Speaker 1: Today's guests might be part human and part owl. James
Speaker 1: Harrison was born and raised in Hillsborough, Missouri, where he
Speaker 1: married his high school sweetheart, and has two sons, Cody
Speaker 1: and Carter, who both have followed in his footsteps and
Speaker 1: loved the outdoors as much as he does. By day,
Speaker 1: James is a machinist. Pretty good skill set to have
Speaker 1: when you're designing and building game calls, and he's been
Speaker 1: building them and designing them for over fourteen years. In
Speaker 1: addition to being an amazing contest caller and call builder,
Speaker 1: James knows his stuff when it comes to hunting turkeys,
Speaker 1: which is the whole reason we have him here on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Welcome to the show, James. Hey, how's it going, Jason,
Speaker 1: How are things going there? Excellent? You know what, It's
Speaker 1: seventy degrees today, it's a sunny so definitely getting me
Speaker 1: in the mood for some spring turkey season. Spring peepers
Speaker 1: are out peeping, and I guarantee it's keys we're probably gobbling.
Speaker 1: This morning, I woke up, it was beautiful out. I
Speaker 1: hated to go to work. I was like dog on it.
Speaker 1: I'd like to be out of scouting birds. What do
Speaker 1: the populations look like in Missouri this year? You guys
Speaker 1: have a good hatch or is it down up from
Speaker 1: last year? Well, you know around the house here we
Speaker 1: had we've had good hatches the last three years in
Speaker 1: a row. So I mean you're just right around the
Speaker 1: house here is it has been really really good. Uh.
Speaker 1: We do manage. I'm lucky that I know all the
Speaker 1: farmers around the house, so we all manage for predators,
Speaker 1: and we do habitat and stuff like that. So that
Speaker 1: makes a you know in my area there that makes
Speaker 1: huge difference southern Missouri and some spots that we hunt
Speaker 1: a lot, Uh, they're they're kind of hitting miss You'll
Speaker 1: get some pockets that got good birds and then you'll
Speaker 1: hit others. Ah, there ain't no birds area. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just been bad hatches, you know, due to weather
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So it's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny. You'll be one spot and then you'll
Speaker 1: drive ten miles away and they'll be loaded up full
Speaker 1: of turkeys. And you'll go to another spot maybe just
Speaker 1: down the road, and uh that used to carry and
Speaker 1: hold a lot of birds and there's just there ain't
Speaker 1: that many there. So gotcha, So hit or miss, but
Speaker 1: in your your area pretty good right now. Yes, Turkey
Speaker 1: turkeys are one of those species that are they're awesome
Speaker 1: with their life expectancy of you know, three and a
Speaker 1: half to four years max. You know, they can definitely
Speaker 1: get older than that, but on typical so you can change.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we're you know, the last twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years, Missouri seems to be going on a downhill trend.
Speaker 1: It's like a couple of good springs, you know, things
Speaker 1: going your way, and it can rebound, you know, fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: Compared to some of the other species, you know, winter
Speaker 1: kills and stuff we have out west here, it seems
Speaker 1: like it takes a lot longer to rebound and get
Speaker 1: your numbers back. So it's good to hear that. Um,
Speaker 1: you have had a few good hatches in a row there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been good. We've been seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: jake's uh for last three years. We've had good jake
Speaker 1: numbers and two year olds and a lot of the
Speaker 1: farms that we do that we do hunt and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. We manage it pretty tight. We may only
Speaker 1: take one bird off of a farm. The farm here
Speaker 1: by the house that uh, I've been watching really close
Speaker 1: and we've had under management. We didn't even kill a
Speaker 1: bird off of it last year. So just because we
Speaker 1: the age structure. There was a bunch of two year
Speaker 1: olds in there, which is great, you know, they're movie
Speaker 1: stars full fans usually get shot, you know, but uh,
Speaker 1: they were breeding. We had a lot of hens, so
Speaker 1: we just kind of let that farm set and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we got the luxury to do that, and
Speaker 1: we we hunt a ton of private I mean a
Speaker 1: public ground down south of us. So it's all timber,
Speaker 1: big hardwoods. Uh, you know pretty much. I think right
Speaker 1: behind right below the house. About an hour we got
Speaker 1: like ninety eight thousand acres of public ground to hunting.
Speaker 1: Then it's all all like I said, it's all timbers.
Speaker 1: So we go down there and chase birds all the time,
Speaker 1: and we really enjoy it. So that kind of takes
Speaker 1: the pressure off of our birds here by the house
Speaker 1: to just kind of let them do their thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of your backgrounds, a little bit
Speaker 1: of private hunting, a little bit of public hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: out here in the West, we we do a lot
Speaker 1: of public majority public But then when I get to
Speaker 1: go back to Kansas and whatnot, get to do some
Speaker 1: private and it's it's it's fun to compare and contrast
Speaker 1: and kind of use a different skill set on on both.
Speaker 1: So you have that, you know, well rounded. You just
Speaker 1: got home from the NABTF National Convention down there in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I just got back from the Pacific Northwest Sportsman Show
Speaker 1: there in Portland, Oregon. I I envy your location compared
Speaker 1: to mine, for sure. Yeah, Portland's not the not the
Speaker 1: greatest place, but it's got great customers. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I would call them friends. Now at this point, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of our back backyard show. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you can attest to it. Even the people
Speaker 1: we've seen here in the Pacific Northwest. People are starting
Speaker 1: to get excited about Turkey. Um, you know, it's right
Speaker 1: around the corner. So how was the convention down there
Speaker 1: in Nashville. It was bigger than it ever was. I mean,
Speaker 1: the seems like the people are really coming out. I
Speaker 1: think I haven't heard any solid numbers, but I know
Speaker 1: there was I'm almost one hundred percent and positive it
Speaker 1: was over sixty thousand people went through the show or
Speaker 1: it's going to be really close to that. But I
Speaker 1: mean people were there, they were you know, they were
Speaker 1: spending money, they were out shopping, they were they were
Speaker 1: doing what they're supposed to do, and I mean we
Speaker 1: were having a great time and uh, you know, positive feedback.
Speaker 1: The weather was nice, so that always helps. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody got out and stuff like that. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the NWTF convention every year just seems like it keeps
Speaker 1: getting better and better and better and growing, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hats off to those guys were putting on
Speaker 1: a heck of a convention. You know. The calling contest
Speaker 1: end of it was up, probably record numbers of guys
Speaker 1: in the contest. Uh you know, vendors vendors was up,
Speaker 1: you know, so it was it was good all the
Speaker 1: way around. You know, the custom Call building shows there
Speaker 1: where they do the duck calls and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and the Turkey calls and everything, and uh, I think
Speaker 1: that was a record this year too as far as
Speaker 1: people entering NATS. So overall it was a home run
Speaker 1: for sure, you know. And they have it at the
Speaker 1: Opera Land Hotel down there and convention center, so it's
Speaker 1: all contained in one building. So I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: staying there, that's awesome. You never have to Once you
Speaker 1: pull in in park, you don't leave for the next
Speaker 1: three days. You're just there, you know. So, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an enjoyable, joyable time for sure. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: mentioned you know, record attendants coming off of the Western
Speaker 1: Hunt Expo and out of the the Pacific Northwest. Uh. Everybody
Speaker 1: talks about these uh you know, recessions and stuff we're in.
Speaker 1: But if if you had to judge based on the
Speaker 1: sportsman and people at these shows, you know, spending money,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't you wouldn't know anything about it. Seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, either people are on fire, they're passionate, they're
Speaker 1: just they're showing up and and um, you know, I've
Speaker 1: always I've always kind of thought that, you know, hunters
Speaker 1: were a little bit you know, recession proof because they're
Speaker 1: gonna budget, they're gonna do what they need to do
Speaker 1: to make sure that you know, they they can enjoy
Speaker 1: the outdoors and have the right equipment and so um
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. And I think COVID too. You know,
Speaker 1: when COVID hit a lot of guys that uh, you
Speaker 1: know had to stay at home, you know, or work
Speaker 1: for home and stuff like that, and everything was shut down.
Speaker 1: So I think a lot of guys you know, got
Speaker 1: back into hunting again and they you know, they realize
Speaker 1: what they've been missing all that time, so they just
Speaker 1: picked it back up and they're just you know what, hey,
Speaker 1: this is we enjoy doing it, and they continue to
Speaker 1: do it. They just didn't go back to work and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll drop it. So I think that really,
Speaker 1: I mean, take a bright point out of a out
Speaker 1: of a terrible situation. I think covid really made the
Speaker 1: sportsman and uh, you know, fishing industry everything. I think
Speaker 1: it made it stronger because more people got out there
Speaker 1: and started participating and uh and are still continuing to
Speaker 1: do it. So I mean that's great all the way
Speaker 1: around for everybody. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna jump into the first segment here on the cutting
Speaker 1: of the Distance, where we take listener questions and if
Speaker 1: you have any questions for us here on the show
Speaker 1: for me and my guests, please make sure to email
Speaker 1: CTD app phelps gamecalls dot com or send us a
Speaker 1: social message. We'll do our best to get these questions
Speaker 1: on the show and see if myself. Our experts can
Speaker 1: answer them. So the first question for today is and
Speaker 1: it's kind of right up your wheelhouse. I went and
Speaker 1: kind of cherry picked these for you. I'm new to
Speaker 1: turkey hunting, and I'm curious why you would located turkey
Speaker 1: without turkey calls. That's a that's a good question. I
Speaker 1: get that one. I'll ask a lot too. And uh,
Speaker 1: the reason, you know, the main reason to located turkeys
Speaker 1: to get that bird to gobble at you so you
Speaker 1: know his location so you can go set up on
Speaker 1: him to hunt, hone him and stuff like that. I'm
Speaker 1: a real stickler about not turkey calling to a bird
Speaker 1: until I'm ready to set up on him and actually
Speaker 1: start calling him in to shoot him. So that's why
Speaker 1: I use the al hooters, the crow calls, the you know,
Speaker 1: the kyote howlers, stuff like that, because I want that
Speaker 1: turkey to be gobbling at a sound, but I don't
Speaker 1: want him to be associating that turkey because a lot
Speaker 1: of times I've seen guys set up and this is
Speaker 1: me too. I've done it before in the past. I'm
Speaker 1: guilty of it. I've set up and I hadn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't get a bird goblin. So I started getting a
Speaker 1: mouth call or a box call out and I started
Speaker 1: cutting at him, and I got one of gobble at me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, he's over there, you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna go to him. And as I'm going
Speaker 1: to him, he was actually coming to me. So I
Speaker 1: just lumped him and spook the bird or if there's
Speaker 1: a bird around, it's being quiet, and I'm turkey calling
Speaker 1: to him and he never gobbles, and I go on
Speaker 1: and move on. Then that bird shows up at my
Speaker 1: location and he's just he's he's confused, like, okay, there
Speaker 1: was a hen here, she's not here. Now I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened. And uh so I try not to
Speaker 1: turkey call until I am set up on the bird
Speaker 1: and actually ready to call him in and shoot him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh that's the same as me. I think, you
Speaker 1: know the same as elk cutting out here out west.
Speaker 1: We will locate you got a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: elkdo shot gobble unfortunately, so you do have to locate
Speaker 1: him with a bugle. But it's very similar. Like I've
Speaker 1: always said, I think the biggest mistake is like bugling
Speaker 1: your way in and letting him know you're coming. Um.
