Turkey calling is more than what it seems. It’s not just making sounds, it’s having a conversation with an animal. Speaking their language in order to convince a turkey that you are a turkey. Dave Owens is one of the best turkey callers in the world. We talk turkey calling, turkey hunting and being an advocate for conservation and wildlife. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Best Birds
Dave Owens: 01:44
Pointless: 42:49
Top 5: 01:07:07
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nickvinzant@gmail.com (Show Email)
Interview with Dave Owens of the Pinhoti Project
Nick VinZant 0:11
Welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, The Art of turkey calling and the best birds.
Dave Owens 0:25
But that's your yield. That's the essentially like a people saying, Hi, you have basically fooled the ears of some of the most critical judges, and you're on the other side of that curtain a mere feet away often, and you're folding them to thinking that you're a turkey. I started this stuff when I was a college kid, you don't get much broker than college, I did that to Gulf Coast to country living out of the back of my truck sleeping on a cottage is funny as it sounds, Turkeys themselves have put me in places that I would have never seen had it not been for Turkey. So I've done things in my life that I never thought was obtainable. And it's all due to Turkeys,
Nick VinZant 1:02
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So our first guest is one of the best Turkey callers in the world. And what's so interesting to me about turkey calling, it's not just making some sounds trying to get the attention to the turkey. It's having a conversation with the turkey. It's fascinating. This is turkey call champion, Dave Owens, what is the importance of having like a turkey call where Why do you need this? Where does this come from?
Dave Owens 1:50
Well, the calling aspect of turkey hunting is is kind of the defining factor. That's what kind of makes it different because we have a communication with our prey, we are able to carry on a conversation carry on a dialogue, what we're essentially trying to do is is enter their flock convince them that we are one of the flock and convince them to come investigate for one reason or another. So the culling aspect is is what makes it different is extremely important because without it turkey hunting would just blend with any other type of spot and stalk or the sit and wait kind of games that you get in with with often oftentimes with big game hunting. The calling is very important because it sets it apart and kind of what gives turkey hunting in itself a different feel. And I think that's what is the big fascination for most of us that are just obsessed with it. That's kind of what gives it that that drawl.
Nick VinZant 2:43
So like when you're doing the call, you're not just like, hey, Turkeys come here, like you're going back and forth with them.
Dave Owens 2:51
It's like any other conversation like the one that we're having here. Now. I mean, there's, they have a whole vocabulary, I mean, you can get excited, you can do subtle stuff. It's no different than saying, Hey, how you doing Nick? Hey, Nick, how's it going? Like you just learned over time, how to the dialects and the different, you know, the excitement levels, and what to say, I mean, they have a couple off the top, like, the most standard Turkey sound as a Yelp is what everything else is kind of developed around and kind of builds off of you have cutting, which is a very excited sound, which typically means aggression or excitement of some level, you have purring, which is can be a contented call, which is what they do when they're just, you know, just kind of subtle talk, because, you know, like you would do if you were, you know, in your office chatting with a co worker while you were you know, doing something else. But that same purring sound can also get aggressive because that's what they do when they're fighting. You know, it's almost like when you're fighting, you're grunting and growling and whatever. You know, it can be, you know, to that level. So as you can quickly probably gather the calling is that there's a big part in it. A lot of layers do
Nick VinZant 4:04
it. Could you give us an example of like those, what the calls sound like I got one
Dave Owens 4:09
right here. Oh, this is what I'd use a lot. There's a lot of different kinds of calls but this is what you call a mouth call or a Yelper diaphragm call. It's essentially an aluminum frame that's below this tape this tape is kind of like to explain it, it would be kind of like medical tape that you would you know wrap a bandage or something with and it's got an aluminum frame in it and this is latex that stretch between that aluminum frame and you blow air across it and you get vibrations off the ends. There's a lot of different cut configurations that you can use to get different sounds and probably the most universal call you can use the mouth calls to do little bit everything and but there's also pot and peg top calls or pots call I was gonna see if I had one of those laying around here. No don't um But basically, it's just different instruments just like musical instruments, you got horns and guitars and drums. I mean, it's the same thing with turkey calls, you got different things that can kind of make the same sounds but they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The mouth collies, you can obviously tail it's very small, you put it in your mouth, you can still hold your firearm or whatever else you may have in your hands that you may not have available. If you're having to run like a box call, which is another instrument, you can use deer and turkey. Calling that I'll demonstrate it, but you caught me off guard here. So let me
