Callmakers questionnaire...

[Coulter]

Well it's not really a questionnaire, but more like just a single question - why did you start making your own calls?

I'll be the first to jump in here and answer - I started making calls because I wanted to make my own duck call. I am a very traditional sort of fellow and I thought it would be cool to make one myself. Well now that I have more turkey, crow, predator, and deer calls than I have duck calls. I think I am going to start concentrating a bit more on my truly custom duck call. I still intend to make all of the other calls but I am shutting things down on October 1 to concentrate on trapping, hunting and my duck calls. It will be hard to turn any calls with all of the fur hanging in the shop , but I will still turn a few here and there as time allows. Operations will resume as normal again around Feb 1, 2009 or at such time that I become tired of skinning beavers. I will be cutting back on turkey calls, but predator calls and the others will remain about the same.

That was a bit more of what my future plans are, but it gives the main reason I started to make calls too


NEXT...

[Jimmie in Ky]

 I needed a barrel for a Burnham Bros long range call. I had lost mine somewhere somehow. I needed it then and did not want to wait on mail order for another. ( Which was the only way I could get that call at the time) Out came the drill and a dremel tool and a crude but very functional barrel was made. That was over ten years ago. Made a few howlers from scavenged parts from factory calls after that the same way.

Since then I have added to the tool colection and tinker with all kinds of woodworking. I enjoy tinkering and seeing what I can or cannot do. Even a post recently got me to wondering if I could build a variety of scratch box calls for turkey's. That led to cutting out and hollowing out a number of box calls, which I am working on now.

I make a few to give away and sell a few each year for parts. That is basically my call making in a nut shell. Jimmie

[Yotehntr]

Just thought it'd be cool to call one in with something I made... I just got hooked!

[Kuipdog]

I started making pens on a pen mandrel and I was teaching it to my middle school students, then I saw a book about making duck and game calls. My first call was a duck call that I gave to a friend to try out and he loved it. He offered to buy it from me and told him that he could have it. He said it was the best call he owned and that he shot more ducks using that call than he did any of his others, it is his favorite go to call and that he would be lost without it. I now teach my middle school students to make calls. Not all my students make them, but I will try and post pictures of ones that they make. I have a student making a crow call next week. I love doing it and it is something that I can't just do once and I have it mastered, I am constantly trying to improve. If I didn't constantly try and improve and that it was easy to master I would have moved on. The worst part is these crazy forums, I see what everyone is doing and I keep trying new stuff and improve the projects I have going. I telling you now these forums push me to better all the time!!!!!
Kuipdog

[nailbender]

  Bought a few production calls and they worked, sorta.  Tinkered a little, thery worked better.  Read some fine online tutorials and thought,  I can do that!  It's a good feeling calling with something you made yourself.

[Kuipdog]

Al's tutorials on THOgamecalls.com are some of the best. I just happend upon them while searching the internet for call parts and holy cow was I impressed. Al is a master call maker and teacher that is one of the best people you could be in touch with if you have a problem. I have gleaned so much info from his website and from his posts its almost scarry!! I have never talked with al directly, but I can usually find answers to my questions on a forum he posts to because someone else had the same problem I have had. He is a treasure.

[alscalls]

I got tired of wearing out or breaking a call and not being able to find that same sound again. so I cut down a cedar that had died and dried it for two years. In the mean time I fooled with making box calls and did not like any of them. then one day I went to that cedar and split it into boards and planned them. I carved on them with a draw knife and spoke shave until I thought I had what I wanted. The result was two days of hunting turkey with just this call and I scored!
I was hooked and have been making calls ever since. I look at this call now and think ...What was that bird thinking? But I will always Cherish that old call that I made myself.
I call more birds now for others than for myself and still get a thrill when they answer one of my calls.
I have learned that it is not the call alone that makes that sound, but the caller.
A guitar is just a guitar until someone who can play picks it up.
I play the guitar, I am a turkey caller and a coyote caller though I am still learning always on all of them.

[Hawks Feather]

I did it for the money.   :roflmao: 

O.K. so that was pretty bad on my part.  I first started collecting calls and then wanted to see what I could do.  I have always enjoyed working wood and love trying to get the perfect finish - making calls allows me to try to do this. 

Jerry

[FinsnFur]

I did it for the money.

 
You musta reached your quota, cause you give more away then you sell.