Turkey Calls & Calling: Guide to Improving Your Turkey-Talking Skills

[Greg Massey]

Nothing wrong with this discussion or suggestions on the purpose of reading books or using internet or video's. What it's all about is the passion we have in hunting these birds and helping others. This forum is the best on the internet along with a lot of great people and turkey hunters. We will all have different opinions.. If your a beginner gather as much information as you can and hunt safe and ethical. Boot's on the ground and learning cadence and practice with your calls. Remember you have to have turkeys to hunt turkeys ... that's why it's important to scout and ride and as questions from deer hunters, farmer's, mailman can tell you a lot he or she is on the road everyday but one.... It's just the love of the game and hearing that first gobble at daybreak that get's me excited after that it's game on ... if you spend a lot of time hunting these birds you can tell almost within a few gobbles if your going to kill that bird or not .... some birds are going to die that day regardless ....I didn't read this in a book. I learned this over 35 plus years of hunting these birds and spending time with them in the woods and fields of Tennessee and Missouri ......In Tennessee you can hunt all day and for years i've hunted these birds all day.. Pack a lunch and play the game with them is what i enjoy , kill or not ....it's turkeys being turkeys ..

[Sir-diealot]

Very good comments from GobbleNut an Gregg, experience will always be the best teach for sure, you just have to be smart enough to let it teach you, that's another lesson we have all had to learn in life.

[Happy]

Books are great and I will not knock them but experience trumps it all in my opinion. You can understand the basics of turkey language but until you work birds and begin to understand the nuances of their responses I don't think you start to really get it. It is a constant game of learning and getting a feel for it. Picking up on a toms mood and calling accordingly will go a long way. Still sounding like the most sexy hen on the planet won't help much if your in the wrong location. I am far from a master but working birds and even calling in hens has taught me more than books have. Heck I still get in wrong sometimes but that is what I love about it. You can practice your whole life and not be good. It's not until you have played a few games that it starts to come together and make sense.

[Sir-diealot]

Books are great and I will not knock them but experience trumps it all in my opinion. You can understand the basics of turkey language but until you work birds and begin to understand the nuances of their responses I don't think you start to really get it. It is a constant game of learning and getting a feel for it. Picking up on a toms mood and calling accordingly will go a long way. Still sounding like the most sexy hen on the planet won't help much if your in the wrong location. I am far from a master but working birds and even calling in hens has taught me more than books have. Heck I still get in wrong sometimes but that is what I love about it. You can practice your whole life and not be good. It's not until you have played a few games that it starts to come together and make sense.

Can't say that I disagree, but a book can also make you try things you may not have otherwise.

[NCL]

At a stage in life where I realize how much I do not know, the more I learn the more I realize how much more I need to learn.  All source of knowledge are good but applying that knowledge in the field is the acid test. Each year I think I have made every mistake in turkey hunting that is possible and I manager to discover a new mistake. The learning process is a big reason why I go back each year, well there are several other reasons but for this discussion the learning is the big one.

[1iagobblergetter]

At a stage in life where I realize how much I do not know, the more I learn the more I realize how much more I need to learn.  All source of knowledge are good but applying that knowledge in the field is the acid test. Each year I think I have made every mistake in turkey hunting that is possible and I manager to discover a new mistake. The learning process is a big reason why I go back each year, well there are several other reasons but for this discussion the learning is the big one.

I agree.  I've hunted Turkey's for a long time. Im still learning all these years later. It's the hard ones to kill that keeps me at it..
I didnt have a mentor to help me in the beginning so I read alot of books on Turkey's especially in the beginning. Hickoffs fall turkey hunting book is a good read also.Other than books the Turkey's taught me what worked or what didn't. I still like a good turkey hunting book if I can 3ver find the time to read them. I have probably a couple hundred of them. It was another passion of mine turkey hunting book collecting.

[silvestris]

I have only been hunting them for forty-five years.  Once one learns to find them, set up on them and hide properly and then learns to perform those actions naturally, calling is everything.

[Cut N Run]

Getting my hands on and reading everything I could about hunting turkeys when I first started definitely helped me learn the game early on as there was no internet or videos,  but it really takes going to turkey school in the woods to help get dialed in. Before the season starts every year, I like to go find wild turkeys someplace where they aren't hunted, get as close as I can, and listen to their conversation to get tuned up for the season.  A few days of listening and absorbing the rhythm, volume, and frequency of turkeys calling can really get me dialed in on what to say and when to say it better than anything in print. Books are fantastic for learning the rules, or finding what brought success to other hunters, but it takes real world experience and making your own mistakes to learn what the turkeys want and and expect to hear. A thousand books can't teach what several days spent in the turkey woods can.  I learned more from my own screw ups than all of the stories & how to's I read ever taught me. The hardest learned lessons are the easiest ones to remember.

Someone could could have all the normal turkey calling sounds down, but until one hears what calling sequences to use and when from live birds, you're limiting yourself and your ability to become a better turkey hunter. You can get by without being a competition caller (I'm living proof) though if you start making the wrong calls at the wrong cadence from the wrong location, it's game over.