Nick VinZant 5:32
Yeah, yeah, I didn't give him a chance to really do something. So like,
Dave Owens 5:37
like anything else, you got to loosen it up. It's like a guitar player that's gonna, you know, strum the strings and in a set tune his guitar and everything and nothing's different with turkey calls. And we're gonna try to rush this. But the yield just just explained or just kind of hinted to
I don't know how that comes across with audio when these earbuds in the machine here, but that's your yield. That's the essentially like a people saying hi, or hey, or where are you, you can take that to so many different levels, it can be a curiosity deal, it can be a demanding deal. And it's all going to be with the personality that you want to put behind that hand, the voice that you want to give the hand that you're trying to portray some more. It's gonna be hard to do cutting, it's going to pick the audio, but we can do clucking is more or less, it's a dress up word in the turkey world that kind of it can be contended. It's kind of one of those things that turkeys are going to be doing all the time. And so you do the clucking, kind of dresses it up, it's almost like a, I'll explain it as larvae, kind of like an adjective in human vocabulary, it's going to help add personality, it's going to help detail the nail and that you're trying to explain the point you're trying to get across other sounds that would just send it to like the purr, which can be very contented. It's the sound that turkeys are going to make when they're congregated, and feeding. There just being content.
And all these sales are just made by putting air across this litex. And these reads, and vibrations that you make with your throat with your tongue and causing those sounds to come across there. To mimic a turkey.
Nick VinZant 7:50
I can't believe how do people figure this out? Like to me looking at it from the outside of it. I assume that like all right, you make a couple of sounds and turkeys come down and take him out. I didn't realize that that was that in depth.
Dave Owens 8:06
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it isn't. There's turkey calling competitions. We do it competitively. I mean, you're obviously judged by me. And so you know, not judged by Turkey, per se. But it's all on the realism realism that we can put into turkey calling and how realistic we can be using these devices, who can sound the best. There is so many layers and so I mean, you can get so deep on trying to be perfect. Just like anything else. You just work and work and work and try to polish your sounds to be as realistic as possible. And when it you know that's going to obviously be good when you're competing against others. But once you take those talents into the woods when you're you're actually hunting turkeys, the more realistic you can sound, the more you're going to be able to obviously mimic what you're trying to try to replicate in the wild and full more turkeys.
Nick VinZant 9:05
But will you like blow a hunt because you messed up a sound right? Like I had them right where I wanted. And then I made the clock when I should have made the cut and the turkeys were gone.
Dave Owens 9:19
No, it's not a hard and fast situation like that. Just like we have in human vocabulary. I mean, if you and I are talking and I say a word, it's out of place, or my voice cracks, or I'm happy to get a drink of water because I get cotton mouth. Same thing happens with turkeys. So it's I won't say it's impossible. But I will say it's quite difficult if you've got a turkeys attention and you're having a conversation to really just say something out of place. Now, you know, if you flip a read, which is something that we refer to in the turkey calling world like you have these latex reads that I just talked about, and they do have a tendency of one of the tongues flipping backwards. sticking onto itself, like so. That just comes out as squeaks. I mean, as you can, it's like popping a guitar string. You obviously can't strum the guitar when the guitar strings are going the same way. So if something like that happens, yeah, sure, you could run one off because it's going to sound like you got something caught in the trap. You know, it's kind of squirrel and squirrel. And, and, yeah, you could run them off that way. But fortunately, just like with people, turkeys have different voices, they have different enunciations. So there's a lot of flexibility when it comes to creating Turkey sales.
Nick VinZant 10:34
But why so then what are you doing on the other end of it in the sense that like, eventually, even if you making all these great sounds right, like, doesn't the turkey expect to see another turkey?
