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Photo courtesy of Jesse's Hunting Page and Gear Review


Wingbones--An Appreciation of Sorts


Bone calls or "flutes" are most likely the world's oldest turkey callers, unless you count the human voice (I don't) or hollow sticks or reeds (it's possible).

One marvels at the ingenuity of native hunters of old, and wonders how they ever figured out that sucking on hollowed out bird bones produced turkey sounds. But they figured it out, and we're still using them, though certainly with varying degrees of success. For unlike most friction calls, which certainly deserve the description "user-friendly," wingbones are not the easiest calls to master. For some of us who learned to make passable turkey sounds on the slate, box, and diaphragm calls with relative ease, learning to use the wingbone, and use it well, has proven most frustrating indeed.

How many times have I given up after countless hours, red in the face, as much from frustration as lack of oxygen? How many times have I wanted to give my prized wingbone call to my young son who is just learning the ins and outs of using a hammer? How many times have I kept going, out of a sense of--what?--to be rewarded with a not altogether unacceptable cluck, a fair imitation of a kee-kee, a mediocre yelp that I seem to have made by accident and, try as I might, can't duplicate.

Ever seethed with envy at your buddy or your kid or your mother-in-law who can make your wingbone sing like an entire flock of love-starved hens? Only to take it back and produce, at best, a half-hearted string of chirps that don't resemble turkeys so much as a young loon with laryngitis.

After months of practice I still can't play the danged thing with confidence or skill, and I've had the best advice from everybody who'd give it. Sometimes it seems as though the turkey's tendency to make a fool of the hunter is somehow genetic, deep in their very bones, whether those bones are still attached to the living creature or not! This is how they get even with us even after they were foolhardy enough to step in front of our buffered, copper-plated magnum loads of fours, fives, and sixes. It's the sort of thing that gets you chastised by your wife when she finds you out on the front step in your underwear at midnight, still trying to make the damned thing yelp. The neighbors tend to keep their distance, too. Even your children start looking at you funny. And--here's the rub-- you neither notice or care!

But long after the season's ended, long into August and looking at September, after my box calls and slates have been put up on the shelf and are gathering dust, and the diaphragms are either long gone or stored in the fridge 'til next spring, and my mind's already drifting toward October squirrels and the opening of bow season, and we're about as far away from turkey season as it gets in Alabama, I can still be heard sucking on that wingbone.

Nope, they ain't easy. Neither is hunting turkeys, or doing anything else worthwhile, for that matter.

But ain't it fun to try!



Photo Courtesy Jim Groenier of Groenier's Custom Calls

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