2012 turkey odyssey, game calls, turkey and turkey hunting

New Turkey Toys for 2012—Mouth Call Reviews

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I received an email earlier this week from a turkey hunter who was looking to get some new mouth calls, and they had read an earlier post where I had mentioned that I now owned some Woodhaven mouth calls.  They reminded me (politely) that I had promised a more in-depth review of the product which as of this week was undelivered.

Since there hasn’t been much doing around here for turkey activity (and I’ve been scouting pretty hard…but that’s another post) I thought now would be as good a time as any to post up my thoughts on these calls.  I haven’t had a chance to test these out on any turkeys yet, but I have had three months to practice with them, so consider this a mid-term review.
From L-R: Woodhaven’s Copperhead 2, Copperhead, and Red Wasp
As I alluded to earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to receive a Woodhaven Customs Calls TKM (Turkey Killing Machines) three pack this past Christmas.  At first glance, they are as sexy a mouth call (aesthetically) as I’ve seen.  After doing some online research that may be a bit pricey compared to some other brands of mouth calls, but according the Woodhaven’s website, professional hands touch every call so like anything, craftsmanship comes at a price.  The three calls included in the pack are the Red Wasp, the Copperhead, and the Copperhead 2.  Each is different, and each can be purchased individually (as opposed to buying the whole three-pack), so I’ll briefly share what I found each call to be like.
The Red Wasp is billed as “great for raspy cutts and yelps” and a call that is “very raspy and bold like an old hen”.  No arguments from me.  A red latex reed with a V-cut overlays two thinner clear reeds, and the tape is flexible but not too soft, which I like because I find the tape on some other mouth calls I’ve bought from the Big-Four manufacturers (HS, Primos, Knight & Hale, and Quaker Boy…I’ve owned them all) starts off a little too soft and after a couple of hunts betwixt cheek and gum the tape begins to separate from the frame or break down.  No such problems yet with the Red Wasp (or the others for that matter) and I’ve been practicing nightly for the last couple of months.  This call is set up pretty stiff and so far the reeds have retained good snap and tension.  I prefer a stiff call so out of the three, this one is my favourite so far…which was why I started with it.  If the call has a downfall it is that it is too sensitive, which is likely a function of being a bit on the stiff side.  If you have too much pressure on the reeds they tend to squeal a bit.  Too little pressure and the call gets muted or even just goes silent.  It took some getting used to, so for a mouth diaphragm beginner this call might not be suitable.  After some consistent practice though, the call goes from soft tree yelps and purrs right to the loudest, raspiest cutting pretty easily.  If you don’t like stiff calls or are just looking to start out with a mouth call then the Red Wasp might just frustrate you, but if you already have some know-how running a mouth call, this one is probably the most versatile of the three in the pack.
To be blunt, the Copperhead is probably my least favourite call in this pack, but it is still as good, or better, than most mouth calls I’ve had.  The call has an orange latex reed with a silky finish and a snake-tongue cut that is laid over two clear reeds.  Again, I love the tape job, but what I dislike about the call (the only negative really) is that it is a uni-tasker; I find it to be an ultra-loud call with serious rasp and good cutting and this is probably ideal for shocking a distant tom into gobbling, calling to a fired up and aggressive tom, or on windy days.  In fact, I’ll very likely use it in those exact scenarios this season, but I find it tough to change volumes on and I think it is the worst at purring of the three, which is less than ideal for those situations where you need some subtle ‘finishing’ calls.  I’m not a fan of switching out mouth calls when a bird is coming in, and although I’ll do it, I’m also not big on carrying two calls in my mouth at once.  If you’ve mastered subtlety on this call, then good for you.  I haven’t yet.  Also somewhat troubling, but not really a big deal yet, is that the bottom clear reed has started to pucker already.  This is likely a factor of the tongue pressure I find I’m using to ratchet up the raspiness on this call making it an operator problem not a call problem per se, and it has not yet been detrimental to the call’s sound so like I said, no big deal…just worth noting if you’re like me and exert a lot of pressure and wind on a call.  Yes, I sometimes call loud and I almost always call often.  If volume is all you’re looking for than the Copperhead will be great for you.
According to the product specs, The Copperhead 2 “features a special yellow and orange latex combo with a new ‘snake-tongue-combo cut’” in the top reed.  The one that came with my TKM 3-pack has the combo cut and the yellow latex, but my other reeds are clear, not orange.  Don’t ask me why…Production error?  Just ran out of orange reeds?  Who knows?  I’m not too concerned though because the call still runs well.  I’ve found that the Copperhead 2 is a nice medium between the Red Wasp and the Copperhead; with a broad range of volumes and rasp the only thing that the Red Wasp does better than the Copperhead 2 is purr.  It goes from tree yelps to plain yelps to cackles smoothly.  It doesn’t purr badly, if not just a bit inconsistently, and the cutting is nice and crisp.  A good all-around call, just as stiff as the Red Wasp, but like I said, just a bit tough to get consistent purrs; it does however have the best kee-kee of all the calls in the pack so that’s a win.
So there you have it.  To say I have an embarrassment of options at my disposal this year in terms of mouth calls would be an understatement.  It’s always going to be a toss-up between the Red Wasp and Copperhead 2 for the starting job this year, but it is nice to know that on a windy day I can jack up the volume on the Copperhead.
Of course, as with most reviews, this is strictly what I’ve found.  There may be those of you out there with loyalties to other call manufacturers, or those who have had completely opposite experiences to what I’ve had with the above calls.  What will be really telling is how they fare some early morning in April or on a sunny May afternoon when I get to put the call out to a love-sick gobbler.  That will be the true litmus test of the worth of these calls, and I look forward to writing more about them here.
hunting, varmint hunting