Dave Owens 10:43
Absolutely. And you're hunting turkeys which are hunted by everything, 365 days a year, you're hunting the most paranoid critters out there. I mean, they are hunted from the air, they're hunted from the ground, they're hunted all the time. So what you're trying to do is convince them to trust their second most important, since they live and die by their eyes. That is how they stay safe is their eyesight is incredible. So what you're trying to do is get them to trust their ears enough to second guess their eyesight. That's the whole drawl to turkey hunting, you are really trying to put a turkey in a position to where he is so convinced that you have convinced him by his ears through auditory effects that he almost second guess is his asset, you know, he's going to put his main line of defense that he has lived with, and it has trusted his whole life. And he's going to put that on the shelf because you've convinced him to, to trust his ears. So that's, that's the big draw. That's the big poll, to me, is kind of taking something that has absolutely, and you're hunting turkeys which are hunted by everything, 365 days a year as you're hunting the most paranoid critters out there. I mean, they are hunted from the air, they're hunted from the ground, they're hunted all the time. So live in the wild, you know, and been hunted by everything and in convincing it to, to that you're one of them. So
Nick VinZant 12:22
So now are you female Turkey, trying to lure a male, male Turkey trying to lure a female like, or how does that usually?
Dave Owens 12:32
Typically, I mean, just to be the stereotypical thing is yes, you're a hand you're a female Turkey, you're trying to replicate like, you know, a turkey wanting company is breeding season. That's why we are most often hunting deer in the spring. And is Yeah, exactly. You're just trying to lower the gobbler, which is the male turkey into into shotgun Ranger archery range by mimicking, you know, his his desire to breed So,
Nick VinZant 12:58
so the range that you would be looking at to try to get them close? I obviously it depends on the the firearm right, but like, what's the ideal? I want to get in within 500 yards? I want to get five feet?
Dave Owens 13:11
Yeah, I mean, the standard answer here is going to be typically most people are hunting them with shotguns, which is you know, more of a shorter range weapon. Because turkeys you typically shoot him in the head and neck area, because that's what's most lethal. It's most ethical. And, and that's something that's very seldom steel, if you've watched a turkey, their pay is always moving because they rely on their ass out there constantly tilting their head to get a better view, they can see like 320 degrees around them. So unless you're directly behind them, they can still see you moving. So we're shooting with shotguns at close range. Typically, that's going to be 40, orbs and en, which is kind of that standard. Advancements in shot and things of that nature may extend that range a little bit. But you will find that in the turkey hunting crowd, there's a lot of ethics that are self imposed. I mean, there's a lot of us out there in the community, that although we may have the ability to take a turkey at extreme ranges or something, maybe, quote unquote, legal, you might get in trouble for you're not breaking any laws. But we kind of just put things into place because we want to play this game that we are essentially play and we want to want to self impose some restrictions so that we can get the most enjoyment out of the out of the resources possible. You know,
Nick VinZant 14:31
that's one thing I think we should jump into fairly quickly, right, like some people. I grew up in Kansas and my general experience has been there's very few people who are as good as stewards of the land as hunters are. Do you ever get a lot of pushback? Is there pushback in the hunting community that like why are you doing this? That kind of thing?
Dave Owens 14:53
I'm not in the hunting community. I mean, we we know we're brothers in arms. I think we're all on the same team and we understand And that we have to be because we are a minority in the human population. I mean, we're hunters, like a fragment of the population. But while I will say the wildlife populations that we're all able to enjoy, whether you're a hunter or not, is because of hunters, hood hunters and shooters, were the ones that fit the veal. And we're happy to do so we have self imposed taxes that we put into place. You know, we enjoy the populations. And we're the first ones like right now, for instance, a lot of your turkey populations have seen reintroductions, and starting in about 2000, a lot of the areas that turkeys were reintroduced, they basically fulfilled all the carrying capacity of the land. So basically, their populations were just climbing exponentially there for a while. And now they're we're starting to see a plateau, maybe even dip a little bit before they plateau, which is pretty standard, when you introduce a spacey in a lot of turkey hunters, louder than anybody else is on the horn saying, hey, you know, our turkey populations aren't where they were 10 years ago, it's time to put some additional regulation into place, it's time to kind of dial back to make sure that we have this resource for many generations, hunters are the people that are doing that hundreds of people who are excited about making sure that these these animals are here for for years to come. So
Nick VinZant 16:24
when you go to the competition aspect of it, what makes one call better than another, like how competitive is that, that arena?
