Catawba Valley Calls
Jeff Sipe,call maker and contest caller,has been hunting turkeys for 25 yrs.He has been calling competively on the local,state,and national level for several years now.He also enjoys the art of making turkey calls which include;mouth calls, boxcalls, wingbones,and slates.The craftmanship,detailed art work,and especially the realistic tones are what sets his calls apart.
Jeff is very good at making mouth calls to work with different individuals tones of calling.He made the cutting call that Lance Hanger of VA used to help him clinch the Grand National Intermediate Division Championship in Nashville TN Feb.2007.
For turkey hunting, is it the call or the caller?
By Tony Robinson
The News Herald, Morganton N.C.
From Florida to Maine and California to Washington State by way of Hawaii, there’s a springtime hunting phenom-ena sweeping this country.
It is called “wild turkey hunting.”
Somewhere in all the states, except Alaska and a few Canadian Provinces, hunters off all ages and walks of life slip into the woods between late March and the end of May.
Dressed in full camo, with only their eyes visible, they blend into their surroundings in wait of the first light of a new day. The three things that they will all have in common are a shotgun, camo and at least one turkey call of some type. The problem though is that they all do not know how to use the call. So the question of the day might be, is it the call or the caller?
I remember going on a hunt one morning last spring with veteran turkey hunter Spence Shew of Lenoir, maker of “Bag Limit Box Calls.” Before the first rays of light were hitting the Caldwell County hill tops, Shew had used one of his high volume wooden box calls to call in a big tom from at least a half a mile away in just a few minutes.
Listening to Spence call I kept thinking to myself, “I believe I can make that sound with the right call.” Then I heard Jeff Sipe of Conover at the CVWC Hunting and Fishing Day this past fall using a diaphragm call. Not only did I think that there was no way under the sun I could ever do what he could do but it didn’t even seem humanly possi-ble. He even sounded more real than a real turkey.
So I called up the one hunter I knew that would know the answer, Harry Wilfong, of Newton. Now Wilfong is no ordinary turkey hunter. He has be pursuing turkeys since the first ones were ever stocked in this area back in 1962. Harry says that was the year you could hunt in the old South Mountains Refuge. He recalls using a one-sided hen yelper box call. There was not much available back then in the line of turkey calls.
Today there are basically two general types of calls, the mouth or air type and the friction type. While this creates more options for the sportsman, it has created a boom market for the industry. Mastering any call is no overnight feat. Hunters including myself want that instant call that is well; so easy that maybe a caveman could use it. Ac-cording to Harry a caveman may well have used the first turkey calls made. They were the wing bone calls. These are used today. Wilfong claims that they are the truest sounding call there is, in the right mouth. He says that if he had to settle on just one call it would be one of the friction types known as a “slate call.” He also advises that every hunter should learn to use a mouth diaphragm if only for that last second cluck.
According to Wilfong, it may not be the call or the caller that is the most important but ones hunting abilities. He says that he knows of a state champion caller that called in twelve different birds before they were able to back one simply because of their hunting abilities when it counted most. Wilfong recommends using the call that you feel the most competent with and not to over call. Then it will be your abilities as a woodsman and hunter that will help you bag that gobbler this spring.
Tony Robinson can be reached at decoydoc@charter.net.
Jeff Sipe's email kss0098@yahoo.com
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