Ep. 3: Calling and Killing Turkeys with Chris Parrish
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Welcome to Cutting the Distance Podcast. I'm here with my good buddy, Chris Parrish. Chris is not only one of the greatest turkey callers of all time, but even more impressive to me. He's a great guy, a great father, and a dang good turkey hunter. I can't wait to jump into talking about everything to do with calling turkeys with Chris. He's been a little bit of my mentor, I would say, on the turkey call side, but we've really just...

kind of got to know each other eight or nine years ago and really just kind of hit it off. And I've been able to hunt with Chris a little bit, talk about Western hunting, turkey hunting, deer hunting. But in this podcast, it's going to be all about calling turkeys, you know, his preferred calls, his approach to calling turkeys, his favorite time of day to call turkeys, favorite time of year to call turkeys. And we're just going to jump into all that. So welcome, Chris. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me, Jason.

As I mentioned, one of the better turkey callers, you know, anybody can run a call, but to go out and put that ability to use, I think it's more important to be a good turkey hunter than it is to be a good turkey caller. On our trip to Kansas last year, I think I remember you right, you had said that was your 400th bird or somewhere right around there? Yeah, actually 401. But, you know, I've been doing it a long time. We won't give away age here.

Yeah. And, you know, some of those things like it's cool to keep track of, but I can tell being out in the field with you like that number is it's not as important to you as the experience and the time that you're having out there. But it is cool to just kind of know you would never bring that number up. So I brought it up for you just to let people know just how accomplished you are, not only as a caller, but as a hunter.

It was cool to get to see you do your thing last year in Kansas. I grew up watching you turkey call and on the stage and getting to hear how good you were, but to see you out in the field and put it to use was...

even, even more important. You came from, from the days when you, a guy could make a living off of being a good turkey caller, you know, back when turkey calling was a big, big thing. Um, you talked about, you know, being able to go out on a weekend or go to a turkey calling contest and it wasn't anything to bring home, you know, three to $5,000, you know, for winning that turkey calling contest. Um,

Um, I remember, you know, back in the day, you were one of the first, you know, hunting callers to appear on, you know, not only the Letterman show, you were on the Stern show. Um, and it used to be a big, big deal, um, to be a, uh, you know, a good turkey caller. I think it's, it's still a big deal, but it's not, um, it doesn't seem to be as big as it was back when, when you were winning all those competitions.

No, it's definitely changed over the years. You know, YouTube and several other things have made it a lot easier to become a good caller. Back in the day, we used to go to contests actually to learn and learn off of those that, you know, were predecessors of ours. And, yeah.

I think now with YouTube and all the different channels that people can go through, it just makes it a lot easier to become a good caller. And you can become a better hunter as well because you're learning a lot about tactics and tricks and things that people have been using for the last 25 or 30 years. Yep, yep.

I really appreciate having you, Chris. This should be a good show. I'm going to dive into a lot of these questions I've asked you before, but we're going to dive in so all the listeners can kind of dive into the turkey-calling brain of Chris Parrish. And I want to take a second to congratulate you personally. I think in a couple weeks, you're going to be inducted into the National Wild Turkey Federation's Hall of Fame. Thank you. Congratulations. It's an awesome award.

awesome uh you know award and uh couldn't be happier for you not sure whether it's deserved or i'm just getting old enough yeah they they figured they better throw throw you in while they still got time and you can uh and enjoy it but no i mean we didn't jump in i'm not going to jump into all the you know the grand national championships and the team championships but

I'm just going to put this out there that you're one of the more decorated turkey callers of all time, and you deserve it both from a calling standpoint, what you did for the calling industry, both as your own company and what you did with Night and Hail, what you did on the stage. So it's well-deserved, Chris. And like I say, couldn't be happier for you. Thank you. So we're going to jump in. We've got a couple questions from social.

it's kind of funny, me and you were actually talking about this a little bit this morning. Um, you know, it's kind of the ideal, the ideal way to, to, to,

To condition our pot calls versus like maybe what's good enough for everybody out there. So there's a lot of different surfaces, you know, in our lineup, we've got slate, we've got aluminum, we've got a crystal, we've got a glass surface. Like in your opinion, what is the ideal way to condition those calls? And, you know, you get really technical because you've called in like friction calling championships and stuff where you're trying to do really, really,

you know, fine calls with like kikis on the edges, you know, doing stuff that we're probably not going to be doing out in the woods as we're trying to call turkeys in. But what's your ideal way that let's just go through, like give me your ideal way to condition a slate, your ideal way to condition aluminum, and then your ideal way to condition like a crystal or glass surface for, you know, for ultimate use as far as any strike you're going to throw at it, you know, long,

Long use out in the field, something that's not going to need conditioning over and over. Well, on a slate surface, I prefer to use something like Scotch-Brite. Slate will wear. It sands really easy. So using sandpaper on slate, you wind up, one, cutting too many big grooves in the slate, and two, you wear the surface down so it gets thinner and thinner. Where Scotch-Brite just barely takes that surface off.

and gives it a good conditioning and your striker runs easily on there. And you always want to sand regardless of the surface. You always want to remember you want to sand in one direction and then you want to bring that striker across that surface. That's what creates that grit or that grab of that striker.

