Hunter Brandon Peavy uses the Roberts Turkey Calls Hunter Model 100, a unique two-sided friction call with glass on the front, a slate sweet spot on the back and a pot made of a special green camo wood composite. (Photo by Lynn Burkhead)
May 07, 2024
By Lynn Burkhead
Each time I get to visit the Osceola turkey-rich state of Florida, there’s a magical place I like to visit near Starke—the call-making shop of custom turkey-call maker Lamar Williams, a legend and disciple of the late Neil Cost.
For a turkey-call nut—and that’s surely what I am, since I’ve rarely met one I didn’t like—stepping into that shop and its rich smells of wood working, all while talking a little gobbler-getting history with Mr. Williams, and listening to him stroke his latest Stradivarius-like box-call creation, is something I will never tire of. It’s a slice of heaven if you like box calls, longbeards and the music of the springtime woods.
If there’s a little turkey-call nuttiness in you—or if you’re just looking for a great call to tag your next gobbler with—there’s a sea of worthy candidates to consider for this year and many years to come:
David Halloran Turkey Calls Double Glass II David Halloran Turkey Calls Double Glass II I had a chance to hear guide Brandon Peavey put this pot-style friction turkey call to work in the pine woods of Georgia a while back and to say I was impressed with its melodic turkey sounds would be an understatement.
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I'm not alone since the David Halloran Turkey Calls Double Glass II has 39 five-star reviews on Halloran's website, one user going as far as to call it the best call on the market today.
Few will disagree with the call now featuring a walnut and poplar laminate pot, a glass surface, and a striker. Easy to run, giving great raspy yelps and gobbler attracting cutts, few longbeards within hearing range can resist the lure of this great friction call.
HS Strut Drury Outdoors Signature Ghost Tongue Mouth Call HS Strut Drury Outdoors Signature Ghost Tongue Mouth Call Mark Drury, his daughter Taylor, his brother Terry, and Terry's son Matt are legends in the hunting industry that need no introduction, pioneers in turkey hunting, deer hunting, online mapping techniques, and filming it all for a variety of TV programs like Outdoor Channel’s well-known Thirteen series for many years now.
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Mark is not only a hunting and TV pioneer, but he's also a 6-time World Champion turkey caller and his call designs have delivered many longbeards to the dinner table. The Drury Outdoors Signature Ghost Tongue Mouth Call by HS Strut is no exception to that rule, using cutting edge technology to tighten up reed spacing, leaving a flat tongue instead of a pointed tongue surface, and gaining more gobbler getting performance in the woods.
With an aluminum frame, three hand-stretched reeds featuring .003 latex, the Tongue Series' unique flat tongue cuts, extra tight reed spacing, and the signature Ghost cuts and notches, this is the next best thing to having Mark Drury and the Drury Outdoors team sitting next to you in the woods, calling another wise old tom into shotgun range.
Kluk Custom Calls Cherry Turkey Tube Call Kluk Custom Calls Cherry Turkey Tube Call Turkey hunters like Mossy Oak's well-known Ronnie "Cuz" Strickland have been making wild turkey music for many years with tube turkey calls. In fact, Strickland once related a humorous story about hunting with legendary turkey hunting poet laureate Col. Tom Kelly and daring to bring the tube call out of his turkey vest pocket to make a little gobbler music. After listening to Cuz make some spring melodies on the tube call and having a gobbler respond, the turkey hunting expert and acclaimed author of Tenth Legion abruptly stopped him and asked why he hadn't been calling with that tube call all along.
While many tube calls are made from plastic or fashioned in a backyard workshop these days, the Kluk Custom Calls Cherry Turkey Tube Call by Jed Paronish is getting many great reviews as a custom made option. Hand crafted from cherry wood, topped with a green .004 latex reed, and an American made tube call from a veteran owned company, this is a great turkey calling option for your corner of the springtime woods.
If you hunt stubborn, hard to get, and highly pressured gobblers that throw their snood at you in longbeard contempt, then throw this custom made tube call's distinct sounds their way and see if you don't soon get some thunderous gobbles and a longbeard quickly closing the distance!
Lamar Williams Custom Box Call and Boat Paddle Call Lamar Williams custom box calls. As noted above, Lamar Williams learned his call making craft from the late Neil Cost, who was considered by many to be the finest box call maker of all-time.
More than a quarter century ago, Williams began to make his own handmade custom turkey calls in a shop behind his Starke, Fla., home.
Williams became quite the call maker in his early days and his original Widow Maker box calls have become highly collectible. As he continued learning the craft, Williams met Cost at a call maker's show, with Cost eventually becoming one of Williams' best friends.
So much so when Cost's health began to fail, he summoned Williams to his Greenwood, S.C., home. Why? To pass on the mantle of his box-call-making skills and style to Williams, even down to the distinct carved checkering on the side of the box call.
Today, years after Cost passed away in 2002 following a long battle with emphysema, Williams' box calls are thought by many to be the best in the business , made from a solid block of wood that has been drilled, hewed by hand and tuned to the voice of the wild turkey.
In fact, so supremely good is Williams’ call making craftsmanship that he was inducted into the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Custom Callmaker’s Hall of Fame at the NWTF Conventio n this past February in Nashville. If you’d like to have a Lamar Williams’ box call or boat paddle call for your turkey hunting vest, give him a call and place an order at (904-964-5691).
Phelps Game Calls Harrison Hooter Owl Hooter Phelps Game Calls Harrison Hooter Owl Hooter There's nothing like the anticipation of a springtime morning when your O' Dark Thirty pre-dawn hike reaches a stopping point, you reach into your turkey vest, put an owl hooter to your lips, let the mysterious hoots roll forth, and wait for an angry gobbler to sound off in response. When you hear that shock gobble a couple of hundred yards away, the game is afoot as Sherlock Holmes used to say!
