Struggling with a mouth call for turkeys? Here’s why that may be

If you’ve ever bought a mouth call for turkey hunting only to give it a couple of hours before declaring that it’s not the call for you … well, you’re not alone.

Most mouth calls cost around $10, and maybe that explains why they are easy to discard when you don’t get the sound you’re looking for right away.

“You don’t need to be proficient with a mouth call to kill turkeys, but there are so many advantages to a mouth call,” said Minnesota’s Shane Simpson.

Simpson is a call-maker, a champion competitive caller, and a passionate hunter who hunts turkeys in seven to 10 states each year on public land. He shares his hunts and tactics on his website and social media accounts through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

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Simpson said he loves the versatility a mouth call provides. Many times, he incorporates a mouth call and pot call during the same calling sequence in order to mimic two separate hens.

He’ll “read the temperature” of individual toms, but he’s typically an aggressive caller – yes, even on public land where hunters often think they can’t call aggressively to pressured birds.

“That seems to work the best – cutting, excited yelping,” Simpson said. “There are things I can do on a mouth call that are nearly impossible to do on a pot call or box call. The little whines and switching calls quickly. I can do some clucks and purrs and some whines and then I could jake-yelp and go to a hen yelp with a mouth call. I can transition to all those calls relatively easily and quickly and sound more authentically like a real turkey.”

What type of call to choose

Calls are available in all sorts of options, ranging from a single reed of latex to two, three, and four reeds.

Simpson produced a Mouth Call Mechanics video (above) on YouTube in which he details everything about learning to use a mouth call. In that, he says hunters need at least a two-reed call – one reed to create the front-end note and another to create the raspy note – in order to make the most realistic turkey sounds.

Many tutorials will tell hunters that two-reed calls are easier to blow, and thus good for beginning callers. Simpson loves the sound he gets from a three-reed call.

“The thing with a two-reed is there’s not enough, I call it, like the spine of a fishing rod or enough backbone where you can get super aggressive without it sounding too much like latex,” he said. “You can hear that latex vibrating and it doesn’t sound realistic enough. By having that third reed on the bottom, all it does is it gives a little backbone to the call.”

Find your channel of air; it’s important

Among the options to choose from are many different styles of cuts on the top reed of a call.

Look at where the gap is cut (on the left, right, or centered) on the call as it would be placed in your mouth. That’s important, Simpson says, because each person has a specific channel of air – how the air travels over your tongue and across the reed. Buying a call that is cut to match where the air travels across the reed will produce the best-sounding calls.

“I think it’s your tendencies,” Simpson said. “The channel of air in my tongue is right down the middle of my tongue, but I have a tendency for my tongue to go up and to the left. It puts that channel of air to the left side of the call.”

To determine your air channel, he recommends using a two-reed call that has no cut in the top reed. Position it toward the front of your mouth, slightly angled down, and get to the point where you can consistently produce a high-pitched, front-end note. Watch Simpson’s Mouth Call Mechanics video to get a good visual of how to do this.

With your mouth open slightly, produce that front-end note while looking in a mirror with a flashlight to see where the channel of air forms with your tongue.

Another way to determine your channel of air is by having three calls with the different cuts – one gap in the middle, one to the left, and one to the right on the call. Blow them all and determine which call produces the clearest note.

“I’ve had a lot of people give me feedback, and they didn’t look in the mirror and they say, ‘I was trying the calls and it seems like the one with the combo that’s cut to the right, that’s the only one I can get a nice, clear note on, so I’m assuming that’s where my channel is,’” Simpson said. “I’d say yeah, that’s most likely where it’s at.”

A few final tips

Mouth calls may require a bit of a break-in period, but it’s short – just long enough for the tape to conform to your palate and your saliva to clean off the reeds to produce great sound.

Latex breaks down, so the sound of the call will change with time and use.

“To me, they sound good right out of the gate and they get a little bit better as the reeds are cleaned off and as the reeds basically start to break down,” Simpson said. “Early on in the use of the call, I can call aggressively and get nice, clean cuts and yelps, but (after much use) instead of getting sharp cuts, they have more of a high-pitched pip in it that I don’t like.”

If you experience a tickling of the tongue, you’re not blowing air across the call properly.

“That’s usually the tip of your tongue that is tickling on the vibrating reeds,” Simpson said. “The fat part, the middle part of your tongue, is what should be making contact with the reeds.”

Simpson recommends buying calls from a call-maker that prioritizes consistency.

“I’m not trying to market mine when I’m saying that. I’m just saying whoever you’re buying from, look at that type of stuff,” Simpson said. “Grab two calls off the shelf that are from the same manufacturer, same cut, and visually compare the two and make sure they’re consistently cut the same. If it’s a company that’s not concerned with consistency or they have multiple people cutting the reeds on them and they’re not getting consistent cuts, that can affect the sound.”

Finally, practice and gain confidence before entering the woods. Listening to audio of real turkeys helps take your calling to another level.

“What I typically did is I found a hen that I liked, and I tried to copy her,” Simpson said. “OK, here’s her front note, here’s how she transitions into the rasp. You’re always going to get more authentic-sounding calling if you’re listening to the real thing.”