when to shut up and or back off on the calling.
I vary cadence and put excitement in my calling, something Ray Eye has stressed over and over through the years.
Right bird
Right place
Right time...
Quote from: Double B on March 02, 2018, 05:43:09 PM
A little on the trashy side..... ;)
That's my saying... "That's a cocktail waitress in a Dolly Parton
wig!"
I use both but prefer slightly raspy. I really like to do what I call high pitched HE HE's and then fall into rasp and then come out with high He He's. This is what my yard turkey hens do whether the have a clear mouth or more of a raspy voice. I have learned a lot by having hens to listen to all year long.
Interesting thread...
To add to my previous post, I just read where turkeys tend to respond more to higher pitched sounds...
I have also noticed that in years following poor production, I use a bit bossier/raspy call to more effect, and on years such as this following high production, maybe I get more responses from a cleaner higher pitched call?
Early in the season, hens tend to be quite vocal in the areas I hunt, and especially in the morning. I really try to hear what they are doing, and especially to what sounds and vocalizations the gobblers are responding to...
Later in the season, if I do hear a hen, or hens in the morning, I pay attention, and will imitate those sounds in prime areas later in the morning (hopefully when the hens are back on the nest).
We all listen for that gobble, but I am far more intent on listening to the hens and what vocalizations they are doing. If I do not hear any vocalizations, I tend to be far more subtle with my calling and concentrate on quiet contented clucks and purrs. Most of the time it does not work, but it has proven fruitful for me at times...
High pitch and "young"