The Right Call

While I dedicate a lot of time to chasing whitetails and other antlered monsters, spring turkey hunting is still one of my favorite pursuits. It's a great time to be in the woods, you don't have to freeze your butt off, and best of all, I can do most of it right near my home in Georgia.

I grew up hunting ol' Booger Bottom right behind where my daddy still lives today, and I look forward to taking time off from my hectic traveling schedule every year to return there and hunt. But whether I'm hunting familiar woods I've hunted all my life or am chasing Rios or Merriam's in front of a camera in some place I've never even seen before, I use the same key skills to be successful. The most important skill I rely on is my ability to call. Calling is not only one of the things that makes turkey hunting so much fun, it's also the most important skill every turkey hunter needs to have in order to bring that big gobbler into gun range so he can ride home in the back of your truck. Here are a few tricks I've learned over the years. Maybe some of them will help you.

1 Mix It Up
A lot of turkey hunters, especially beginners, learn to use one call pretty good, but never become proficient on other types. Or they may be able to use other calls, but they rely on that one they like almost exclusively. Bad mistake. Every call has its own pitch and sound and not every one is going to appeal to a particular longbeard. While one turkey may gobble his head off at your box call on Friday, that same turkey or even a different one, may ignore it on Saturday.

Different calls may fire a tom up at different times. That's why it's important to learn to use several different calls and be able to run each of them as proficiently as the next. If turkeys aren't responding to your box call, switch to a mouth call or a slate. Even a tube call can work wonders in areas where gobblers have heard everything else thrown at them. If you prefer a box or a pot-and-peg type call, and are really good at that type, then buy several different ones and learn to use each of them as well as the other. Then you can keep inside your comfort zone, though I still recommend becoming versatile with different types of calls.

2 Master the Mouth Call
My favorite call to use, without a doubt, is a mouth call. To me, it's one of the most versatile. With a mouth call or diaphragm, you can make virtually every sound a turkey makes, varying rhythm, pitch and volume all with how you hold your mouth and huff air across the reeds. Best of all, it keeps your hands free so you can keep them on your shotgun when a gobbler is in close, but you need to work him just a little closer with a few light yelps or purrs.

3 Cadence is Key
As varied as a hen's yelping and many other calls are, they nearly all follow a basic rhythm. In fact, I would say, when calling to a turkey at a distance at least, it is more important to have the right cadence than to even have the right sound. Listening to real turkeys in the woods or watching videos and TV shows of turkey hunts is one of the best ways to observe this cadence and learn to mimic it perfectly.

Yelping, the hen's most basic call and the most important one for you to master, is delivered with evenly paced beats. Whether it is a casual yelp or one that is more excited and delivered with a little more speed, those yelps will always be spaced evenly apart. Cutting, which is really just a very excited, short burst of one-note clucks, will be more unevenly delivered, but still have a certain general rhythm to them.

4 Add Motion
I bet you're scratching your head right now. "Add motion, he must be talking about decoys now," you're probably thinking. That can be helpful, too, but what I'm talking about here is adding some motion to your calling. How many guys, walk in the woods, plop down at the first gobble they make and just start calling from that same spot? If a gobbler is hopped up and ready for action, that will be enough. But when he is feeling more cautious and would rather the hen show herself, you're going to have to change positions.

If a longbeard is far enough away, or even if the gobbles have gone silent on a particular morning, I will stand up and walk around, cutting and yelping and turning my head and body in different directions to make it sound like the hen is coming toward the tom and then moving away from him. I've walked 20 or 30 yards toward a gobbling tom that kept strutting back and forth out of sight to make him think I was a real hen. In these situations, try walking toward the turkey and then away while calling. Then shut up and move back to where you were closest to him and set up. The longbeard might think the hen is leaving him and finally show himself. When calling on the move like that, it is not only important that you do it when you are far enough away from a tom that he can't see you, but also that there is no chance of other hunters being around for obvious safety reasons.