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All right, welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. Today, I've got Steve Morgenstern, I got James Harrison, and these are the masterminds behind our small batch calls. So I thought, you know, I came out here to film some content around the small batch calls, and I was thinking, well, while I'm here, I might as well get these guys together and let them chew the fat a little bit, so to speak. All right, so I'm here with Steve Morgenstern,
about building calls, calling turkeys, and anything you guys want to talk about. So welcome to the show, guys. What's the first thing on your mind, James? I feel like you got a lot to say usually. It's almost turkey season, so that's what's on my mind right now. We just got done wrapping up the NWTF convention and stuff like that, so we are full-on turkey mode right now. Everything turkey.
Right on. It's turkey time. It is. It is. It is. Yeah. Winter's been long and we were ready for spring to get here. Here's some birds gobbling and get out of state in Missouri and kill some turkeys. Right. So these guys would never probably pat themselves on the back or, well, I know James would.
Steve would never pat himself. I can't reach my back. My shoulders are too sore. For patting it. No, no. Or they wouldn't, you know, toot their own horn. But these guys are some very accomplished callers. So they do a competition calling for turkeys, whether it's friction, whether it's mouth diaphragm, whether it's owl hooting. Until a year ago, I didn't know anything about owl hooting. And let alone, I didn't even know there was a contest.
So it was kind of like, wait, what? They hoot in a contest. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out it's a little harder to think. I can now hoot with my voice, but...
Enter James Harrison's Harrison Hooter. So immediately I think I'm going to blow this thing like a like an elk call. And I can't do it right. I can't do it at all. So it took a little bit of time. Had to watch his instructional videos that we have on Phelps Game Calls YouTube channel.
And after watching him do it, you know, explain it and then watching his his facial expressions, his his the way he moved his mouth and his jaw, the way he was pushing air through it, I was actually able to do it. Now, if he put me on the spot right now, I probably wouldn't do it very good. Right. Sound terrible. But we need to get him out real quick.
We do need an actor. This could be on TV. Yeah, I want to see that. We could have this on video. Steve, he's a great Al Hooter, too.
I guess James is kind of like the OG. He's been doing Al Hooten for a long time and then somehow drug Steve into Al Hooten. He made me do it. Well, the reason Steve's Al Hooten is because he's good at it and the reason I'm not friction calling contest is because I am terrible at it. If anybody knows this, that's the honest truth. That is...
- Friction calling is not my forte. - You want me to try one of these things? - Yes, we do. - Heck yes, yes we do. We want to see this happen. - Yes we do. - We're gonna wipe your cooties off this thing. All right. So I'm gonna do just like James said. So you take your hand and make the little signal okay down at the end of the barrel here. And then you're gonna want to put your hand over this cup, like you're holding a baby chicken. - Yep. - Is exactly how he said it before. And you don't want to seal off the air. You want to let enough come through.
the first thing you want to do is get some some noise going through through through there kind of like this we're not going to blow it like we're blowing out a birthday cake we're just kind of like tightening our core and getting some of that air coming out from our from our diaphragm up so first make those first few noises
You made the dog yell. My dog, my black lab goes nuts. He starts howling and barking every time I start howling or quacking on a duck call or anything. Yeah, our dog at home, he...
Oh, come here. If he's sleeping when you start Al Hooten or turkey calling or whatever, he just stays there. He just sleeps. Right. Well, this is Ranger here. He's part of the Sweet Dream security team. So anytime I'm up here in the shop, the Labrador's up here sleeping and this one's in and out checking on everything. But he's the supervisor of the whole thing. So when you're Al Hooten, he was listening to you right there. Oh, yeah.
That's why he came in, he heard the Alhutin, and he was coming in to check it all out. So, okay, give me a grade. Like, zero to ten. Probably five? Oh, no, no. You've got the tone right. You're doing it. I mean, you've got the hand placement. The big thing is, guys, need to be able to do it.
need to practice the call and everybody's hands a little different and stuff like that. So it changes up a little bit, but you have your hand placement down and it's, it sounds great. I mean, you're, you've got, you're over the hurdle, put it like that. Right. Next step is the more you practice it, the better you're going to get. The more real owls you listen to. That's the key. I listened to a lot of real owls.
And the more I listen to them, then I just start to mimic them, just like elk or anything. And it goes from there. So that works great. And I can't even do a dog sound here. The thing with the Alhouten that I found is, I mean, I've blown one before. But when you get to James and he can tell you where you need to go with it. And it's just a matter of knowing where to be with it.
And that's what he did with me. You know, when I started getting back into the, you know, we're getting into the Al Hooten contest, you know, he's like, well, that's good, but here's, here's where you go. And not necessarily as a person, I wouldn't think need to do that hunting wise, because you're trying to get a turkey to cobble, which is what the biggest percentage of people are looking for. But when you start getting into that, once you get into it, you want to go more, you know what I mean? You want to,
You want to, man, I can do this and man, I want to be able to do that. So you start thinking and learning. That's where James helped me a lot, you know, is taking me to that next, next level and next level and just keep stepping up to where, you know, you have success at that. But then it's, then it's a no brainer when you're trying to make a turkey gobble, you can do whatever you want to do because you've done it, you know, you've learned how to do it and made it happen.
