The Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center plans a special turkey hunting workshop that will focus on turkey calling at 6 p.m. March 8.
Participants will learn the basics of how to attract turkeys with a friction call and build their own call.
The yelp of a hen turkey may sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to some people, but to male turkeys it's a siren song. Over the years, hunters have imitated these sounds with all sorts of instruments, but one of the most popular is a wooden striker dragged across a piece of slate or glass that's mounted on a soundboard to amplify the vibration.
Participants in this workshop will use materials provided by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to create their own working call under the direction of Chad Lowe, a Game and Fish education program specialist and turkey hunter.
"We'll give workshop attendees the slate material as well as a plastic base and a soundboard to glue together," Lowe said. "We'll also make our own strikers from oak dowels. Then we'll rough up the surface of the slate with a piece of sandpaper and start working on our technique."
Lowe said many different sounds can be made from the slate call that will be created, and they can be extremely effective with a little practice.
Workshop attendees also will learn about turkey anatomy and their life history. The more knowledge hunters have about their target, the more they can adjust their hunting techniques to increase success.
"The nature center has 10 to 15 hunting-focused workshops similar to this on all sorts of species each year in addition to all the standard outreach we offer," Lowe said. "We try to offer a good balance of watchable wildlife, boating and paddling as well as hands-on hunting and angling here at the nature center."
Lowe jokingly calls his call collection his "arsenal."
"There's no telling which sound a particular gobbler will respond to best, so I carry a variety of calls to sound like different birds," Lowe said. "But one of the best calling techniques I have is to just go and listen before you start trying to entice a gobbler. If you can find a bird that is already calling naturally, he's going to be much more receptive to your sounds."
Sports on 02/26/2019