With aluminum, it's either a stone or like a piece of 100 grit sandpaper. That's a good way to start it. And then a lot of times I'll go to using Scotch-Brite just to kind of keep it buff because once aluminum has some of its grooves in it, it generally will stay really good for quite a long time. It's actually a pretty easy surface to condition.

And crystal, you definitely, or any kind of glass surface, you definitely want to use a stone on that. And again, just always going in one direction and bringing your striker across that. But stone works really good. Oftentimes after I stone it, I will take a little piece of Scotch-Brite just to knock some of the dust off of it to make sure I get all the dust off because that stuff will build up on your striker.

For sure. For sure. And then, uh, why we're on that, you brought up a good point. Um, something I want to throw in is, you know, conditioning strikers, me personally, um, you know, you can rotate it a few times. You do get that one little slick spot, kind of your, you know, right on that radius where you're, you're playing that. Well, I usually just hit it with a Scotch bright. Do you do anything different, Chris? Um, you know, you just kind of twist it in Scotch bright, make sure you don't put any, you know, higher, lower flat spots in it. Just give it a little twist and it's usually good to go. Um,

you know for for quite a bit longer but do you do anything different on your strikers no i always try to condition them with a little piece of scotch bright a lot of times you'll see people buff them with a piece of sandpaper and to your point what happens when you do that is you'll create a lot of times you'll get a valley on one side or the other of the radius and then you'll get a skip in the call and and sometimes people don't realize that but if you could you know take a uh

where you could see that really good, you'll see that you can, you can take the, uh, the perfect radius out of that striker if you don't watch what you're doing. So yes, Scotch bright is, is the way to go. Yep. Yep. Scotch bright. And then I used to sit there and just rotate it back and forth, but I think just twisting it all one direction is better. That way you're not getting those high points or anything developed into that radius that, that needs to be fairly uniform. I agree. Um, the next question, Chris, somebody only has a small chunk of ground to hunt. It holds a few birds, uh,

How much pressure is too much? You know, for elk, I've got it pretty set. Like I know if I put this much pressure on, they're going to be the next valley over. If I put additional pressure on, they may be a mile over. But when we go into birds, you know, turkey hunters, they put a lot of pressure on the birds. But is too much pressure too much? Are you going to make those birds unhuntable? Kind of what's that balance of being aggressive enough but not pushing the birds onto a different piece of property or making them so you're just not ever going to be able to call them in when you do get your chance?

Well, there's a fine line there and we could talk about this for a long period of time, but I'll use a prime example of my backyard and you've been here, Jason. I've got 23 acres, so I don't have a lot of timber here. I don't have a lot to hold the turkeys and the turkeys go up and down the creek quite a bit. They don't necessarily roost here.

every day. So you kind of got to hit and miss with it as far as where they're roosting. And if they're roosting too far away, there's not much you can do about it. You're going to fly down with hens and move off. And, you know, they may be three or 400 yards off the property. But when I look at pressuring a turkey,

So hunt them smart. If you know they're roosting on you, like for the night before you've roosted the turkeys or they're gobbling in the tree that evening before, you kind of have a good idea where you need to set up. You slip in there, you get in there way before daylight, sit down on the turkeys, try to work them a little bit. If they're not doing much and they move off and they move off the property.

Leave it alone and just hold your ground and sit around a little bit and see what's going on. I prefer to, because of the lack of turkeys in certain areas, I prefer not to put a ton of pressure on them when it comes to small pieces of property. A lot of times I'll skip days of hunting

just to make sure I don't push them off this property. I want to make sure that they stay here or stay around close where I still have a couple of extra days I might be able to hunt them and work one of them. I don't think that you can actually over call to a turkey when it comes to pushing them off a piece of property with your calling. I think what happens is, it's more than anything, is you pressure the hens. The hens don't want to be around you. They walk the turkeys off.

