When a Turkey Calls

The history of callmaking and how it shaped turkey hunting in Missouri

Spend the night in an Ozark holler and you have a good chance of waking up to the echoes of gobbling toms and calling hens. It’s rough country, with clear streams, steep ridges, and views that you won’t soon forget. Missouri’s Ozarks were central to the reintroduction of the wild turkey nationwide. This region is also home to a long history of turkey callmaking that helped to shape turkey hunting as we know it today. 

The 1930s saw the conception of the Missouri Department of Conservation and soon after, the official closing of turkey hunting. Widespread habitat loss and overexploitation by market hunters caused the turkey population in Missouri to dwindle to an estimated 2,500 individuals by 1952. 

The recovery effort took off when birds were trapped from areas with known turkey populations and transferred to 213 sites in 91 counties where sufficient habitat existed for them to gain a foothold. The local communities where relocation occurred helped by improving habitat, leaving extra grain on field edges, and reporting poaching so that spring gobbles could be heard echoing in the woods again. 

Thanks to Missouri hunters, biologists, and landowners, turkey numbers rebounded and in 1960, the first turkey season since 1937 was opened.

There followed a boom in interest for turkey hunting. At the time, however, commercialized turkey calls were not readily available for most people, and neither was information on how to effectively call or hunt turkeys. The Ozarks, most famously Shannon County, is a haven for turkey calling tradition and soon became one of the most iconic locations for turkey hunters and turkey calls nationwide. 

A Distinctive Style

It’s easy to take for granted the mass production and development of turkey calls in today’s callmaking market. Every sporting goods store and Walmart will have a mouth, slate, or box call available to buy. Initially, however, turkey calling and callmaking itself were niche skills. 

Brent Rogers, an avid turkey call collector and historian, said that some of the old timers would use leaves as a primitive mouth call. They also would drive a square-headed nail with slate or soap stone to use as a friction call. Rogers has an extensive personal collection of calls from the Eminence area, with calls from the likes of Dan Searcy, David Ferguson, carving work by Jack Burrus, and more. 

“The Eminence tradition of turkey callmaking has a very distinctive style,” Rogers said. “Many have come to appreciate Eminence long boxes, adorned with artistic renderings in the form of woodburning, paintings, or carvings of local scenes. They combine the value of small-batch appeal, similar to bourbon, with the notoriety of an instantly recognizable brand. The late Earl Mickel was a notable turkey call collector whose 1994 book, Turkey Callmakers Past and Present: Mick’s Picks, was perfectly timed to inspire many new collectors during a new Golden Age of wild turkey hunting and callmaking. His coverage of Eminence makers, as well as the popularity of Neil Cost’s long boxes, which were Eminence-inspired, was a one-two punch.”

Bill Jensen, a callmaker who grew up hunting in the St. Francis Mountains with his father, recalled a similar technique being used. 

“The best leaf was a greenbrier vine leaf,” Jensen said. “They wouldn’t leaf out during the season, but the cherry leaves would green up.” 

The technique was similar to modern tube calls, and they would also use snuff cans and dried gourds to achieve a similar effect. 

They did use box calls to hunt as well, and Jensen said the box calls that his father and his friends used were very compact compared to the larger box calls that became the symbol of turkey callmaking in Eminence. 

The style of box calls that became most associated with the Ozarks were called fence post, longbox, and boat paddle calls. The terms boat paddle and longbox refer to the larger size of the box calls from Shannon County. While not all the calls fit this pattern, they tended to be significantly longer and as time went on, had a handle not only on the lid of the call, but also on the box itself. Rogers credits Robert Searcy with the first handled box call with known provenance. 

Fence post calls are exactly what the name implies. Callmakers would take cedar fence posts, which provided a source of easily accessible, already dried wood, and make turkey calls out of them. Cecil Fry is credited with coming up with the term. In a conversation with Fry and callmaker Walter Winterbottom, reported by Del Kruzan, the two had gone on a hunt together. After a tough, cloudy morning with no gobbling, Fry told Winterbottom that he needed to go back to his car to get his “caller.” He returned with the biggest box call Winterbottom had ever seen and when Winterbottom asked him what it was, he said, “I call it my cedar fence post caller.”

An Ozark Tradition

The tradition of callmaking didn’t start with the 1960 turkey season. For families like the Searcys, their connection to turkey calls stretches back to the early 1900s. 

“Most people made their own calls because they weren’t broadly available,” says Robert Searcy, Shannon County resident, whose father and grandfather made turkey calls. 

One call from Searcy’s grandfather is dated 1912, before Missouri turkey seasons were shut down in 1937. That call, as reported in a 2004 Rural Missouri article, was given to Searcy’s father, Dan, around 1943 by a friend who said, “Your dad made me this turkey call. There won’t ever be any more turkeys in this country, so I’ll just give you this call.”

It’s likely thanks to this ironic evaluation of turkey populations that the call wasn’t lost to time and has been preserved by the Searcy family. 

