Self-Critiquing Your Calling: How the Pros Do It
You might think your yelping sounds good, but some high-tech help and a dose of real hen talk can provide more honest feedback.
As turkey hunters progress along their calling journey, many want to know if they’re improving and how their yelping stacks up to the real thing.
However, you don’t always have a vocal gobbler or hunting buddy nearby to provide feedback, so you must critique your own sound. That can be tough unless you go about it correctly, but modern technology has made the job easier.
“I love recording myself and then overlaying it with real hens,” said champion caller and WoodHaven Custom Calls pro-staffer Scott Ellis. “If you are improving your calling ability, you’ll start noticing how you blend with wild birds. Also, just recording yourself and listening to your cadence and tone will help you make changes to add to realism.”
Fellow WoodHaven pro-staffer and champion caller Steve Stoltz uses a similar method when prepping mouth calls for hunting or competition.
“I will try to run the call about 15 feet back from my iPhone in either the audio recording mode or video mode,” he said. “Either one will give very accurate feedback on the sound quality of the call. I will try to do this outside if possible. This gives a more accurate version of the call. I will then compare it back-to-back or overlay the call with audio or video of a real live turkey. If the call is very close to or matches live turkeys, I’m definitely going to mark that call with a little star on the back.”
Ellis said overlaying sound files of your calling with vocalizations from live hens can actually provide a step-by-step guide for improvement.
“Once you have found a hen that you feel you can duplicate with tone, then go to rhythm,” he said. “Next, regardless of the device you chose to lean on in the woods, you must be able to create the desired call on demand. Master all the vocabulary of the hen. When you can create the sounds on demand, you need to start learning when to use which call.”
Some hunters fall short with self-critique because they can’t quite pinpoint what they’re listening for. Ellis said that’s why comparing your calling to that of hens is even more important.
“Some people just can’t hear what they are trying to duplicate,” he said. “But when played along with real hens, I feel it helps them align their calling with the real thing.”
Stoltz doesn’t stop there when critiquing calls. Like many callers nowadays, he shares sound files with other high-level competitors, keeping those tracks to a minute or less.
“I will send the sound file to one or more of my turkey calling buddies for a final critique and approval,” he said. “Keith Wahlig, Chris Parrish, Scott Ellis, Randy Panek, Jason Conrad and Jesse Martin are all champion callers who will cut no slack on whether or not the call has what it takes. Do I trust my own ear? The answer is I trust my own ear the best, but I just like to get a confirmation or validation, so to speak.”
When Stoltz identifies yelpers intended for each call required in a contest — hen yelp, kee-kee or others — that sound close to a real hen and have received approval from his peers, he marks those with a second star. And when he has two of each, he feels confident that he’s bringing his best to the stage and the woods.