If you walk into a sporting goods store these days to the game call section it can be a bit overwhelming to say the least! Game calls have been around in some form or another for about as long as man & making calls from raw materials that can be found is what people were forced to do in the early days. Wood, horn, turtle shells, reeds, slate or in this case the very bones from the animal your trying to emulate, case in point, turkey wing bones!
Years ago my dad purchased a wing-bone turkey call from a fellow at a gun show & the concept was amusing for us but with a little practice DANG this thing sounded JUST LIKE A TURKEY! Eventually I decided I could make one of these myself so one Thanksgiving Day I was sure to save the wing bones to give it a try, ok so it was only a little old Butterball bird but hey, they actually sound just as good as the wild bird ones do.
Well, quite a few years have passed & I'd say conservatively I've made around 100 of these calls & sold them all over the US, but I kept the first one in my shooting bag to keep me humble (the top one above) & it still works just fine. They can be made using 2 bones or 3 depending on the tone & volume you want & the sky is the limit for how you finish them. The bottom one in the top pic just went to Colorado the other day.
Now this one I got a little carried away with, adding copper wire to the middle bone, dyed deer tail hair on some brass cone drops, some glass wampum beads on the lanyard as well as a double turkey feather drop. I also dyed the actual call in a mixture of walnut hull/sumac berry dye.
Besides selling these I've donated quite a few to various fund-raisers & auctions & sat back & watched them bring as much as $100, considerably more than what I sell them for! Oh well, just another thing I enjoy making & using & seeing other folks get enjoyment out of.
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