Right. Yeah. Well, James said one thing about what I really keyed in on is he listened to a lot of real owls hooting. Right. And he went out and played with owls. That's how I kind of have gotten better elk calling over the years is listening to the elk, try to mimic those. I'm not trying to mimic my favorite YouTube celebrity. I'm trying to mimic elk, real live elk. And as good as a guy can get, it's just still, it's just like, there's that nuance. Like, man, I've just...
That elk is way better than me. And is that, would you say that true with owls? Oh yeah, 100%. No matter how good I build that owl hooter or how I refine it and keep practicing it, when the real owl is right there in front of you, it just humbles you because you cannot...
do what they're doing naturally. I mean, we're working with plastic and wood and stuff like that, where they're putting all their vocal cords and feeling into it. And there's just an element there, even with a elk call or a turkey call, that realism that they get, I mean, they've got all their feeling and it's just, we try to get as close as possible. And I think we're there.
But to match them is just, I mean, the more you listen to the real thing, the better off you're going to be on, you know, turkeys, elk, it doesn't matter what it is, you know? Well, yeah, I think it's, I think that's exactly right because you've even mentioned it, you know, no matter how good you think you are with an elk, you know, it's like, man, I'm not that good. And that's, that's the way with the owl hooters, the turkey calls, you know, this stuff has progressed so good nowadays that,
I mean, the stuff that they had 20 years ago, 10 years ago is not even in the same ballpark. But when you put them side by side, where you have the real thing, whether it be an owl, an elk, a turkey, and then you, you have you on this. Now it's better than it used to be, but it's still not. It's that, it's that those tones that just that real, the real thing that's there. And it's,
you know, no matter how close we think we are, we're never ever going to get there. I mean, not fully. Right. Same with elk calls. Elk calls have come a lot. Like I started calling elk in 1989 and back then, you know, you had flat frames, you had the vacuum cleaner hose tubes. It was, it was a whole other world. You know, there was not much for even an external cow call. You, they had those ones that were called cow talk.
by elk ink. It looked like a little plastic credit card looking thing with a black rubber band stretched in between and you blow on it. And it sounded more like a weird bird than it did an elk, but elk, they would reply. There was lots of people use those and helped them successfully take an elk
um, home with them. So, you know, elk calls, turkey calls, I think deer calls, everything is like progressed over the last decades, um, a lot. Oh, sure. It has. And just like, you know, when you talk about elk would respond to it. I mean, that's like back in the day, you know, when they started with mouth calls, it had little lead frames and, you know, the, your scratch boxes and, and, uh, James talking about the, the natural voice owl hooters and stuff. And
Listen, some of them are horrendous, but turkeys would respond. And that's the ultimate goal of what any of us are trying to do. You know, the contest stuff is fun and I enjoy it. James enjoys it. You know, I've done it 34 years. You know, this is my 34th year doing it. But it's still not, you know, walking out on a stage to Grand Nationals is something I love. And that's why I still do it.
but it's still not like walking out to the timber and having a response and and you know that turkey goblin and coming to you or hit the owl hooter and that turkey blows up you know 50 yards away or 75 yards away but the ultimate goal is to have that response you know get that response from oh yeah from whatever it is the more realism you can put in it and
The same way when you're hunting, whether it be private ground, public ground, whatever, I want to be as realistic of whatever animal I'm doing, whether it be a deer, turkey, an owl, whatever, crow. I want to be, man, I want to sound like that owl sitting on my shoulder.
I want it to be so realistic that other owls hear it and come in. Because a lot of times in the mornings, I'll get up and I'll hit the owl scream and I'll hoot. And then another owl will respond. Well, then I quit calling and I just listen. You know, if you can get one owl to hoot back at you, then he's got another owl. So they're actually doing my job for me. So the more realistic I can get it, it's just like calling it a bunch of cow elk. When you're elk hunting, man, you got the real deal right in front of you. What's better? You know, same way with a bunch of hen turkeys. Sure.
You got them right in front of you. That's the, you know. Plus you can, you can sit back and you're not making that noise. And you're number one, you're watching the show. But number two, you're able, that puts you in a better position because it puts you a leg up because you're not messing with a call at that time. You've done your, you've done your part. You've got that realism out and you've got them fired up. So you sat back, let them do the work and you can analyze a lot better because you, you're not, you're,
having to do the calling or you're not having to do this or do that. It just puts you in more, a better vantage point. Oh yeah. Oh, for sure. And, and, and one big thing too, like on locator calls and even turkey calls when we're hunting, me and Steve's hunting together, you know, anytime I do a locator call, I put him out in front of me a ways and,
Just so, cause I'm blowing a call that's, you know, owl scream, hawk scream, stuff like that. That's super loud. So if I put him out in front of me, he can actually hear that turkey gobbling good and get a good direction where I can hear it gobble. But then I'm like, okay, where'd it come from? Right. You know what I'm saying? It'd be the same with elk too. You're bugling and you get one to cut you off.
