My wife teaches 2 doors down the hall from me at work. This morning, I brought my new trumpet and was trying to make some soft calls before the students and other coworkers showed up. A few minutes later, my phone rang. It was my wife in her classroom and she could hear me calling. She asked if I was "playing with turkey calls"? I told her that it is never playing but serious practice. I guess I need to work on calling softer because her trained ears were able to hear it with no issues down the hall.
:) Softer is better
It's amazing how well turkeys can hear. A friend of mine had a tame domesticated gobbler. The gobbler was about 150 yards away and my friend said to call as softly as I could on a slate I made a yelp that we could barely hear and that gobbler would gobble every time. I couldn't make a call quiet enough that he didn't hear.