If Coyote Hunting is for Supermen, Consider me to be Kryptonite

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It had been a long time since I had made the run up to the Bruce Peninsula.  At least four months; I don’t usually like to go that long between seeing my friends, having some laughs, and stalking whatever game happens to be in season, but nothing I could do about it in this respect.  The plan was just to leave work on Friday afternoon, get up there, and enjoy it.

Early on the Friday morning I had encountered a lone coyote as I drove past a field in Halton Region on my way to work, but since the Halton Region landowners, at least the ones whose doors I have knocked on, have not been keen on providing coyote hunting permission, I had no option but to drive on past.  That and the fact that all the artillery was locked and safely stowed in the trunk of my car.  My workday was filled with thoughts of that morning encounter and the hopes that it was to be a good omen for the weekend to come.
Nope.
By 7pm, a blustery headwind from the north had been conspiring to wreck my fuel mileage for pretty much the whole trip, and just north of Wiarton the same wind offered up some sleet as a side dish.  A couple of years ago on a particularly wet turkey trip, a friend of mine had chided me for ‘bringing the bad weather’ and his absent-minded cliché rang in my head as I drove through the increasingly deteriorating precipitation.  I stopped for an oil-change and a haircut at a friend’s on the way up (he provides oil changes, his accommodating and lovely wife handling the mane-taming duties) and had a nice little visit with them.  By the time I again made the road, ankle-deep slush made the going slow.  I pulled into my cousin Luke’s house for about 10:30pm and over a drink we discussed the weather, the coyote hunting to date, the prospects for turkey season (a mere eight weeks away!) as well as the various and sundry other things that men talk about after the spouses go to bed.  By that time big, wet, aggregated snowflakes had begun to fall, and the wind had reached a new level of ferocity.  A morning hunt was not looking promising.
Just on the dark side of 6am, Luke opened the door and said it had stopped snowing.  I could still hear the wind blowing a gale and Luke let me know that it had swung around and was blowing straight from the west.  Still, I was there to hunt and so long as the worst of the precipitation had passed I was fit to get going.  The plan, as always, was to hit the road early and look to cut a fresh track or spot a coyote out foraging in the fields and then put the dogs on the trail.  That exercise usually took the better part of a morning, and then I intended to while away my afternoon raising hell with my rabbit distress calls in the hopes of luring a cagey old coyote into the range of my .243WIN.
No sooner had our derrieres hit the seats in Luke’s truck that the snow and sleet began to fall.  Or more accurately, the snow came at a wind-driven angle that was more or less parallel with the horizon.  Visibility was, ahem, minimal and as such we spotted no coyotes or fresh tracks that morning.  The only beasts foolish enough to be out in that wind storm were us.  Bacon, eggs, sausages, and toast accompanied coffee as we re-thought the day’s plans.  It was a short discussion: if the wind and snow wouldn’t co-operate we’d have no choice but to lay low for the day.  So we did…all day.  But at least we got to have a good meal or two.
Sunday morning broke snowy but slightly less breezy, and I was chomping at the bit to get out and get the dogs running.  Within fifteen minutes we had the hounds on a track, and I was stationed with my pal Rory near a copse of balsams and cedars while the dogs howled away in a block of trees.  The barking got closer and then the hounds broke from the woods…but no coyote was in front of them.  Either they’d lost the track or the coyote had gotten out from them and past Rory and I before we had been in position.  We broke for the road to get ahead of the pack, and hopped out again and hit the woods.  One more time the dogs came near and once they came so close that I could hear them crashing through the underbrush.  Still, the coyote remained elusive.
