Pennsylvania Game News - May 2017 - 55

Caught Looking
They cooked a tasty steak. And we'd return to the restaurant - even after my quickstriking indigestion caused us to abruptly end one post-dinner shopping trip and hurry
home. But when we recognized visits to the restaurant were linked, too, to my wife breaking out with allergic symptoms, then identified the culprit as a kitchen staff that regularly
wears latex gloves, we added this to the list of places we'd avoid.
Such steps hardly can be considered sacrifices for a family with each others' well-being
at heart. But I never imagined the family allergy would impact my hunting.
I'd never really been much of a turkey hunter. But early in my teens I learned to make
sounds on a diaphragm call and would carry it in my pack while hunting deer in bow
season. Every once in a while, I'd get a chance to talk to turkeys. And on one occasion,
I credited my calling for bringing about a half-dozen young birds into would-be range.
Years later, when I decided to give spring-gobbler hunting a go, a diaphragm call seemed
a natural choice. And I quickly proved proficient enough to start believing the true challenge of turkey hunting isn't calling one in, but closing the deal on an interested gobbler.
But I never gave any thought to the material from which the call's sound-producing
reeds are cut. When, at last, it occurred to me, I knew I had a problem. If I returned home
from a hunt with a latex-laced mouth, a welcome-home kiss would be out of the question.
But I didn't own another call, and didn't have time to get one before heading afield the
next morning - the third Saturday of the season, and my third time out that year.
Daybreak was quiet. The field I watched was still. After about an hour, yelps I made
on the mouth call attracted a lone gobble, so far away I could barely hear it. It would be
the only call I'd hear that didn't result from air forced over latex.
While I'd resolved to hang in until noon, by 10 a.m. the hunt seemed more an exercise
in patience than a legitimate opportunity to fill a tag. I began thinking about that latex
call pouched in my cheek. Do they make diaphragm calls with non-latex reeds? Most
medical supplies these days are made with other materials, largely due to latex allergies.
I pulled my phone from my pack and began searching for the answer.
While I found no non-latex diaphragm calls on the market, I came across a do-it-yourself
website with instructions for making your own mouth call. I couldn't help but wonder what
it would sound like if I clipped two reeds from a vinyl glove and affixed them as shown to
a snipped tin frame covered with tape? Giving thought to this question, I raised my eyes
from the phone's screen - to see a longbeard striding across the open field at 50 yards.
My first instinct - to put down the phone I still was holding in front of me - was a bad
one. Even my slowest, smoothest, most-deliberate few inches of downward hand motion
stopped the gobbler and brought him to attention. I could only sit there as he drew his
head back, scanning me with a wide eye as he turned and scurried away in the direction
he came, sounding off with alarm putts all the while.
Dad later would tell me I'd broken one of the three rules of turkey hunting - Don't
move, don't move and don't move. And I continue today to try to follow that advice, while
making all of my calls on a box or slate, with my phone zipped in my pack's front pouch.

Travis Lau
MAY 2017

Pennsylvania Game News - May 2017

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