If I favored basketball, it could be past cool to discover ways to shoot a leap shot from Michael Jordan. However I like turkey looking, and the Michael Jordan of turkey calling is Matt Van Cise. He’s received 16 Grand Nationwide Calling Championships, which incorporates 9 open-division and 4 friction-calling wins. On prime of being the turkey calling GOAT, Van Cise can be the customized name maker behind High Class Calls.
On this episode of the Out of doors Life podcast, I talked with Van Cise about the whole lot from selecting a pot name to the refined tips he makes use of so as to add realism to his calling.
How one can Select a Slate Name
I began looking with customary manufacturing pot calls, and as I turned extra focused on turkey looking, I purchased a Woodhaven. Then I discovered about name corporations like Hanks Sport Calls and David Halloran Turkey Calls. These smaller name corporations received me focused on customized calls, which led to a dizzying array of choices. With a customized name, I may choose the pot, soundboard, and floor elements from an enormous menu of unique woods and supplies
So, I wished to see what Van Cise thought of discovering the proper floor, pot, soundboard, and striker.
Van Cise says that slate is all the time a terrific place to begin for a brand new turkey caller as a result of it’s so forgiving. Slate isn’t a simple choice as a result of you possibly can select from inexperienced, purple, purple, and black slate — all have refined sound variations. Years in the past, Van Cise didn’t look after black slate, however that has modified as an inflow of high-quality black slate turned accessible.
“What’s on the market now’s higher than something I’ve ever ran,” he says.
Aluminum is a floor that’s gained quite a lot of reputation lately, however even that steel produces nuanced variations in sound.
“The place you get the distinction in aluminum is the completely different grades,” Van Cise says. “The tougher aluminum will sound completely different than the softer aluminum.”
Van Cise’s favourite pot name surfaces are aluminum, ceramic, and slate, and he prefers calls with a physique made out of walnut.
“Walnut works effectively with the whole lot,” he says. “An excellent name maker informed me that in case you can’t get the turkey out of walnut or cherry, you possibly can’t get it out of something.”
Van Cise additionally says that unique woods are extra for appears to be like and since they’re denser supplies, name makers have to regulate their designs barely. He says that aluminum works effectively with these denser supplies and that ceramic might be finicky to get good.
The ultimate possibility in a pot name is the soundboard, a skinny piece of fabric that rests slightly below the taking part in floor. Van Cise doesn’t discover an enormous distinction with completely different sound boards on glass and slate calls. However, various thicknesses of wooden soundboards could make an enormous distinction as a result of they’re usually thicker and sit nearer to the taking part in floor.
“A number of instances that may tighten a name up,” he says. “And by that, I imply it should carry it slightly greater, and it’ll break tougher.”
To make issues easy, I requested Van Cise to spec out his three favourite pot calls. He stated:
- Slate floor, glass soundboard, and a walnut pot
- A canary wooden pot with an aluminum floor
- A padauk pot with a ceramic and a copper soundboard to mellow the sound
Selecting a Striker
An excellent pot name is nothing with no good striker. Van Cise says you simply should attempt a bunch and see what works greatest. However he depends closely on Diamondwood strikers for all his calls. He additionally likes bloodwood, yellowheart, and hickory.
You possibly can select between a one or two-piece striker and a straight, flared, or rounded tip. Van Cise usually goes for a one-piece striker as a result of he finds it balances higher, however he talked about that two-piece strikers don’t sound a lot completely different. For yelping, he prefers a flared tip.
Customized vs Manufacturing Calls
I like something handmade, so naturally, I gravitated towards customized calls. Surprisingly, they’re no more costly in comparison with a high-end manufacturing name. Van Cise says there’s much less of a distinction in efficiency than you may assume, and all of it depends upon what you’re searching for.
“In the event you go to Walmart and purchase a plastic Primos pot, a few of these are actually good,” he says. “However all of them have an identical sound — they’re constant. While you need to step to the subsequent degree, that’s if you get right into a Woodhaven.”
Van Cise says there’s no actual distinction in sound between a premium manufacturing name like a Woodhaven and a customized name. The benefit of a customized pot is a unique-sounding name and an total higher-quality construct.
“While you’re solely doing 100 calls a 12 months, there’s slightly extra room for consideration to element,” he says.
While you work with a customized name builder, you’ll be capable of hear a number of calls and choose the one which has the sound that you simply’re particularly searching for. While you purchase a manufacturing name, they’ll all typically sound the identical. That slight distinction will help you win a championship or shut the deal on an previous tom.
Learn Subsequent: Best Slate Calls
How one can Make Sensible Sounds on a Pot Name
The entire purpose for locating the best turkey call after which matching it to a striker is to make practical turkey sounds. My query for Van Cise was how do I’m going about including slightly extra realism to my calling
“Primary is being acquainted with a turkey’s vocabulary,” he says. Which means realizing exactly what the completely different turkey vocalizations sound like. Most individuals know what a yelp seems like, however in all probability not all of the subtlety inside a collection of yelps.
“On a regular basis, I get guys who say, ‘Nicely, I don’t should hearken to turkeys, I do know what they sound like.’ Nicely, I feel I do know all of the phrases to a music I heard 5 years in the past too, till the music comes on.”
Although we don’t precisely know what we’re saying to a turkey, we’re nonetheless speaking. So fairly than imitating a name you heard your buddy make, hearken to actual turkeys. He says Turkeys for Tomorrow and the National Wild Turkey Federation have nice sources on their websites, YouTube, and TikTok. One other nice possibility are the DVDs from Denny Gulvas, assuming you’ve nonetheless received one thing to look at them on.
As you hearken to these recordings, you’ll discover turkeys use various quantities of inflection relying on what they’re attempting to say. Consider a plain yelp versus an excited hen yelp.
“It’s about feeling, and inflection is feeling,” Van Cise says. “Some guys assume pace is inflection. It’s not. If I’m attempting to emphasise a degree, you’ll hear my voice change. A turkey is identical method.”
Van Cise says which you could regulate the way you maintain the pot to make these inflections. “I’ll open and shut my hand to get these pitch adjustments,” he says. “I may range my pitches simply by various the strain on the striker.”
In the event you watch the GNCC friction finals, you’ll see rivals take away their fingers from the aspect of the pot and put them again as they run by a calling sequence. That’s one instance of how one can barely change the decision’s tone so as to add realism.
Van Cise did one thing much more attention-grabbing whereas gobbler yelping on the 2024 GNCC. He put a towel on his hand.
“That concept goes again to the early 80s, it was one thing that Denny Gulvas did and informed me about,” he says. He defined that the towel removes the ringing sound from a name and produces a extra pure, guttural sound.
“In my bag I had two towels that had been the very same [type of] towel,” he says. “[But] one was softer than the opposite and also you’d be shocked how a lot completely different the softer one made the decision sound. It improved it over the opposite one.”
The way you maintain the striker may impression your sound. Basically, Van Cise holds the striker nearer to the tip for softer, extra managed calls like purrs, and better up for extra aggressive calls like a combating purr.
He did supply up one professional tip: “I take sports activities tape and put it on the striker for a greater grip,” he says. “It retains the striker from sliding and provides you extra management.”
The Upshot
My large takeaways from speaking to the turkey calling GOAT are that learning actual turkey sounds and experimenting with my calls to copy these sounds will enhance my calling. And I’m fairly positive I additionally discovered that I ought to order a ceramic and black slate calls, plus a number of extra Diamondwoods strikers. Simply in case.
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