Just about that time, the wind picked up, but the sun came out.  They coyote eventually headed south and we travelled en masse to get ahead of it once more.  While we waited in position, Rory and I were able to creep to within eight feet of an Eastern Screech Owl that was just lounging on a fencepost next to cedar thicket.  While we watched the little owl and tried to determine its species, the crafty Canis Latrans got by the blockers and snuck across the road into a block we could not hunt.  Defeated but not discouraged, some other hunters of our group gathered the dogs and we set out once more looking for fresh tracks or a coyote out loitering in the open.  Just north of where we’d been last stationed Rory spotted a very crisp and fresh track crossing the road from east to west into a good block of mixed forest and fields.  We put three dogs on the track and we were off again, heading down the road to get ahead of the hounds and deploy blockers on the field edges.  I was set up leaning on a fence post facing north into about as bitter an early March wind as one could come up against.  As my cheeks and nose took on the characteristics of wind-beaten leather, and as my eyes watered in the wind I waited for the trusty hounds to push the coyote out in front of me.  Once more the dogs were duped by North America’s shrewd answer to the jackal and as we approached the breakfast hour we decided to call it a morning.
One Mom’s Restaurant famous Farmer’s Breakfast later, I returned to my cousin Luke’s place and as he blew snow out of the driveway, I packed my gear up.  A call from my wife bearing news of a family emergency precluded an afternoon calling session, and I had to hit the highway south.  As I left I was told that the coyote hunting had “been better last week” and that the weather was going to change up and that I ought to return “next weekend” for more coyote hunting and the annual local hockey tournament…which is always a fun time, or so I’ve been told.
None of this surprised me.  I’ve always had good success with waterfowl and have had plenty of sightings, close encounters, and opportunities when turkey hunting.  Heck, even my recent form in deer hunting seems to be on the upswing, with a deer down in 2009 and two close encounters this past season.  Yet the coyote, in its well-adapted resourcefulness, continues to elude my best efforts to take one in front of hounds or solo with the call.  It seems I’m always a week behind the good hunting, or I depart just before it picks up again.  Like most game animals, I’m absolutely certain that the coyote is better at avoiding being prey than I am at attempting to be a predator, but that only makes sense; coyotes benefit from centuries of adaptations to both environmental and mankind’s pressures…I’ve been only been out hunting for about 20 years, so I’m still learning.
And that challenge is the reason it’s fun, even if I continue to fail.
hunting, lists upon lists

The Lesser Known Skills

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On newsstands, the “big mags” are soon to be publishing their turkey hunting run-ups, and that is fine.  Great actually, because I love to read them.  At various times of the year, every hunting publication that you’d buy in a bookstore has what I call their “Get Ready!” issue and they all feature articles with catchy tag lines like “Fool Wary Late-Season Geese!” or “Sure Fire Tactics for Greenheads!” or my personal favourite “Your Best Rut Ever!”…like I’ve ever had a ‘bad’ rut.  That’s as redundant as “good orgasm”.

