How to condition a slate call (and the striker that runs on it)

The routine, in five steps

1. Hold the pot by its sides, not by the playing surface. Skin oil is one of the two things that kills a pot call.
2. Pick the right abrasive for your surface. Slate and aluminum take a scrub pad; glass and crystal take sandpaper, drywall screen or a sanding stone.
3. Scuff in straight lines, back and forth in one direction across the whole area you play, until the finish is evenly dull (slate), matte (aluminum) or frosted white (glass and crystal).
4. Scuff the striker tip with fine sandpaper, or scrape it lightly, until it is clean and square rather than polished.
5. Wipe the dust away and run the call across the scratches, pulling the striker in the direction that crosses the lines you just made. It should bite immediately.

Five minutes at the kitchen table. The whole job is about restoring grip between two surfaces, which is the same principle as chalking a box call — see box call chalk and care for that version.

Why a surface goes slick

A pot call makes sound by friction: the striker grabs the surface, slips, grabs again, hundreds of times a second, and the pot amplifies it. Anything that reduces that grip takes the voice away. There are only four culprits.

• Polish from use. The surface gradually gets burnished smooth where you play it most.
• Skin oil. Primos is blunt about this on its own slate call: “Never touch the slate with your hand as natural oil will create a slick spot.” One fingerprint in the middle of the playing area is enough.
• Dust, grit and chalk. Dust from a vest pocket fills the scratches; chalk from a box call in the same pocket is worse.
• Water. A wet surface does not condition, it just turns the dust to paste. That is its own problem, covered below.

Makers treat conditioning as basic setup rather than a repair. Knight & Hale's instruction for its Slate Hammer is simply to “make sure the call is appropriately conditioned with the included scouring pad.” Primos says of its Jackpot that “keeping your Jackpot slate surface roughed up with the enclosed conditioning pad will produce the best results.” Both calls ship with the tool in the package, which is the strongest hint there is that this is a job you are expected to do before the first yelp.

The right abrasive for your surface

This is where most beginners go wrong, usually by taking the pad that came with a slate call to a glass one and concluding the glass call is a dud.

• Slate: the scouring pad or conditioning pad in the package. Slate is soft; it does not need and should not get coarse sandpaper. Aim for an evenly dull grey, with no shiny patch where you play.
• Aluminum: a scrub pad as well. Some anodized aluminum surfaces need nothing at all — Primos says its Rare Breed Aluminum “requires no conditioning, so it's ready to call out of the box.” Read the maker's page before you scuff an aluminum call.
• Glass and crystal: sandpaper, drywall screen or a sanding stone, per the NWTF. Phelps describes the motion for a stone on crystal or aluminum: run it “in a left to right motion until the crystal/aluminum appears white and frosted,” then run the striker top to bottom across those scratches. The frosted look is the test. Shiny glass will not talk.
• Two-sided calls: condition each side with its own tool. A glass-over-slate pot needs both the pad and the stone, which is worth knowing before you buy one — see best glass turkey calls.

Straight lines, not circles

The NWTF's instruction is specific and most hunters ignore it: “Run them in a straight line back and forth, not in circles.”

The reason is that the striker travels in a consistent direction when you call, and a surface scratched in one direction gives it a consistent bite. Circular scuffing leaves the grain running every way at once, so the call sounds slightly different depending on where in the stroke you are — which is exactly the inconsistency that makes a new caller think their hand is the problem.

The habit that goes with it: condition in one direction, then run the striker across those lines rather than along them. Phelps spells this out as scuffing left to right and then running the striker top to bottom. Keep your calling stroke in the same orientation every time and your yelp will be repeatable.

Condition the striker too

Half the people with a dead pot call have a clean surface and a polished striker tip. Primos is direct about it: “You must keep the tip of your striker clean and free of any build up.” The NWTF notes that “some prefer a light-grain sandpaper for this, and others use a pocket knife to gently scrape the tip.”

• Wood tips glaze over and pick up chalk and dust. Fine sandpaper, a few light passes, keeping the tip shape square rather than rounding it off.
• Carbon and synthetic tips need less. WoodHaven's Carbon Striker is a hollow carbon dowel under a maple head, built for “raspy, high pitched yelps and crisp cuts,” and the shaft does not soak up water the way bare wood does.
• Never oil a striker tip. Not furniture polish, not gun oil, nothing. Oil on a friction surface is unrecoverable without re-conditioning both parts.

One striker per surface is the upgrade most hunters notice more than a second call. Six of them are ranked in best slate call strikers.

How often, and how to tell

By symptom, not by schedule. Condition when the call tells you to:

• It slides silently under the striker: the surface is slick. Condition it.
• It squeaks or screeches rather than yelping: usually too much pressure, so lighten your grip first. The NWTF's pot-call instruction is to “rest the pot on your fingertips, and grip it so lightly that it could fall out if you turned your hand over,” using “light, even pressure to drag the striker across the call surface.”
• The tone has gone flat or dull: condition the surface and the tip, in that order.

Prevention beats repair. On NWTF call care, Steve Hickoff writes that “keeping calls clean is the best way I know to avoid having to condition frequently,” and he carries pot calls in drink koozies, which he says “make great pot and trough call protectors and reduce any rattling against other items.” A pot call in its own vest pocket, surface-up, conditioned at home before the season, is a call that will work on opening morning.

Four things that ruin a pot call

A wet call is a different problem

Conditioning does nothing for water. A soaked slate surface and a damp wood striker will not make a hen sound no matter how you scuff them, and wet slate conditions into mud.

The honest answer in rain is a different surface. Primos calls aluminum “the most weather-resistant calling surface” and publishes the fix: if it gets wet or oily, wipe it with an alcohol wipe, let it dry and keep calling. Knight & Hale sells a striker with a tip it says “performs in all weather conditions.” Dry the wood at room temperature with moving air, never on a heat vent, and read best waterproof turkey calls before the forecast makes the decision for you. Where the birds go on those mornings is in turkey hunting in the rain.

What to buy for this

Conditioning tools come in the box with most pot calls, so the useful purchases are the ones that reduce how often you need them. These three are scored on the rubrics published with our First-Season Score — the pot call on the call rubric, the two strikers on the accessory rubric, so their numbers are not interchangeable.

If your call did lose its pad, the NWTF's list is the shopping list: a scrub pad for slate and aluminum, sandpaper or a sanding stone for glass and crystal, and fine sandpaper for striker tips. None of it is turkey-specific or expensive. Keep a scrap of each in the vest; the conditioning you do at the truck at 5 a.m. is the conditioning that counts.