Dave Owens 16:35
It's very competitive, you have different divisions, because like the calls that I was explaining earlier, you have the mouth calls like this. And that's an air operated call, it's, you know, obviously operated with air, you have a certain number of calls that are operated through friction, and that's the pot and pig calls that have like a slight surface or glass surface. And you have a wooden peg that you scrape against that surface. And it makes a sound that replicates a turkey and that's a friction call. So you have a division devoted strictly to friction, you have an open division, which is open to anything. But essentially, regardless of what kind of instrument you're using, the whole idea is to be as realistic as possible. You're judged by a panel of judges who are behind the curtain or under the stage. So they don't know who's calling in most situations, and their judging strictly off what they're listening to and what what is most closely resembles the sounds of a hand turkey.
Nick VinZant 17:36
So is it a hard thing to do? Or is that a hard thing to do? Well,
Dave Owens 17:40
making the sounds of a turkey are not a very difficult thing to do to make the sounds of a turkey that are extremely realistic can be very difficult. I mean, it's like with anything else, you know, we can you know, with with a little bit of practice, you can teach an eight year old to toss the ball up in the air and hit it with a bat to go to the big leagues and get into the Hall of Fame. It takes a considerable amount of practice and effort to become that skilled at that. So same way with turkey calling I mean as far as picking up a call and and making a sound that can sound somewhat like a turkey and probably fool a turkey. not difficult at all to get on the big stage and full human ears and you know, consistently full turkeys. It's considerably more difficult.
Nick VinZant 18:27
So, okay, correct me if I'm wrong here. You got second place in the most recent national competition?
Dave Owens 18:35
Yeah. There's a lot of turkey calling competitions across the country. We're trying to get the popularity of that built back up. It's not quite what it was in the early 90s When the turkey populations were peaking. As matter of fact, it was popular. Everybody was doing it turkey calling competitions got popular. And they're coming back. We're seeing a lot more involvement than we used to. But yes, the big one, I guess you would call it the Super Bowl of turkey calling is the grand nationals. It's held at the National Wild Turkey Federation, their national convention in Nashville, Tennessee. And they have the big grand national turkey calling competition. And yes, last year placed second and the year prior play second. And then the year prior. I mean, yeah, it's it's been. It's been a fun little run. But yeah, that's the most recent finishes.
Nick VinZant 19:23
So putting kind of all humbleness aside, I guess, for you like, why did you play second? In the sense that like, what are you doing that makes you better than other people? But what did the person who won do that like you didn't? It's
Dave Owens 19:41
all when you get to that stage. You have basically they cut down all of the colors in the country, down to 13. There's 13 callers to go across the finals stage. Just making that stage is a huge accomplishment. Basically, you're one of the best. You have been Basically fooled the ears of some of the most critical judges, some judges that are behind the curtain that know turkeys that have 2030 4050 years of turkey hunting experience. So they know what a turkey sounds like, and you're on the other side of that curtain a mere feet away often, and you're folding them to thinking that you're a turkey. So basically, they scale, they judge you on a scale from one to 20. And if they think if they basically think that there was a turkey on the other side of that curtain, they're gonna give you a 20 if they think you were almost a turkey, but there was a few things in there that, you know, they'll give you 1819, you know, so basically, they're all judged. And there's anywhere from five to seven judges, and they'll total the total of the points and they claim the winner. But as far as what I'm doing, it's, it's, it's once you get to that stage, everybody up there is so good and so polished. It's splitting hairs, you know what I mean? It's, it's really competitive, you always try to do something that's a little bit unique, that may hurt the ears of the judges, that maybe the guy next to you is not. And of course, you're just trying to have a clean run, you're not you're trying not to slip up and make one of those unrealistic Saionji try not to flip wreaths on your car, you try not let us peg slip on your surface, you're trying to be as much a wild turkey as you possibly can.