They get done breeding the hens for that morning. A lot of times they're coming back looking for you. So I don't necessarily think it's the calling part of it. It's the human presence on a consistent basis or the taking the chances of bumping those turkeys with your human presence, you know,

by going in and out and moving all the time on a small piece of property. So, you know, I would just say hunt it wisely. If you get the chance to roost a turkey the night before, that's a great way to do it. Or if you're going into the piece of property, say a later morning or midday type of hunt, and you're not exactly sure where the turkeys are,

slip in real carefully and check on the edges and see if you can get a turkey to gobble before you ever get in there and give his presence away. Because oftentimes, you know, they're strutting with hens or they're just milling around and you walk in there without, you know, getting a location, you wind up bumping the turkey physically. And then when that happens, he may be a couple of days before he returns.

Yep. Yep. And we have a fairly similar example. I didn't, I wasn't locked on a small chunk of ground, but here in Western Washington where we had, you know, just a few Easterns, that was literally, you know, maybe the only bird you were going to get to hunt all year because there just weren't very many of them. The numbers are so low where that was one thing we had to battle with all the time. You know, you wanted to keep chasing them and pushing them, but if you push them out of the area, who knows where you're going to find them again and you might just not hunt a bird the rest of the year. So yeah.

Yeah, it was that, it's that balance of you still want to get in them. And, and we didn't, we didn't make our move or push them hard until it felt like, you know, everything was in our favor. Like he's responding to all of our calls, he's moving in our direction, then we'd keep the pressure on him. But a lot of times if he moved off or we didn't really know where it went, we would just have to back out. And it, it kind of makes for, you know, not as action-packed turkey hunting, but if you ultimately wanted to kill that bird, that's what we had to do.

Well, that's definitely the thing is, you know, if you want to be successful, you got to change it up a little bit. And I cut my teeth and grew up hunting public land where I'm dealing with not just my pressure, but all kinds of outside pressure. And you never know every day was like a box of chocolates. You were going to get something different from the turkeys.

But I always learned early on, sit down, be patient, wait it out, see what happens. And it's surprising how many times you come out of there successful and nobody else is killing turkeys because you're using the little patient hat track. ♪

Well, I appreciate you helping me answer some of the questions we got. And then let's jump into the questions I have for you, Chris. And a lot of this is kind of carryover from what I know from elk hunting, but I really want to pick your brain. You know, we said everything was going to be about calling, but I want to start with the setup and then go into the calling because in my world of elk, the setup is so important.

Um, and you know, to, to before you ever begin. So once you locate a bird, Chris, kind of what goes through your head? Like, is there a decision tree? Like, well, that bird hit me right back. That bird's in this location, that bird's, you know, time of day is the bird going to be moving to a certain spot? Like what goes through your head to figure out like where we need to get to? And I know there's a lot of factors we can't, you know, put into a question, but kind of what are some of the things that you think about before you go to get ready to set up?

Well, I'll start off just talking about turkeys on the roost because most of us are hunting them early in the morning. So, you know, when I have a turkey roosted, my number one thing getting in there in the dark is to get as close as I can as possible. I like to get 60, 70 yards of the turkey if possible. No, I don't want to get any less than 100 yards from the turkey if I can. To eliminate some of the factors, one, you know, hens.

A lot of times you're roosted in and around hens. And maybe I'll be the first hen that he hears that morning and he will decide he wants to come to me. And a lot of times you can bring those hens to you that morning right off the roost and he'll follow as well. So there's that factor of early morning hunting. If I'm going into a turkey in a morning hunt and I don't have him roosted, they're already gobbling on the roost.

Obviously, terrain and the amount of cover that we have is going to dictate how close I can get to that turkey. But again, I'll push my luck a lot and try to get as close as I can. I want to cut that distance down and make it easy for him and easy for the other turkeys that he may be around to come to me and make it more inviting for him.

Um, middle of the day, you know, a lot of times you're, you're trying to strike a turkey, you know, we've hunted together there in Kansas and sometimes you're walking and calling and trying to strike a turkey and the birds just aren't doing much. But if I have one hit me, you know, a couple of things that I do is I like to assess the area. So if a turkey gobbles, let's say a turkey gobbles 200 yards away.

Well, if I can get closer, I'm obviously going to get closer. I want to get as close as I possibly can. But if terrain doesn't allow me, sometimes you just have to set up where you set up. The first thing I'm going to look for is, is it easy for the turkey to get to me? But is it also easy for the turkey to see my location from a great distance? So

I want to do one or two things here. I want to try to figure out how to set up and eliminate that turkey from being able to see 100 yards to me so that he thinks that hen's further away and he comes in closer and keeps coming closer to see if he can get a visual on that hen. And it's really open terrain. I'm going to shut the calling down a little bit. I'm not going to call to him a lot. I just want to get him interested in coming and just give him enough to keep him coming to me.

