Turkey Box Call

[Kurt Aebi]

I made my first box call this weekend. I used Rosewood for the handle and bottom and Purpleheart for the sides and ends. It is a glued call, I followed Chip Brown's Plans from his website www.calltrader.com.

It sounds okay - still needs a little tuning, but it does have a turkey sound. I still have to apply a finish, but I figured I'd get it to sound good first.









I went pretty plain with this one, since it is my first.

[Jim Becker]

Kurt, I'm trying to figure out how you "operate" that one...is it the top moving/scratching on the sides of the box that creates the sound?? Any chance you could post a WAV file of the actual sound of this and your other types? 'Just curious...

[Kurt Aebi]

Kurt, I'm trying to figure out how you "operate" that one...is it the top moving/scratching on the sides of the box that creates the sound?? Any chance you could post a WAV file of the actual sound of this and your other types? 'Just curious...

Jim,

You are right that you slide the paddle across the top of the side rails to create tha scratching yelp sound that a hen turkey makes. The angle, pressure and speed at which you do this greatly effects the sound it produces. I will try to record some of the different sounds I can make with my calls. I've never done this, so bear with me! LOL!

[Brett Baldwin]

I'm not much of a hunting type so I wasn't aware that there was a turkey call made like that. I've seen the ones that are a box and a dowel you scratch it with and was expecting that. This design looks a little more controllable. I was going to ask you about the choice of woods but figured I'd check your link first. That guy is the type I'd buy from just to spite the people who take themselves to seriously. Very funny reading.

[Lee Schierer]

Nice looking call. The proof of course is if it fools a turkey or two. My Dad made several and some worked better than others. I have two that he made and they get used nearly every year to at least wake up a turkey.

Lee

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

That's nice. I especially like the shotgun brass.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Kurt, I've been trying to come up with something to make for my brother-in-law, and something like this would be a hit. I'll check out Chip's plans when I get home tonight. (Our office firewall is blocking his site for some unknown reason.) As an experience call-maker, and words of wisdom to offer?

- Vaughn

[Corey Hallagan]

Excellent Kurt! I wish I had made one of those for my son but he bought one before I could get one made. On Friday, he got his second turkey and it is a bigun. 28 lbs dressed out. The local Bass Pro shop is sending a photo to Springfield for the catalog.

Great looking calls.
Corey

[Kurt Aebi]

Vaughn,

I'm not very experienced with box calls, but I'll try to help. You want to pay attention to the grain direction of the sides - you want it runing lengthwise and you want relatively straight grained wood to make them from. Poplar & Cedar are callmakers favorites. You want the sides to have a slight radius on th etop from back to frone (1/4" max.) and you want to round-off the rails a little. You want a rather dense wood for the paddle and you want a nice radius on the bottom (this was the trickiest part of the entire piece - a lot of belt sander work). Another website that has good plans is www.customsawing.com - they hide it in the box call kit section, but it is a downloadable PDF (they want you to buy their kit, but the plans are pretty detailed and as good a woodworker as you are - you'd have No Problem with it). It appears a little easier to make than Chip's design, but I haven't made one from that to know for sure.

Good Luck - it's pretty fun.