These articles and features do become formulaic after a time…after all how many different times can we be told how to call to a hung up gobbler?  Deer will always be deer and I think by now I know how to use rattling horns.  Likewise there are not a lot of differing ‘strategies’ for deploying a pop-up blind or a trail camera.  But again, that’s fine because every once in a while I find a hidden gem of wisdom.  For example, last year in either Field & Stream or Outdoor Life (I can’t frankly recall which, and my wife has since recycled the magazine) there was a nifty piece about how to make a ‘wingbone’ style of turkey call out of a pen and a spent shotgun shell.
How very MacGyver.
But that’s not the point of this post.  This post is about what has been missing.  For all the promise, exceptional photography, and flashy splendor of these institutions, they’re missing out on what I would call the ‘unspoken fundamentals’, which I consider the basis for making any hunt enjoyable and the key skills to becoming a successful hunter.  So with that in mind, I humbly submit to you a list of some of the lesser known aptitudes that truly define what makes “a hunter”.
Lying
Now this is admittedly a cliché, and we’ve all seen the shirts and hunting camp placards that say something like “Liars and Hunters Gather Here” or some permutation thereof, but in every joke there is a kernel of truth, and hunters are exceptional liars.  Now I alluded to this in an earlier post, but that dealt with a certain segment of the hunting community.  To put it simply, to hunt you must develop the ability to lie.  Now I’m not talking about the kind of double speak and manipulation that politicians and power-brokers use.  No, no…in this respect I’m referring to both the benign, passive lies that make you seem like less of an abject failure or the broad, open lies that grease the wheels of conversation.  If you meet a hunter that tells only the truth, beware.  He or she is not to be trusted as they are either a far too upstanding citizen to associate with, or they are a hunter par excellence and has never had any reason to lie because they always experience glowing success.  Either way, those are people that you do not want to live in a cramped shack with for a week.
Excuse Making
Of the same vein, but distinct from, lying is excuse-making.  To be a successful hunter this is a must-have skill and once developed it will carry you far.  It has a multi-faceted range of applications from practical use in getting out of doing dishes and sweeping floors through to actually helping you harvest game.  Don’t believe me?  I would argue that we all know someone who through excuse-making and laziness (laziness being excuse-making’s deadbeat progenitor) decided not to walk ten miles cross-country and instead sat on the porch with a gun and cigar and killed a huge buck that had the temerity to stroll out onto the front lawn.  Heck, in 2009 my own excuse-making and laziness led me to sit in hardwood opening not eight minutes from the front door of the camp.  Shot a deer ten minutes later, if I wasn’t such a poor shot I would have shot two.  Don’t tell me it isn’t an essential skill.
Arguing
Being a generally objectionable person is not a prerequisite to being a good hunter, but it helps.  I’ve met a lot of hunters that were accommodating, friendly, and willing to listen to your opinion on anything.  But I don’t really remember them fondly or as being particularly successful.  The ones that I do remember as successful and memorable are the irascible, gruff, opinionated SOBs that did things their own way regardless of what the camp consensus was because that’s what they thought was right, even when it clearly wasn’t.  These people are not the best camp-mates when trying to nail down a dinner menu or debating the merits of gun caliber, political affiliation, or governmental tax mandates…but by gar do they know how to hunt.  The underlying trait of argumentativeness is self-confidence, and to be a successful hunter, you’ve got to have that in abundance to go where no one else will, to try what no one else will try, and to believe in your abilities when everyone else doubts them.  Hunters with that trait are inherently, and inexplicably, successful.
Calm
In a bizarre, Zen-master kind of way, I’ve found the best hunters to be exceptionally, if not frighteningly, stoic.  Now here in Ontario there is not much that you can hunt that will realistically ‘kill you back’ so to speak…although the “black bear sow when surprised with cubs” scenario lives in an especially dark corner of my nightmares, especially in turkey season when all I have is a shotgun packed with a few 3-inch rounds of paltry #6 lead shot…but calm is more than facing the potential dangers of the woods unfazed.  I’ve never even had the crosshairs on a deer that was more than an average-sized doe but those beautiful ungulates reduce me to a quivering mass of skin and tissue every time I get the gun up on one.  Likewise a wild turkey, a bird that is both beautiful in plumage and hideous in countenance, ratchets up my adrenalin like no other game animal and I can’t make rational or even basic decisions very well.  Now I’m not sure if the calm and collected camp of hunters just has better control of this than I do, but I don’t really care.  All I know is that they ghost serenely through the woods and fields, seemingly attuned to all the nature that surrounds them, and when they do succeed in taking their prey of choice, they always act like they’ve been there before.  Even when I know damn well that they haven’t.
Gluttony
