On Shock Calls

(fromthe Quakerboy.com forums)

Early in the morning at my place, I can usually rely on my owls to piss off the gobblers. The owl hoots, the gobbler responds, and I didn't have to do squat. If you listen to what time that takes place, that's a fair indication of when the gobblers are going to be open to shock calling with an owl call. You can cheat it a few minutes, but owling in pitch dark generally won't get me anywhere. I also find that past sunrise, owling is useless.

Ditto with crows, hawks, woodpeckers, etc. Later on in the morning, listen to what sets off your gobblers. For me, it's loud crow calls. However, it usually isn't my calls that set them off. It's the other crows. I call to them, get them cranked up and then the gobblers respond to that. Get a tape on calling crows, and you'll learn the tricks that honk off crows and get them responding to you.

I've been using a hawk call more and more, simply because I hear more hawks these days than before. Last weekend was the first time, however, I've ever heard a gobbler respond to a hawk directly. Usually I get a response from the fuss created by the other birds when I go off with a hawk call, or when I hear hawks in the neighborhood.

Warning:
If you're too close to the gob, a loud barred owl call may make him hang up and stay hung up. Usually I owl no less than 200 yards away from where I think gobblers might be.


. . . and from later in the same thread . . .



I'm thinking more about my earlier years of hunting. I twice made the mistake of hooting too much, trying to get to a gobbler. When I got too close, the gobbler shut up, flew down and walked off. After that, I learned to hoot sparingly and to stop before I got too close. That goes back probably 15 years. Nowadays, I normally don't have to hoot at all, or if I do, it's just to get the party started. We have a lot of owls and once they start sounding off, the gobblers chime in. I have one favorite high spot near the house, where I try to be at just the right time. I can owl once there and set off several owls and then they do my work while I'm deciding which gobbler to hunt.

Crow calls? I can easily fool other crows, so I'm not worried about gobblers. Overall, the gobs in my neighborhood are not prone to shock calling during the mid-morning. I say that, because I do a lot of scouting pre-season, and I hardly ever hear a gobbler honor a crow or a hawk-- in six years, the first hawk call I heard that got a gobbler to sound off was this past weekend. Believe me, we have very vocal hawks, and it does not take much prodding from me to get them in a swizzle.

My point is that if you listen while you are scouting, you'll learn which shock calls work. Each locale is somewhat unique. I've got crows, owls, hawks and woodpeckers on my place, but shock calling in general does little good. Where I first learned to hunt, in SE Ohio, crow calls worked fantastically at mid morning, barred owl calls didn't, but great-horned hooty owl hoots did. Go figure.

What does work for me, from post-flydown until midday, is excited yelping. That's when I bring out the box call and crank on it in ever increasing volume. If there is a willing gobbler in earshot, he will usually respond. The other trick I find that works when shock calling is not is connecting up with hens, getting ahead of them and then setting up so the hens pass by me as they feed and picking off a quiet gobbler that may be following them.



BTW: Do you know the ace #1 and #2 shock calls I've found? Roosters and donkeys. I have a neighbor on one side of me that had roosters. On the other, I used to have a neighbor with a donkey. The rooster would start sounding off about 4 AM, and keep going all day. If I was hunting that side of my place, I never shock called at all. The rooster would keep them busy. If I hunted the other side, I could wait for the donkey to bray, and that would set off the gobblers.