Speaker 1: Similar to turkeys, you don't want to have to give
Speaker 1: up your location until you have to. So if you
Speaker 1: can paint that, if you can, you know, get his
Speaker 1: location without having to, you know, paint the picture that
Speaker 1: you are a hen turkey somewhere on the on the landscape.
Speaker 1: I think you're putting the you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: stacking the deck in your favor a little bit, because
Speaker 1: then you can go silent um and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: when you are set up within close proximity UM or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever you know, tactics or you're going to use UM,
Speaker 1: you can then you know, become a hen turkey and
Speaker 1: do the calling. So, you know, very much like you,
Speaker 1: we we try to always locate UM, you know out
Speaker 1: west UM. You know, we we tend to use and
Speaker 1: I'll get into this in a little bit, UM we
Speaker 1: tend to use. You know. You try to time your
Speaker 1: your locators with with what's working, you know, So in
Speaker 1: the morning we'll go to Ala. In the evening we'll
Speaker 1: go to al or Kyle. I don't like to use
Speaker 1: KYO early in the morning because I don't want to
Speaker 1: let that turkey know, you know, if I do locate
Speaker 1: that there's a kyote running around and may you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if turkeys think that deeply about things,
Speaker 1: but in my mind is like, well, if there's a
Speaker 1: kyote on the ground, that turkey is going to be
Speaker 1: a little less hesitant or a little more hesitant then,
Speaker 1: you know, coming in. And then for us out west, um,
Speaker 1: you know crow and then the pilliated woodpecker, maybe even
Speaker 1: more so than these other ones, Um seems to just work.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's that sharp, high pitched, you know,
Speaker 1: rapid sound that just kind to get them going. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we've been using a lot of affiliated woodpecker
Speaker 1: out here on the Merriams and it seems to have
Speaker 1: great um. You know, it's just got a great response
Speaker 1: and it carries, it carries to some of this big
Speaker 1: canyon country. And then there's all the other things we
Speaker 1: could use, you know, kyote, peacock, goose, duck, We even
Speaker 1: use elk bugles. And you always hear the same reference too.
Speaker 1: I just slam my truck door, I hunk my horn
Speaker 1: you know when I get out, and those work. But
Speaker 1: I think I'd just just being a woodsman and wanting
Speaker 1: to fit on the landscape. I think, you know, using
Speaker 1: natural animal sounds as part of the game we love
Speaker 1: to play, right, Oh, oh for sure, Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1: You know, I try to when I'm hunting, hunting and
Speaker 1: going to located bird I try to be as realistic
Speaker 1: with my calling, even on my locator calls, as possible.
Speaker 1: So and I was talking to a guy this weekend
Speaker 1: about that the show. I said, if I can get
Speaker 1: my owlhooter out and I can get that, get a
Speaker 1: you know, hit a few notes on the owlhooter, and
Speaker 1: I can get four or five owls to start hooting
Speaker 1: back at me, then I can just be quiet and
Speaker 1: listen to the owls because if that, you know, if
Speaker 1: another owl's on a different ridge, he's carrying farther than
Speaker 1: my sounds carrying, so he's actually helping me locate more
Speaker 1: turkeys and carry the distance. Same way with a crow
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So I try to keep it
Speaker 1: as realistic as possible. And you know, I mean like
Speaker 1: in the mornings, I like to do a crow in
Speaker 1: an owl kind of like you're talking about where you
Speaker 1: guys are at midday, I'll hit the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the hawk screen peleated woodpecker Kyle Hollen. I saved that
Speaker 1: until they are up on roost, and you know, I
Speaker 1: know them. Berger actually up on the roost. And the
Speaker 1: reason being had a great hunt in Kansas a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and I was on a bird and
Speaker 1: had it was a galber had three hens with him,
Speaker 1: and I was laying there just watching him. He was
Speaker 1: gonna flyp to roost. I was gonna get set up
Speaker 1: far him that next morning. You know, if he came
Speaker 1: into range that evening, I was gonna shot him. You know,
Speaker 1: we get hunt all day out there. And uh, I
Speaker 1: could tell by the way he was acting he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He was just gonna stay with him him. So I
Speaker 1: was just gonna watch him fly up, get a good
Speaker 1: bearing on him, and slide in the next morning and uh,
Speaker 1: here comes my oldest son, Cody, driving down the road.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm five six hundred yards off the road. He
Speaker 1: doesn't even know I'm in there on this chunk of ground,
Speaker 1: and he stops a truck and he starts kyote Hollen
Speaker 1: and he's probably six hundred yards for me and the turkey,
Speaker 1: and that that Galbert literally just popped out a strut,
Speaker 1: popped his wings in and all three of them took
Speaker 1: off going up the ridge side and was gone for
Speaker 1: the evening, so I never knew where they got to
Speaker 1: to go to roost. So I was like dag, um,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's the the kyote hollen works great.
Speaker 1: It covers a lot of ground. Just make sure when
Speaker 1: you do something like that that then birds are definitely
Speaker 1: on roost that way, they're safe and up in a
Speaker 1: tree because kayo's definitely I mean, turkey's their main goal
Speaker 1: in life. They're gonna try to survive and uh, everything
Speaker 1: tries to eat a turkey pretty much. So I think
Speaker 1: they definitely associate. You know, they know what noises or
Speaker 1: what you know, they hear kyote, they know that's danger.
Speaker 1: So yep, yep, I'm I'm in the same camp that
Speaker 1: you are that. Uh, those kyle halls work great, but
Speaker 1: they're only a you know, after dark locator, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, make sure those birds feel comfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: and during the during the morning, even during the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I don't want them to think that there's a you know,
Speaker 1: a kyote running around close to them. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: a good segue into this next one. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we just mentioned the plethora of calls. You know, you
Speaker 1: could have crow, I'll woodpecker, kyote, peacock, goose, you know,
Speaker 1: duck calls, elk, bugles, whatever you mean. You could you
Speaker 1: could literally fill up a vest and have way more
Speaker 1: locator calls than you could have turkey calls on you
Speaker 1: if you carried everything. But what locators? Uh? What locator
Speaker 1: calls should I carry with me? And this was a
Speaker 1: listener question, but you know, what's what's a good coverage?
Speaker 1: You know, what's a I guess what kind of covers
Speaker 1: all your bases? Um? And what do you carry for
Speaker 1: locator calls? Oh? That's that's a great question there, and
Speaker 1: I can I can honestly sum it up. You know,
Speaker 1: I hunt a lot of big timber, you know, especially
Speaker 1: on public grounds places like that where we're going in
Speaker 1: there a long ways and going you know, four or
Speaker 1: five miles in and stuff like that. So and when
Speaker 1: you're in and it's probably just like you are out west,
Speaker 1: when you're in that big vast country. If you can't
Speaker 1: find in your turn keys to hunt, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: doing a lot of walking or a lot of glass
Speaker 1: and a lot of time wasted just trying to find birds.
Speaker 1: So I carry. Usually I have my al hooter with me,
Speaker 1: I have a crow call, I carry a kyote holler
Speaker 1: with me. I usually carry a peliated woodpecker and a
Speaker 1: hawk scream, And so I carry several locator calls just
Speaker 1: because if I can't find my turkeys that I'm trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, to hunt, then it's just making my job
Speaker 1: that much harder. So I literally probably carry I I'm
Speaker 1: one of the guys. I probably carry more locator calls
Speaker 1: than I do turkey calls, so you know, I you know,
Speaker 1: it's just all the way down the line. So good
Speaker 1: al hooter, good crow call, peleiad woodpecker, hawks scream, kyote holler,
Speaker 1: you know, let's and you can get into goose calls,
Speaker 1: you know, like we're around the house where we're at,
Speaker 1: we don't have a ton of geese, so you know,
Speaker 1: you can hit a goose call and they may not
Speaker 1: ever answer it. So then I got a couple of
Speaker 1: places I hunt that's loaded up with geese, So I
Speaker 1: mean they'll hear geese a lot and they'll gobble at it,
Speaker 1: you know, So I really trying to hunt that. You know,
Speaker 1: you're terrain in that area as far as yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's what's natural for the area. All right. So with
Speaker 1: that said, we've already kind of talked about not using
Speaker 1: turkey calls. When is there a situation or if you
Speaker 1: know there are turkeys around, is there at a point
Speaker 1: where you're like, all right, these locators aren't working, they
Speaker 1: don't care. Will you switch to a turkey call, do
Speaker 1: some loud cutting or some yelping, or do you do
Speaker 1: you only only use that for calling turkeys in once
Speaker 1: you know where they're at the time, I'll start to
Speaker 1: switch over and use the turkey calls. If I'm in
Speaker 1: an area and I've scouted at a bunch and I
Speaker 1: know there's birds in there. So let's take, for instance,
Speaker 1: I'm on a couple ridges and I know I got
Speaker 1: three long beards hanging in those ridges, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big area, but I know them verger there,
Speaker 1: and it's getting mid day and it's kind of just
Speaker 1: starting to wind down. You know, everything's gotten woods have
Speaker 1: kind of gotten quiet. I may go ahead then and
Speaker 1: hit a call cut a few times, but at that
Speaker 1: point I'm pretty much setting up and gonna stay for
Speaker 1: a while. You know, I'm gonna find me a real
Speaker 1: good location that I can see good, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: set up up, go ahead, get ready to roll, and
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna hit the calls, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: sit there and wait for you know, half an hour
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, and then I may hit another series
Speaker 1: of calls and then you know, wait again for another
Speaker 1: half hour forty five minutes and just kind of like
Speaker 1: wait for the birds to do their thing. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times that works out great because I may
Speaker 1: call two or three times I've had birds coming quiet
Speaker 1: on me, a bunch that you know, didn't gobble at all.
Speaker 1: And then also, you know, you're sitting there in thirty
Speaker 1: four or five minutes, you know, an hour, just doing
Speaker 1: your thing, and then you'll you'll hear another bird gobble
Speaker 1: in a different direction or something. So then at that
Speaker 1: point you can pick up and go from there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if I know I'm gonna stay in an area and
Speaker 1: I know there's birds in the area, then I'll be
Speaker 1: more apt to grab a turkey call and sit down
Speaker 1: and just set up. And basically what you're doing is
Speaker 1: blind calling to them, you know, kind of like you
Speaker 1: do a deer. You're just know they're in the area.
