I started this call about 2 years ago, but kids, life, and my fly tying business got in the way. I just got a chance to try and complete it last week.
Tied about 2 dozen flies last night then messed with my call for a little bit. I was mainly focusing on the back end. I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t really have any at all. I was just doing various calls and realized it was really quiet when I tried to do a gobble.
So I held the call straight out in front of me and watched the lid slide across the rails. Looked like it had some unnecessary contact at the rear of the call. I took my file and chisel and created a trough. I kept checking the lid and made sure it had clearance. Bingo! Gained a little back end rasp to it. I played with tuning out the back end and got it a little closer and decided to stop on the back end for the night before I messed it up.
My next issue was that squeaky front end, and not achieving sound. I was looking at my box compared to others and found my curve was not really all that steep. The whole curve had a long sweep to it, with not a lot of rise.
Tonight I plan to disassemble the call and put a bit more aggressive curve on the front with my belt sander. Little by little I’ll take some off and check the call. I’m going to mark where I do have sound as to use that as a reference point to where I need at keep it as is and add curve ahead of it. I believe this will allow the call to have a smoother slide and achieve the higher front end note of the yelp. It almost seems the lid rises there and then comes back down, and deadens the sound.
I added a little more curve to the rear as well last night. I decided to literally chalk the entire bottom of the lid and do a few yelps. I turned the call over and could see places where the lid was hitting where it shouldn’t have. The spots that had chalk missing on the back of the lid pointed me to the trouble areas. I then smoothed out and eliminated these clearance issues.
I love making calls and picking my brain to try and figure out how to get the wood to do what I want it to. I’m weird and enjoy the struggle associated with it. I have a lot of guys eager to help me but I am enjoying trying to learn it on my own for the most part. I’m sure some are reading this and thinking, that’s what I was going to tell him to do, and I appreciate you holding your tongue. That’s how I did it with tying flies. I had a few years of not catching fish, then I’d catch fish but my flies would fall apart, now they are super durable and hold up to 15-20 fish before I see any evidence of failure, and a scroll through my personal or fly business page will show you how they catch fish.
I’m trying not to settle on the “I can kill a bird with this mentality” and focus more on “I’m closer to what a real hen sound like” idea. I know that you don’t have to sound perfect to kill turkey. If that was the case I’d never kill one.
I own a pile of box calls. The ones that blow you away aren’t ones that the call maker thought, this will call in a bird; the ones that focused on every aspect of the yelp are the mind blowers. I’m not looking to be a Gibson award winning call maker, or even sell them. Just want to make a call that matches a hen, and in this calls case a gobbler. I think my gobbler side is pretty decent, just now need to get that squeak out and focus on the high front end Yelp.
Thanks for reading along with this build. I thought some of you may enjoy the journey, and maybe bring back some memories when you first started.
I attached the pics for reference of what I meant about the curve of the call.