April 21, 2003

The Ancient Yelper
by James L. Cummins

Thousands of years ago, long before the Egyptians built the pyramids, the wild turkey was being lured to Native Americans with calls made from their own wing bones. Turkey wing bone yelpers were unearthed in 1940 at an archaic sight located in Benton County, Tennessee. Radiocarbon testing dated these calls to around 6500 BC. Today almost 10,000 years later, those alluring notes can be heard as modern turkey hunters draw breath through little changed yelpers.

According to Bill Lester, an Art Professor at Delta State University and from Dockery, Mississippi, "Turkey yelpers were changed by Charles L. Jordan in the late 1860s. Jordan's contribution was to add two sections of cane, one inside the other, to the turkey wing bone. The call was easy to handle and carry, and the notes it produced carried for great distances in the woods."

Over time, calls evolved. With an enlarged turkey population and many new modern materials, today's turkey hunters enjoy hunting with 10,000 year old technology. "My interest in call making started years ago with duck calls. I turned the calls out of cocobolo on a lathe and was pleased with their look and sound," stated Lester.

"When I heard the notes it produced I went to work learning and making wing bone calls. With the introduction of new, tough, acrylic materials, my duck calls improved. After the dense acrylic worked so well on the duck calls, I began turning turkey trumpets out of acrylic. The sound was sharper and more distinctly realistic because of the hard, new acrylic. After much experimentation, the 'Compensator Turkey Trumpet' was added to the thousands of years of efforts made toward improving the ancient wing bone yelper."

The "Compensator" has a black acrylic trumpet, a commercial raised goose bone mouthpiece supported by a Weathersby 257 Magnum brass cartridge, and an adjustable rubber mouth gauge. Each call is hand made ensuring it possesses superior sound, durability, and beauty while producing realistic cackles, clucks and yelps. "The 'Compensator' works in all weather conditions and is easy to master. If you can kiss (which all of us turkey hunters most humbly admit to being very good at), then the 'Compensator' will produce for you cackles, clucks and yelps that demand an answer," continued Lester.

Turkey hunters will continue to use their imaginations to develop turkey calls. The ancient wing bone turkey call now awaits new advancements in materials, as well as imaginative turkey hunters, for the next improvements to it in its long, successful history.

For more information about the history of turkey calls and the "Compensator," contact William "Bill" Lester at (662) 756-2996 or write him at Dockery Farms, 229 Highway 8, Cleveland, MS 38732.

James L. Cummins is Executive Director of the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Stoneville, Mississippi. Known as "Wildlife Mississippi," the Foundation is a non-profit, conservation organization founded to conserve, restore and enhance fish, wildlife and plant resources throughout Mississippi