After reading DRELAN30’s post regarding box calls, it got me thinking back to my formative years of turkey hunting. Back then, I begrudgingly carried a box call for a number of reasons. For one, I had to as I didn’t sound very good at all on a diaphragm or a slate call. Yet at the same time, I always felt they were bulky and a “beginner’s” call. Even though I was about as green as they get at the time, I didn’t want to be reminded of it every time that glued together wood scrap in my vest squeaked or popped.
Eventually, I could scratch a few yelps on a pot/peg, so the first bird I ever called in was worked on a slate call. As I got better at that call I moved away from the box call for a few years, convinced that I didn’t need one. Moving further away from the box, I started getting better at the mouth call. One time, I got into a situation where I was working the top of a draw with gobbling birds below me, and another hunter in an opposing draw working the same birds with a box call. As I blew what I thought at the time were golden notes from my mouth call, he just started working the paddle on that box call even harder. I think he eventually spooked those birds towards me and I took a good tom, leading me to incorrectly assume that notes from a box call can’t stand up to good mouth calling….whatever that is.
I must admit I came back to box calls as almost a novelty. It had been a good season, and I had called in a few birds for folks, and decided that I was going to try to kill my bird that spring using a box call. Not fully believing in it, I had a mouth call tucked in my cheek for backup. That bird I’m sure didn’t know it at the time, but he sparked a passion for that type of call that I’ll never forget.
I sat on a sprouting oat-field, below a long, oak-lined ridge top where birds liked to roost, but that morning my birds were quiet. It’s a morning that turkey hunters dread. When they’re quiet on the roost, it can make for a tough couple of first hours. I decided to cold-call with that tank of a box call, and to my surprise a bird answered from way up top and beyond that ridge. His gobble was barely audible….the kind where they gobble before you finish your sequence, then turn your direction to offer you another just so you took them seriously. He stood in one place, gobbling like a fool for 15 minutes straight. I couldn’t resist, I simply had to offer him some mouth calling. I wanted that bird and wasn’t going to let a silly promise to myself stand in the way of killing him….but the bird clammed up. Even started heading away and gobbling “over his shoulder.” To which I responded with the box call, and he went right back to his “spot” and gobbled his head off some more. Not any closer, I was starting to wonder if he’d ever commit. The gobbling ceased, and what followed was over 20 minutes of silence. I didn’t have permission to hunt the land he was on, so moving closer was futile. So I decided to go for broke and literally made that box call bark. Third paddle-stroke into the calling he cut me off, then triple gobbled. Then he gobbled every fifth step of his death-march until I put him down for the count in that oat field.
Since that day, I’ve come back towards the box call in a very big way. Now, I would never think of hunting turkeys without one. I count on it to beat back the wind and to get just about all the birds I work fired up. I’m a firm believer now in building that initial excitement to a fever pitch, then cutting them off. Box calls do it better than just about anything else, and now it’s one of the joys of turkey hunting for me.
Every year I try out a few new ones. Some work well, others just make noise, but either way, I’m sold on their ability to flat-out kill turkeys. While they may not contain the complexity of tone and pitch in that you can’t vary those elements as easily, turkeys sure love them. Which means I do too.
Joel
