Photo courtesy of Steve Sorensen Perfect calling is not the secret to tagging this guy.

The last few weeks turkey hunters have stirred their stagnant winter blood by watching old DVDs and new YouTube videos. That gets us into a spring gobbler hunting mood. But it can also teach us to make mistakes, something we don’t need to be taught. Every turkey hunter wishes he could stop making mistakes.

For myself, no spring turkey season has ever been mistake-free. That’s because a guy named Murphy always shadows me, and his job is to enforce a law that says, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” I’m betting you know the guy well.

It sounds ironic, but one calling mistake we make is trying to sound perfect. We shouldn’t be calling as though being mistake-free is the goal. It’s not the goal. The goal is to get the gobbler into range of your weapon, and perfect calling isn’t necessary to do that.

If you’ve ever listened to a hen, you know she hasn’t watched videos that taught her how she’s supposed to sound. Sometimes hens sound awful, and that’s good for us. It takes us off the hook of perfection. So, take a lesson from hens. A real hen will teach you realism, not perfection. Realism fools more lustful gobblers than perfection does.

We can nail the yelp, the cluck, and the cutt. We can mimic a tree call and fly-down cackle. We can probably even make a proficient purr. But realism isn’t about flawless sounds. Realism is never mistake-free. Realism is calling that’s passable, not perfect. Realism includes cadence, volume, and attitude.

Realism is sounding like a living hen. If you sound like a hunter who is trying to sound like a hen, you fail the realism test. I learned this when I was working a gobbler and heard a terrible call not far away. I assumed some idiot had snuck in and was interfering with my hunt. The idiot turned out to be a real hen. Her calls were poor by a hunter’s standards, but real — as real as they come — and the gobbler was responding to her.

Listening to hens teaches us not to let our calls become mechanical and robotic, as though we’re trying to match our own brain’s idea of a perfect example of the call we’re making. The posture of a hen, with her head and neck in constant, spastic movement, makes her sounds vary. Let that fact destroy any idea that your calling should be perfect.

A hen turkey’s cadence often will not be well-paced. Her calls will speed up and slow down, rise and fall in volume, or hesitate. All of this might be subtle, but listen carefully and you will hear it. She might be saying, “I’m interested.” Or “You come over here.” Or “I don’t care.” Or “I’m just minding my own business.” Or “I’m happy where I am.”

We don’t really know exactly what she’s saying, but we know she’s definitely not saying, “Listen to me make a perfect call.” So, abandon your efforts to make perfect calls. Even thinking of calling perfection is a mistake. A real hen isn’t trying to replicate the sound file you’ve heard on videos. And she isn’t trying to convince a gobbler that she’s real.

It should be encouraging to know that when our calling isn’t perfect, we haven’t diminished our odds of killing the gobbler. In fact, we might have improved the odds because a “bad” sound might be the thing that gets a gobbler’s attention.

So, before you make your first call, listen to the gobbler you hear and think about whether your calling should be loud and aggressive, soft and contented, or something in between. It won’t hurt to follow some good notes with a couple of odd notes. Add a cluck to your yelps, or a couple of kee-kees to your cutts. The payoff is a gobbler that thinks you’re a real hen.

He might not come to the best calls, and he might come to what you think is the worst. So, hang in there. You don’t need to be a perfect caller to bring a gobbler into range.

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When “The Everyday Hunter” isn’t hunting, he’s thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. If you want to tell Steve exactly where your favorite hunting spot is, contact him through his website, www.EverydayHunter.com. He writes for top outdoor magazines, and won the 2015, 2018, and 2023 national “Pinnacle Award” for outdoor writing.