You're like, okay, I heard him, but I don't know where he was at. So we, and we do that with turkeys too. We always split up and I get him out in front running that friction call. And I sit there and listen, you know, and I'm like, okay, that bird gobbled there. And the more realistic you are. I mean, when we were doing some videos before and we're hunting together, I was always a mouth call guy for competition, but man, Steve running a friction call in the woods. I mean, that, that is a hen turkey coming in. That's how realistic he's got it. I mean, you have to like stop and look psyched.
That's awesome. And that's, that's, I mean, if it sounds that good to us, you know, them turkeys are just going nuts over it. So yeah. Steve said, yeah, that call there has got a lot of turkey in it. And when you say that you're, you mean that thing sounds as real as it gets with a, with a, with a pot. Yeah. When, yeah. When, when you're saying it's got a lot of turkey in it, you know, it's there's stuff that you play that it just, it almost like it's just making noise, but then you pick up something that,
And as soon as you start running it, it's like, wow, I can hear you almost, it almost puts a picture to mind. I can hear that and see that old hen out there just flapping her beak, you know, just prop, prop, prop, prop. I mean, that's when, that's when it, in my mind has turkey in it. You know, I mean, there's not necessarily one up inside there beating around, but yeah, I mean, that's what. Wait a minute. There's not a turkey inside that little thing?
I know it sounds like it when I play one, James, but there's not. Well, and the cool thing, and I'll even go a little further on the small batch calls. You hit it earlier on like the red slate. Right. You know, one might be a little higher pitch. One's a little lower pitch. On the same way when I'm doing the owl hooters, you know, I'm hand tuning every one of them calls.
And not all two owls sound the same. Right. And the turkeys are the same way. So in that small batch, the cool thing about that, when we say there's a lot of turkey in there, or I get it, I always say, man, that thing's spitting feathers or, you know, I mean, that thing's it's every one of them. Like you grab a pot, maybe a little bit higher pitch. It may be a little bit lower pitch, but they're all turkey.
And that's what's cool about it because there's not too, you know, everybody always asks me, well, why do you carry, you know, why do you have a triple threat locator and a crow call and an owl hooter? Well, certain spots, I've got spots that I hunt that, man, there's so many owls that turkeys don't even respond to them. They just, they won't gobble at them. Where I can grab a hawk scream and it's something new and fresh to them and they'll gobble at it. Same way with a turkey call. You've got your mulberry with the gray slate. Then you've got the, uh, the babinga.
That red. And I mean, it's just two different sounds. They're both turkeys, but they're just different sound. And I'm sure it's the same way with elk too. You can, you know, change it up and make different sounds to get different results. Yeah. And that's what, like you're talking to different, it's a turkey, but it's maybe just a different turkey, but it's still all turkey. And the thing is, and that's something that, you know, I hear guys say, well, I need some mouth call.
Listen, man, you're walking by more turkeys than you're ever seeing or hearing if you're just taking one call. And by the pitch change or by the variance, say, in the red slate, a higher pitch, a lower pitch, whatever, get two of them. Get one that's high pitch and one that's low pitch. But you can also do that with different strikers, mouth calls, different mouth calls, whatever.
A box call. Box call. Anything, you know, and what happens is everybody gets a sound in their head that that's what they want to hear. Well, turkeys quit responding to it, you know, and then you have to go with something that they don't hear every day or maybe something that I've had instances where
I've yelped and yelped and yelped to this turkey and he's gobbled his brains out, but he just walks right on by, you know, a hundred yards out. Well, he's following a hen and I'm listening to her yelp. And it's like, man, I've got a box call at home or a pot call or something at home that sounds just like her and go back out there. And I mean, he just loses his mind as soon as, because that's the hen that he's hearing. So, you know, the fact of different pitch pot calls or out hooters or whatever else,
What we try and do, and James nails it, you get the most owl or the most turkey out of that particular piece of wood and piece of slate or box call or whatever it is. You get as much of that turkey out of that as you can. And that's when you start hitting it. You know, you just, you get all you can out of that particular piece of wood.
And it's, you know, it's. And the advantage of building the small batch is anytime I'm building calls and I've been building calls since, oh man, what, 17 years now, custom calls.
Every, I'm never satisfied. Steve's never satisfied. Just like you guys aren't, you know, Jason's not satisfied with elk calls. We're always looking to improve that call to get it even just that much better, whether it be for stage or for hunting. Like a stage call, I run the Harrison Hooter and the Maple.
I love the sound of that maple. It's a great tone. For hunting, I run the Hooter Pro because it's adjustable. And the reason for that is you can choke it down and get nice and quiet, or you can open it up and get as loud as you want.
And the same way with, you know, I carry two different friction calls with me. You know, I carry a slate and I'll carry aluminum or glass or whatever. I carried that Osage aluminum last year and turkeys just went inside. I mean, they just turned them inside out. And it was that frequency. And then it didn't matter if I was in Kansas or I was in Missouri or I was in Arkansas, wherever I was at, turkeys were responding to it. So that's, you know, that's, we're always trying to make it better all the time because we want it, you know, we want hunters to,
Not just us, but we want hunters to have that advantage too. Right. Well, I think, you know, as a hunter, you think, well, I already got a pot call or I've already got a box call or I've already got my one diaphragm I like to use. But to your point, like it doesn't hurt to have more than
Right. Oh, you know, I used to I kind of fell for that whole thing back in the day when I was younger. Like, I'm just going to run a diaphragm for turkeys. And there were days I cannot buy a frickin gobble with a diaphragm.