Nick VinZant 21:26
So is it more for kind of personal competition reasons or necessarily or is this like something like you can make some money doing this?
Dave Owens 21:35
Who it's hard to make money in this. I mean, it's definitely out of passion, it's definitely out of an obsession with turkey hunting, turkey hunting is what got me to wanting to do competition calling, because it's gonna make you a better turkey hunter, it makes you practice on your call more and makes you more proficient on your call. And all of that is going to translate into being able to communicate with turkeys better,
Nick VinZant 21:57
how often a day, or how many hours a day, or a week or whatever, like, how much will you practice,
Dave Owens 22:04
that's all going to be dependent on the collar themselves. A lot of these guys practice a number of hours a day, a lot of folks have jobs that they can practice when they're on the clock, so to speak, and I got a good friend who operates heavy machinery and he's up there. And he said he keeps a mouth collar on his mouth all the time. He's up there by itself. So he's just, you know, practicing and getting new sounds and working. For me personally, I practice quite a bit when I was trying to kind of find my sound and kind of figure out what I wanted to do. But once I have I have found a lot of practice doesn't exactly do favors for me because I pick up bad habits like anything else. So I don't practice that much. Now. I don't practice you know, it's more just making sure I have the right equipment making sure I have the right call. And because we make a ton of calls because no two calls are the same. You got to find just that rat, you know, everybody has their favorite you know everybody has their favorite guitar if you're if you're a musician and just Turkey callers we have our favorite calls and typically everybody builds their own calls. And so now the practice for me now is usually breaking in new calls and trying to find that that rap call to have on game day.
Nick VinZant 23:18
So I googled some stuff right and you were described as the best turkey hunter alive
Dave Owens 23:27
now it's it's it's pretty subjective considering that you don't keep score at this game, you know. So yeah, that's you know, that I've never and I don't think anybody that turkey hunts and considers themselves a big turkey hunter or whatever. Like be gunning for that accolade. I don't think anybody will really want that title because the guys who really love this stuff I would much rather be known as like a an ambassador for the sport somebody that wanted to see turkey hunting popular wanted to say turkey hunting done in the right way and wanted to be a champion for the resource wanted to see that tomorrow there's more turkey hunters than there was I mean turkey hunters and turkeys is there was yesterday so that's what I'm I hoped that when when I'm getting going and when the Pinhoti projects you know, seen its final sunset I hope that people can look back on and go the guy look turkeys and he wanted more turkeys and he wanted everybody to enjoy what he enjoyed because as funny as it sounds, Turkeys themselves have put me in places that I would have never seen had it not been for Turkey so I've done things in my life that I never thought was obtainable. And it's all due to turkeys and I just had the fear I'll just always hear these you always hear when I retire or one day I'm going to do that when I retire. I'm going to do this and I just had a fear much younger hearing horror stories that man you don't ever know if that day is going to come. So I've always looked at you know, man if I can if I can make it If it was possible, then I was gonna try to obtain it. And that's kind of the way I learned early on with this turkey hunting thing. That's what I love to do is what I wanted to be good at. And I'll work and just add a passion. It's not like when when you say you work, it's not like a professional sport where you got to go run wind sprints is not, you know, it's not it's almost involuntary, your passion is so strong that you're gonna get out there and do it either way, you're gonna get out there and do it because you love it. And that's kind of what I've fallen into is just strictly a passion that's caused me to love this stuff as much as I do. And it's, like I said, has provided me with so much that I just thought Man, if there's somebody that never is exposed to this, this could potentially have such a profound effect on them as it just as it did me. But if they're never exposed to it, how would they ever know? So that's why I thought it was a really good idea to start making it available for folks you know, putting out content that they could find and see how it had affected me and how more fulfilled I am as a person in life just because of wild turkeys and wild things wild places and getting to go I've traveled to all 49 states that have a huntable turkey population I find it turkeys in all 49 states there's no way I would have ever went to Rhode Island or Delaware or you know Nevada I mean these places are just I mean managed to get from southeast I'm happy being in the southeast you know I'm a majority of Florida Alabama that's that's kind of where I like to do my thing but this attraction to want to experience wild turkeys and and all over the country has put me in these places and I've seen things and had experiences that man I'm just every time I do I think there's somebody out there that they won't ever see this and you know, exposing them to wild turkeys. Maybe they will so that's that's my that's my place.