Speaker 1: You're just hoping to make contact with them and get
Speaker 1: them to come in. Yeah, and what kind of led
Speaker 1: me on to doing this. We're a few situations where
Speaker 1: we knew there were birds around. We're on a you know,
Speaker 1: a good piece of property or a good area over there,
Speaker 1: and you know you're locate and locate and locate, hitting crow,
Speaker 1: hitting you know whatever, you got, pillated woodpecker. Nothing's answering, right,
Speaker 1: But then you can visually like see the turkeys, like
Speaker 1: you know, hind up or they're with and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I can I know they can hear me. I know
Speaker 1: that I can see them, and they're not answering. But
Speaker 1: yet you sit down and hind call, and then you
Speaker 1: could you know, we've we've pulled over, you know, pulled
Speaker 1: over one of the you know, subbordinate toms, or we've
Speaker 1: pulled over one of the two year olds, and it's
Speaker 1: like all right, that's where like, all right, turkey calling
Speaker 1: may be beneficial versus you know, just sit there cranking
Speaker 1: on locators the whole time, you know, And that's like
Speaker 1: you mentioned right off the bat on that question. If
Speaker 1: you know they're birds in the area and you're not
Speaker 1: just you know, I would say it's not cold calling,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily hot calling either. It's kind of
Speaker 1: that you know, lukewarm calling where you know there's birds around,
Speaker 1: but they're not directly answering you, Like I feel that's
Speaker 1: the time where we can start to try to locate
Speaker 1: um with our with our hind calls. But also at
Speaker 1: that point you're almost SIMMI trying to call them in
Speaker 1: from that location at that point. Yeah. Correct. And it's
Speaker 1: just like fishing in a farm pond, you know, the
Speaker 1: fisher there. You just gotta figure out what they're biting
Speaker 1: on that day and h hopefully you know, get one
Speaker 1: and get one to bite. Same way with the turkeys,
Speaker 1: we know they're in the area, we know they're you know,
Speaker 1: probably have hens with them, you know, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's where and and we may talk about this a
Speaker 1: little bit later, and I'm sure we will. As scouting
Speaker 1: is key. You know, the more you've spend scouting the
Speaker 1: birds and knowing the turkeys and uh going and you know,
Speaker 1: studying them and knowing how many birds is on your
Speaker 1: piece of property or where they're at, that that's just
Speaker 1: all the you know that that benefits you so much
Speaker 1: because then you know when you get into an area. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've had two birds in this area, offspringer, I've had
Speaker 1: one bird and a couple of jakes or something like that.
Speaker 1: So the more you scout, the better advantage. You have
Speaker 1: to really pinpoint your birds and getting them. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm scouting birds too, and I'll bring this up
Speaker 1: on the on the topic, when I'm scouting for birds
Speaker 1: before season, I leave my turkey calls at home because
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I'm more than nebody love to
Speaker 1: hear a turkey gobble, and I want to fire him
Speaker 1: up and get that bird gobbling and hammering and doing
Speaker 1: everything that you want him to do. But before season,
Speaker 1: I don't want to call to that bird. I don't
Speaker 1: I want him just as calm and no hunting pressure.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like on deer hunting. I don't want
Speaker 1: them bucks to know I'm in the area that I
Speaker 1: don't even want them to know I exist. So I
Speaker 1: kind of treat my turkeys like I do my deer.
Speaker 1: I get on the outside fringes, hit them with an
Speaker 1: owl who to hit them with a crow call whatever,
Speaker 1: get them to gobble, and then I just sit there
Speaker 1: and listen to them and learn and see where they're
Speaker 1: going to. You know, if I can get them, If
Speaker 1: I can get birds that are roosting on a certain
Speaker 1: ridge and every morning they'll fly down and go to
Speaker 1: a watering hole or someplace to a creek to get water,
Speaker 1: well that's just giving me the advantage that I know
Speaker 1: the next morning I need to be where the water
Speaker 1: is and just set up on him. And if I
Speaker 1: hen call, maybe I'm off a hundred yards from them,
Speaker 1: but they know a hens there, buy it, They're gonna
Speaker 1: come over and skirt right to me, you know, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna get the hen and get to the water
Speaker 1: at the same time. So scouting and just paying attention
Speaker 1: to listen, you know, that's that's the key. Key key, key, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks for answering those questions for us, James,
Speaker 1: and once again, if you have any questions for us here,
Speaker 1: me or my guests here on the cutting the Distance, um,
Speaker 1: please submit your questions to CTD at Phelps Gamecalls dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll do our best to get him answered. So on
Speaker 1: the day's episode, I wanted to dive into your tactics
Speaker 1: and strategies and what you use to be successful year
Speaker 1: and in year out. When it comes to turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: we mentioned it earlier, you know, Ben in Missouri, you
Speaker 1: saw the heydays of the nineties, the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: you know, where turkey numbers were way up. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: you guys had maybe some of the best turkey hunting
Speaker 1: in the world, you know, in Missouri. Um, and now
Speaker 1: it seems, you know, I've heard anywhere from you know,
Speaker 1: fifty to sixty five percent reduction in turkey numbers here
Speaker 1: in Missouri from the from the from the peak, which
Speaker 1: is an ideal, but it also probably forces you guys
Speaker 1: to you know, be a little more cautious, become a
Speaker 1: little bit better to you know, So there is some
Speaker 1: I don't want to say there's any good that comes
Speaker 1: from it, but it forced you guys to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: sharpen your skills a little bit and home your approaches,
Speaker 1: and you learn a lot from that. You know, when
Speaker 1: there isn't a bird around every corner. Um, we're still
Speaker 1: kind of in that that big upswing here in Washington
Speaker 1: where we have more birds than we know what to
Speaker 1: do with. But um, you know, once the predators kind
Speaker 1: of figure them out. I'm sure we'll be in in
Speaker 1: your guy's a situation. UM. So yeah, your experienced turkey
Speaker 1: you know you and your son's um. You know, Cody Carter,
Speaker 1: they you guys get it done every year. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you guys. See what you do, UM,
Speaker 1: the same and then maybe different than than what we do. UM.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just give a little background before we
Speaker 1: jump in our conversation, kind of how we met and
Speaker 1: kind of you know, what we've got going on for
Speaker 1: people that may or may not know. We have a
Speaker 1: mutual buddy Chris Parrish. UM. You know, I got to
Speaker 1: know him almost ten years ago building Turkey Calls, went
Speaker 1: out and visited him, and we've stayed in touch, you knows,
Speaker 1: as Phelps Game Calls has grown and and as he's
Speaker 1: you know, changed careers and did some stuff and we
Speaker 1: were able to meet you and Steve On we were
Speaker 1: on a Kansas Turkey hunt and you guys came out
Speaker 1: for a day and I don't even know what the
Speaker 1: whole idea was. We were just kind of meeting up
Speaker 1: and maybe bus and a little bit maybe we had
Speaker 1: I don't know at that point if we'd even decided
Speaker 1: to do anything together. We were just going to meet
Speaker 1: up and talk and chat there and maybe film some
Speaker 1: maybe we had decided to do that. But we met
Speaker 1: up in Kansas and just I think I speak for
Speaker 1: everybody here at Phelps Game calls like it was one
Speaker 1: of those things We're just getting to know you and
Speaker 1: Steve a little bit, and I don't care how good
Speaker 1: of colors you guys are. I don't care how good
Speaker 1: of call makers you guys are. Like one thing that
Speaker 1: we always looked for first is U you know, quality
Speaker 1: of people. We can we can find all kinds of
Speaker 1: guys that can call, we can find all kinds of
Speaker 1: people that can build calls, but you know, quality of people.
Speaker 1: And remember me and Dirt chatted a couple of days,
Speaker 1: you know, he stayed an extra day and filmed you guys,
Speaker 1: and like, hey, these guys are as salt of the earth.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we met, we had a few phone calls,
Speaker 1: met there in Kansas and then um, you know, just
Speaker 1: been kind of rolling on projects ever since then. So
Speaker 1: really excited to have you, you know, you guys on board,
Speaker 1: and we're doing some cool things and we have some
Speaker 1: cool things coming in the future. So um yeah, we've
Speaker 1: we've worked on you know, our beta and our our
Speaker 1: Omega deer calls, you know, with you kind of giving
Speaker 1: some feedback and then um, you know, the Harrison Hooter
Speaker 1: and Harrison Hooter Pro were kind of all your ideas.
Speaker 1: So we're really stoked to be able to bring those,
Speaker 1: you know, to market through the Phelps Game Calls brand.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, that's that's enough of a plug. Just
Speaker 1: want to give a little background story that I just
Speaker 1: wanted to give a little background story on how you know,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, Elk Hunter from and a callmaker from Southwest
Speaker 1: Washington hooked up with some you know, some some great
Speaker 1: guys from Missouri and are doing some collabs together. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was great and you know and Chris is uh
Speaker 1: Chris Parrish is I want to thank for that because
Speaker 1: I've known Chris since I've been you know, basically a teenager,
Speaker 1: you know, in the Turkey calling circuit and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and uh, he knows I build out who's in you know,
Speaker 1: into deer grunners and stuff like that, and then he
Speaker 1: got with me and it's like, hey man, you need
Speaker 1: to build me some deer grunners and stuff. And uh,
Speaker 1: I need show some of these guys. And at the
Speaker 1: time he was talking about you, you you know, showing deer
Speaker 1: grunners and you know, talking about how Hooters and I constantly,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always trying to build a better mousetrap,
Speaker 1: I guess so to speak. You know, I'm never satisfied
Speaker 1: with good. I always want to keep take something to
Speaker 1: the next level and keep going. And then, uh, when
Speaker 1: he brought up your guys, you know, Phelps and you
Speaker 1: and Dirk and everybody, I was, man, I was so
Speaker 1: excited to meet everybody. And then and it was the
Speaker 1: same thing. I remember the first conversation me and you
Speaker 1: had on the phone. I I hung up and I
Speaker 1: talked to my wife and I said, Jason is the
Speaker 1: type of person that is literally is as passionate about
Speaker 1: building calls and a down Hooters person as I am.
Speaker 1: And I said, this is going to be phenomenal. And uh,
Speaker 1: ever since it's been, it's been absolutely Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been awesome. It's been a whirldwin. You know, we
Speaker 1: went out to Kansas, met you guys. It was great,
Speaker 1: and then from there we ain't looked back. You know,
Speaker 1: we're we're we're full steam ahead. You know this is Uh,
Speaker 1: deer Gunners did great, the owhooters are doing great. So
Speaker 1: it's a blast. Yeah. Yeah, looking to do some new
Speaker 1: stuff in twenty twenty five. So excited, excited to have
Speaker 1: you on, not to not to board the listeners with
Speaker 1: our our our, our, our backstory. But well we'll jump
Speaker 1: into some of the questions I have for you. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these are similar questions I've asked
Speaker 1: past guests. Um, but yeah, just kind of get your
Speaker 1: take on it. And uh, like I say, it's give
Speaker 1: our listeners kind of the chance to find where some
Speaker 1: of you, you know, you expert you know turkey hunters,
Speaker 1: guys that get it done, know your stuff, kind of
Speaker 1: where you guys are similar, and then maybe little nuggets
Speaker 1: where you guys are different, and give them kind of
Speaker 1: enough tools and their toolbox to go out and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, try different things that they found successful. So
Speaker 1: one question I always ask is how early do you
Speaker 1: get to the Turkey Woods? And I know you'd mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier we're gonna talk about scouting a little bit and
Speaker 1: if that affects it, go ahead and kind of add
Speaker 1: that in. But um, you know, we we've always balanced
Speaker 1: back and forth on getting out, you know, at four
Speaker 1: o'clock waiting for everything to to come alive versus you know,
Speaker 1: let's just hang back and get to the best bandage
Speaker 1: on the entire property and then we've got like a
Speaker 1: good snapshot on what it's all over the property and
Speaker 1: you know how to kind of give us a little
Speaker 1: a little um, you know, insight into how earlier is
Speaker 1: James Harrison sitting under a tree? And then um, you know,
Speaker 1: how does that affect if you don't have a bird
Speaker 1: rooster or do you have a bird rooster plus all
Speaker 1: you're scouting. Well, you know that's that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Early for me is I will get in as early
Speaker 1: as I have to get in. I mean, that's kind
Speaker 1: of vague, but most of the time I am well
Speaker 1: at where I'm gonna be hunting at an hour to
Speaker 1: an hour and a half early. Maybe not up against
Speaker 1: a tree, but I'll be at my location. And just
Speaker 1: for the fact that you know, if I'm crossing fields
Speaker 1: or if I'm going through timber and I got to
Speaker 1: walk in on a bunch of public ground and I
Speaker 1: have a half mile or a mile trek or whatever
Speaker 1: I want to get in there super early. That way,
Speaker 1: if I do make some noise getting through there by
Speaker 1: the time daylight hits and then birds start to goblin,
Speaker 1: that that's a noise they have done forgot about. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things in the woods that make
Speaker 1: noise all night long, between deer and you know, possums
Speaker 1: and armadillas, whatever. There's always something making noise. So as
Speaker 1: long as you're not doing it right at daylight when
Speaker 1: them birds are waking up, and you're you know, relatively
Speaker 1: quiet about it, you know, you can get away with
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. But I get in. I'm an
Speaker 1: early guy. I like getting in early. If I have
Speaker 1: to take a nap beside a tree and sleep for
Speaker 1: half an hour or forty five minutes, I'm fine with it.
