At last, opening day of turkey season is visible at a glance on my wall calendar without flipping pages. Turkey season, for most hunters, is the true beginning of the hunting year. For me, it is a time to take stock of my gear and prepare for the kick-off of my hunting season.
One, of many things, that I start doing several weeks prior to opening day is practice with my turkey calls. There are several things that are crucial for turkey hunting, but the most important are calls. The type of call you choose will not only be determined by the type you prefer, but also by your skill level of using the various styles of calls. The most imperative thing to look for in any call is its ability to mimic true sounds and the capability of doing that at varying levels – from soft to loud.
Although I use a variety of calls (box call, slate and striker and diaphragm calls), I prefer a diaphragm call because it uses the least amount of movement and allows freedom of both hands for your shotgun or bow. This makes it possible to use the call when the turkeys are within vision range of the hunter without the hunter being detected.
It is imperative that the diaphragm call fits properly for the user to get different tones and pitches from it. Most women hunters have difficulty in finding a good-fitting call. It is obvious that men and women are physically built differently; our mouths are even different. Most women have higher, narrower roof palates. Most call makers suggest you “cut the tape” which does the trick if it is the tape that is too big. The frame is usually the culprit in many cases; which is always my case. Searching for youth or mini frame calls led me to Woodhaven Custom Calls.
Woodhaven Custom Calls Stinger Pro Series has small frame calls perfect for women turkey hunters. The Stinger Pro Series small frame calls include three popular calls: Mini Red Scorpion, Mini Yellow Ghost and Mini Green V. The small frame was a perfect fit after I trimmed the tape some. The Mini Red Scorpion is an excellent call for varying levels of yelps, cutting, kee-kees, clucks and purrs. The Mini Yellow Ghost was able to soften those sounds, yet had the raspy tone of mature or dominant hens. The Mini Green V was the easiest for me to use and emitted a raspy cutting, cackling and a superior fly down cackle.
Before you ever have the need to use a diaphragm call, you have to locate a turkey. Woodhaven Custom Calls have two outstanding locator calls: the Real Crow call and the Real Hawk call. Crows are more pronounced in the South; therefore, I field tested the Real Crow call. The first thing I noticed about this call when I took it out of the packaging was the call’s beautiful and smooth wood. The call came on its own lanyard and was not heavy or bulky, making it cumbersome to wear or clip onto a turkey vest. The call looked more like a piece of art than a game call, but as pretty as it was, could it do the job?
The plastic mouth piece was the perfect size making the call easy to use. In the past, I have tried plastic crow calls and the one thing I noticed was the sound they emitted seemed whiney or echoed a higher pitch in the sounding chamber, similar to a party horn. The calls I tested in the past did not have a true sound of crow whaling in flight. The Real Crow call was not pitchy and the sound was the same every breath no matter how soft or hard you worked it. You could raise the sound of the call without changing the tone.
Rapid calls in succession were easy to make without having to worry about accidentally making an off sound when inhaling. The Woodhaven Real Crow call was the easiest and most realistic crow call I had ever worked.
You can purchase the 3-pack Stinger Pro Series Small Frame Mini set for $19.99 and The Real Crow locator call for $39.99. You can see these calls and other custom products that Woodhaven Custom Calls has to offer at their website www.woodhavencustomcalls.com. You can even order a catalog from the homepage and sign up for the email list to receive future news, product releases or product specials.
The Woodhaven Custom Calls product line is tried and true and the outstanding quality of these calls was evident when put through the test at the 34th Annual NWTF Convention in Nashville, Tenn., where callers competed for the Grand National Championship. Woodhaven Custom Calls was used in four of the Championships taken; Poult, Junior, Senior Open and Friction.
Endorsement Disclosure: Per the guidelines of the Federal Trade Commission, this product review is an endorsement and the writer was compensated by “in-kind” payment to review the product.
The Women's Outdoor News, aka The WON, features news, reviews and stories about women who are shooting, hunting, fishing and actively engaging in outdoor adventure. This publication is for women, by women. View all posts by The WON
