Spring Hunting Tip: Get High To Get More Turkeys

High-frequency calls will probably attract more toms than low-register sounds.

Mark Drury of M.A.D. Calls believes high-frequency sounds produce more gobbling from distant turkeys and gets more of them in shooting range.

If you hunt turkeys, you have probably noticed that birds respond to some calls better than others. Also, you probably know that the way you use a call makes a big difference in how the birds act. I have identical Lynch box calls, yet one draws a lot more gobbles than the other. Also, I have noticed that if I cut loudly and aggressively with my favorite mouth call, it will make a gobbler who has ignored everything else cut loose. When the Primos Power Crow locator call came out, it made birds gobble more than other crow calls I have used, particularly when I adjusted it for a loud, high-pitched sound. I have often wondered why.

Mark Drury of M.A.D. Calls may know the answer: He believes higher-pitched calls produce more results than other products.

“All my life I migrated toward higher-pitched calls,” the Columbia, Missouri-based call maker said. “I never knew how high they were or why the turkeys liked them. I just knew that they would gobble at the higher-pitched calls, so I used them.

“Then, in the spring of 1994, Paul Rishel, a good friend of mine from Pennsylvania, showed up on a hunt with a silent dog whistle that really made turkeys gobble, and I started to put it together.”

Mark started experimenting with dog whistles and found some of the whistles worked while others did not. He set out to find out why.

“We went to the University of Missouri in Columbia to the speech and hearing department,” Drury said. “I had a veterinarian friend who helped me get in by telling them he was interested in researching what turkeys can hear. They allowed us to use their spectrogram on several different visits.

“We found that dog whistles ran from 5,000 Hz to 25,000 or 30,000 Hz. Those that made turkeys gobble were in the mid-teens frequency range, about 12,000 Hz to 15,000 Hz. The one that Paul had was right at 15,000 Hz. We found that the better, more expensive calls worked far better than the cheaper ones. That was simply because the cheap dog whistles didn’t hit the higher frequencies.”

Drury soon put what he learned into production, creating the Dead Silence locator call, which became available in the spring of 1995.

The whistle, which can be tuned to hit frequencies over 16,000 Hz, can’t be heard by humans from more than a few yards away. Yet, it will make a turkey gobble at 300 yards. If you can’t hear it at all, you are probably above 20,000 Hz, which is too high for the best performance on turkeys. The Dead Silence call sounds like something the turkeys have never heard in their lives, and the shock makes them gobble.

With the discovery that hunters can shock a turkey into gobbling by hitting 15,000 Hz frequency, he wondered if the same high frequency would call turkeys in as well. “Our coyote howler, like the Dead Silence, hits 15,000 Hz, and it will make a bird gobble, but it’s strictly a locator, not an attractor call,” he said. “To call a turkey in, we needed to reproduce the hen’s sound. The high frequency simply helps to take the sound farther and clearer, but it still needs to sound like a hen.”

He taped hens yelping and cutting and found that the hens often hit frequencies as high as 15,000 Hz. This was particularly true when the hens were cutting and excited. Most diaphragm calls, particularly two- and three-reed latex calls, hit between 4,000 to 6,000 Hz, with a peak of 10,000 Hz. Most slate and glass calls peak between 10,000 to 12,000 Hz, but many are lower. Box calls vary with the grain of the wood. The tighter the grain, the higher the pitch.

Drury bought his own spectrogram and tested lots of materials, searching for the item that could make turkey sounds at the high frequencies he wanted. He remembered that Ben Lee’s Super Hen call used a strip of aluminum that was worked with a Plexiglas peg. It turned out that aluminum sounded like a turkey and also hit 15,000- Hz frequencies. Armed with that information, Drury experimented with various grades and thicknesses of aluminum until he found one that produced the results he wanted. The resulting Super Aluminator call uses an acoustical pot, similar to those used in slate and glass calls, in tandem with a hickory striker. Carbon strikers also produced great results.

But do they work in the field?

What We Found
Talk is cheap, and every manufacturer will say his call is the best. But field tests we have conducted at the Omaha Indian Reservation in eastern Nebraska and in Missouri have shown us that birds gobbled at Drury’s Dead Silence locator calls when they ignored everything else. Not just once, but time and again. They also came to the Super Aluminator when nothing else worked. One staff member took a 23-pound Merriam’s turkey at the reservation, and we saw hunters in Missouri double-team a reluctant bird during a morning hunt filled with screaming-high winds. They called almost 2 hours to pull the 251/2-pound tom as close as eleven steps. Based on these experiences, we are convinced that the calls’ high-frequency sounds play a role in taking more toms.

“High frequency is another piece of the puzzle,” Drury said. “It is certainly a breakthrough in turkey-call designs, but it’s not a magical cure. For some reason today’s turkey hunter wants the easy way out. It’s still not going to help you take any turkeys if you don’t know what you are doing out there in the woods. You still have to pattern your birds and know the woodsmanship stuff that goes along with the sport of turkey hunting. But you can make more turkeys gobble more often with high-frequency turkey calls. Higher-pitched sounds travel farther and faster and with a clearer signal. The sound is cleaner when it reaches the bird, and the turkey will gobble at it quicker.

“I think that’s why we are striking more turkeys with the Super Aluminator call. The sound is traveling farther—it’s really that simple.”

Also With This Article
Click here to view "High-Frequency Test."
Click here to view "Contacts."
Click here to view "Other Conclusions."

-By Bryce M. Towsley