How to call a turkey for beginners: one call, four sounds, a practice plan

How to call a turkey: the beginner's path

Calling a turkey is a skill you build in steps, not a trick you buy. This guide, part of our turkey calls hub, lays out the path we suggest for a first season, built on the NWTF's beginner advice and each call maker's own instructions. We haven't hunted with these calls; the technique below is quoted or paraphrased from the people who make them, and the practice plan is our suggestion, not a published standard.

1. Pick one easy call. The NWTF says “beginners usually find a box call the easiest to get a consistent sound.” A push-button call is simpler still.
2. Learn four sounds: the yelp, cluck, purr and cutt.
3. Practice most days for about four weeks before opening day, soft and loud.
4. Learn a simple woods sequence: locate, set up, call soft, go quiet.
5. Add a second call type (a pot call, then a mouth call) once the first feels automatic.

Step 1: choose one call to learn first

The NWTF's Turkey Hunting 101 is refreshingly plain about this: “Start with one call. It doesn't have to be the most expensive box or pot call, just a good quality call will do the trick.” One call, learned well, beats four calls you half know. Here is how the four call types compare for a beginner. The learning-curve figures are the bands from our published scoring rubric (before the one-point bonus for maker beginner claims).

A push-button call is the gentlest start. Knight & Hale says of its HD Cutter that “you only need one finger to create authentic yelps, clucks, cuts, and purrs,” and H.S. Strut says its Push Button Yelper runs with one hand “so you can keep the other hand on your gun as a gobbler approaches.” The trade-off: Knight & Hale pitches the HD Cutter as a closing call for birds already near, not a long-range one. A box call reaches farther and is the NWTF's pick for a consistent sound. Either is a fine first call. Our ranked list of the best turkey calls for beginners compares all four types, and our push-button call picks cover the easiest type in detail.

Step 2: learn four sounds on the call in your hand

Four sounds carry most spring calling. The yelp is the everyday “where are you” call; the cluck gets a bird's attention; the purr is a relaxed, feeding bird; cutting is loud, excited clucking. (The NWTF's own starter list is cluck, purr, putt and yelp. We put cutting in the putt's place for practice, because the putt is an alarm call you make only with the gun ready.) For what every sound means and when turkeys make it, see our guide to turkey calls and what they mean. Here is how each maker says to make the four on its own call.

On a push-button call

Knight & Hale's instructions for the HD Cutter give a stroke length for every sound, which makes it the easiest call to practice by the numbers:

• Yelp: push the dowel 5 to 10 times with 1 in strokes.
• Cluck: quick ¼ in single taps.
• Cut: 3 to 5 pushes in quick succession, using short ¼ in strokes.
• Purr: one 1½ in stroke.

On a box call

Knight & Hale's technique for its HD Long Range Hen box: for a cluck, “pop the paddle off the body's lip with short strokes.” For a yelp, “slide the paddle across the body's lip in longer strokes in succession.” For cutting, “cluck repeatedly in fast numerous bursts.” For a purr, “slowly slide the paddle across the body with little downward pressure.”

Mind the chalk, and follow your own call's maker. Knight & Hale ships the HD Long Range Hen “hand-tuned and pre-chalked.” Lynch's care instructions for its wood box call say to keep the underside of the lid “well chalked with nontoxic oil-free dust chalk.” Waterproof boxes are different: Quaker Boy says its Hurricane “never needs sanding or chalking.” Our full box call walkthrough covers grip, chalk and the strokes in detail.

On a pot call

For its Slate Hammer, Knight & Hale says to condition the surface with the included scouring pad, cup the pot between index finger and thumb, and hold the striker “like a pencil at a 70-degree angle to call.” Its yelp is a short oval or circular stroke in ½ in lines, 5 to 7 times; the cluck is a very quick, straight ¼ in popping stroke; the purr is a slow, straight 1 in line; the cut is quick ¼ in strokes in a broken rhythm. For “the most consistent pitches and tone,” it says to use the upper third of the surface. Our guide to how to use a slate call goes further on strikers and surfaces.

On a mouth call

Leave this one for later unless you're patient. The NWTF's Mouth Call Madness says to “start with a two-reed call with no cuts in the top reed,” to “huff” air from your diaphragm rather than blow, and to “try to achieve a clear, high-pitched whistle (don't try to sound like turkey yet).” Its honest warning: “mouth calling takes a lot of practice and work.” No single-reed call made our registry, and Quaker Boy doesn't publish the cut on its Beginner's Double, though it says the two medium reeds are set “to help the beginner caller.” When you're ready, our guide on how to use a mouth call starts from placement.

Step 3: a four-week practice plan before opening day

Nobody publishes a standard for how long it takes to learn a call, and we won't pretend to. What follows is a plan we suggest for a first season: short sessions, most days, on one call.

How to call a turkey off the roost

This is the classic spring-morning question, and the NWTF's answer is mostly about restraint:

1. Locate him first. The NWTF says an owl hoot “gets the bird to gobble without using turkey sounds” and advises starting “about 30 minutes before sunrise.”
2. Set up without closing in. Wisconsin's DNR tells hunters to “never stalk a turkey, and don't try to approach closer than 100 yards to a gobbler.”
3. Talk softly while he's in the tree. The NWTF describes tree calling as “soft muffled yelps” that “let a gobbler on the roost know you are there,” and says a cluck can do the same “subtly.”
4. Tell him a hen is on the ground. The NWTF calls the fly-down cackle a “good call to tell a gobbler that a hen is on the ground.” Knight & Hale gives a cackle technique for its pot calls: quick, straight ¼ in strokes, 7 to 10 times.
5. Then go easy. Soft, spaced-out calling from here. Our guide to how often to call turkeys covers the cadence for the rest of the morning.

How to call turkeys in the spring: your first sequence

Once you're sitting against a tree (the NWTF says to find “a substantial tree to lean against”), its beginner guide sums up the whole plan in two sentences: “Start soft and slow with your calls. When you get an answer, you are in business.” From there, answer his gobbles with short series. The NWTF's calling-gaffes column says “a smart hunter should call just enough to keep the bird gobbling,” and that when a gobbler is walking to you, “no calling at all is the best call.” If he stops coming, change the message: a cluck, then a cluck and purr, then cutting if soft calls have failed. Our pillar guide to how to turkey hunt for beginners puts calling in the context of the whole season, from scouting to the shot.

What to look for in a first turkey call

• Instructions you can follow. A maker that publishes technique for each sound, as Knight & Hale does on its product pages, gives you something to practice against.
• A beginner claim from the maker. Our rubric adds a point when a maker explicitly markets a call as easy or for beginners, because that maker is promising a gentler learning curve in writing.
• A named sound list. The four sounds in Step 2 should be on it.
• A plan for wet mornings. Chalked wood boxes and slate pots carry no weather claim. If you hunt in rain a lot, look for a maker's waterproof claim.
• One call or a kit? A kit lets you try every type before you commit, but you pay for calls you may never use. One good call is enough for year one.

One honest alternative: Quaker Boy's H2O Easy Yelper scores slightly higher than the HD Cutter (7.9 vs 7.6) because Quaker Boy calls it waterproof and says it “requires no chalking.” If you hunt a lot of rainy mornings, it's the better push-button buy; we lead with the HD Cutter here only because Knight & Hale's printed stroke lengths make it easier to practice by the numbers, while Quaker Boy lists no specific sounds for the H2O. If you'd rather start on a box, our best box call rankings compare the field.