And then I bought a box call. And on those days, I couldn't buy one with a diaphragm. Then they were answering boss calls. Then there's the days they don't answer either one. Well, then I got a pot call. And then now, again, we have a completely different sound profile. And it's the same with elk. Sometimes, you know, those external read elk calls.
Some people will say, oh yeah, that's all you need. They, they weren't really great all the time, but for me, just where I hunt elk, and I think maybe regionally elk answer calls differently, but where I go, I've had pretty good luck with those open recalls, maybe 20% of the time, 10% of the time. So two bulls out of 10, one bull out of 10, probably two out of 10 will answer that external call way better than they will a diaphragm. And,
On those days, like you blow that thing and he wasn't answering good. And then you blow that external and he just fires up and now he's coming. That's all it takes. And it's the same thing with turkeys, I think. And I think it's adding that realism and that different sound and that different voice that might remind them of that old turkey in Mary Lou from last year that they made some babies with. Same with the elk. Yeah. And I think turkey calls in general, I mean, I'm a fridge and I'm a pot call guy.
I'd call in a box call, but there's been times where I can't get him to answer anything I've got. And I'll throw, grab a tube call or a mouth call. And trust me when I say I'm terrible on a mouth guy friend, um, rhythm wise, but hit a mouth call and he flips out, you know, just starts pounding and coming. And I'm thinking, well, that's dumb.
But I'm going to go with it because that's what's working at that particular time, you know, and, and, uh, it's just, it's, it's crazy sometimes what a guy can do with
different sounds and different same call, different striker, um, mouth call, but a different read configuration or cut. Oh, I can, I can even do one farther on. You're talking about the calls. Everybody like I run an owl hooter. You run an owl hooter. We take the same owl hooter and pass it around. You'll have three different owls because everybody runs it different. Same way. The mouth calls, the friction calls. Steve runs his fiction call. Great. It sounds like a real Turkey. I run it and it sounds like a dying Turkey.
But it kills turkey. You know, I mean, I call. It's not that bad. It's pretty bad, dude. Nah, it's not that bad. It's got some issues. I'm working on it. It's got some issues. But there's some turkey in it. Very little. It's a wee little turkey. But that's the thing, though. Everybody can grab those calls and they're going to have a different sound to them. And that's a good thing about it, you know.
And you can grab a call and run it and everybody's going to run it just a little bit different. It's going to sound like a different turkey, but it's got as much turkey in it as possible. Yeah. Just like diaphragm. So there's a handful of Western guys I know. They're just like, oh, I just use my elk reed to call in turkeys. And it's not the least bit of rasp. It's not as perfect sounding turkey, but it kind of sounds like a turkey. Bam. They call in turkeys with it. Until that quits working, I guess, run it. But
If you're trying to be serious, then I think you need to have like your quiver full of arrows, so to speak. You need to have a few different call options, different sound profiles that way. Right. Because you never know. You don't go fishing with just one lure, right? Oh, no. You take a whole box of them. Yeah. And that's the thing. I'm not saying a person has to pack 14 pot calls, three box calls, and 20 mouth calls.
you know, you can do like James said, with a, an aluminum call, if you put an aluminum call and a slate call and a glass call would be all you would never need change them up. You know, if you got more of them at home or whatever, you want to change sounds or what have you, but put different pegs with it, you know, different strikers, you know, get a, get a striker that runs great on that aluminum. Well, when that doesn't work, maybe you pick up a,
a hickory striker versus a diamondwood striker versus a carbon striker. You know, get three different variations on a couple of different calls. I mean, you've got a mirage. You've got nine turkeys right there. Yeah, you've got a tremendous amount, you know, and the mouth calls. Mouth calls don't take up much room. Put you a combo cut or a bat wing or, you know, a cutter style or even just a clear double read, you know, something like that that you could put in.
That's where the triple locator call comes in too. It gives you a variance of if you can't get him to gobble with one, try something different. And that's the thing, man. Don't, I mean, you can't be afraid to try something. Right. And that's why you have, and you have all of these tools in, in this little space. Yeah. And you're not walking by turkeys that,
didn't want to hear that one mouth call you had. Right. Well, that can be one of the frustrations of turkey hunting is you just, you can't get them to gobble. Right. So that's a hundred percent. So then you're hunting them like deer, right? You're going to try to find where they're, they're crossing or they're going to a place to feed or where they're going to go strut or whatever. And I mean, that's, that's okay, but it's not as fun as calling them in, calling them in. That's the best. That's where you want to see them gobble and strut and come in and stuff like that. And I tell everybody the most time you can spend scouting,
the better off you're going to be but a lot of times we don't get a chance to scout so we rely a lot on our calls to get them birds going and like we got some public ground below me that i hunt it's 98 000 acres well dude if them birds don't want to gobble that day
Go try to find a turkey in that. I mean, it's impossible. So the more opportunity you present, if he just gobbles one time, it's just like an open bugle. If he hits it one time, at least I got a game started then, and then we can go from there, you know?