Nick VinZant 26:57
What's the Hawaii is the one state that doesn't I'm assuming it's gotta be Hawaii, right?
Dave Owens 27:01
No, it's Alaska. Hawaii actually has a lot of turkeys. Really? Absolutely. Yep.
Nick VinZant 27:07
How the hell they get to a Hawaii not to Alaska.
Dave Owens 27:11
They don't? Well, Alaska. See turkeys function on a photo period like length of day. That's how they know when it's time to breed. That's how they know when it's not you know, this the length of day and if you're aware of Alaska has this point of time, whether it's daylight all time and dark. So turkeys can't deal with that they function off the photoperiods Hawaii's actually got a ton of Turkeys because they don't have any natural predators like we do in the continental US. You know, the turkeys have a lot of predators here. Like I mentioned earlier, they're hunted by everything. Everything needs to Turkey. But in Hawaii, there's very few I think they have like a weasel or something that's a predator. And and that's about the only thing so their turkeys out there are plentiful.
Nick VinZant 27:52
Man. Those are great. That was a great sentiment that you put before I asked that dumb question about. But that's all I could think of is like, man, which state is it? I had to be Hawaii? But like, do you when you go out there? Do you have an overall strategy? Or is it just kind of whatever nature gives you?
Dave Owens 28:11
Yeah, I mean, hunting turkeys whether you're doing it from South Florida to you know, Washington, I mean, from sea to shining sea gets pretty similar. You're doing the whole dialogue. It's the whole conversation thing and you're trying to replicate Oh, he in Turkey most of the time and trying to look to fool the turkey into thinking that he's coming up there to breed. So all of that is pretty, pretty much the same. It's just the topography, the terrain changes. You know, and that's what makes it attractive to battle the turkeys across the country because you never know what's around the next corner when you're on unfamiliar ground and I think that's the that's the drawl to a lot of us that travel to turkey hunt like I do is wanting to experience something familiar in an unfamiliar place. And turkeys gives you the ability to do this somewhat on a budget. You know, if you're an elk Hunter, or even a deer hunter. The cost of entry is pretty steep. A lot of times I mean, your tag cost is five $800 over $1,000 Sometimes the access to property that may have these animals is pretty limited sometimes turkeys are pretty affordable. I've kind of prided myself and kind of built a reputation on doing everything on a budget just trying to be in a you know, I started this stuff when I was a college kid you don't get much broker than college kids. You know what I mean? eat ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I did that took off across the country living out of the back of my truck sleeping on a cot and just living out of a cooler, you know we would take off and the only thing we would have in the whole trip was the cost of tags you can typically get Turkey tags for around 200 bucks or less. And you can go out there and hunt and you live out of the back of your truck eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and have the experiences of a life and you know you have less than $1,000 in this thing and this hard to find any, it's hard to find that much fine for that path little bit of money.
