Illustration Ryan Kirby

Confidence

by Tom Kelly

A great many turkey hunters, especially in the beginning of their career, are extremely uncomfortable with the quality of their yelping. I know a man who never in the 30 years that I have known him has ever made a sound on his yelper while he was in my presence.

He brings home a turkey from time to time and is an excellent woodsman, but when it comes to the matter of yelping, his confidence has been overpowered by the grade and quality of the yelping he has heard in turkey calling contests. Whenever he is in the presence of other people, in the language of the courtroom he "stands mute." He told me he went behind his house before the beginning of the spring season last year to practice — alone, of course. In the middle of the session, he looked up to see a doe deer within 50 yards of where he sat, looking at him with her head cocked off to one side. He went on to say, "I always knew that my yelping was inferior, which is why I don't do it in front of other people, but I never knew it sounded like a fawn in distress."

His yelping cannot be all that bad because he brings home too many turkeys to be simply depending on luck, and he is too honorable to be in the car window business . He has let himself be intellectually overwhelmed by perfection.

Contest turkey yelping is exactly that, an exhibition of perfection. If Mozart had ever heard it he would have composed sonatas for yelpers in addition to those he composed for violins and pianos.

In its way, contest yelping is much like watching, at close range, the touring pros on the PGA circuit play a round of golf.

Some years ago there was an early event on the tour that was held in Pensacola, 40 miles from my home. The purse was lucrative enough to attract the top professionals, but the event itself was not sufficiently prestigious to attract huge crowds of spectators. You could attend, pick a twosome that did not include somebody like Arnold Palmer or Gary Player, and follow them at a distance close enough to make you step back out of the way to let them play each shot. Watching those guys move the ball from right to left, fade and draw it at will, and get into and out of what looked to be insurmountable difficulties was not inspiring, it was humiliating. You knew you could never make shots like that if you had an extra hand, unlimited time and a brand new set of reflexes.

Contest yelping does the same thing as sub-par golf. Both activities overpower you with a show of proficiency that you know in your soul you cannot possibly duplicate. The fact of the matter and the saving grace in the whole act of calling, so far as turkey hunting is concerned, is you really don't have to duplicate anything.
You don't have to because real turkey hens just don't yelp that well.

I know it approaches sacrilege to say this, but most turkey hens would not win any calling contest I have ever attended. Many of them squeak and squawk as badly as a beginner struggling with his first box call.

Turkeys in all cases and under all conditions hear better than we do, see better than we do, and can fly away from suspicious situations. They do not let their attention wander, they don't leave equipment at home and they never lose their ability to concentrate. They never take themselves out of the game through carelessness or poor judgment, and they possess a positive genius in the ability to psych us out.

Absolutely the last thing we need to do is give them another weapon to club us over the head with, especially if it is the one thing we do about as well as they do. Unless your yelping sounds like a crow being strangled by an eagle, cadence, artistic sensibility and purity of tone finish a long way behind the ability to administer silence.

Silence at the proper time and not classical yelping techniques is the thing that buys shoes for the baby. Cross my heart and hope to die.

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