Speaker 1: I don't mind at all. I'd much rather be early
Speaker 1: than late, because lates when you get caught, and lates
Speaker 1: when you start rushing and doing doing things that that
Speaker 1: spook birds, you know, crossing fields when it's starting and
Speaker 1: break daylight and the birds are roosted on the edge
Speaker 1: of the fields, or if you're in big hard timbers.
Speaker 1: You know, I think a big mistake guys making timber
Speaker 1: situations is they try to get too close to them birds.
Speaker 1: And I'm a two hundred pound guy, so when I'm
Speaker 1: walking in dry leaves, I sound like a two hundred
Speaker 1: pound guy. And if I'm gonna try to get fifty
Speaker 1: sixty seventy eighty yards on a bird and set up,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna happen without that bird not knowing I'm there.
Speaker 1: So the earlier I can slide in on a bird
Speaker 1: and get set up in his general location, the better
Speaker 1: off I'm gonna be. Now that being said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll throw this in a little bit here. I'll jump
Speaker 1: ahead a little bit. If I am in a situation
Speaker 1: like that and I get there super early and I
Speaker 1: get set up in the bird start goblin, and they're
Speaker 1: not where I want to be, and I cannot get
Speaker 1: to them without spooking or letting them know him there,
Speaker 1: I let them go ahead and fly down and start
Speaker 1: their morning off, and then at that point I'll get
Speaker 1: up and circle and put the move on him, kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, it'd be the same as an elk.
Speaker 1: You know, you know that you know where he's at,
Speaker 1: you just don't have a good way to get to
Speaker 1: him without booger and him, So you just let him
Speaker 1: make the first It's just a game of chess. You
Speaker 1: just got You know, the biggest thing is patience and
Speaker 1: time with these turkeys. And you know, turkeys don't wear watches.
Speaker 1: I've said it all along. They don't know it's Saturday
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock and you got to be at work
Speaker 1: at nine o'clock. So you're trying to cram a hunt in.
Speaker 1: Just take your time and get there plenty early. I
Speaker 1: love getting in way before daylight. That way, I know
Speaker 1: I'm not spooking nothing. Yeah. Oh, and you're opinion, You know,
Speaker 1: you brought up a good point, not getting through fields
Speaker 1: or open areas. You know, we always call it that
Speaker 1: gray light where it's not dark, it's not quite daylight.
Speaker 1: In your opinion, if the turkeys aren't gobbling yet, are
Speaker 1: you okay to kind of get through that field or
Speaker 1: are you risking them seeing you? And then like, how
Speaker 1: how long is a turkey's memory on when they're on
Speaker 1: the roofs. You know, I've heard people say, oh, we
Speaker 1: can get through there. You know, they might, we might
Speaker 1: bug them up, they might hear us, but they'll forget
Speaker 1: by time they fly down. And in my opinion. It's
Speaker 1: just it's hard to imagine that they're going to forget
Speaker 1: that there's something that just walked, you know, towards their
Speaker 1: tree or they're close, and so I've always been you know,
Speaker 1: similar like you said on ELK Coney, I'd rather go
Speaker 1: way around or you know, for us, it's wind more
Speaker 1: than eyesight. But I'd rather just never get smelled than
Speaker 1: risk it. Um, how much can you get away with
Speaker 1: during that gray light? And is a turkey gonna remember
Speaker 1: what they just saw? I think it varies per bird
Speaker 1: and hunting pressure, you know, like around the house here
Speaker 1: we have a lot of cattle farms. So I think
Speaker 1: if you're a big object and you're moving in the
Speaker 1: field in that gray light, I think them turkey's probably
Speaker 1: don't pay much as attention. You know, they don't. They
Speaker 1: ain't really just registering as a threat because they hear
Speaker 1: that stuff constantly at night and stuff. But I still
Speaker 1: if it's a gray area, man, that's once again, I
Speaker 1: try to make sure I get to my spot before
Speaker 1: it ever starts. To get to that point. That way
Speaker 1: I know I'm safe, no questions asked, because turkeys will
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of times you've had guys walk
Speaker 1: through the field and he's like, man, that bird was
Speaker 1: gobbling good and when he pitched down, he pitched down
Speaker 1: completely the other direction. Well, there's a good chance he
Speaker 1: might have seen you. He might not have been spooked,
Speaker 1: but he knew you wasn't correct or you wouldn't you
Speaker 1: didn't belong there, So he's definitely not gonna fly down
Speaker 1: to you and check you out. You know, turkeys are
Speaker 1: one thing about turkeys, they're not curious creatures. They don't
Speaker 1: stick around to find out very long. So I try
Speaker 1: to give them zero you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: give them any advantages. So you know, and another thing
Speaker 1: too while we're talking on that, as far as a
Speaker 1: gray light, I go into an area to rooster bird
Speaker 1: or to locate a turkey in the morning. When I
Speaker 1: go to alhu, man, plant yourself up against a big
Speaker 1: tree or a backdrop to alhoot, just because if a
Speaker 1: bird's close and you hit him with a alhoot or
Speaker 1: anything and he wheels around in gobbles and he looks
Speaker 1: right at you, and you're a six foot guy that
Speaker 1: you know that's an awful big owl. You know that
Speaker 1: bird's gonna know something's up. Where if you're up against
Speaker 1: a tree and you're more or less hid, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get away with a lot more stuff. So I always
Speaker 1: anytime I stopped to call, whether it be a turkey
Speaker 1: call or a locator call, I really try to have
Speaker 1: myself in a situation where if I got to hit
Speaker 1: the deck and sit down real quick, I can just
Speaker 1: slide right into a spot and disappear without spooking anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great point. Don't don't go locate from out
Speaker 1: in the middle of the wide open where everything can
Speaker 1: see if they look that way. So, what's your typical
Speaker 1: morning looks like when you don't have a bird roosted?
Speaker 1: If you either you know, didn't have a chance to
Speaker 1: roost the night before, or you know, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: it's a farm or a piece of ground that the turkeys,
Speaker 1: you know, roosting multiple spots. Kind of, what's your strategy?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna GetUp on a high point, are you
Speaker 1: gonna go to where you think they are and then
Speaker 1: you know, walk around the property kind of what's your
Speaker 1: typical strategy when you don't have a bird roosted? Well,
Speaker 1: and that depends too with me on if you know
Speaker 1: what farm. It is. If it's farms around the house
Speaker 1: here that I know really well, and I've got a
Speaker 1: long history with the farms and the turkey's on them,
Speaker 1: I always got general areas where they're gonna be at.
Speaker 1: So I got a real good idea. If I don't
Speaker 1: hear a bird, or if I don't roost one the
Speaker 1: night before and a lot of times around the house,
Speaker 1: our birds will not hardly gobble in the evening, not
Speaker 1: like out in Kansas and Nebraska and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You know, we for every ten times we go out
Speaker 1: to rooster turkey, we might get them to gobble twice,
Speaker 1: you know. So I mean I don't put a lot
Speaker 1: of stock in roosting birds at night. I do a
Speaker 1: lot of listening at night, you know. I would go
Speaker 1: out and listen and listen farm to fly up and
Speaker 1: maybe gobble. But I mean, I just if I don't
Speaker 1: hear one gobble, it's not the end of the world.
Speaker 1: In my book, I'm just like, oh, well, we'll just
Speaker 1: catch them in the morning. But if it's a ground
Speaker 1: that I don't know a lot about, like timber and
Speaker 1: spots that I'm going I usually try to get to
Speaker 1: an advance in point, you know, I check, you know,
Speaker 1: I check my on X or my hunt stand apps,
Speaker 1: look at the top o kind of get an idea.
Speaker 1: I even go to the point where I check which
Speaker 1: way the wind's blowing that night, and usually then birds
Speaker 1: will try to get out of that wind. So I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: if the wind's been blowing strong coming out of the north,
Speaker 1: and birds are probably gonna be on a south facing hillside,
Speaker 1: you know, down off of it a little bit, not
Speaker 1: catching that wind all night long. So um, I really
Speaker 1: kind of look at stuff like that, and uh, I
Speaker 1: try to stay high. I literally I don't mind staying
Speaker 1: low on a bird. I just really look for places
Speaker 1: that I can get and move on because man, a
Speaker 1: lot of times and a lot of this stuff that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about and your listeners are listening is I've
Speaker 1: done all this stuff, and I've made all these mistakes,
Speaker 1: and I've screwed up countless times. So I've just learned
Speaker 1: over the years what to do, so you don't do that.
Speaker 1: So I just basically try to get it to a
Speaker 1: spot where I can have an advantage and move. So
Speaker 1: if a turkey does gobble and he's I'm not in
Speaker 1: a POSI and I can get you know, I can't
Speaker 1: set up right there and call to him. I want
Speaker 1: to be able to move on that bird and get
Speaker 1: in a position that I can. So I try not
Speaker 1: to get myself too high up on a knob where
Speaker 1: I'm kind of stuck up there, or in a spot
Speaker 1: where I can't back out of without that bird spooking me, so,
Speaker 1: you know, without me spooking him. So that's that's the key,
Speaker 1: And a lot of that's just scout, like I said,
Speaker 1: goes back to the basic scouting scouting scouting. The more
Speaker 1: you know, and the more even better know you're terrained,
Speaker 1: the better off you're gonna be. Yeah, And then you know,
Speaker 1: you guys hunting primarily Easterns out there versus US hunting
Speaker 1: you know Merriams. Rio's, um, it's like a completely different game.
Speaker 1: You know, those Merriams will gobble more time on the
Speaker 1: you know, more times at that nighttime roots, and they
Speaker 1: will throughout the whole day, which to me is crazy.
Speaker 1: Versus when we do go to Kansas the east side
Speaker 1: and hunt you know, um Easterns, they won't barely gobble
Speaker 1: at night like you had mentioned. You know, you won't
Speaker 1: get him to roost near as much and you go
Speaker 1: back in the morning and the day and things, you're
Speaker 1: right there. They just didn't make a peep as they
Speaker 1: flew up that night. So yep. Yeah, different subspecies are
Speaker 1: just like you know why they all are all turkeys.