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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. And you know, there's times where there's times where I've had no luck at all getting anything to gobble and I'm
find you a point, a high point, you know, to where you can hear a long ways, just go up there and sit down. Don't make a sound. Don't do anything. And at some point, something's going to fire off, whether he means to or not. I mean, he's, you know, he gobbles. Then you can make a little, like he said, you've got the game started, you make a little move. Then you can go and find what he wants. You know he's there. So you're not just completely blind to the oblivious to the whole thing. You just
you've got a little bit of a deal, but then you start whatever call it is. - Well, I mean, if it's like day three and they've been hardheaded, I'm gonna go fishing. So you're talking about the bass. I've fished with him, it's like bass pro, he's got a lot of lures. It's like, I don't even have to take anything 'cause it's like, he's got me covered. - You probably hang up a lot of them on stumps and stuff too and like, "Oh, sorry, sorry, Steve." - No, no, he make you go get them. So I make sure I do my stuff right. But no, I mean, and that's, we do that a lot.
you know, we'll go if we ain't got nothing happening. We just find a spot where we can hear. And, you know, another good thing, and I'm sure, I mean, deer hunters do it, elk hunters do it, check the wind direction. If that wind's blowing a certain way, you know, you're going to be able to hear farther if it's, you know, however you head. So make sure you put yourself in a position where you can hear, you know, you get the best advantage. You know, if it's going to be a super windy day like today, the wind's gusting out there, we've got a cold front coming through,
You want to be down in low areas. You know, them birds are going to get out of that wind and they're going to be in them low areas. Just like if it's coming out of a hard, you know, you got a storm coming up that night and you know, that wind's coming out of the West. Well, them turkeys are going to be on the backsides of them ridges out of that as much as possible. So, I mean, there's, there's advantages and that's more of the woodsmanship than the calls. But when you combine, when you don't combine all that together, that's when you, you know, that's when you're killing turkeys and you're on turkeys. Yeah. Consistency is the key. You know, I mean, you, you,
I don't judge a hunt by if I kill a turkey or not. I just want to make sure I play the game. And I think that's all you can ask for when you get out there is you just want to have a day where you get birds to gobble and you're actually in the game chasing. Because we've had those days where you don't get nothing fired up and you just do a whole bunch of walking and get in some good exercise. I'd definitely rather get one on the ground and get him working, whether I get him killed or not, because every one of them is a learning experience. Yeah, it's still fun to play with. Oh, yeah.
So I talked a little earlier about small batch calls. I'm down here videoing some stuff and I want to pick your guys' brains. Maybe some of our followers, they don't know about our small batch calls. So last year, I'll kind of give the long and short story. Last year, 2023, was our first year doing small batch calls. So small batch calls was the Harrison Hooter, the Harrison Hooter Pro, Al Hooters. And then we had Steve's
Osage and aluminum. Osage and aluminum. And what was the other one? A teak green slate. A teak and a green slate. So we had exotic domestic woods, had some kind of cool
Cool surfaces. I mean, the aluminum is not super uncommon, but the green slate's kind of an uncommon slate to put on a turkey call. And then this year you've got, you've got Babinga, which is fun to say. - It is fun to say. - Babinga. - Babinga. - Babinga. - I think somebody's going to start a game called Babinga. - Right. - Kind of like Yahtzee. I mean, everybody wants to say Yahtzee, right?
It's cool. That's cool. Anyway, sorry. Bbinga. We got Bbinga. We need T-shirts. And what was the other one?
Mulberry. Mulberry. So, babinga is from the Congo in Africa, and mulberry is a domestic. From everybody's backyard. Everybody's backyard. Everybody's got a mulberry tree. Yeah. You know, when you're kidding, yeah, you climb up there and eat mulberries. I got several. Yeah. I don't know. And then you paired a red slate with babinga. With the babinga. Because the babinga is kind of a reddish-colored wood. It's a reddish-colored wood, and they, I mean, number one, they look good together. But then we, you know...
we make it work, make that pair work. You know, if that's what you want to do, you get the red slate and you cut dimensions until it does what you want it to do. - So what Steve's saying is you don't have this like pre-thought out dimensional pot that you're just going to slap
Slate in they both have to pair right so you may have to change some dimensions internal stuff You have to overall dimension. You have to do some cool little tweaks Well, I make it sound optimal right you're optimizing the wood and the and the slice yeah, and here's this is a thing with a small batch of doing it's a small batch way and These are done. Basically. They're cut on a CNC mill. They're not hand-turned but when they get to that CNC mill and
I've went through and hand turned them and got all those dimensions right and tweaked it. And the small batch theory or thought behind it was we can do all of this stuff. And then with some of the equipment available, make it, you know, get it down to where you can get the tolerances a lot tighter. So what I'll do is go through and we've got Bubinga and Red Slate. This is what we want to make run.
So I've got a generalized starting spot with it and I try that. Okay. And if it's too tight or if it's too loose, what I mean, like really high pitch and pinging, it's too tight. If it's really sounds like it's rattly or something, maybe it's too loose. So you start adjusting those dimensions. And then the end result, when you get it where you want it and the sound that you want and the playability. Now,
the red slate versus some of the other stuff is a little pitchy at times, but that's just the nature of the beast with the red slate. But once you get it to where you want it, then you take it to this machine and you put those dimensions in. Now granted, you test it before you run 500 of them to make sure that's going to be right. And if you have any tweaks there, then you make those tweaks then.