If you're looking to up your owl hooting game, look no further than the James Harrison design from Phelps Game Calls , the Harrison Hooter Owl Hooter . While this small-batch call is on the compact side of things, it talks plenty big in gobbler getting vernacular with a great sound, full range of volume, and easy to make hooting melody.
With his fifteen World and Grand National Calling titles—not to mention eight National Custom Call Building Championships—this Harrison owl hooter design will deliver owl hoots through the woods, over hollers, and across the plains, all to the irritation of any nearby gobblers. But when Mr. Tom sounds off in ticked off protest, you'll be all smiles as you make your final move into position, settle against a tree, and get your shotgun up and ready for a trigger pull!
Primos Tall Timber Gabriel Box Call Primos Tall Timber Gabriel Box Call In 1971, Greenwood, Miss. cotton farmer and turkey hunting expert Charles Whittington wrote an impossible to find book on spring turkey hunting called Tall Timber Gabriels. In Mr. Whittington's mind, a wise old gobbler was an "Old Gabriel," a nod to a winged Biblical angel sitting high on a pine tree limb as he sent out his love songs for all of the area's woods and occupants to hear.
Whittington's book and hallowed view of the wild turkey gobbler affected another Mississippi turkey hunting legend, famed call maker Will Primos. So much so that the Primos Tall Timber Gabriel Box Call is Will's personal box call and the company's premium box call design, one that incorporates all that the Mississippi company knows about the springtime musical instrument called the turkey box call.
With a purple heart lid, a box fashioned from sapele mahogany, and decades of trial-and-error call making expertise, this is one of Will Primos' favorite things ever produced by his namesake company: "We have put all that we know and cherish about the box call as an instrument into this call: the choice of woods, the curves of the striking surfaces, the shape and cutouts of the sideboards as well as the finish to give you the finest instrument in reproducing the sounds that Old Gabriel so badly wants to hear."
If you're looking for a heavenly box call that will send an old longbeard to the pearly gates this spring, this incredible sounding box call is worth a look and a listen. And that's the truth, as Wilbur and the Primos call making gang likes to say. More from Primos .
Roberts Turkey Calls Hunter Model 100 Pot Call Roberts Turkey Calls Hunter Model 100 Pot Call Made in Oakwood, Ga., the Roberts Turkey Calls Hunter Model 100 is a unique two-sided friction call with a pot made of a special green camo splattered wood composite.
Coming with a hardwood striker and a conditioning pad, this great sounding call features a True Grip non-slip finish, is sealed to provide water resistance, has a glass front callilng surface, and a Pennsylvania slate sweet spot located on the back.
If conditions are dry and still, use the small sweet spot slate surface to call. If it's damp and foggy like it often is in the Georgia springtime woods, use the glass surface to make your gobbler getting melody. Either way, get ready to put the shotgun barrel's bead on the noggin of an inbound gobbler!
Woodhaven Custom Calls Next Level Ninja Slate Woodhaven Custom Calls Next Level Ninja Slate There are few things that sing springtime turkey music better than a Woodhaven Custom Calls pot call , and the Heflin, Ala. company's Next Level Ninja Slate is no exception to that rule.
The well-known turkey call maker’s improvement on the old pot call, slate surface design, the Woodhaven Next Level Ninja Slate features a walnut profile pot and two strikers, a hickory striker and a purple heart striker, each one giving this slate call a distinct sound in the spring woods.
Work those different strikers over the conditioned slate surface, and the raspy yelps, cackles and cutts wafting on the springtime breeze are sure to drive a lovesick gobbler wild. And after you've tagged Mr. Johnny Longbeard sometime this spring, use the call's surface saver lid to protect the slate surface until the next time you're ready to send out a springtime dinner table invite for a gobbler destined to be the culinary guest of honor!
Woodhaven Custom Calls Ninja Crow Woodhaven Custom Calls Ninja Crow If hooting owls make spring gobblers angry, then so do cawing crows, and no turkey vest is complete without a crow locating call like the Woodhaven Custom Calls Ninja Crow .
Coming with a soft body design and ergonomic feel, this Woodhaven crow call is extremely user friendly, produces highly realistic sounds, and serves as a great locator call to use throughout the day whenever longbeards get a little bit on the quieter side of things.
Or, if you'd like a wooden crow call from Woodhaven Custom Calls , not to mention a little different sound to elicit a shock gobble during the mid-day doldrums, then don't overlook the company's The Real Crow call complete with a hand-tuned birch barrel for rich wooden sound, a properly tuned reed and mouth piece, and ultra-realistic crow noise that spring turkey hunters have relied on for years.
Zink Calls Z-Cutter Zink Calls Z-Cutter Fred Zink has been chasing ducks, geese, and turkeys for years near his Port Clinton, Ohio home. And along the way, after figuring out that he couldn't find the perfect calls–or perfect turkey decoys, for that matter –he decided to go out on his own and start building great sounding game calls a number of years ago.
To that end, Zink, the host of the Ducks Unlimited TV show on Sportsman Channel , has another winning call design on the market these days thanks to the Zink Calls Z-Cutter Diaphragm Call .
A cutter-style triple reed design that features three prophylactic reeds and a cut carved out on one side of those reeds, this mouth call is custom-built, made by hand, and is a tailor made option for run-and-gun style hunters reaching out for a distant longbeard or hunters in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains who are battling wind, distance, and terrain as they try to lure a longbeard into shotgun range.
Put one of these calls into use this spring, and odds are, you'll be smiling big as you notch a tag to put on a fallen longbeard heading home for dinnertime. More from Zink Calls .
