Perfect Call- Perfect Sound

[tad1]

All making some good points.  Another thing the exact call run by different people will be totally different!  While I know all of this, I still like to fool w all kinds of different calls.  I don't personally own more than 10 or so. 
Funny thing, the first and largest gobbler I ever killed, I never made a call to him.  I picked up the pot then thought "naw, I'll give it just a bit longer".  Few mins later heard him scratching along following a hen, rest was history!
     JT

[Brillo]

This is interesting to me as a newish turkey hunter because I tend to think that the next thing will be magic and magic is what I do not have.  I just need to spend my way to success.  Where calls are concerned I bought some box and pot calls, two trumpets and a bunch of diaphragms.  I am focusing on my "best"  trumpet and diaphragms because I am terrible at yelping with a mouth call but can purr, and make the softer sounds pretty good.  I can yelp and cluck pretty well with my trumpet and I can play soft or reach waaay out.  I am also  finding that I can sound like different birds on the same trumpet, if that makes sense..  I think that mouth calls and the trumpet compliment each other well and that is what I am determined to stick with until they are magic.  Now my gun and vest...

[Dtrkyman]

I made my first wing bone calls mid season two years ago, called in the first two birds I worked with one of them, thought I had the magic bullet.  Called in zero birds with it the next year, oh well.

[g8rvet]

My nephew and I were bored early afternoon on a WMA draw hunt.  We had walked our legs off and had heard no turkey sounds all morning.  We sat down in the woods for lunch and a rest.  We got to talking about this call and that call and how we ran them and literally pulled every call out of our vests and were just calling with them, listening to the sounds and differences in each.  About 45 minutes go by (I am talking some crazy calling - all turkey sounds, but fighting purrs, kee kee runs and LOTS of them, clucks, putts, purrs with no regards for volume or frequency) and a gobbler sounds off close.  We call the hen in to range and the gobbler could see her and stayed just barely out of shotgun range.  We joked after that we should have just gone nuts on the calls, cause that is what he came in to!

[Spitten and drummen]

Here is my humble opinion. For the most part I agree. You can kill birds with production calls just like customs. I could write on this post for an hour but will try to be brief. Some days you could kill a bird with a nail scratching on a piece of tin. Others you could be a world champion caller and it makes no difference, they just ain't gonna respond. I have been hunting these birds over 40 years and cut my teeth on Mississippi public land. I believe it's kind of like bass fishing. One day a spinner bait works well and then it don't. What I'm getting at is a certain type bait works one day then the next you may not get a strike until you throw something different.
  Killing a 2 year old vs a 4 year old for the most part takes a little more calling realism imo. Cadence is for sure the most important in calling in birds , however , let me share a hunt I had many years ago that shed some light on hunting these tough eastern.  I set up on a bird off the roost that had a half dozen hens around him. He did not gobble much and why should he with that much company. The birds pitched down and he and the girls had about a 100 yards in between them. The hens were really vocal and I threw my hat in the ring with a mouth call. He did not really show any interest in me or a lot of the hens carrying on. I noticed when a particular hen would yelp , he would respond to her. Now other hens were also yelping and cutting but he did not gobble at them. But that one hen he would climb on top of her call. I listened and said to myself that I have a box call in my vest that sounds similar to her. I pulled it out and tried to sound exactly like her in rhythm, pitch and a hint of her rasp. Long story short , I killed that bird at 18 yards about a hour  later. He had a thick11-1/2 inch beard and long sharp hooks. Definitely a older bird.
   This is a exception I'm sure , but over the years I can recall a half dozen hunts that resulted in the same strategy that I ended up killing the bird and the bird had 1-1/2 or close to that in spur length , telling me the bird was most likely 4 or 5 years old each time , possibly older. This tactic absolutely has not worked every time. I have struck out many many times no matter what I tried. It's turkey hunting. That morning many years ago I learned another tactic and has shown me it's something to it.
   I do not carry a ton of calls , but usually carry at least one of every style , pot , box , trumpet and diaphragm. I want to have the versatility to sound like that one particular hen on that particular day that old boy wants to hear.