But in result, then you have as consistent as you could possibly be with the exception of like the natural wood or the natural red slate or something like that. And it, uh, you know, it, it really works and it, and it flows out good. And I mean, I think the results, you know, last year we had the Osage aluminum, which were phenomenal, the teak green slate, you know, that good old throaty sound. I mean, but when we came back this year with the Bubinga and the Mulberry,
We changed dimensions up to make that combination work. And that's a cool thing about it, you know, because a lot of these guys, when they're doing this, like you said, they'll take one pot and they'll put a glass surface, a slate surface, a red slate or aluminum. That doesn't necessarily work because...
Those combos, you know, and depending on what, regardless of what would they do, you know, they got all these different combos and then they wonder how come it doesn't play like it, like they want it to. Right. That's when the dimension thing goes in and you start changing things to match what you want to do. And it's absolutely possible. I mean, we've done it, you know. Sure. Now, what about James, you talked about your hickory hooters and your, um,
The Hooter Pro is made from acrylic. Right. But why hickory? Why did you pick hickory? Well, we went with the maple on the Hooter. Maple, yeah. Maple, sorry. And the maple is just a solid tone wood.
So the maple's got a, it's just, it's tough. First off, we wanted a wood that was going to withstand, you know, holding it and packing it and rolling around on it, stuff like that. So we, and maple's a great tone wood. So it just has a good mellow sound. It's smooth and it's really consistent when you work with the maple. You're, you can get a batch in and it's all going to be about the same hardness and consistency all the time. And, and on these small batches, like Steve was talking about, he had like 500 of them.
We hand tune every one of those. We get them. We put like he's doing his pot calls. I know on the Al Hooters, I'm shaving the tone boards. I'm setting the reeds. I'm doing them. And I run mine. I go through 12 steps to get the insert right. And then another five times running them before they ever go out to Phelps.
So, I mean, these are hands-on. We're building them. So the maple's a good tone wood. It's light. It looks good. The acrylic with the adjustable, the adjustable's got so many moving parts, we needed a tougher material. So that's why we wanted the acrylic. The sound of acrylic is second to none. It's got a good high-pitched, sharp sound. And with the Al Hooter in there, you know, with the insert in there like that, it came together great on that as far as sound-wise. Right. So this year, your small batch call is a...
It's a triple, triple, triple locate. So give us the rundown on that. Why'd you build it like that? Why did you put three, three calls in one? What, what,
Why would you want that many locators? Well, you know, it's kind of like we were talking about. The more you're out there, if you're hunting and stuff like that, the more animal noises you can make, the better chance you got that turkey to gobble. So when I started working on it, originally on the Owl Screamer, I was doing it for, you know, the reason I started to develop it was for competition calling. Right.
And I built for a couple of years, getting the bugs tweaked out and then from there. And then when me and Jason got talking about it and we started playing with a little bit, we, I knew I could do a Pilea to woodpecker call on it, but the Hawk call was lacking a little bit. So I was like, man, if we work on that a little bit, we can tweak that to get that Hawk call.
in right there. And I said, then we'll have three calls, three animals in one call. I said, how cool would that be? I mean, we all work for a living. So I mean, if I can go buy a call that has three things in it, instead of buying three individual calls, that's a win for me. I'm going to use that. So that's what we did. So then it came down to the art of
I listened to Hawks. I went out and videoed Hawks and listened to them and listened to them on YouTube and everything else. And then I took my call and was matching it to try to get that sound exactly right. Same way with the owl scream, doing the same thing. And then the Pileated Woodpecker. So that's, you know, that's how that all came about on there. Yeah. I would
I would have got four in there if I could have found another animal to put in there. It'll kind of do a good peacock call. We were playing with it. What about a chupacabra? It will do a little bit of a chupacabra. You drop that over all the way down. It'll make some crazy noises. It'll almost duck call like it do a duck whistle good. I mean, what was we doing earlier? We were doing a wood duck. And then you can almost drop her down. We can do a short reed goose on it.
You can play with it. You can get some interesting sounds out of this little call. And that's the same way. We set every one of them. Make sure there's no burrs on the tone boards. I mean, these get...
These are not a mass-produced call. That's one thing I want. When they hear the word small batch, this is not a mass-produced. Nobody's just assembling them and out the door. These things are getting attention all the way through the whole process. Well, I know last year when we had those Al Hooters come out and they sold out fast. They sold like pancakes, right? And we're like, man, we need to get some more of those done right away. And you're like, well...