Nick VinZant 30:08
Now, where does turkey hunting rank Mike okay, this in terms of like, alright, this is the most popular, this is second like where's turkey hunting kind of in the, in the pecking order, like
Dave Owens 30:19
it's all gonna depend on your region. You know turret county is not nearly as popular out on the west side, you know, on the west side is big game. It's elk, antelope, mule deer, whitetail mountain line, you know, that kind of stuffs really big out west. And then across the country, white tailed deer going to be keen, I mean, white tailed deer, the amount of people that hunt whitetail deer, the, the amount of money it generates for the states is huge. In the southeast, it's probably still gonna be white tailed deer. But in the southeast, turkeys are a very close second, it's almost a religion down here, turkey hunting is pretty sacred down here. I mean, we have a, you'll come down here and you'll find a lot of literature and you don't find that as much on white tails, you know, even though they're as popular, they generate more or less revenue than turkey hunting down here, but you get to look at the just just the, the amount of people that put more effort into the game, you know, the the hunting of the turkey and you'll find people trying to put words to the to the interaction and put words to the connection they feel with their with the, you know, in the challenge that they experienced with their, with the game that they're pursuing. And you see a lot of literature around turkeys, because I believe people are constantly trying to put a description that that does it justice, and I'm not sure anybody ever has, that you look at people that are, you know, Colonel Tom Kelly, you know, Jean nun, or you got some authors out there that have done a really good job of trying and putting pen to paper to kind of document the feelings and the emotions that this stuff evokes. And you don't find that with anything else. So the SE I guess is your short answer is there's turkeys are is close to Second of all in the pecking orders is anywhere in the country.
Nick VinZant 32:18
Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Sure. Hardest call to do easiest call to do.
Dave Owens 32:29
That's all going to be do it's going to be up to the individual. But the most difficult call for most people is glycolic o'clock. And per it takes a fluttering of the tongue or a gargling of the throat when a mouth call that causes that little bubbly sound. And that's typically harder for people to accomplish. The easiest call is the easiest and the hardest. And I'll explain what I mean by that. A Yelp is probably the one that people start off with. Typically, they'll pick up a boss call or a pot call and they can mimic that call well enough easier. But in my opinion, when it comes to judging a turkey sound, it's harder to fool my ears with a turkey yield. Like very few people in the country can Yelp on a call and me hear it and go that's that's a turkey and it not be a turkey. So it's the easiest to kind of come you know to make. But it's the most difficult in my opinion to actually be realistic.
Nick VinZant 33:23
Has anyone ever entered an actual turkey into a turkey haul turkey calling competition? And where do you think the actual Turkey would place?
Dave Owens 33:33
If the turkey didn't win? You've got a problem with judges. Because no matter how hard we try, and how much we practice and all the little knickknacks that we gather to try to replicate the sounds. We still have so far to go. I mean, if we still have so far to go, I mean, you can listen to the most accomplished Polish callers in the country. And you can put them beside a wild turkey and man we all we don't even it's not even close. So there's a lot of room for improvement there. So yes, what a wild turkey when he better or she better. But no, I don't know if anybody's ever done that. Is this gonna be hard to get your hands on one and make them talk when you want them spoke? You know, speak when they're spoken to?
Nick VinZant 34:19
Yeah, that's true. I'm always reminded of the things that Groucho Marx that famous comedian took third and a Groucho Marx and lookalike competition. It's always made me laugh. Um, all right, man. feet to the fire. You got to pick a state best place for hunting. Best place for turkey hunting
Dave Owens 34:37
best place for turkey hunting it's gotta it's gotta be hard to beat Georgia and Alabama because opportunity or bag limits are available here I think you can still kill for in an Alabama even though it's went through a reduction used to be out to kill three in Georgia they went to a reduction you can only kill two now because like I mentioned earlier hunters are the first He wants to start pulling back on the reins when it's necessary. But we have long seasons, seasons or, you know, 40 days, 45 days. So the opportunity to get out there for that amount of time, I don't think you can find that anywhere else in the country.
Nick VinZant 35:13
Can you do other calls? Right? Like, are you good? Could you just go into Duck Calling and knock it out like a pro?
Dave Owens 35:19
Yeah, well, maybe not like a pro. But the app spin when I was, even when I was young, I was just one of those kids that could hear a sound and replicate it and get pretty doggone close with just a little bit of practice. So Duck Calling goose calling elk. Even though I've only hunted elk a handful of times, it's a lot of it goes hand in hand with the mouth reads the diaphragms that you that you use in turkey calling. But yeah, I've always been one of those guys, and they can just hear something and replicate it pretty quickly.
Nick VinZant 35:49
Is there a rivalry, rivalry between Turkey and duck collars?