Reading and watching videos about turkey hunting are great tools which helps feed my addiction in the off season, but neither one is a good substitute for being in the woods around wild turkeys. By all means absorb what you can from literature, though live turkeys will end up proving to be far more educational in the long run.

A buddy of mine is not a good caller at all, though he's a good hunter and has some great land where he can hunt.  He does quite well by setting up in the right kinds of places and calling sparingly on a push pin caller.  He could probably do better with more/better calling skills, but his experience has taught him well enough by knowing what calls to use and where to set up.

Jim

[Sir-diealot]

Completely agree.

[bobk]

Once one learns to find them, set up on them and hide properly and then learns to perform those actions naturally, calling is everything.





I agree. 

Time in the field  is the greatest teacher. This will be my 51st season and I learn something new every time I am in the field.

[GobbleNut]

Once one learns to find them, set up on them and hide properly and then learns to perform those actions naturally, calling is everything.
I agree. 

Time in the field  is the greatest teacher. This will be my 51st season and I learn something new every time I am in the field.

All other things being equal,...that is, your set-up, positioning, mind-set of the bird (or birds) you are talking to,...then, yes, I agree that "calling is everything".  The problem with that simple, three-word statement is that a lot of turkey hunters do not have the experience to understand what we mean when making that statement.

It seems a lot of hunters interpret that to mean that they need to sound like the championship-level callers they see in contests and on the internet.  That interpretation is entirely off-base.  While it's true that one needs to sound like a "real" turkey, the fact is that the spectrum of what "real" turkeys sound like is all over the chart. 

"Calling is everything" means that a hunter needs to understand when, what, and how to say something to a gobbler more-so than meeting some fictional standard of calling prowess.  Yell at a gobbler when he wants you to whisper to him (or vice-versa), no matter how realistic your yelling sounds, and he is likely to shut the hell up and say "adios".

Coaxing a gobbler to you, in many cases, requires interpreting his state-of-mind and then talking to him in the manner that he thinks he should be talked to.  As bobk and other have inferred, that mainly comes from experience,...not necessarily calling ability.

[Sir-diealot]

Once one learns to find them, set up on them and hide properly and then learns to perform those actions naturally, calling is everything.
I agree. 

Time in the field  is the greatest teacher. This will be my 51st season and I learn something new every time I am in the field.

All other things being equal,...that is, your set-up, positioning, mind-set of the bird (or birds) you are talking to,...then, yes, I agree that "calling is everything".  The problem with that simple, three-word statement is that a lot of turkey hunters do not have the experience to understand what we mean when making that statement.

It seems a lot of hunters interpret that to mean that they need to sound like the championship-level callers they see in contests and on the internet.  That interpretation is entirely off-base.  While it's true that one needs to sound like a "real" turkey, the fact is that the spectrum of what "real" turkeys sound like is all over the chart. 

"Calling is everything" means that a hunter needs to understand when, what, and how to say something to a gobbler more-so than meeting some fictional standard of calling prowess.  Yell at a gobbler when he wants you to whisper to him (or vice-versa), no matter how realistic your yelling sounds, and he is likely to shut the hell up and say "adios".

Coaxing a gobbler to you, in many cases, requires interpreting his state-of-mind and then talking to him in the manner that he thinks he should be talked to.  As bobk and other have inferred, that mainly comes from experience,...not necessarily calling ability.

You are saying what I have been trying to say but better than I was saying it, especially your third paragraph. I used to know when to call in a certain way, I have had as many as three right up on me touching my blind and or the backpack that was a foot or so outside my blind. Problem was it was the Spring after my last accident and my back was so bad I could not get the front end of the gun up enough to shoot one of them and one could not have been more than 15 feet from me when he stood there and presented a perfect shot. But I have forgotten a lot of that stuff and books seem to help me a lot with trying to remember the when and where to use things as well as video's from reputable companies/people, I love anything from Primos, I would love to hunt with Will Primos one day, that will never happen though.

[Harty]

Great thread!

Learn however you can. read,join forums, find a mentor, watch videos,facebook, listen to sound bites etc. but.....get in the woods. When an Ol'Sage taught me how to ease quietly into and out of the woods using the terrain to my advantage I started seeing and hearing a lot more Turkeys ( and that includes other game species as well).

[1iagobblergetter]

I learned alot in the beginnings years ago through reading books which started another addiction of collecting them. Lots of ways to learn,but nothing wrong with a good book if you have the time. Not all are how to's and can also make you a better turkey hunter.

[Sir-diealot]

I learned alot in the beginnings years ago through reading books which started another addiction of collecting them. Lots of ways to learn,but nothing wrong with a good book if you have the time. Not all are how to's and can also make you a better turkey hunter.

I am beginning to enjoy the ones where they are sharing memories more than the how to's lately. I had gotten a hold of a book from Amazon called "Somewhere Along The Way" It was a short book, only 124 pages but the man wrote so well it was like you were there with him. He was not a blow hard for this brand or that brand and did not tell you how to do things, he just shared his love and memories of the sport and made you want hear him telling you about them.