It just takes time to make them. It just takes time to make them. And I'm a one-man shop. I mean, same as Steve. So when I do my inserts, I'll sit down and work on inserts. And what I do first is I glue everything together I want. I cut the O-ring grooves because there's
you know here's the deal you're putting o-ring grooves and o-rings on an al hooter insert well dimensions on that matter i've got them set for a certain dimension because you don't want them too tight you don't want them too loose so there's a lot of we're just not slapping stuff together and putting it in you know there's there's thoughts behind every bit of this process and it's all and at the end result is you get a great sounding al hooter and if it doesn't sound good
it doesn't go out the door. We will literally, I've got a pile over there of Al Hooter inserts that don't make the cut. Right. So they just don't go out. Well, one thing, you know, like you were talking before, and that's something on this small batch. I mean, people have to realize what James and I go through as far as doing this. You know, when Jason had me do that podcast to begin with, he was like,
you know, how much of this do you want to do and whatever? Well, the capabilities of some of the machines are way above what I'm capable of doing or what James is capable of doing. But, but the end result, when it comes back down, every owl hooter that comes out of Phelps has had James's hands on it. Yeah. Every pot call that comes out of the small batch Phelps is my, had my hands on him. He runs them. I run them, you know, before they ever walk out. I mean, I've,
I pulled calls. James has pulled calls because they don't make the grade. And that's something else.
that maybe not everybody gets, you know, and understands. Right. Well, and one thing, you know, like James kind of alluded to is you guys got a small shop. Like we've been videoing in it. I seen videos from last year. I'm thought, Oh yeah, James shop is a little, probably twice as size, but it's a very small space. So to make any amount of Al Hooters, uh,
to where a lot of people could buy them is just out of the question. I mean, you'd have to work day and night to turn enough barrels for owl hooters and same with you. Like, you can make those one at a time pots at your house, but you can't, like, make enough to where it's like, well, I, you know, several people like to try them. Well, it's just not that kind of an option. So that's why we have them to our shop and we have them made there to your specs and then, like,
you know, you're constantly working toward with them too. You're working with them like, Hey guys, we have to make sure this spec is met. I noticed this, I noticed that we need to fix this. We need to fix that just to make sure that your recipe is in the end product. Right. And it works out good because I've been a machinist for since in high school. So I run all the CNC. So I know what they're talking about. So when we talk to,
you guys about, hey, we need to open this up five thousandths or me and Steve's talking, we're explaining it to each other. I don't build friction calls, but when Steve says, hey, this is a little tight, we need to open it up. You know, we we're not just guessing at this stuff. I mean, we've got this stuff down pat as far as like we know what we're talking about on the dimensions. And the cool thing is
When we call, and this has happened several times, last year on the first batch, I said, hey, we need to open this up like five thousands. And now a sheet of paper is three thousands. So you're almost just like two sheets of paper open up and I need to chamfer down in the bottom of this hole.
And bam, they came back. And I mean, out of all the Al Hooters I built, literally there's only been five or six that I've actually called because of a machining issue or anything like that. I mean, that's where you're hand turning them or something like that. You're not going to, you can't keep that kind of quality up. Right.
You know, so I mean, it's cool on that fact that everybody from Jason all the way through it is just as educated on the product as we are doing it. So that makes it flow so much better. I mean, I couldn't ask for a better relationship with how it all works out and flows. I mean, it flows really well. And quality, you know, it ain't about...
It ain't about the money on mine. It's about the quality of it. You know, you're making a product. It's made in America. I mean, when you, this ain't coming from China, dude, this is coming. Mine's coming from Hillsborough, Missouri. His is coming from Kirksville, Missouri. I mean, that's, this is worse. And the machine shops in Washington. Yeah. And that needs the mesh of the whole thing is we can take the custom world to the production world, make a mesh and, and,
have a, have an outstanding product and do it in a manner that works for everybody to where we can, we can do a little bigger number. I'm not talking mass production, you know, thousands at a time, but we can do a bigger number more so than what James and I can do in our little one man shops, but we can still keep our one man shop,
feel behind it yeah right and it uh well i'll have people call me and say hey i want a custom al hooter and then i explain to them hey this is what i do with phelps all the way drumming they're so like and they'll ask me they're like so it's a custom al hooter i said well we call it small batch but i mean it's i mean i hand i from the time that egg's there all the way to i hatch that owl out i said it's it's custom as you're gonna get i mean it's a
I mean, it's hands-on. And same with the pot calls. I mean, elk calls, I know it's the same thing. I mean, it's all about the sound and quality, and that's what's cool about it. But that stuff, you get the parts together, and it's what you do with it, with those parts to make that sound right. You know, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, dimension-wise and piece-wise and all of that. But then once you get it, it's still like, you know,
me sending pod calls or James sending, you know, them doing all the parts, it's still us making them make sound. Right. Okay. So you could go through and put an owl hood together, but what happens, but what happens if you put it together and it doesn't sound like an owl, what are you going to do? You don't know because you don't, you know what I'm saying? You've never, you've never done it. That's where the custom part from our side comes in.
you know, now the owl hooter is probably way more than even the pot call, because once I get that pot call dimensions to a deal, I mean, it's, it's really kind of a simple process, but it's a matter of, you know, this is how much glue I use. And, you know, this is how it goes. There's some secret sauce to it. Yeah. You know, so, I mean, in result, there's things that maybe I do with a pot call, putting it together that,
And if you look on Facebook or some of them and hear these guys and, oh, you've got to do it this way. Well, not necessarily, you know? Right, right. And it's just like, I mean, that's our deal. You know, we do that. Sure. You know, they can do it however they want to. This is how we do it. And there is something to it. There is a secret sauce. Yeah. And with any call, whether it be elk, deer, turkey, squirrel, I don't care what it is, you can build 20 of them in a row.