Speaker 1: They they've got different little um, you know, quirks and
Speaker 1: and different things that work. Now I'm gonna kind of
Speaker 1: break down the day. Um. You know, one this is
Speaker 1: where I really struggled kind of as a as a
Speaker 1: new turkey hunter. Is different strategies I should be using
Speaker 1: throughout the day. Um. So we talked a little bit about,
Speaker 1: you know, hunting the roost, but what is what's your
Speaker 1: go to on the roost? You know, you are you
Speaker 1: getting one hundred yards one hundred and fifty yards from
Speaker 1: the tree? Are you calling? Are you just sitting there? Like,
Speaker 1: what's your what's your best strategy when you've got a
Speaker 1: bird in the roost and you're you know exactly what
Speaker 1: trees in Okay, that's a you know a lot of
Speaker 1: it as far as distance wise really is determined by
Speaker 1: the terrain that you're in. You know, it could be
Speaker 1: a really uh early spring and there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of foliage so you just can't get that close to
Speaker 1: that bird where you know, give it three weeks and
Speaker 1: it really greens up, you can get in a lot
Speaker 1: closer on that bird. I try to stay back, you know,
Speaker 1: my ideal situation would be seventy five to one hundred yards.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to that bird to be
Speaker 1: able to hear me and know where I'm at. But
Speaker 1: I don't want that bird to just be able to
Speaker 1: look from the roost right down where I'm at. So
Speaker 1: I kind of stay off of him just a little bit.
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of curiosity right there for
Speaker 1: that bird, so he has to come check me out.
Speaker 1: You know. I think a lot of times guys will
Speaker 1: get close in on a bird and that bird will
Speaker 1: be up on the roost and he'll be gobbling and
Speaker 1: you're trying to tree call to him, and that turkey's
Speaker 1: literally looking down there and there's like, man, there was
Speaker 1: no hint there last night. There was I don't see
Speaker 1: nothing this morning, you know. So a lot of times
Speaker 1: they'll pitch down and go the other direction because something
Speaker 1: just doesn't add up. So I try to stay seventy
Speaker 1: five one hundred yards off. Just really depends on the terrain.
Speaker 1: I'll soft talk to him, just a little bit of
Speaker 1: tree yelping. Once I get that bird to gobble at me,
Speaker 1: a lot of times I will shut down and just
Speaker 1: let him do his goblin. I always carry a wing
Speaker 1: with me. That's one thing I carry a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: I do a lot of you know. And I'll take
Speaker 1: that wing and when I know that bird's up there
Speaker 1: and it's getting closer to fly down time, I'll take
Speaker 1: and hit that wing on my leg and coming down
Speaker 1: like I just flew out of the tree. Because you
Speaker 1: can't get no more realistic than an actual set of
Speaker 1: wings coming out of a tree. I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: turkeys do every morning, every night. So when that bird
Speaker 1: hears that, he automatically thinks that's a turkey. So you
Speaker 1: don't have to be a great caller to kill turkeys,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's that's, you know, just how it is.
Speaker 1: But if you can keep it as realistic as a
Speaker 1: real turkey, you're gonna kill a lot more So when
Speaker 1: he hears that wing, that takes that level of realism
Speaker 1: up to him. Where Okay, that hen just flew out
Speaker 1: of the ground, off out of the tree, unto the ground,
Speaker 1: and now she's on the ground. So a lot of
Speaker 1: times he'll gobble at that, and when he does, I
Speaker 1: may hit him with this, you know, a couple of notes,
Speaker 1: you up, just you know, just something to lay you know,
Speaker 1: him still there, and then I just shut up and
Speaker 1: let him fly down and do a thing. And most
Speaker 1: of the time off the you know, now that changes.
Speaker 1: He may have hens with him right in there. And
Speaker 1: then at that point, you know, I try to get
Speaker 1: them hens talking and uh, you know, try to get
Speaker 1: them hens to feed into me and work in my way.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times that will lead hen
Speaker 1: she'll fly down and pull him right away from you
Speaker 1: because she doesn't want the competition. So if a situation
Speaker 1: like that arises, I just doug them turkeys. You know,
Speaker 1: I let him get out of sight, and I just
Speaker 1: kind of you know, if that's the only game, if
Speaker 1: that's the only turkey I've heard, and that's the only
Speaker 1: game in town, I just shadow him until I can
Speaker 1: get to a spot where I can either ag get
Speaker 1: in front of him or you know, I've followed birds
Speaker 1: all morning long until the hens finally, you know, we're
Speaker 1: bread and left and went to nest and then I'll
Speaker 1: work on him from there. So I definitely stay in
Speaker 1: the game if I can. You know, if I got time,
Speaker 1: or if that bird stays on my property, you know,
Speaker 1: he may, he may. A lot of times guys will
Speaker 1: hunt him and they'll fly down and get on another
Speaker 1: guy's property. So what do you do at that point? Well,
Speaker 1: if I know that's the only bird there, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: up and wait on him. If I know there's multiple birds,
Speaker 1: I may back out of there, not pressure him, because
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest mistakes you can do
Speaker 1: on any of them birds is spook them. And that's uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. You know, Like I said before, they don't
Speaker 1: have they don't tell time, and they don't know you
Speaker 1: got to be at work by nine o'clock or ten
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. And I don't want to rush
Speaker 1: a hunt. And as bad as I as bad as
Speaker 1: I want to shoot the turkey, I don't want to
Speaker 1: rush a situation and spook a turkey or make a
Speaker 1: bad shot on him, because then you just you just
Speaker 1: took your whole game and you lost. So you know,
Speaker 1: then you got to go find another bird on another
Speaker 1: piece of property. And you know, when I was growing
Speaker 1: up as a kid. We didn't have a ton of
Speaker 1: turkeys right around my house. So the ones you did here,
Speaker 1: you had to make sure you were you know, you
Speaker 1: had to hunt him. It may take you an extra
Speaker 1: day or two to get him killed, but you didn't
Speaker 1: spook him because once you spooked him, it was checkmate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to capitalize on the few birds you had,
Speaker 1: so on the roost, real quick decoy or no, or depends,
Speaker 1: you know. If it's early season, I'm h and I
Speaker 1: am field hunting, I run decoys, especially during youth season,
Speaker 1: so I can pull them birds attention off of me
Speaker 1: and the youth or me, you know, just me. You know,
Speaker 1: if I'm field hunting, I'll run a decoy. If I'm
Speaker 1: timber hunting, I rarely packed decoys. I'm pretty much try
Speaker 1: to get in a terrain situation where that birds got
Speaker 1: to fly down and walk up and when he walks
Speaker 1: up in to look for the hen, he's within range.
Speaker 1: So that's that's my goal. You know, catch him over
Speaker 1: a little crest in the hill, or over a little
Speaker 1: knob or you know, a bend in a logging road
Speaker 1: or something like that, so when he walks around it
Speaker 1: I can shoot him. But uh, decoys are oh man,
Speaker 1: they're they're phenomenal. I mean they've gotten so good over
Speaker 1: the years. They look I mean, guys are using mounted
Speaker 1: birds all the way through. So uh yeah, and in
Speaker 1: a case too, I try to put those decoys out
Speaker 1: in the field. You know. Well, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: running decoys, like I said, get get out there early.
Speaker 1: Set them birds out there early, way before the gray
Speaker 1: light starts. That way, you know, you're all set up
Speaker 1: in position. The birds are out there, you know, and
Speaker 1: that way, when that gobbler does wake up and they
Speaker 1: come down, there's no chance of you spooking them. Yep. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so we've you know, birds kicked off the roost,
Speaker 1: they go the opposite way. You don't get a shot
Speaker 1: at them. What's your hunt look like? You know after
Speaker 1: fly down into late morning, and what's your strategy You
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned if it goes to another property, you're
Speaker 1: gonna kind of hang out since that's the only bird
Speaker 1: in town. What's your strategy there? Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: it depends. If like I'm on public ground, I've got
Speaker 1: a lot of ground of cover. I may go ahead
Speaker 1: and mark that bird and know where he's going to
Speaker 1: and I may jump off of him and go try
Speaker 1: to find another bird that's goblin. And then from there
Speaker 1: I'm pretty aggressive. I'm you know, I'm walking hitting locator calls,
Speaker 1: looking for fresh sign. You know, don't over underestimate too.
Speaker 1: When you're walking down through the woods and you're walking
Speaker 1: and you see fresh sign that was made that morning,
Speaker 1: them turkeys are close. There's somewhere right in there. So
Speaker 1: at that point, slow down and start watching and listening
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe find a good spot to set up
Speaker 1: if it's fresh sign, and especial if you see some
Speaker 1: gobbler tracks and stuff like that, and hit some calls
Speaker 1: if you think you know, like again, if you know
Speaker 1: the birds are there in that area, definitely set up
Speaker 1: on him and try to call them. You know, you
Speaker 1: might be surprised and maybe right just around the bend
Speaker 1: of the road or over the ridge and once you
Speaker 1: sit down I hit a call, you know, they'll gobblin
Speaker 1: come on in on you. So, uh, my mid mid
Speaker 1: day is I just you know, I'm pretty I kind
Speaker 1: of hunt. I always tell Cody, I hunt like a coyote,
Speaker 1: you know, I stay low, I stay out of sight,
Speaker 1: but I keep moving and I'm constantly looking. If I'm
Speaker 1: on property around the house where I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of ground, I could I can really just jump on.
Speaker 1: I'll either make the decision to bail off the property
Speaker 1: and go to another chunk and check it, or if
Speaker 1: I think them birds are gonna come back that mid morning,
Speaker 1: I'll just you know, I'll set up and just wait
Speaker 1: on them, you know. More more or less, you almost
Speaker 1: go to a deer hunting mode then, which I rarely do,
Speaker 1: just because I'm I'm active. I want to be out there.
Speaker 1: You know. That'd be kind of like deer hunting elk
Speaker 1: for you, I can get pretty tedious. I'd rather make him.
Speaker 1: I'd rather have turkey goblin and that elk buglin then
Speaker 1: just sitting there waiting on when to come in. So
Speaker 1: I usually I'm pretty active. Yeah, And one thing I've noticed,
Speaker 1: We're lucky here in Washington. We've got three subspecies. We've
Speaker 1: got easterns here on the west side of the state,
Speaker 1: and then we've got rios and a majority of them
Speaker 1: or merriams on the northeast and southeast side, I think
Speaker 1: southeastern rios. But I've been able to hunt in all
Speaker 1: the locations and both the Easterns I've hunted here in
Speaker 1: Washington's state and in Kansas, man that midday hunting is
Speaker 1: just tough to pull a gobble out from them, especially,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd say from like April twentieth to May tenth.