A fascinating tidbit of history from that same article is that the elder Robert Searcy took Dan Searcy to Kansas City when he graduated high school to enroll him in the Kansas City Art Institute. Discouraged because he felt he was too far behind the other students, Searcy quit after just four days. While he may not have recognized his artistic talent at the time, Searcy’s skill in both the technical and artistic aspects of callmaking are undeniable. He has been featured in articles in the Kansas City Star, his calls have made it all across the states and are still highly sought after by collectors. 

David Ferguson, a callmaker and historian who lives in the Eminence area, was encouraged to start building calls by Searcy after a 2008 hunting camp where they were sharing stories about fence post calls and the history of the area. Now, Ferguson’s calls are highly sought after, have won multiple awards, and have been featured in film and in articles. 

When talking about the fence post calls, he said, “The old timers would cut those straight cedar poles for fence posts. They lasted forever. Harley and Art Patterson had a place up there … he was older than my grandpa and grandma, but that’d put it about the early 1920s when they were driving them posts in the fields up there. Those posts are still standing.” 

Few other places can so definitively claim a unique contribution to turkey hunting history. 

 “The Eminence area has produced more noted turkey callmakers than any other area in the country,” said Earl Mickel, collector and author of Turkey Callmakers: Past and Present. Walter Winterbottom, Dan Searcy, Swiney Rayfield, Cecil Fry, Clarence Huffman, Jake McCormick, Jack Burrus, and others have contributed and helped pass on their callmaking heritage.”

Eminence quickly became a destination spot, drawing hunters, writers, and callmakers who wanted to experience chasing birds in the iconic terrain and for many hunters, pick up a locally made call. Many of turkey hunting’s most recognizable names, from Dick Kirby, Rob Keck, and Earl Mickel, made pilgrimages to the area. All of them left with stories they’d remember for a lifetime. 

Calling Competitions

Before turkey calling knowledge became broadly publicized through books, articles, television, and social media, calling competitions served as the main hub for callers, hunters, and callmakers to learn from each other. 

The first turkey calling contest in Eminence, according to Del Kruzan’s article, Callmakers of Eminence, was held in 1968, the year of the Eminence Centennial. Dan Searcy won first place in the contest and was featured in the local paper. Kruzan credits this competition as the emergence point for Dan’s journey as a callmaker, though he wouldn’t sell a call until 1994, with the exception of a pair of calls sold to a visiting Chicago woman for $15. 

Callmaking competitions started popping up everywhere, such as the Festus-Crystal City Conservation Club Calling Competition, which is the longest running competition in the state. 

“Every community, every small town across the midwest had a turkey calling contest,” said Ray Eye, outdoors communicator, award winning caller, and all-around turkey hunting legend. “It was a big deal … we would start turkey calling contests in January and go all the way through April. Some of the local contests, like Steelville and Potosi, would go through turkey season … it wasn’t unusual to have 600 people in the audience.” 

Calling competitions became a central aspect of turkey hunting culture, bringing people together and breathing life to the upstart industry of turkey callmaking. Even though turkey callmaking has gone mainstream, the craft is still being celebrated by private collectors, events such as the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Grand National Callmaking Contest, and local calling contests. 

Keeping the Stories Alive

A number of calls from Shannon County callmakers can be viewed in person, both at the Shannon County Museum and the Twin Pines Conservation Education Center. David Ferguson helped to create these exhibits. Visitors are welcome at both; Twin Pines is open Wednesday and Thursday from 8 a.m.–5 p.m. and the Shannon County Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m.–1 p.m. 

“Turkey hunters are very passionate about their pursuit, valuing both the experience of the hunt and the tools that are part of that chess match with a wily gobbler,” Brent Rogers said. “The leap from call owner to call collector isn’t a big one, as most turkey hunters have their favorite calls or favorite callmakers. Turkey callmaking is actually a uniquely American art form, as wild turkeys are only native to North America. From Native American wingbones thousands of years old to 20th century Eminence calls, there is a story told through turkey calls. It encompasses communication between species, our roots as people of the land, and tool-making innovation and craftsmanship.”

To learn more about callmaking history, the Callmakers and Collectors Association of America, which has cataloged historical information on a variety of callmakers, offers a quarterly newsletter and hosts multiple events every year. Brent Rogers has published an exhaustive history of turkey call making, The Origin and Evolution of Turkey Calls. Rogers shared a new resource for those interested in learning more about the history of turkey calls. 

“A new organization has just been formed to preserve and promote history related to the wild turkey,” shared Rogers. “The American Wild Turkey Historical Foundation has just rolled out a digital museum called the Wild Turkey Archives at AWTHF.org. While we aspire to have a physical museum in the future, we will be continuously building free online content featuring photos, audio, and video of all things wild turkey, from the Native Americans to the present.” 

The National Wild Turkey Federation also hosts a callmaking competition at its yearly national convention, which can be a great place to find calls from Missouri callmakers and network with other collectors and calling enthusiasts. 

Gilbert Randolph is a writer and an avid outdoorsman. When he’s not creating stories in the digital space, he’s exploring nature and sharing it with people.