And they're all going to sound just a little bit different. That's where the hand tuning comes in. And then sometimes you'll get something that just slaps together and it just don't work. Even though it's the same as, and that's where we come in. I'll be doing Al Hooter inserts and I'll have, man, I got hit it, hit it. Oh, that one don't sound right. I'll pull that insert out and I'll go through it. A hundred percent. Look at head bottom, check all my dimensions, make sure I didn't screw something up, put it all back in. And that just,
you know what, we're working with materials. It just doesn't work. So what do we do? In the trash can, round filing cabinet, grab the next one, keep on going from there. So that's the cool side of the small batches. I mean, we spend a lot of time on those things, man. We don't cut no shortcuts on them. I take my time saying, you know, whatever we need to do to make them right.
Because I'm not going to ship anything out that ain't right. Because it's got my name on it. Absolutely. And the big thing with owl hooters is, owls only, you know, barred owls are only that tall. Foot and a half tall. They are only so loud. Right. The biggest thing for me, and I struggle with, is teaching guys just to blow it easy. And I'm sure it's like elk calls. Same way. Teach them just how to run the call and spend time with it. I mean, a locator call, really, if it's good and everything works right, you should literally grab it in the morning. Oh!
put it back in your vest. You're going from there. You're using your turkeys a lot more than you're using a locator call, hopefully, where guys don't practice the locator calls as much. That's why I'm always out there doing videos and trying to help them to get to that level because the more you practice it, the better you get with it and understand the call. Because the way I look at it as a custom call builder, they're musical instruments. They're not...
I mean, they're a tool, but it's a musical. I mean, we're making sounds with them calls. And it's just like a banjo or anything like that. It's a musical instrument. Right. Right. Well, I think I'd like to wrap things up here. But before we go, Steve, give us give our listeners some.
your best advice on running a pot call, friction calls. If they've never ran one before and they're trying to get into it, what's your best advice to run one and kind of shorten the learning curve? Probably just the fact of relax. Don't try and snap the striker in your hand. Just relax.
Put your striker on there, start easy and adjust as, as you go. If you need a little higher pitch, I mean, basically you're looking to begin with to get a high and a low note on a Yelp and pop it on a, on a cluck or a cut and just relax, be smooth with it and be honest with yourself when, when, you know, you know, it doesn't sound right. You know, you need to need to fix it.
Just be smooth and confident. I'm going to practice that because my friction calling is not up to par. So I'm going to keep practicing that.
Practice makes perfect. My security guard dog's out there barking. I'm sure you guys are probably picking that up too. Yeah. And if you don't even know where to start on how to hold the call, how to move the striker across the surface, check it out on Phelps Game Calls YouTube channel. We have a video. James shows you, walks you through step-by-step on how to run that call, get you started on it. And then, James, what do you think?
What's some helpful hints on the hooter and your locator call? Man, on the hooter, just grab it. And the biggest thing I get with guys is,
They're almost like, oh, I don't want to run it around you and stuff like that because it sounds funny. The only way you're going to get better is practice. So just grab it and start practicing. Listen to owls and just have fun with it. That's what I tell. I mean, go outside when you're barbecuing in the evening, grab the thing up and run it a little bit and practice it. And that's and on the locator call. I mean, just watch the videos and just, you know.
The triple locator is, man, we've made that thing as easy as possible. You just got to blow air into it. You don't have to do any hand manipulation. Just let it eat. Biggest thing I always say, just practice. Just have fun with it. Enjoy it. That's like turkey calls. I video mine a lot.
you know, and then I listened back to it. Yeah. Because that is a man that makes a world of difference. I can think I'm sounding great until I listened to the video and I'm like, Ooh, that's like this podcast. I'm going to listen back and be like, Ooh, I should stick to just being quiet. My voice sounds weird. Yeah. No, I say the same thing about outcalling. If you want to get better about outcalling is film yourself. Not only you listen, you're listening back. It's almost like doing a cartwheel, right? If you're doing a cartwheel, you're like, yeah, I did it. And like,
Your feet came two feet off the ground. You didn't do it. If somebody shows you the video, you're like, oh yeah, I didn't do it. Same as elk calling, turkey calling, record yourself, but also record so you can see your face.
That way you can look and see any kind of facial expressions that you're doing or maybe the way that you're manipulating the call that will affect the sound. And a lot of times when you see it, you can identify like, oh, I've been getting this weird sound and I see why I'm doing this weird thing with my jaw or whatever. Or weird thing with the striker or whatever the case is. So, yeah, that's a great, a great hint. Yeah. Video, it's good. And then big thing I always do is just go to the woods.
That's where you're going to get your volume and your tones right. Just go to the woods and practice in the woods if you can. - Yeah. No, I really appreciate it guys. This has been a great, great talk. Appreciate you guys having me down. I had fun today. I had lots of laughs filming this stuff. I don't know if we got all the funny stuff, but we had a heck of a good time and appreciate it. - We might have one safe pack. - Yeah. What was our fun word for the day?
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