Dave Owens 35:55
Now know, I don't think so it's such a different, such a different avenue, I guess. I mean, because with Duck Calling competitions, they're there to typically showcase the ability to be able to call as much as they are the ability of the caller, where turkey hunting, in turkey calling it's all about, you know, being the turkey, they're there to replicate the sounds of the intended animal. So they're not thinking about the call, they're not there to showcase the call, they don't care what kind of call it is. So that's kind of two totally different. Totally different deals their
Nick VinZant 36:34
best Turkey haul, best turkey call to start out with best like second turkey call, like
Dave Owens 36:41
the easiest. That typically your your when you start out, this is going to be with like something like a push pin, or a box call, which is a friction top call, typically made out of wood, it's very easy to get a sound out of. And with just a little bit of practice and even some instructions off the off the paper that comes with the call, you can usually get something that's going to somewhat replicate a turkey quickly encouraged and most people do, they'll pick up a mouth diaphragm pretty quickly, just because of the necessity. Like I say a turkeys live and die with their eyes. So if you can imagine trying to get a turkey into 40 yards or less running something that you have to actually move to make the sounds can be a conflict, you can't sit there and call to the turkey with him looking at you and making the movements because he's going to know that it's not a real Turkey and he's going to flee. So that's why you use the mouth diaphragms, you can you know you have your you have a face mask on. So you have it pulled up to here. So you can still call with a mouth diaphragm in your mouth and the turkey can't see it. So typically, that's the second call everybody's going to pick up just due to the necessity of being able to continue to coax the turkey into that close range and him not be able to see any movement.
Nick VinZant 37:56
So tell me about the Pinhoti project. When did you start that what's kind of the mission
Dave Owens 38:01
Pinhoti project started in 2018. It was just to produce turkey hunting content it was to give turkey hunters like myself something that to watch that they could relate to. We all get kind of amped about this time of year when Turkey seasons are knocking on the door, everybody wants to kind of live through somebody else live vicariously relive haunts and that kind of thing. And with the popularity of like digital media and YouTube and these different streaming platforms, we saw the opportunity to hop in there and provide something that we felt like was was tasteful, and kind of you know, illustrated how we Turkey hunted and just the cool factor of turkey hunting making it popular again, making people care about Turkeys just saw the opportunity to make all of that something so that's kind of why we hopped in and here we are.
Nick VinZant 38:56
White meat or dark meat.
Dave Owens 38:59
Oh man, it's it's hard to choose you can't beat turkey breasts. Everybody likes turkey breast rot. But if you know how to prepare turkey legs and thighs, they are extremely good. We make turkey tacos and Turkey pot pie we make we actually had Turkey enchiladas not before last make a lot of stuff with the turkey legs and the dark meat. So it's it's hard to be you shouldn't throw any other way. I promise you.
Nick VinZant 39:28
That's pretty much all the questions I got manage anything else you think we missed? Or what's kind of coming up next for you?
Dave Owens 39:35
Oh, next for me. It sits the busy season for me. It's essentially turkey season. We're planning where we're going this next spring. I have turkey content I still have we typically I typically turkey hunt in the neighborhood of 90 to 95 days a year. And everything's videoed if I'm awake unfortunately, when I signed up for the Pinhoti project, I might promise that I was going to video and document every single thing and I'm it's kind of What I'm doing now is we produce and I try to get that as much of that content out there real time. Typically, that's only about 1517 episodes during the spring season. Because as you can imagine trying to document everything, hunt, if it's daylight we're hunting, if we're legally allowed to and then also having time to edit which is an extremely strenuous and and time consuming process. You can only do so much of that when you're doing it all at the same time. So we have a ton of footage that after the season is over that we're just sitting at home and all offseason I am cleaning that footage up coming out with episode so the year before the season, like I mentioned, when everybody's ramping up and getting excited wanting to live through live some hunts from last year, I have a lot of that content available. And that's what we're doing now. I had about two months of content that I had to clean up and I've been nose to the grindstone now for gosh, next to two months to get this stuff cleaned up. So we're we're down to about three weeks left footage, and so I had to power it down to get on this call with you. So it's it's busy.