[1iagobblergetter]

When i 1st started turkey hunting i only had a couple of calls..A production pot and a production box call...
I felt i was alot better sounding on the pot call so i used that exclusively...After hunting the property for a few days and not really getting any responses one morning i pulled out the box call after trying with the potcall i had them gobbling from 3 different directions and called one into gun range and missed.. I was a rookie and hate to admit i didnt pattern my gun...
I did learn 2 things one was it doesnt matter if you call one in if you dont know where your gun is shooting and the second thing was i didnt rely on just one call...I dont believe a person needs a bunch but its good to be proficient with a few..
I did go out the next weekend after patterning my shotgun and called one in with my potcall that didnt seem to work the week before and filled my tag with a nice old tom...
It was a great learning experience.. Ever since that i know where my gun shoots and strived to learn how to play several different types of calls....Now if i go home skunked i feel like they just won that day instead of feeling like i just am not that good.. 

[Zobo]

   Here's a recent example of a call I didn't need, but had to buy.
I was at the NWTF convention a week ago and stopped by Marlin Watkin's crowded table (how could you not?)
    I started playing some boxes along with about 10 other guys. I picked up this bloodwood/min poplar misfit box and the guy next to me said it sounded pretty good. Then Marlin said "it does when he runs it," pointing at me!  Then the guy sitting next to Marlin agrees, nodding at me approvingly. Later found out that guy was Herb Hornstra!
So now I have another box I probably could never part with, because two legendary call makers said I played it well, lol!

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[GobbleNut]

In this day and age, everybody has the resources at hand to know what "a turkey" sounds like...and the tools available to make those sounds. The problem is that there are an awful lot of turkeys in the woods that sound differently from one another...at least from the standpoint of that basic turkey sound we define as the yelp.  For every turkey in the woods that has that yelp that matches what each of us imagines in our heads is "the perfect sound", there are a dozen more that don't match that sound. 

Ultimately, the best each of us can do is identify the sound we individually prefer to use (and at least somewhat based on the standards that we find in those resources mentioned above)...and then hope that the turkey we are calling to agrees with our choice.  As others have stated, regardless of the type of call/calls we carry with us, the sounds we can make with those calls should be variable enough for each of us to cover as much of the "bell curve" of turkey sounds as we possibly can. 

The bottom line is that the "perfect call or sound" we each decide is the one for us is not necessarily what the turkey we are calling to wants to hear.  There are some turkeys that are not too picky (those are the kind we all like to run into)...and there are others that are picky enough to the point that we are unlikely to ever hit on the sounds they will fall for (personally, I would just as soon not run into one of those).   

If a guy knows the basics of turkey calling in all of its forms (and where and when to apply it), in the end, more often than not, our success or failure is primarily a result of just happening to choose the right gobbler...at the right time and place.  When that happens, whatever that call and sound were at that particular moment,...we can all say they were "perfect".      

[captpete]

I personally think confidence in a call is as important as the sound of the call. I'm a pot call guy. For awhile I was buying 6-7 new calls a year looking for that magical call. In the last few years I have pretty much stopped buying calls and sold most of my calls. When I hit the woods I carry 3-4 pot calls, 1 box call and 4-5 different strikes. 9 times out of 10, I start with the same call/striker combo. That's the call/striker combo I feel I play the best and have the most confidence in. Then if nothing happen, I switch strikers, and so on. The box call seldom comes out of the vest, but it is there....it's more of last resort. The reason I seldom use it is because I don't have confidence in it...not that it is a bad call or doesn't sound right. It's I have no confidence in my ability to run it. I practice with it, but I still don't have a lot of confidence running it. The same goes for mouth calls...no confidence in my ability.

With all that said, I'm getting to the point now that I want to do more experimenting with different calls. Maybe a trumpet, a wingbone call, a scratch box, etc. Looking more to change up the experience and hunt instead of just the same old thing every time....get out of my comfort/confidence zone.

[Kygobblergetter]

I use 1 mouth call 99% of the time and it just flat kills turkeys. I have 2 or 3 of them in my vest along with a wing bone and sometimes a trumpet. It's pretty rare that I ever use anything else. I found a call that I like and I use it. I'm very confident in my calling ability and can sound like several different turkeys with that one call. I also always carry a gobble tube. Don't use it a ton but it has also caused the death of several birds


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[Mossberg90MN]

I actually enjoy buying new calls every year but I'm somewhat of a gear junkie. When I hunt I only use about 3 main mouth calls and a glass call with 1 striker.


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