Speaker 1: It's just we've we've seen it. We can get a
Speaker 1: gobble out of the midday, but it just seems a
Speaker 1: lot tougher. Where like Miriam's lend themselves, they seem to
Speaker 1: gobble all day long. If they're there, they hear a
Speaker 1: shot gobble, they hear turkey calls that, and then rios
Speaker 1: are kind of a mix between both. It maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit tougher to pull a gobble out, And that's
Speaker 1: one thing I just wanted to kind of put out
Speaker 1: there is in my experience, you know, having you know,
Speaker 1: five six years of hunting Easterns, post hunting Easterns, they
Speaker 1: just they're a little tougher bird. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think they lend they they make you think that there's
Speaker 1: not as many birds on the landscape when when there are,
Speaker 1: especially on some of these properties with lots of cameras
Speaker 1: and stuff, we can see where the bird. You know
Speaker 1: that there are birds everyone we're not there when we
Speaker 1: go and check cameras after the hunts, Like, dang, that
Speaker 1: thing was right next to us when we were you know,
Speaker 1: we were a ridge over or whatnot. We couldn't hear them. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing that I've noticed, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: just just between the different subspecies that we've got to hunt,
Speaker 1: um mid day. And then one thing I like mid
Speaker 1: day is you know you get later in the season.
Speaker 1: We used to always our season goes all the way
Speaker 1: to the end of May. Here um Easterns and Merriam's
Speaker 1: both and the Rio's that we've got to hunt. Is
Speaker 1: when those you get into the middle of May and
Speaker 1: all those hens are either starting to sit or their
Speaker 1: clutches are about full or they're sitting full day. Like,
Speaker 1: that's when the hunting gets good and you're gonna kill
Speaker 1: those older birds. In my opinions, so when when we
Speaker 1: when I was learning cutting my teeth, turkey hunting, like
Speaker 1: mid day was like you went back to camp, had
Speaker 1: a big breakfast, hung out until the night hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: we always thought we could only kill them when they
Speaker 1: were gobbling. What we've actually started killing. I would say
Speaker 1: the majority of our birds midday once, you know, once
Speaker 1: you get that gobble dot, gobble's worth a whole lot
Speaker 1: more than those morning gobbles as far as you know,
Speaker 1: can finding that bird and killing it. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a you know, in Missouri, we can only hunt
Speaker 1: till one o'clock. So after one o'clock we were fishing.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we're done. And some days, if the
Speaker 1: weather's good in the turkeys and goblin, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: go fishing earlier. But uh, you know, and it's one
Speaker 1: of them things like that's that's a great deal with
Speaker 1: the locator calls, uh you know al scream or a
Speaker 1: Kyle How, not a Kyle How midday, but an al
Speaker 1: scream or like a peliated woodpecker or something like that.
Speaker 1: Just one time to get that bird to gobble midday,
Speaker 1: one time, just to give up his location. That's gonna
Speaker 1: help you immensely because most of the time when you
Speaker 1: can get if you can get a bird to gobble
Speaker 1: midday and get him fired up, he's killable. You know,
Speaker 1: he's either had hens lefteam and uh he's and you know,
Speaker 1: and up till noon and one o'clock. I have more
Speaker 1: success around the house here at eleven, thirty twelve and
Speaker 1: one getting birds to goblin, getting them killed, and I
Speaker 1: do at eight, nine, ten o'clock in the morning. So
Speaker 1: and then as the season goes on, and once the
Speaker 1: hens start getting bread and they're hitting the nest and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, then the gobblers are definitely starting to
Speaker 1: pick back up and make more tracks and be more vocal.
Speaker 1: Now when i'm decoy and in the spring of the year,
Speaker 1: like early season, I'll run a jake decoy, a couple
Speaker 1: of hen decoys stuff like that, and then then birds
Speaker 1: will come in and a lot of times them gobblers
Speaker 1: will go right to that jake decoy because they want
Speaker 1: to assert their dominance and fight that jake for the hens.
Speaker 1: As it gets later in the season, I dropped the
Speaker 1: jake decoy and I just go with a hen. That way,
Speaker 1: when that gobbler pops around the corner, he can see
Speaker 1: a hen out there, but there's no other gobblers for
Speaker 1: him to contend with or fight. Because you know, the
Speaker 1: way I hunt the birds, as you gotta understand their
Speaker 1: breeding cycle and early season, they're aggressive, they're wanting to fight.
Speaker 1: They're just like pre rut with a deer. You know,
Speaker 1: they're or sparring, they're going at it. Once the mating
Speaker 1: starts and the gobbling kind of hits a lull, then
Speaker 1: birds are actively mating them. Gobblers don't want no competition.
Speaker 1: They don't want another gobbler coming in, you know, challenging
Speaker 1: them off the hens and stuff like that. So that's
Speaker 1: when all the goblin quits and they get quiet. Well,
Speaker 1: once the hens start nesting and the gobblers are starting
Speaker 1: to find themselves more alone, they still want to come
Speaker 1: to the hens, but they still don't want the competition
Speaker 1: of another gobbler because they know the hens are scares.
Speaker 1: So that's when I drop, if you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: running a decoy again, I'll drop down to one hen.
Speaker 1: A lot of times of grass and stuff starting to
Speaker 1: get taller late season, you know, from early on, so
Speaker 1: I avoid any of the wheat fields or any of
Speaker 1: the hay fields early morning because they're all wet, and
Speaker 1: the birds usually don't like getting in that wet. They
Speaker 1: wait till it's dry, you know, mid morning on. So
Speaker 1: if it's a field that you know and you have
Speaker 1: to watch your turkeys. This is a big thing I
Speaker 1: can say about scouting you even though you scout before season,
Speaker 1: You also need to be paying attention scouting deering season
Speaker 1: because just like elk hunting or deer hunting, as a
Speaker 1: mating season progresses and the temperature changes and the terrain changes,
Speaker 1: whether it be leaves greening up or grass getting taller,
Speaker 1: you have to adapt and change with that because because
Speaker 1: the turkeys are changing with it. So the situation the
Speaker 1: place you set up early season that you killed a
Speaker 1: bird off of that was just on fire three weeks
Speaker 1: later is dead because the birds are not used it
Speaker 1: because they the grass got up to you know, over
Speaker 1: knee high, and you know, so they went to another field,
Speaker 1: you know, cut cornfield or something like that. So they've
Speaker 1: they've changed their locations a little bit. So the whole
Speaker 1: time you're the whole time season is going, don't you know,
Speaker 1: don't stop scouting to birds, because that's that's a big
Speaker 1: mistake a lot of guys do. They they hold on
Speaker 1: to something like, man, I had birds here all spring
Speaker 1: and now they're not here and they're not goblin. Well
Speaker 1: they're they're still they just might have moved over ridge
Speaker 1: or you know, they might have hens with them, so
Speaker 1: they quit goblins. So just the big thing with turkeys
Speaker 1: is you just have to really watch them because you
Speaker 1: early season, when they're all grouped up, you may have
Speaker 1: eight or nine gobblers in your flock, and then within
Speaker 1: two days you may be down to one gobbler because
Speaker 1: all the rest of them split up to go find
Speaker 1: their own territories. So you know, that's so's it's just
Speaker 1: like deer elk or anything. The more you scout, you know,
Speaker 1: the better off you're gonna be. And you know, talk
Speaker 1: to your farmers, talk to your other buddies. The more
Speaker 1: information you know, knowledge is king. So the more you know,
Speaker 1: and the more you know. Watching the weather, you've got
Speaker 1: storms coming in, and you know that you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a bad winds out of the you know north. Like
Speaker 1: I said before, storms and birds are gonna roost low
Speaker 1: that morning. I'm not gonna go to a high spot.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get down there in the bottom where I
Speaker 1: know them birds are at, you know, where there was
Speaker 1: roosting at that night before. So just you know, take
Speaker 1: everything into consideration when you're easing in in the mornings
Speaker 1: and during the day's hunt. If the winds picking up
Speaker 1: during the midday, like you probably out west, you guys
Speaker 1: probably get it all the time, like Kansas and Bressa
Speaker 1: is terrible mid day. I try to get in them
Speaker 1: low spots where them birds can get out of them
Speaker 1: wind and where they can do their thing without you know,
Speaker 1: just getting pounded by wind constantly. So take that into
Speaker 1: consideration when you're on your midday hunts, getting in a
Speaker 1: spot where the birds can actually hear you calling, you know,
Speaker 1: because if it's windy and you're blowing it, if you're
Speaker 1: running a calling the winds hitting in the face, your
Speaker 1: sound's not carrying very far. So try to, you know,
Speaker 1: use that wind to your advantage. You get in spots
Speaker 1: where you're calling and that sounds carrying a long ways
Speaker 1: with the wind. Yeah, those are all great points. I
Speaker 1: know you've hunted, you know, nights in some other states
Speaker 1: that you've hunted in. But the I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: you kind of what you're late afternoon to fly up.
Speaker 1: Looks like we're gonna skip that since it sounds like
Speaker 1: you guys can't hunt pass well one o'clock there in
Speaker 1: Missouri and well, Kansas and Nebraska, places like that. I've
Speaker 1: hunted where you can hunt knights and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Kentucky we can hunt nights and Tennessee in through there.
Speaker 1: Uh you know what, I it's a lot of times
Speaker 1: the dudes goes back to scouting a lot of the
Speaker 1: areas in Kansas and places like that. Then birds are
Speaker 1: going to roost in the same general areas that they were,
Speaker 1: you know, from night to night to night. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna slide in there a couple of hours early, you know,
Speaker 1: catch me a nap up against a tree. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be somewhere in their general vicinity where they're at.
Speaker 1: And then as it's getting closer to dark, I'll have
Speaker 1: a good setup and I'm gonna start calling to them
Speaker 1: and try and get them birds coming in because you know,
Speaker 1: Rio's and Rio's and Miriam's all like that. Man, they
Speaker 1: got long legs. They can cover a lot of ground
Speaker 1: quick and all of a sudden, getting close to dark,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you got to parade to Turkey's
Speaker 1: coming right in on top of and you hit them
Speaker 1: with a call, man, they'll light up and go. Now,
Speaker 1: Kentucky places like that where the birds don't generally like
Speaker 1: around my house. I don't think my turkey's roost in
Speaker 1: the same tree their whole life. I think they pick
Speaker 1: a different tree every night just to drive me crazy.
Speaker 1: But Kentucky's the same way. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of spots. They may be on the same ridge, but
Speaker 1: they'll never be in the same spot exactly. So when
Speaker 1: that happens, I just kind of pick a spot that
Speaker 1: I know I can get in and out of good
Speaker 1: and I know I've got a little bit of advantage,
Speaker 1: you know. I'll check the wind and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and uh set up and I just wait on them,
Speaker 1: you know, hit them with some soft calls, and if
Speaker 1: they gobble and come in, that's awesome. But I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there listening too, So if I hear them fly up,
Speaker 1: I'll know there's birds there for the morning. So that's
Speaker 1: what I do. If I if I hunt all day
Speaker 1: and we've had great success in the evening time, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's for me this. I've never got
Speaker 1: to hunt the evening. When I get to go someplace
Speaker 1: that I can't hunt the evening, I want to just
Speaker 1: because it's something new and exciting to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been up plenty of mornings at three thirty stomping
Speaker 1: through the woods to go get a bird off the limb.
Speaker 1: But I'm excited when they're getting ready to fly up
Speaker 1: on one and I can get in there and work
Speaker 1: them because I've found that the birds in the evening
Speaker 1: time are they're they're killable. There ain't no issues there. Thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks for thanks for going to lining out you know
Speaker 1: your strategies throughout the day. Now we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of jump into calling. Um, how important is calling to
Speaker 1: your success? And then how important is good calling? Um?