If it's a situation where it's really, really thick, really, really nasty, and I feel like the turkey is going to be slightly uncomfortable, I may back up and go around and try to get in a position where I think that turkey is going to feel more comfortable coming into. You know, they're just like people. And I use this as an example. I don't necessarily like walking in places where I think I'm going to poke my eye out in the dark.

So that's why I use a headlamp light. So a turkey, you know, he's not walking around the dark, but he's coming through that thick stuff. They're not necessarily as comfortable as they are where they're places they can see and they can, and, you know, it's just easier for them to, to assess the situation. They're also looking for danger the whole time they're coming in. You know, there's something always trying to eat them or get to them. So, you know, keeping that in mind, oftentimes,

you'll strike a turkey sometimes and they're like right over the ridge from you. And I'm sure you dealt with this a bunch in the mountains, Jason. And, you know, a lot of times we have a situation where we want to just like plop down right there, get our gun up or whatever we're hunting with and try to call the turkey from there. Sometimes you need to look at that and go, well, you know, this is not

Really, the turkey's going to be in my face before I can do anything. And if he comes in right or left, I might get caught. So learning to back up a little bit from your setup and give yourself a little bit of room

uh, and, and a place where you can visually see the Turkey coming in and where you can actually move a little bit more, um, to get yourself in position as that bird's coming in so that you're, you're on the Turkey when he gets there. Yep. Yep. All good points. And also don't look to get into like a ton of cover. Um, some,

sometimes people get themselves so tied down to cover that they can't even move their gun. You know, if the Turkey circles to the left or circles to the right, they can't hardly turn to get their gun on the Turkey, you know, get a good backdrop of a big tree. Try not to have a bunch of stuff out in front of you to, you know, that, that, uh, keeps you from moving from one side or the other. Um, you know,

you know, you don't have to absolutely hide from the turkey. We don't have to build a blind against a tree every time we set up on a turkey, you know. And another thing is, is don't set up when you got the sun directly beating on you. That's a big mistake a lot of people make. They'll set up and the sun's just glinting off of their, you know, if they're wearing glasses or their gun barrel or anything else. And, you know, that's kind of a dead giveaway. Turkey walks in and

Best camo in the world is not going to hide you when it's shining. Yeah, for sure. And that kind of last year on my bird in Kansas, you know, we kind of got...

We didn't take the time to set up. I don't know if we half-heartedly just thought maybe there wasn't going to be a bird there, but remember where we set up, it was so flat there in Kansas that we kind of set up skyline a little bit, even though there wasn't much rise. And, you know, we were able to kind of stay out of that bird's way until he got to the decoy. And then, you know, instantly when he got to that decoy, he, I think,

We all agreed that he kind of picked us off probably on that horizon, you know, and we had a pretty good setup, but it's the same thing we encounter a lot here in the West turkey hunting is we, you know, a little more mountainous, a little more ridges. A lot of times what's going through my head is let's go set up on the ridge top because that way I don't have to pull them up and down. But when we set up on that ridge top, you've just...

you know, you just started playing the turkey hunting game on level expert because you're now basically skyline to any direction a turkey comes from. And any little bit of movement is going to just, you know, stick out like a sore thumb. And, and so that's one of the things when setting up is, you know, make sure you have a big tree as your backdrop or make sure you have some brush behind you. Um, because, you know, any of us that have did this, you know, long enough knows like their, their eyesight is just

you know, tremendous and you can't get away with a whole lot. No. And on your hunt, Jason, to your point, that decoy was the thing that sealed the deal. You know, I mean, there was a little bit of, a little bit of Colin to make him break and go ahead and come and convince him. But,

Without that single hen decoy, that game was probably over before it got started real good. Just a prime example of how decoys can play a role in open terrain, especially. For sure. For sure. And one thing we all thought is my bird was...

you know, even for being a more mature bird, he was super hesitant. So, you know, were there other big birds out there that were affecting just how callable he was? It's almost like he approached very gingerly. He didn't want, you know, a tom to pop out of the brush and whip him again. So that was one thing we noticed in calling that bird. We were, we had to be very, very patient with him because he wasn't going to put up with a ton of calling, which is, you know, you adjusted once you've seen that and we, you know, you just adjust your calling to that style.

