I can remember being younger hunting with my dad and chasing spring gobblers. I could hardly wait on daylight most mornings just to get to hear a bird gobble. I've always been interested in the vocabulary of the wild turkey and the more time I spent in the woods the more I learned. The more I was around turkeys the more I was fascinated by how extensive their vocabulary actually is. 

This led me to want to be more realistic with my calling. It was a personal goal of mine to try to sound just like a wild turkey and understand the calls. I would listen to competition callers and try to mimic the sounds they would make. I would watch how they would move their mouths in order to achieve certain sounds. 

The more I practiced, the more realism I achieved. It was very rewarding. In hunting scenarios, I noticed I could speak to turkeys and kill gobblers that I couldn't of killed in the past. My dad also noticed the progression in my calling and how I could turn certain situations around. For instance, we would get busted by a hen that had gotten too close and she started to putt. I would cover the putt up with clucking and soft yelping to calm her down and get her to accept us. 

There were also situations during the early season when the birds are really henned up and I would focus on calling to the hens and convincing them to come to investigate. Hens are aggressive like gobblers and I would agitate them and get them to drag a gobbler within range. Realism also led me to be more aggressive with my calling. I found that being aggressive was far more effective in getting birds to respond and I was way more successful in harvesting birds.