Speaker 1: If you could break that down? You know, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you know you're you're a call builder. You love to call,
Speaker 1: You're like me. We like to add that, and that's
Speaker 1: what we're out there for. Um. But but how important
Speaker 1: is it? And and you know the same thing we
Speaker 1: always get do we have to call it? You know,
Speaker 1: elk as good as you to be able to call
Speaker 1: elkin or you know, So how important is calling? How
Speaker 1: important is good calling? Oh? Man? I you know I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a call builder. I love to hear myself call.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty as charge. I want to make that turkey
Speaker 1: gobble five thousand times just so you know I love it.
Speaker 1: But as far as you know, calling's important, and I'll
Speaker 1: stress this out, you know, I mean, I've I've called
Speaker 1: competitions since I've been in high school. So I mean
Speaker 1: to me, if I'm gonna go out there and make
Speaker 1: an animal sound, I want it to be correct, exactly
Speaker 1: like you know, whether if I'm locating birds, I want
Speaker 1: to sound exactly like an owl, sound like a crow.
Speaker 1: I think the more realistic and natural you are, and
Speaker 1: the proper volume we are, I think the better success
Speaker 1: you'll has because that's what the birds are used to hearing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a good caller to kill turkeys.
Speaker 1: What you have to have is woodsmanship and the knowledge
Speaker 1: of knowing turkeys and knowing where they're wanting to go.
Speaker 1: So if you're across the woven wire fence and you
Speaker 1: got a hot gobbler, I don't care how good a
Speaker 1: caller you are, he does and if he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to across that fence, he's not gonna come across it.
Speaker 1: Where if you had a little bit of knowledge of
Speaker 1: that fence and you set up where there was a
Speaker 1: hole in it or where you could shoot to the fence,
Speaker 1: you to kill that turkey with, you know, hardly minimal calling.
Speaker 1: So I mean, take, for instance, the Indians used to
Speaker 1: use a cherry leaves and wingbones. And if you've heard
Speaker 1: those calls, they roughly imitate a turkey sound. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call him a good sound. I'd call him good enough
Speaker 1: to full a turkey. And that's what and that's all
Speaker 1: it takes. So you don't have to be a champion
Speaker 1: caller to kill turkeys by no means, you know, I
Speaker 1: think being a better woodsman and knowing where the birds
Speaker 1: are wanting to go and putting yourself in a position
Speaker 1: where you can kill them turkeys is a big thing.
Speaker 1: So I mean, if if you get off work and
Speaker 1: you're driving to the ice cream shop, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you can get in between there, you know what's
Speaker 1: gonna go on, you can you know, same way with
Speaker 1: the turkeys. If you know them, Turkey's gonna fly down
Speaker 1: and run to a watering hole and get some water.
Speaker 1: If you can get in between there, and then you
Speaker 1: can sound like a turkey, whether it be just a
Speaker 1: little bit or you know, excellent, then birds are gonna
Speaker 1: swing by right there because they're on their way anyway.
Speaker 1: So and trust me, when I first started turkey calling,
Speaker 1: I sounded like I got slammed in a screen door.
Speaker 1: So my first turkey hunt. I sounded, dude, I sounded
Speaker 1: like a coyote and a henhouse killing chickens. It didn't
Speaker 1: sound like a turkey, trust me. But the turkey still
Speaker 1: gobbled at it and they came in, you know. So
Speaker 1: I mean, now that being said, if you can call
Speaker 1: and call good, I've had situations that I have been
Speaker 1: able to pull birds that, let's say, and you know,
Speaker 1: an average I wouldn't be able to where I've had them,
Speaker 1: let's say across the river or something like that, where
Speaker 1: I've just showered down on them with really crazy calling
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And I kind of have an
Speaker 1: unfair advantage if I'm hunting with my Cody or Carter,
Speaker 1: because those two can call like a house of fire.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times we'll set up and it'll
Speaker 1: sound like two or three hens over there, all calling
Speaker 1: at once, and I mean we just we drive them
Speaker 1: turkey's nuts till they've out to fly over. They've got
Speaker 1: to come over and check us out. So you know,
Speaker 1: good calling does have its advantages in certain situations. But
Speaker 1: I will honestly say ninety five percent of the time
Speaker 1: or ninety seven percent of the time even back just
Speaker 1: being able to you know, do your basic yelp, your
Speaker 1: basic cluck, your basic per as long as you're set
Speaker 1: up where that burden needs to be. You know, a
Speaker 1: wing is a great example, Like I use a wing
Speaker 1: in a morning to fly down with. You can't get
Speaker 1: no more turkey than that. And you don't even have
Speaker 1: to make a sound. You just have to, you know,
Speaker 1: bring it down, you know, beat it across your leg
Speaker 1: when you come down. If you're in a spot where
Speaker 1: they want to be and you know them turkeys are
Speaker 1: gonna be there, you can kill them. But no problem
Speaker 1: at all. Thanks, Thanks for that. Um. So that's a
Speaker 1: great segue into what you know. We talked about what
Speaker 1: locators you carry, what turkey calls are in your vest
Speaker 1: um you're taking on every hunt, every hunt. Man, I
Speaker 1: tell you what, I take a wingbone turkey call. I
Speaker 1: started out in my whole turkey calling crew learning how
Speaker 1: to run a wing bone. So I take a wingbone
Speaker 1: with me. And a wingbone is a great call because
Speaker 1: it's a very soft call, or you can get as
Speaker 1: loud as you want on it, and it carries extremely
Speaker 1: long ways. So I mean I will I will match
Speaker 1: a wing bone up against any box call or any
Speaker 1: friction call, as far as sound carrying in the woods,
Speaker 1: as far as if you're like trying to locate a bird.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had bird's gobble at it before where
Speaker 1: you could see their heads and next stick out, but
Speaker 1: you couldn't hear them gobble. So I mean that it's
Speaker 1: a good call to carry. It's a you know, doesn't
Speaker 1: take up a lot of room. I always carry a
Speaker 1: few mouth calls, you know. I run a couple of
Speaker 1: double reads. I'll run a couple of triple reads, different cuts,
Speaker 1: you know, split vs. Basically, what I'm wanting is different
Speaker 1: calls that have different sounds, because every hen sounds different.
Speaker 1: And you know, if if I'm out in the woods,
Speaker 1: here's a great story, and I'll get back on the
Speaker 1: turkey calls in a second. I was out and in
Speaker 1: the public ground a couple of years ago, and I
Speaker 1: had this gobbler, and man, I could not get this
Speaker 1: bird killed. I just couldn't get him killed. He was
Speaker 1: outsmarting me every time. And I was just like gonna
Speaker 1: start taking up croppie fishing for a living. And I
Speaker 1: to hen walk by one day and she did like
Speaker 1: a two note yelp, and she was real high pitch.
Speaker 1: I mean she was just like yep, yep, just like that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, holy count and I and he
Speaker 1: gobbled and they hooked up and you know, went on.
Speaker 1: So the next morning I got in there and I
Speaker 1: was digging through my mouth calls, and I had a
Speaker 1: single read mouth call, which I keep in there because
Speaker 1: a lot of times if I'm out hunting, I see
Speaker 1: a coyote or something like that, I'll throw that single
Speaker 1: read in I'll try to like squeak him up and
Speaker 1: get him shot. And uh so I took that mouth
Speaker 1: call and I hit it, and I was just like yep,
Speaker 1: just like that turkey and that high pitch. A bird
Speaker 1: gobbled at it, and he came right to me and
Speaker 1: I killed him and it wasn't and it was it wasn't.
Speaker 1: You know. I threw every mouth call, every box call,
Speaker 1: every friction call I had at him, and any pew
Speaker 1: gobbled at it. But he'd never come in because he
Speaker 1: was used to hearing that certain sound. And once I
Speaker 1: pinpointed it, you know, I did it. So that's why
Speaker 1: I carry several mouth calls are small, you can fit
Speaker 1: them in a poucheesy. There's you know, they're minimal, so
Speaker 1: you can carry a lot of them. As far as that,
Speaker 1: I always care a couple of friction calls. I carry
Speaker 1: a slate call. I'm a slate junkie. I love slate
Speaker 1: just because it's soft. A lot of times in Missouri
Speaker 1: where we're at, you know, we're doing tree yuffs, clucks
Speaker 1: and purrs, you know, just soft stuff, tree talking. Then
Speaker 1: I carry my aluminum you know, alumium call. I know Steve.
Speaker 1: I was carrying Steve's aluminum call before you know, before
Speaker 1: he started with you guys and designing that one that
Speaker 1: we did with you know one that he did with
Speaker 1: the osage, and uh, that thing's a monster, So I
Speaker 1: you know, I was. I'm carrying that all the time.
Speaker 1: And that's more for the you know, aggressive getting a
Speaker 1: little bit louder stuff like that. It still does all
Speaker 1: the soft stuff great, but uh, that aluminum's just got
Speaker 1: a sound that that slate doesn't have, and on certain
Speaker 1: days and birds will gobble grade at it. So I've
Speaker 1: got my two friction calls. I got my mouth calls.
Speaker 1: I got a wing bone. I will carry a box call.
Speaker 1: I'm hit or miss on a box call. Sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: carry it if I'm out west, I seem to carry
Speaker 1: a little bit more than I do if I'm around
Speaker 1: the house, just because I know my birds and I
Speaker 1: kind of got an idea what I'm gonna be setting
Speaker 1: up on and stuff like that. But I mean, I've
Speaker 1: had days before where the box call was the only
Speaker 1: call that made the turkey gobble and everything else just
Speaker 1: didn't work. You know a lot of guys, and we
Speaker 1: can segue on that a lot of guys. I carry him.
Speaker 1: I carry multiple calls because certain days, certain turkeys will
Speaker 1: gobble and work in better on certain calls. So break
Speaker 1: that down for you. You know, last year I was
Speaker 1: on a bird here by the house, working him, and
Speaker 1: he was gobbling really good at all everything I was thrown,
Speaker 1: but he was just hanging up. He just wasn't doing
Speaker 1: He wasn't advancing towards me. He was just sitting there gobbling,
Speaker 1: And basically, you know, in nature, the hens go to
Speaker 1: the gobblers, so we're reversing nature and having the gobblers
Speaker 1: come hunt us up. So he was gobbling good, he
Speaker 1: just wasn't coming into nothing. And I pulled out that
Speaker 1: aluminum call and hit him with that, and it turned
Speaker 1: him inside out. He just lost it. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it triggered in his mind or
Speaker 1: what why that sound that day grabbed him, but man,
Speaker 1: it grabbed him and he broke and came you know,
Speaker 1: he actually left two hens and came in right into me.
Speaker 1: So the multiple calls you can carry, the better you
Speaker 1: are as far as you know being in the game.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get out there and have one
Speaker 1: call and then the bird night answering it and then
Speaker 1: what do you do? You know, then you're kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: So I carry a friction call, you know, my two
Speaker 1: friction calls, I usually carry about four strikers because every
Speaker 1: striker I have a little bit different sounds. So the idea,
Speaker 1: you know, sound like the turkey that they want to
Speaker 1: hear that day. So that's that's the key. Gotcha. Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the new Harrison Hooter
Speaker 1: and Harrison Hooter pro um. You guys have been calling
Speaker 1: in contests the last three weekends. The calls did exceptionally well.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, we kind of got together and
Speaker 1: you know, the Harrison Hooters kind of your what we'd
Speaker 1: called your our standard um, you know, fixed fixed exhaust Hooter.