Yeah, I might add too, that was one time that though they've came in very handy, oftentimes always carry your binoculars because when I started to work that bird, when he locked up, I couldn't visually see him with my eyes. So I was using the binoculars to look at Dirk's

screen on his camera to see what the bird was doing and how he reacted to my call so so that i knew how to work the turkey which you know that might might be cheating in some respects but it worked you know and and he he finally he finally broke when i started clucking and purring to him and soft talking to him and uh decided he wanted to go ahead that was the convincer you know and you

you never know what's going to work and what's not going to work. But the, the big thing is, is you always want to have a, a big basket of tricks and different things that you can do to, to convince the Turkey and, you know, switching up calls, making sure you've got a couple of calls that, that have some different sounds, you know,

Obviously, we didn't have but one hen decoy, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a hen back over on the other side behind me in that field that was doing some calling. So, you know, all those things come into play. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you, the other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

There's also millions of wide open acres chock full of different landscapes, meaning the hunt in one county is often completely different from just a few counties over. But what really makes South Dakota the greatest goes way beyond just hunting a colorful bird. It's the pursuit of something more like the camaraderie that awaits all kinds of hunters from all walks of life and partaking in South Dakota tradition over 100 years in the making.

It's about taking the greatest shots and watching your dog work the greatest fields in the greatest lands, carrying on the greatest heritage and making the greatest memories. So what are you waiting for? From the rush of the flush to the stories at the end of the day, experience a thrill like no other. Learn how at huntthegreatest.com. Well, that little story there from the Kansas trip was a good segue into the

What is Chris Parrish's calling system or your approach? Are you feeding off of every bird's personality, his aggressiveness? Are you going, or do you have a checklist, let's say one through five, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do a little bit of purring and yelping and kind of build to cutting or what?

When you, you know, and I can't lay everything out here for you, Chris, but in general, like what's your approach to calling birds? And I know the situation has a lot to do with it, but if you can kind of lay that out for us.

I'll go through two scenarios here real quick. One would be a scenario, let's just say you do not have a bird located. You're going to go in and do some blind calling. And what I mean by blind calling is you don't see a bird, you haven't heard a turkey, but you know turkeys frequent a specific area. Kind of like what we did on your Kansas hunt. You know, that bird didn't answer anything until after we set up and we kind of sat down to do some blind calling and see if anything would come into that little food plot area.

At that point, what I'll do is I'll always start off soft, always soft clucking, some soft yelping, just some soft stuff to just feel the thing out and see if I can get a turkey to react to it. And after I've called that first little sequence, let's just say I do, you know, some

two or three small series of five, six notes, soft yelping, some clucking. I'll just shut up and just give it five or six or seven minutes and just see what happens. Something might just walk out. Maybe he decides after me not calling for four or five minutes, he decides to gobble and let me know that he's in the area.

And then at that point, I will always let the turkey dictate how I call to him. Now, whether I call hard to him or soft to him, all depends on how he answers me. If that turkey is cutting my calls and gobbling hard and they have personalities and I'll push this back a little bit on you.

Elk answer the same way. You know, you can tell when an elk is really smoking, when he really answers hard to you and really bugles hard to you compared to a half-hearted bugle. Turkeys gobble in the same way. You'll get a turkey, you'll hit him with a call and he'll gobble and it's like he vibrates the hat on your head or the next time he gobbles,

And it's just like he's answering you, telling you I'm over here. So whichever way I read that is kind of going to dictate how I go ahead and call to that turkey. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to jump in on him and start yelping and cutting and really calling to him hard because I don't need to. There's no reason to do that. If he's going to answer soft calls and come, that's all I'm going to give him. Soft calls and come. But now if he kind of holds his ground, I might juice it up a little bit.

and start hitting him with some excited yelping, a little bit of cutting to try to amp him up a little bit and see if I can make him break and go ahead and come a little bit. I really don't have a set pattern. I generally just let the turkey dictate how I'm going to call to him

And let the situation dictate if he's got hens and you, you saw this last year with Dirk and I's hunt. Sometimes you're just not even going to get the hens to break and come no matter what you do. They'll call back to you a lot of times and walk off. And with that, you just got to, you know, rearrange how you're going to hunt those turkeys. But you let the turkeys dictate what,

I think letting the turkeys dictate how you call to them is always the best case scenario because you can get a read on them. And after you've hunted them for a little bit, you'll understand kind of what I'm talking about, how they answer you, how they react to your calls and how you need to move and adjust your calling to what they're doing.

