Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting What's in your call arsenal????

SQUACK - I heard about that call, but wondered about its effectiveness. Sounds like the ticket for wet weather.
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<br>I'm beginning to think you are on to something about the later hunting. It seems the best opportunity is later in the day when the tom is ALONE.
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<br>Easter weekend I went down a park road about 9:00 AM. Saw a big ol' boy in the road. Slowly drove up to where he went in the woods and stopped, opened the windows of the van.
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<br>Took out a QB box call and started up. He started gobbling after a minute. Strangely, a high pitched whining sound, unbroken by clucks or cuts, drove him wild. Kinda sounded like a cat whining. He crossed the road three times in front of the van trying to find that hen! Finally, after the third time, he was so mad he gobbled with any sound at all off the call. After about 45 minutes I could hardly contain myself from laughter. He was a big boy, too, biggest one I ever saw.
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<br>Problem was the season doesn't start 'til the 22d and the park is closed to hunting, anyway. Put all that in the noggin for future reference. Too much fun.
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<br>Regards, sse

yes i know that i have mentioned those KNIGHT AND HALE FIGHTING PURR CALLS a few times but something that works on turkeys even fairly regularly is worth talking about.
<br> if you have never seen them here's a little description. there are 2 calls in the set. each one has a differant pitch. it is a push button type call. BUT the parts that make the racket are glass and wood. now the glass is sanded and chalked. these calls are LOUD. you use one in each hand and purr with them. now if you have never heard a turkey fight let me tell you it is LOUD. and witnessing several i can tell you that they throw caution to the wind when a gang of them are "at" each other! so when i use the calls i have one in each hand and a diaphram cutter in my mouth and a tube call handy or one of those shaker gobbler calls. get all this stuff ready and keep your gun across your lap.
<br> i usually start out with a few yelps. then start the purring quietly and gradually increase the loudness. keep up the purring and add some excited cutting with the diaphram. once in a while throw in a gobble. keep up all this racket for 2-3 min. try to listen for answering gobbles. if one answers keep up the routine. after a couple of minutes stop.
<br>wait for a minute. if he's interested he will gobble at the next noise you make. when he OR THEY get closer i usually drop one purr call and get my gun on my knee. keep purring and cutting. in my experience every turkey that has come to this calling has come on the run gobbling all the way. and they are mostly old mature gobblers! so if you can find a set of calls you may want to give this a try. if they won't answer anything else, what have you got to lose? luck!

I hope you don't mind another story. I learned patience with turkeys the hard way most of the time. But once I had a lesson that worked out right.
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<br>I had roosted some birds along a creek and went back the next morning. The birds answered my calling and then another hunter begain to call from across the creek on another property. As luck would have it, the birds decided to go to the other hunter. I had to sit there and listen as he worked them in and then shot. But I was thinking that the birds would scatter after being shot at and they had heard me calling. Would there be a chance that they might run back to where they had heard me looking for company and safety?
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<br>I waited about twenty minutes after I had heard the shot and begain soft purs and clucks. It did not take long until a big gobbler showed up. He was silent, and he was coming from the direction where the other hunter had been. I killed that bird. But more importantly, I learned a valuable lesson. Since then I have called birds back after shooting one several times. Hunting partners who have seen me do that are in disbelief at the time. My record on call backs is three times. We killed two birds, I called them back fifteen minutes latter and killed one more, then called them back again thirty minutes later and killed another.
<br>Next time you shoot a bird from the group try it. Just stay still and quiet for fifteen to twenty minutes then yep softly a few times and pur a lot. See what happens.