Speaker 1: And then we've got the Harrison Hooter Pro. You brought
Speaker 1: to me, Um like, hey, how do we how do
Speaker 1: we get this adjustable? And you and we talked, you know,
Speaker 1: between me and you, we came up with different orifices
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, came up with that design
Speaker 1: you know, your idea, and then we kind of worked
Speaker 1: on O rings and ways to make it all work. Um.
Speaker 1: So now I believe when we make the claim it's
Speaker 1: their first adjustable hooter out there. Um, and it's a
Speaker 1: full acrylic on that one. So give us a quick
Speaker 1: rundown on those two, um for all the listeners out there.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, no, the Uh you know, I I've
Speaker 1: been designing out hoooters for a while and I'm passionate
Speaker 1: about these ouhooters things, kind of like you are with
Speaker 1: the Elk. So you know, the the Harrison Hooter, which
Speaker 1: we made out of hard maple. Uh. The you know,
Speaker 1: we went with the maple just because maple's a great
Speaker 1: tone wood. Plus it's just tough, you know, maple. You
Speaker 1: can abuse, you can hunt it, and uh, it's still
Speaker 1: gonna have a great sound. Uh. That's a fix. That's
Speaker 1: a fixed call. It has three exhaust holes in the bottom. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we set the insert in it, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's your that's your sound. It's got a good, nice,
Speaker 1: rich sound to it. Uh, it's really smooth. That's the
Speaker 1: one I've been running in competition. You know. Uh, a
Speaker 1: lot of guys are you know, you know, turkey calling contest.
Speaker 1: You get guys and I'm guilty of it too. You
Speaker 1: want to build a race car, I call him race cars.
Speaker 1: You know. My original ouhore that I want a lot
Speaker 1: of contest with was a race car. I built it
Speaker 1: specifically for contest, and there was only one of them,
Speaker 1: and it was the one I ran this go around
Speaker 1: on this Harrison Hooter. When I got it done, it
Speaker 1: was so good that I am running, you know, at
Speaker 1: the All American this year, you know, at the Grand Nationals,
Speaker 1: at the Rolling Thunder, I'm running a production out Hooter
Speaker 1: on stage. And that's that's really what I wanted. I
Speaker 1: wanted guys to be able to go buy our call,
Speaker 1: you know, and have the confidence to walk on a
Speaker 1: stage or any set of woods and have a call
Speaker 1: of that caliber and that quality that they could they
Speaker 1: could do whatever they wanted with it. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of times you go to a sports show. I've
Speaker 1: seen this in past, and the guy who will have
Speaker 1: a call around his neck and he's blowing or whatever
Speaker 1: he's doing, you know, turkey call whatever, and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: let me buy that one. He's like, now that's my
Speaker 1: personal one. You know, well, I can honestly say, with
Speaker 1: me and you working on these things that are production
Speaker 1: calls is as good as my contest calls. I mean
Speaker 1: they're all the same as one, so the quality is there.
Speaker 1: So that's I'm man, I'm so excited and stoked about that.
Speaker 1: And then the Harrison Hooter pro That idea came to me.
Speaker 1: You know, a long time ago when I was contest
Speaker 1: calling a lot, I wanted to be able to change
Speaker 1: pitches and tones per room I was calling in, so
Speaker 1: if I was in a small room, I could change it,
Speaker 1: or if I was in a big room, I could
Speaker 1: change it, you know, buying pitch stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: then I got played with that idea and making some
Speaker 1: prototypes and I found that, you know, forget the contest
Speaker 1: idea of it, you know, that's that's an awesome deal,
Speaker 1: but the fact that now an individual can take that
Speaker 1: call and tune it to how they run a call,
Speaker 1: because that's the biggest problem I found with a lot
Speaker 1: of calls, whether it be an elk call, a duck call,
Speaker 1: or anything. Everybody's at a different level of calling, or
Speaker 1: they run it different, or they hold their hands different,
Speaker 1: or they hold their you know, they blow air through
Speaker 1: a call different. With that adjustable out hoooter, you can
Speaker 1: actually tweak and tune that call to how you like it.
Speaker 1: So if you're in an open area or a guy
Speaker 1: that likes to blow a lot of air pressure, you
Speaker 1: can open it up and use it that way and
Speaker 1: you know, have that sound that you want. Or if
Speaker 1: you're a you know, a light air pressure guy and
Speaker 1: you want to build that back pressure, you can choke
Speaker 1: that call down and make it softer and quieter. Where
Speaker 1: if you're in like a set of hardwood timbers and
Speaker 1: you don't want to blast that turkey off limb, you know,
Speaker 1: you can go that route. So the adjustable olhooter in
Speaker 1: my world is the cats. The cats me out. I mean,
Speaker 1: it'll do so much and it has so much versatility
Speaker 1: and so much range that it's it's crazy. And the
Speaker 1: acrylic is is you know, you know as well as
Speaker 1: I do. When it comes to acrylic. The sound quality
Speaker 1: on acrylic is just it's just it's got a sound
Speaker 1: of its own that is just so clean and so clear.
Speaker 1: And on the Alhooters, on both of them, you know,
Speaker 1: an awl is only so big and he's only so loud.
Speaker 1: But that tone that they make carries so far through
Speaker 1: the woods. And that's one thing I'm happy about the
Speaker 1: Molehooters that they hit that tone spot on and you
Speaker 1: don't have to really blast them loud to get that out.
Speaker 1: They get that sound to carry through the woods. So
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a I'm tickled to death, you know,
Speaker 1: the guy, the guys we got turning the barrels, Farst
Speaker 1: and stuff are absolutely perfect. You know, putting them together
Speaker 1: was a breeze. I mean, every one of them has
Speaker 1: been just home run all the way around. Yep. Now
Speaker 1: I'm excited how they turned out. Um our first batch
Speaker 1: of the wood ones that you're using on stage already
Speaker 1: sold out, but we've got a replenishment coming in. By
Speaker 1: time this drops on Thursday, we should have them back
Speaker 1: in stock there hopefully. But yeah, they're doing real well.
Speaker 1: And you know I've told you before, you know, back
Speaker 1: in the day where I use the old palm or
Speaker 1: tube and you know these things, you know that had
Speaker 1: a great sound to it, but these things, in my
Speaker 1: opinion or you know, just just surpassed it and the
Speaker 1: sound quality, the ability to crank the volume up if
Speaker 1: I'm trying to locate a bird out in the open
Speaker 1: versus like you said, dial it back, um, if we're
Speaker 1: in a little hardwood draw. Um. I think the Hooter
Speaker 1: pro is just is where it's at for hunting alcohol um,
Speaker 1: And and really appreciate, Yeah, you're taking that on and
Speaker 1: letting us be a part of it, James, and being
Speaker 1: able to add it to our lineup. So oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm tickled that you you know, you guys got it,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. I mean, and we're we're I'm excited
Speaker 1: to be working with you because, uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: were just taking it to the you know, like I
Speaker 1: said on a lot of my stuff, I said, we're
Speaker 1: taking locator calls to the next level. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think that's what the ol hooters, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: just like your elk calls. And just like the deer
Speaker 1: Grunners we worked on. We don't ever settle for satisfied
Speaker 1: We're always working and always trying to make something better
Speaker 1: because no even as even as good as that adjustable
Speaker 1: ol hooter is, I can promise you, I'm already thinking
Speaker 1: about how ways I can make it just a little
Speaker 1: bit better here and there, a little bit tweaks, because
Speaker 1: you know, that's why we work so good together with
Speaker 1: James Harrison Phelps game calls is. Uh, we're always trying
Speaker 1: to strive for something better and and getting the hunter
Speaker 1: the quality product that you know they're spending their heart
Speaker 1: and money for that, you know, And uh, I take
Speaker 1: that serious that they're spending their money and we're putting
Speaker 1: a product out that they can count on and rely on.
Speaker 1: And I don't have to worry, you know when I
Speaker 1: when I know they're getting the best product that from
Speaker 1: both of us, because everything so far we've done, it's
Speaker 1: been phenomenal and I see nothing but awesome, you know.
Speaker 1: Future head In closing here, James, what is one tip
Speaker 1: you feel you would give that you could give that
Speaker 1: would give Turkey hunters better odds and finding success this year?
Speaker 1: Oh man, My one tip, I guess if I had
Speaker 1: to be and this is gonna be an old man
Speaker 1: tip as a man patience, patience, and scout a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, the more patience you can have, Like I said,
Speaker 1: turkeys don't wear watches. You know, when you're in the
Speaker 1: woods hunting, whether it be you know, a turkey, elk
Speaker 1: or whatever, you're on their time. So I try not
Speaker 1: to push situations. I watched the birds. The more you
Speaker 1: can learn about them, the better off you're gonna be.
Speaker 1: The more you can scout them, the better off and
Speaker 1: more success you're gonna have. And just having patience, you know,
Speaker 1: don't you know, just like you said hunting Easterns, you know,
Speaker 1: you then Virgil was there and you just couldn't hear them,
Speaker 1: but they were just right there the whole time. You know,
Speaker 1: patience is the key, I guess if you wanted to
Speaker 1: be if I had to tell one, you know, people,
Speaker 1: one thing is just had patience, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: we live in a world of instant now. You know,
Speaker 1: if if I have a question, I can Google it
Speaker 1: and it's there automatically. In the Turkey words, they don't
Speaker 1: have Google. So patience is the key. Patience, patience, patience.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for that one. And closing, how can
Speaker 1: people find out more about you? Is? You know, some
Speaker 1: of the other calls, some of your even your custom stuff.
Speaker 1: You're still doing. You and you and Cody and Carter
Speaker 1: and your guys is hunting. How can people find out
Speaker 1: more about Yeah, I've got the you know, I've got
Speaker 1: the Facebook page. It's a Harrison Custom Calls. That's usually
Speaker 1: where I just put my hand turned one of a
Speaker 1: kind al hooters on, you know, make them out of
Speaker 1: different woods or exotics and stuff like that. We have
Speaker 1: an Instagram which is is Harrison Custom Calls or you're
Speaker 1: just you know James Harrison. Cody's on there too, he's
Speaker 1: you know, Cody Harrison. Then harder and uh, We're we're
Speaker 1: pretty reachable. Just look farst there and then we'll be
Speaker 1: all over this spring as far as uh, Kentucky, Missouri,
Speaker 1: hunting in a little bit everywhere. I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: since you got so many turkeys out in Washington, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna try to start looking for plane tickets coming
Speaker 1: out there and kill some turkeys out there. There you go.
Speaker 1: You can literally land in Spokane, go any direction and
Speaker 1: you'll be fine out It's good. One of these days
Speaker 1: we need to get you out here. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: just planning a hunt and put it on the book,
Speaker 1: so it'll be it'll be a blast put a big
Speaker 1: Turkey camp together. So um, we appreciate having you on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really appreciate having you on today, James. And good luck
Speaker 1: this spring and uh well I'm sure we'll be in
Speaker 1: touch all week is we're building more out Hooters and
Speaker 1: getting stuff, you know, getting getting great hunting calls out
Speaker 1: to all the customers and listeners out there. Awesome. I
Speaker 1: appreciate the time, man, Thanks dude, Yea, take care of