I don't ever have a set pattern, but I always carry a multiple of calls because you never know what the turkey's going to answer. One minute he's answering a mouth call, and he stops. Then you pick up a slate call, and you hit him, and all of a sudden he likes that pitch and tone. He changes his attitude, and here he comes. Yep, exactly. Very, very similar to...

you know, elk calling where you kind of have your progressions. Like you kind of start at the lowest, the lowest threat level and then slowly work up, you know, so pers and clucks, you know, maybe some soft yelps. And, and it seems like the same thing we want to do with elk, even though we may be big a little bit more as you, you kind of want to call that Turkey in with the least amount of

of aggressive calling and then, and then work up from there. So yeah, yeah. Real similar to our approach, you know, with elk. And then one thing I want to ask you, Chris, specifically, because it seems like any, any Turkey hunter that that's been doing it for a while or anybody that has much experience is, is,

you know, what's your approach to dealing with hung up birds? You know, that, that big hang up that bird, you know, maybe pays attention to you for a little bit, gets to, you know, 150 yards somewhere where you can't see him. Maybe you can hear him gobbling at one location for a while. Can you give the listeners kind of what your, your approach to hangups is? We,

we've tried to be really aggressive. Like if you feel like he's, you know, come to a certain location and then faded, we'll get up and be very aggressive, try to get to that location and see if we can get him to come back to that location since he was comfortable there before, you know, whether it's in like a strut zone. Um, but that's kind of been our approach, whether we're doing it right. I don't know, but, um, let's hear what you have, you know, what's, what's in your bag of tricks for hangups.

I don't know if there's a right or a wrong on any of it. And you're going to hit and miss regardless. It's a wild, wild turkey. He's going to do some things that you have no idea what he's thinking. He don't know what he's thinking half the time. I'm pretty sure of it. But I approach it similar to what you're talking about. You know, if I can't see the turkey and he's been gobbling or if he's still answering me,

Generally, my first indication is he's probably got hens with him. There's a good chance he's got hens with him. That's the reason why he's not breaking and coming. Or you're dealing with a four or five-year-old turkey that just knows how the game's played and he's going to wait and see if that hen will come to him. The first thing that I'll do most of the time is I will shut up on the turkey for a little while and let him think about it.

I'll start off and try to call to him and get him gobbling pretty strong and kind of try to see if I can make him, you know, get him to that fever pitch. If he doesn't break and I shut up on him and he still doesn't break and let's say after five, six, seven minutes and I hit him with a call and he gobbles again, he's in the same spot. I'm going to look the terrain over real carefully and I'm going to make a move. I may move

I may move right, may move left. I may move right at him. I may try to get up and make a big circle and get in a different location. Sometimes just changing locations and sometimes by 50 to 100 yards can make all the difference in the world. All of a sudden, now you become a live hen because you're not sitting in the same place for the last hour.

And a lot of people don't realize that. But, you know, if you're sitting there calling in the same spot, not as he's sitting out there thinking, oh, well, that's a human being. No, he's not. He doesn't have a clue. But he does know if that he is consistently calling all the time in the same spot. She should be coming to him. That's how the game is played.

And so he realizes that that's not what, you know, is not natural. It's not natural. So I'll make a move on that turkey. I'll try to get in a different position and see what happens there. If if he does fade off, say, for example, he gets in behind some hens and he's moving with some hens, especially if he keeps gobbling and he's going a certain direction. I'll try to make a great big wide circle and get in front of that.

and just kind of figure out how they're moving and then maybe lightly call to try to keep them coming that way. Now I have seen the hens turn around and go right back to where they were just because they don't want to deal with you if you call to them and you're going to fight that battle.

At that point, I'm probably going to play the waiting game and just see if those hens will leave him at 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, if it's a morning hunt. Sometimes the hens are with them all day, and you just have to keep working around and working around until you finally get in position. And sometimes it's just not going to happen. Sometimes you're just going to be unsuccessful and chalk it up and try to do something different. Another thing that I have done that is probably a last resort overall is

If I can get in there close enough and get a visual, and I know that every single time those hens are walking him off, a lot of times I'll try to go in there and actually split them up. I'll go in there and try to run the hens off. I'll split the gobbler away from the hens or just spook them in every direction. I know this sounds totally crazy, and people look at it like, wow, man, what are you doing? Well, I can tell you something.

If you've got, especially if you have all day to hunt. Now in Missouri, we don't have that. So I tend to be a little more conservative here in Missouri where I live. But in areas where I can hunt all day and it's say 10 o'clock in the morning, 11 o'clock and those turkeys are hanging out, a lot of times,

I'll go in there and bust them up. And you go back there an hour later and he's standing over in a corner goblin trying to relocate his hens. You sneak in there and give him one little yelp. And a lot of times he'll run over the top of you. Again, it's a last resort.

But I have had it work multiple times. So I guess what I'm getting at in a nutshell is don't be afraid to try a lot of different things. Don't be afraid to move on them. You know, your tactic about moving up and setting up where they were. It's a great tactic to use. I've have called them right back to those areas before just because they do feel comfortable with it. But try it all and you're going to find that.

that every turkey is going to do something different. No two turkeys are going to act alike. So that's, uh, that's the fun part of turkey hunting too.