Here’s where things take a bit of a swerve to the left.  I would argue steadfastly that all the best hunters are legendarily gluttonous.  Now I’m not speaking of wasteful game harvesting or boorish, self-absorbed behavior (although I am likewise not discounting it because I don’t know what you do when I’m not looking) but I am talking about their ability to pack back food and drink.  Of all the hunters I’ve known…and I’ve known many…there exists a one way correlation between the ability to have success in the field and the ability to eat and drink.  I say “one way correlation’ because I also know lots of guys and gals that can eat and drink but don’t have a lick of hunting sense.  To put it basically, I’ve found that if you can hunt, you can also eat.  This is not always inversely true.  And before someone emails me with a list of reasons why this is not an accurate or tenable assessment let me further state that feasting has been a part of hunting as long as hunting has existed in a recorded form.  The coming together of comrades after a hard day afield and restoring our bodies with wine, ale, meat, and wild edibles of all kinds is engrained in the hunting tradition and has been in tapestry, song, and literature for centuries.  As a man with an almost fanatical appreciation of history, who am I to say that isn’t important, nay required, in a hunter?  I await your angry emails.
Swearing
Again, speaking strictly from observation and years of compiled empirical evidence, I think to qualify as a good hunter, you need to be able to swear.  Now I’m not advocating the exceptionally crude, low-brow kind of cursing reserved for locker rooms and Comedy Central Roasts, but then again I’m not talking about maintaining a level of dialogue that is purely biblical either.  What I would say is that the well-constructed, exceptionally-timed, and situation-specific use of foul language is a prerequisite to hunting.  Whether used to castigate one’s self after missing a dreadfully easy shot (I do this often), expressed as dismay as you go through the ice, over your boot top, and into the lake up to your knee on a freezing Lake Huron shoreline (looking in your direction Tack), or just to add spice to a humorous campfire anecdote about what witnessing the birth of your first child was like (again, guilty) the use of salty language is exactly that…it is the figurative seasoning that makes conversation interesting.  I’ve always been struck by the irony that language and dialogue defined as “tasteful” was always exceedingly bland, luckily we keep things pleasant seasoned in our camp.  What constitutes appropriate levels of foul language in your hunting camp is a matter of personal preference; all I can say is test drive a few words you might not normally use.  You’ll learn your limit and will operate accordingly.
Tinkering
The last item on this list speaks to a trait that exists innately in every hunter in every walk of life.  Tinkering with things.  Centuries before the concepts of kaizen and other continuous improvements were implemented in the multi-billion dollar world of business, hunters the world over were toying with ways to improve on weapons, game calls, and hunting techniques.  I’m reminded of a Far Side cartoon where a couple of cave-men have felled a mammoth with a single, well-placed spear; the caption “Let’s remember that spot”.  That’s what hunters do, we innovate.  You could be utterly without redemption on all of the above characteristics and still have success hunting if you show some initiative to hone your skills, get proficient with your weapons, and learn the art, so to speak.  Or you could just have a good time playing in your garage with your game calls and decoys and blinds.  Your choice.
Now to wrap this up, one might ask how I define success…after all I refer to it a lot in the above rambling paragraphs.  I’m not sure if being in possession of everything mentioned previously here will make you successful in the sense that you’ll kill more game (although it may; stranger things have come true) but then again maybe you define success differently than the glossy, vibrant articles run by huge multi-national publishing conglomerates.  If you do, then you’re like me and I’ll leave you with a (censored) quote from one of my now-deceased hunting companions that long ago became a sort of mantra to the way that I go about my hunting adventures.
“Since when did killing deer have anything to do with (expletive) deer hunting?!”
national wild turkey federation, varmint hunting

News: Finally Getting Out Again, NWTF Events, and We’re on Twitter

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After a month or so of a cripplingly hectic family and work schedule, I’m hitting the woods this upcoming weekend in pursuit of some coyotes.  I’ve been itching to do it for a while and have finally found the time.  Hopefully the weather co-operates and we can get some coyotes running in front of the dogs and/or coming hard to the call.  Exciting stuff, and it will eventually be serialized here.

In other news, for the past couple of weeks a few of you subscribers suggested a Twitter feed.  So now I have one.

You can follow the blog here:  https://twitter.com/#!/getoutandgohunt

I’m still going through the (admittedly shallow) learning curve of Twitter, but feel free to join up and see where we’re hunting, what we’re thinking while we do it, and more of the zaniness, analysis, and opinion that you’ve come to expect from this blog…all within a 140 character limit no less!

And lastly, it is NWTF Banquet season here in Ontario and I’ve got a few invites to attend banquets.  The one I’ll definitely be hitting up is my hometown banquet in Barrie, Ontario.  For details on pricing and attendance you can email nwtfbarrie@gmail.com for details.  For info on the auction packages click http://www.nwtf.org/special_events/CoreItems.php

Hunting. Not Hype.