UNFORTUNATELY i have never hunted in a state where you could kill morre than one a day and mostly one per season. but hunting with a partner could bring the possibility up so i'll keep your advise in mind.
<br>and yet another story! a friend of mine had a fall tag for wisconsin. we had never hunted turkeys in the fall at that time. so after years of hunting in this one particular woods for squirrels, deer and such we thought we'd give the turkeys a try. so we climbed up the side of this hill in the dark and sat down to wait for daylight. we THOUGHT they would be roosted up on top of the hill and we didn't want to walk under them in the dark and spook them off the roost. naturally when it got daylight the birds were in every tree right over our heads. and there was a LOT of them! miraculously they never saw us. i figured they would drop to the ground and that would be that. NOPE! the turkeys flew to the top of the hill. now i knew i wouldn't call them down that hill to where they just left. so we just sat there wondering what move to make next. i could hear the birds up there yelping away but had no illusions about sneaking up there. this was a very steep hill. but after a while it got quiet and we thought they had gone on over the hill. so we started up on top feeling that would be a better place to call from.we got about half way up and i heard those tukeys start yelping again. but they sounded like they were on the other side of the ridge. so feeling that there probably wasn't a sentry watching for us we hurried closer to the top. we got just under the crest when the purring started and i mean a lot of purring. it seems that the turkeys that sounded like they were on the other side of the ridge were a complely differant group and come up to the top to settle up some scores with the group that was already up there. then all h broke loose up there! turkeys were making every turkey noise i ever heard and others that i hadn't!we eased up to the top and what a sight that was! there were turkeys in heaps! they were spurring and pecking the daylights out of one another. must of been 40 or 50 birds and all under 30 yds. away with no idea they were in BIGGER trouble! i told my friend "pick one". that's one of the only times i have been able to utter those words hunting turkeys. and one was all we had a tag for. and yes he did get one. a small one. his mother had told him not to be bringing anymore of those big old tough gobblers home or she wouldn't be cooking it for him. oh well. it was his tag and he got to pluck the thing! me . i never got to make a call to those birds. but i can tell you it was pure exciting! luck!

I added a Knight and Hale " Lonesome Hen" call to the arsenal today....I'll either call one up or make them expire due to laughing fits
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<br>Haaa.....
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<br>Mike

rotr - I've heard of that call. What does it do that is suppose to be the clincher? I other words, what does a lonesome hen sound like?
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<br>Thanks, sse

It's just an easy to use(one handed) friction call that you can do soft yelps and cuts on. kind of a round plastic green thing with two strikers sticking out, you push one to operate it or you can buy a bracket and mount it on your barrel and pull the short striker with a string.
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<br>Mike

ROTR: as a matter of fact i have one of those calls and used it on the turkey we took in southern ill. i got the bird in close (75yds) and then used that "lonesome hen" call to make soft purrs. i wasn't doing the shooting and was situated where i could have used any call but wanted to see how the bird would react to it. i carry many types of calls with me for that reason. some times a bird will respond to one call and none of the others. sometimes they like high and clean and others they like low and raspy. i won't say that the only reason we got this turkey was because of that lonesome hen call because this particular turkey gobbled at every call i used on him. and i used a few! when i got my partner set up i got back behind him and before i started calling i got every call that i thought i might use out and arrayed around me where i could reach them quickly. then i kept using differant calls to see how he would react. but here's the truth if i know it. after the first set of calls i more than likely would never have had to make another call. i'm sure that that gobbler would have came right to us without another peep from me. but my friend hadn't ever heard a turkey gobble before the day before he got this one so i thought i'd try to make it as exciting as possible for him. another thing i figured making that ole turkey gobble so much would accomplish was for my buddy to be able to keep track of where the turkey was so it didn't sneak up on him!
<br> the thing gobbled all the way to him so he had no reason not to be ready.
<br> well i get to go try some wisconsin turkeys in a couple of weeks. what is amazing to me is that i have been in the woods hunting now 5 days so far and haven't lost 1 single turkey call. that must be some kind of record for me! luck!

Squacks-That does sound exciting...I even resorted to buying a couple of videos to make sure I wasn't doing anything totally crazy...and to hear some gobbles
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<br>I'll be back at it Thu I hope, then Sat. again!
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<br>mike

ROTR: tenacity counts! don't get frusrated and give up. sometimes when you think it looks completely impossible a turkey just plumb gives up. and the idea that maybe this isn't so tough comes to mind. but turkey hunting is tougher than almost anything in north america.(lower 48) for a long time (and maybe still) it has the lowest hunter success ratio of any other game animal including deer.
<br> after being hunted a while or getting bumped a few times an old gobbler hardly will answer a call. but that doesn't mean he won't come. sitting in a spot you have confidence in for as long as you can stand it and calling sparingly at these times will be the most reliable way of getting one. patience and vigilance still are the key to turkey hunting. luck!

Thanks squacks...
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<br>I will do many things, but quit won't be one of them, Inexorable is one of my favorite words
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<br>I may have been giving up on individual spots too soon(1-2hrs)....I'll park my carcass a little longer this weekend...
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<br>Mike