It's always a chess game. Yeah, those are some great tips and some great things to try. So the question we get all the time, and of course, we get to run a call fairly well compared to most. Everybody wants to sound like Chris Parrish or Jason Phelps or guys that are good on a diaphragm. In your opinion, how important is it to be a great caller? And by that, I mean, like, you know, make the prettiest sounds and the most accurate sounds versus, you know, how important is it to know how to turkey hunt?

Well, I think, and I'm always going to say, I think being a better woodsman is going to be far more successful for a guy than being a better caller. But I think there's a combination of, especially this day and age where we have probably about as many turkey hunters as we've ever had. We've got a lot of turkeys, but I think calling

is overrated when it comes to like sounding perfect. Because if you listen to a hen, sometimes there's nothing that sounds worse than a, than a live hen. So, uh,

The most important part of calling to me is understanding how to call in a particular situation and then calling with the right rhythms and putting your sequences together. And I'll use this for an example. I remember turkey hunting in Arkansas many years ago with a fellow that's a great caller and I love him to death.

But he called to this turkey with a repetitive style of calling, meaning that there was four or five clucks and seven yelps. Turkey would gobble and he would four or five clucks and seven yelps. And he would do it exactly the same every time. And eventually the turkey shut up. And I whispered and said, don't call to the turkey for a little while. Give it about 10 minutes. So when 10 minutes, 12 minutes, whatever it was, was up, I made one, one note yelp. I went...

One time, the turkey gobbled, never said another word and strutted right to us. Prime example of one changing up the sound of your call because it was a different sounding call and then being more natural with your calling. I just think being natural with it is the key is calling with broken rhythms, with more natural rhythms.

qualities to the call as far as your rhythms and how you present the call and not being fake with your calling, so to speak, where you're doing it repetitively the same way over and over and over again. I think that probably is a better key in calling. But if I had to say one thing,

the turkey and learn what the turkeys are doing in the area that you're hunting. And your calling will always be second to that. And that's one thing I noticed, um, hunting with you, Chris. And, you know, I try to do the same thing as, as do what the real turkeys do, you know, and we get to listen to a lot of guys just start cutting on a mouth diaphragm and it's just, you know, never ending or, you know, a fly down cackle that's just loud. And, and, you know, out in the woods, you might hear like three little quick yelps or like a burp.

you know, just a couple little quick cuts or cuts. And, you know, the guy out there trying to mimic what they see in, you know, some professional caller do on the stage, they're out there, you know, 19 hard cuts in a row and then right into a 17 note Yelp and, you know, whatever it may be. But I think sometimes just being subtle and natural and fitting in with the natural turkeys in your area is going to lead to a lot better success than just going out there and just

No matter how good you are, just cranking on that call and just kind of being the loudmouth hen that doesn't fit in. Well, yes. To your point, I think understanding and listening to real turkeys, that's the great thing about YouTube and other things. You can get on there and listen to these turkeys and listen to how they... Here, you watch a hen walking through the woods and she'll be walking along and she's clucking, she...

And you hear that note that I did on the end of that little series of yelps and did with my voice, which is not great, but that's like a questioning yelp. She's searching, she's looking for another turkey, whether it be another hen, whether it be a gobbler, but learning how to put that kind of question mark and searching and emotion into your calling. That emotion is no different than you and I talking, you know, if we're

If we were elk hunting together and you popped over a ridge and saw a .386x6 and I happen to be carrying a bow, you're probably going to look around at me and go, come on, come on, come on, let's get up here and get on this elk. And I'm going to be running and jogging. But if we're just easing through there and nothing's going on, our emotions are going to be lower. So understanding how to put emotion in your calling is very critical because you're

You know, I always use this analogy when I do a seminar. If my wife asked me the first time to take the trash out, she's going to ask me fairly nice. The third time she asked me to take the trash out is probably going to be a little more vocal, a little bit more radical. So, you know, keeping that in mind, kind of approach your calling style to that because

It seems to have worked for me for 45 years. Not giving my age away, but... Now we're going to have a little bit of fun with this. We're going to put you on the spot. If you could only go into the turkey woods with one call, and on that one call, you could only produce one sound. Let's say you can make a yelp or a cluck or a purr. What are you going with? I'm probably going to go with a mouth call just because that's my go-to thing.

Um, and I'm going to probably stick with just yelping. I'm going to, I'm just going to yell. And the, the, the call of my choice is generally a combo cut or a bat wing style call. That's, that's my, you know, I mean, we've got them in the meat eater line, got them in your line and my signature line. And I, I, all of them run fantastic. And that's, that's what I'm going to run. And, and I'm generally going to,

I would generally use a mouth call. I use all of them, but if I was stuck with one, that would be the one thing I would do. And I would stick to yelping only because that's just the backbone and the bread and butter of turkey calling. And that's what you hear more hens do, especially is yelp.

