Gamekeeper Podcast

EP:428 | Lamar Williams and His Call Making Story

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On this episode, we are joined by legendary turkey call maker Lamar Williams. Mr. Williams is a true treasure, and it was fascinating to hear him share his journey of learning how to make turkey calls and how to turkey hunt. Collectors have sought after his calls for years, and the craftsmanship and sound are truly impressive. Be sure to stay tuned until the end to hear him run several box calls.

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SPEAKER_00

I am Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, then buddy, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Baltiok Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices, news, and of course honey. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm going to tell you, I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02

We're live in three, two, one.

SPEAKER_05

All right, guys. Lenny, we're staying old school this week, and we've got a custom callmaker. Toxic, this guy is unbelievable. He is unbelievable. Yeah, let me just go ahead and get him introduced because he can he can add to our conversation here. But we've got Mr. Lamar Williams. And guys, y'all seen some of his calls in the in the Mr. Fox Fest.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Decked out in Moss Yoke, I would say. Looking good. Mr.

SPEAKER_05

Williams, thank you for being here. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. And just for clarification, I'm gonna call him Mr. Lamar, but his name is Lamar Williams. And uh so I so so going forward, I want to confuse everybody, but just out of respect, and we I tell you what, the more I've learned about you, uh, Mr. Lamar, this the more impressed that you you your old way of doing things and the way your box calls sounds. Thank you. Just Landy, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_01

It is.

SPEAKER_05

So look, we've we've got a bunch, we're gonna get started with we'll let Dudley ask you some rapid fires. But before that, guys, last night we had a uh 27-degree night, and I want to ask, are we in any danger of losing any of our mass crop, in y'all's opinions?

SPEAKER_01

You can answer first, but I would say yeah, we are. And now, did we just have a total disaster last night? I don't think so. Dudley knows more than me, but I would say sh it did it did not help at all, was what he said. I agree with that.

SPEAKER_06

I mean, it anytime you get below freezing when stuff is trying to leaf out and bloom, there's you know, you should it's not gonna be better because of that, I can assure you. But uh, you know, like you were saying, I didn't see a whole lot of like hard frost, you know, and that frost is what really kind of cuts into the cell walls and whatnot. So if you get water and then that freezes, that that insulates everything. Right. Uh, but we really had neither. I mean, it there wasn't a lot of white frost out there, but it stayed 27 basically from two in the morning until you know eight o'clock. Yeah. So that's a long time for little stuff like that to freeze.

SPEAKER_01

So you know, I think the breeze was blowing lightly, kept it from getting a little colder than it would have. And I think that air moving may help a little bit. I I'd feel better if we weren't gonna have a pretty hard frost tonight, also. But time will tell. It's there's it's pretty complex, I think, the stage that they're most vulnerable, but I feel like we're in it with a lot of them for this year.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I tell you what, we saw yesterday. Bobby. Yeah. Some snow. Yeah, we did. On March 16th. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And we We had a 15-minute blizzard.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, we did. And it was above, it was almost 40 degrees and it was snowing.

SPEAKER_01

38, 39 degrees and snowing a blizzard before.

SPEAKER_04

Which is weird for us, because it'll be, you know, 29 here and raining, you know.

SPEAKER_01

I'm pretty sure they had a measurable snowfall buildup in uh like Birmingham yesterday, if I'm not mistaken. That's amazing. Because uh Sunday I was working on a roof hot. Yeah, yeah, I dare 84 degrees. So it went from 84 to 27, 27, uh North Mississippi, 22, and by Saturday it'd be 84 again.

SPEAKER_05

What what is the uh Mr. Lamar, what's the weather doing down in North Florida where you are? What's it doing right now?

SPEAKER_03

It's supposed to like I said, it was 37 last night, and uh it gets it gets cold here. We've had probably more freezing weather uh this year than we have in several years. So things getting I think they're getting back to normal.

SPEAKER_01

How about that?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah, I I was telling him earlier that it just it's just the way it's worked out, but we've had we had Davis Love, we had Pastor Joby, we had Dave Edwards, and all everybody's in closed pretty close, yeah. Mr. Lamar are in that same area right there.

SPEAKER_06

There's probably a good reason for that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Probably a lot of turkeys out there.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, are there a lot of turkeys around there, Mr. Lamar?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, there's yeah, I just had a hen in my backyard. Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_05

There we go. Can you walk out your backyard and and yelp and uh expect to hear a gobble?

SPEAKER_03

I haven't been able to do that yet, but I have them coming back there. Yesterday there was two old hens and uh four jakes. I've had three three long beards in there. God's probably been about a month ago, but yeah, they're they're three or four-year-old birds at least. One of them had probably a 12-inch beard. But uh, I don't hunt them. They're they're like pets. Others might hunt them back behind me. Yep. Somebody's probably on them. Somebody's hung them.

