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Author Topic: How good can a call be  (Read 3090 times)

Offline Bowguy

  • Limbhanger
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  • Posts: 4551
Re: How good can a call be
« Reply #30 on: January 21, 2020, 12:17:27 PM »
This idea of a terrible sounding hen is based on a false impression of what a turkey should sound like.  I've heard a lot of variations from hens, but have yet to hear one that I thought sounded bad.  A big flock of Merriam's hens can be some of the loudest most obnoxious sounding turkeys there is.  That's probably the case with any big flock.  Ive heard sounds that I knew that I could not duplicate on my best days (and that's just variations in a Yelp).  It's often those scratchy, off key and tempo yelps that assures me it is a real hen.  But....that's not what I'd call bad sounding...that just sounds like a real hen going about her usual business being a turkey.
If YouTube is any indication of the skill level of most callers.....most folks suck.  In fact I'd say considering the kind of calling that a lot of folks are willing to share, they don't know the first thing about how they or a turkey sounds.  It obviously doesn't matter on some days, but it's painful to listen to.

Good little chat we got going on here....
The fact is that if every one of us based our calling on heading to the turkey woods, listening to the turkeys in our areas, and then trying to sound like them, I believe we would find an awful lot of variation in what each of us defined as good turkey calling.  Another fact is that, listening to the highest level contest callers (and don't get me wrong, those guys are amazing), I often hear them replicating sounds that, in all honesty, I have never (or extremely rarely) heard from a wild turkey in the areas I have hunted (i.e....fly-down cackling et. al.)

Again, the bottom line is that we humans,...especially in the contest-calling world,...have defined what is good turkey calling,...and what is not. Wild turkeys do not adhere to those definitions. It really doesn't matter if I think some guys calling sucks (which, like you Hobbes, I often do), the "proof is in the pudding",...that is, whether that calling does the job or not. 

As you say, some of the calling in YouTube videos, I consider atrocious (and also like you, Hobbes, I would not dare to post "samples" of my calling on YT). In those very same YouTube videos, those what-we-call horrible callers are calling-in and killing gobblers! ...And it ain't necessarily because they are hunting Turkey Utopia! 

Another thing we will never know in actual turkey hunting/calling:  Each of us uses whatever calling combinations we favor in our hunting,...out of dozens (or more) of possible combinations.  We either succeed or fail in each encounter,...but the fact is, in the successes, we don't really know if anybody else's tactics,...perhaps completely different than ours,...would have worked or not.  And on the other hand, we don't really know if the gobblers we failed on would have come running to the calling of one of those "sucky" guys!  And finally, to be totally honest, we don't know whether a gobbler we called and killed with our "average" calling would not have been runt-off into the next county by the so-called "world champ"!  (But granted, I will put my money on the world champ every time....)

You mention the sucky guys. As a kid all I did was mouth call. I practiced all year long n figured I was pretty decent. My buddy was terrible I thought.
He used a Quaker boy twin and never had a clear break between sound. Instead of yelp yelp yelp it was sorta flutely n run on. Lalalalalaala is how he sounded. It was gonna screw ya I thought. Every time he did that the birds would gobble it seems. I wish I could post how it sounded. The birds loved it n responded. Crazy I thought but not uncommon as you’d think

Hobbes

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Re: How good can a call be
« Reply #31 on: January 21, 2020, 12:49:11 PM »
How many have ever seen a turkey judge a calling contest? 99.9 percent of the custom calls will kill a turkey.  The best turkey call in the world is one that someone standing in front of your table wants to buy.

I'd take that a step farther....99.9% of the production calls will kill a turkey.  I did it for years before touching a custom call.

Offline mtns2hunt

  • The Boss Gobbler
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  • Posts: 977
Re: How good can a call be
« Reply #32 on: January 21, 2020, 03:59:30 PM »
I have always put "rhythm" before anything else, I rely on my CODY World Class Slate because of how I can run it and the sound it produces (range of tones) that call is pure turkey! From there I have one other glass call in my pack and it's like a $10 call but kills birds, I carry a half dozen strikers and half dozen mouth calls. Like what has been said having confidence in your calling is key.


MK M GOBL

Well said
Everyone wants to be successful - some just need help.