Yep. The same thing with me. Everybody asks, you know, what do I need to know to be able to call turkeys in? And I said, well, everything will help, but if you could only bring one in, like, you know, get a good diaphragm that you're, you're confident in. And then that, you know, anywhere from a four to a nine note Yelp, or, you know, it's just adding more on and, and transitioning out. It, it,

is kind of the answer that we go with. And then you can build off of that. If you can Yelp, I'm almost positive. You can cluck, you know, pruning is going to take some, a lot of practice and then, you know, being able to difficult. Yeah. Being able to cut and put those together is going to take a little more skill, but you know, being able to cluck and Yelp, you'll learn that as far as going out in the woods and be confident in it. And then,

Like you said, I like a combo cut. Once you get some experience, you know, it almost gives you two calls in one. You can play to the raspy side, which is the side that the latex is overhanging, or you can go to that clear cut side and clean up your call. So it gives you a little versatility in that one call is why I think that combo cut is so popular and versatile for most. I would agree.

Now I'm going to put you on the spot. If you could give, you know, one or two short tips to, you know, all the turkey hunters out there that maybe aren't finding success or aren't able to put it together year after year. Like what are just, what are the two random tips from, from Chris Parrish? Number one tip is scout. Try to find the time to get out and scout. Locate your turkeys, locate the areas that they frequent. You know, it's kind of like killing a big white tail buck.

You can't shoot one where they don't live. You can't kill a turkey where they don't want to be.

So do your scouting, put some footwork in and figure out what's going on. And oftentimes you'll find that you'll see a lot of turkeys in the fall of the year and those turkeys aren't there in the spring. So you'll have to move around and try to find where they frequent in the spring. But find your turkeys, locate them, figure out what they're doing, spend some time in the morning and the afternoons kind of figuring out what they're doing and how they're using that terrain and how they're using that area.

And that will help you greatly learn how to one, where you need to set up, where you need to start at, you know, what time of day you need to be in certain locations that eliminates a lot of the problem factors.

And secondly, set up closer to the turkey if at all possible. That's the number one biggest mistake I find 99% of all turkey hunters make, including those that have hunted for a long time. They hear a turkey gobble and they hastily go in and set up and they're not set up where that turkey really wants to be or they're so far away that there's so many things that can happen between the time the turkey would get to you and

And when he's coming in, can sneak in, never say a word. All of a sudden the turkey shuts up and leaves. So get as close as you possibly can to that turkey before you set up. If the terrain will allow it, always try to break that 100 to 125 yard mark and get in there tight on that turkey. That would be the two number one, number two tips that I could give that I think would improve anyone's success. Perfect. Yeah. I like both of those tips, Chris. And, uh,

you know, I think it can definitely help. Um, you know, it's that aggressive play people really not wanting to get in tight. Um, we've seen it, you know, on the elk side, we've seen it on the Turkey side. Once we started pushing that envelope and, um, you know, all right, let's not set up 180 yards away. Let's set up a hundred yards away using that terrain and that vegetation to our advantage and being a little more aggressive. Um, it was amazing how many birds we started calling into our laps versus, you know, just getting the

getting the old gobble and walk away. And then it seems like we spend the rest of the day chasing because we would never be aggressive enough to get to that, you know, that, that bubble where we could get him to turn. Yep. There,

There's a lot of, a lot of different factors, Jason, you know, there's, I mean, terrain's going to dictate a lot of things, um, time of year, uh, early spring, there's not any vegetation. It's hard to move, but there's always roles and little things in places that you can, you know, that'll allow you to try to, you know, move a little bit closer. And again, it just, it will, it will eliminate a lot of problems if you, if you learn to hunt that way. Yep. Yep. I agree. I agree. Well, uh,

Thanks a lot, Chris, for coming on. We really appreciate you sharing all your knowledge and experience in the Turkey Woods with all of us, especially when it comes to calling. And it's about go time. Most seasons have started now around the West. And if they haven't started, their openers are right around the corner. So hopefully everybody can use some of these tips and tactics to help them be a little more successful this year or at least get a little more action by being in tight and

you know, doing some of the stuff you explained here. Well, I enjoyed being on and I thank you for taking the time to have me on here. And, you know, I've always got time to talk turkey, no matter what the schedule is. We appreciate that about you, Chris. And yeah, I think looking forward to joining back up with you and Randy this year in Kansas and see if we can't do it again. Oh, absolutely. I think we'll have just as much success or more. I had a good hatch last year and a

I think we'll have a lot of gobbling two-year-olds and that to me is what's fun. I like listening to them gobble.