SPEAKER_01

You know, those jakes, I'll think about the people that love college football. Those jakes are having a that's when you got a great recruiting class when you get those jakes there. So that's optimism for the future. I and it's depressing, you know, when you go a couple years in a row without seeing much, you know hard times are coming. So we've been really fired up lately around the all around the south where we're seeing more jakes than normal, and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. All right, so look, let me do this. I'm gonna change the name of a little uh thing that we do just briefly here. So that Landy, don't freak out. Okay, but has anybody heard of any blood on the Jakes vest recently? Oh I hear you. Yeah, I have. I I think I think there's somebody at the table.

SPEAKER_01

So we should maybe more than just something at the time. Why don't you start off, Doc? So um we had a guest this weekend. I guess I don't know, he's probably pretty secret about it, but he had talked about coming sometime because I said, Would you like to come? And he said, Well, I would love to come and bring my 10-year-old daughter. He actually brought two daughters with him. And so it was Mr. Thomas Rhett, the singer. And he's one of the absolute nicest guys you ever met in your life. Uh, grew up hunting a lot, and so he and he, in fact, he made a post today about how much he just loves the spring and everything about it, including being a season of rebirth for everything, too. But anyway, on uh the opening that afternoon, we had a really good hunt that morning, and they had could have shot a couple times, and she was very conscious of not shooting. There was two standing together and she didn't think they're far enough apart. And then another one, she didn't have a clear shot, so we had a great hunt. We heard gobbling, but then Son Neil, my Ace guide, uh, he took them that afternoon and uh got on a turkey, had a great all afternoon goblin hunt, did circles around them, and then they thought they were done for the afternoon, and she evidently saw the turkey coming and didn't say anything. And so, next thing you know, Dad Thomas, her gun raises up right in front of his nose out there, and he looked over to the side, and there's the turkey came and she dusted him.

SPEAKER_00

Big turkey about Wheel of Grace. Heck yeah. So he's a Wheel of Grace.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, 10 years old. That is awesome, and uh that was really fun to go with them. Um just kids that are raised right, you know, respectful, love it, love the outdoors. I mean, um, you know, they were the Neil was trying to carry them across some of the deeper water stuff, and it's like, no, I'll just do it myself and like wade through the water and you know like that. That's just good. You gotta love that. So that was a lot of fun. And you know, for the first weekend when you used to just kind of oh, and he was like, I can't come up there and mess up y'all's open a week and I said, Look, it was nothing we love to do more than take kids. It just it sometimes I worry about getting a go. Um, you know, my old self comes out, you know, I want to, I gotta, man, I want to go combat, I want to kill one, I want to hang one on the porch. But man, when you stop and do that with someone, it just sticks with you so much more. It does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

All right. Lane, have you got one? Well, I've got one, but I think it'd be more appropriate for Dudley to talk about it than I.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. This is big news. Big news.

SPEAKER_06

This was big news. Yeah. Big time. Little Dud got his first turkey. All right. Uh, age 15. Yeah. Uh Clay County, Mississippi. Wouldn't have it any different at the home place.

SPEAKER_05

Dudley White Shoes Phelps.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. So he got some blood on his Adidas. There you go. We uh went to church Sunday morning and then came home and ate leftovers like like you know, normal people do. And uh I said, hey man, you want to go sit in the woods this afternoon? We made uh I saw some turkeys, you know, out there. So he obliged. And so we went out and uh stopped by Academy to grab some boots. And uh unfortunately, the they had a lot of choices, but uh nothing in Mossy Oaks. They were sold out, yeah. I'm sure sold out. Um and so uh I said, you know what? Uh we can just cover those white shoes up with some Mossy Oak camo and uh try to call a turkey in, no big deal. And so we did and sat down, uh called once, and uh kind of did what I like to do. We dozed off for a while, uh, opened and closed our eyes, you know, and looked for turkeys. And about an hour later, we saw some way off in the woods, just little flickers of them. And they came by uh in gun range, but didn't didn't offer a shot. They were kind of on my side. And so uh we sat there and watched this one Longbeard strut uh for close to two hours before he sealed the deal. He was about maybe 60 yards or so, and we just didn't want to shoot that far. And uh he was behind a big old pine log laying there, strutting and and drumming and driving us crazy. And uh as if uh God sent us a little treat, uh, I heard a hen doing a Kiki yelp back behind us. I was like, thank you, Jesus. And that that gobbler jumped up on that log and hopped on over and just strutted on into about 35, 40 yards, and little Dud put it on him and pulled the trigger. Getting him a face.

SPEAKER_01

That that may be the happiest picture I've ever seen. He was so he was so excited.

SPEAKER_04

So that's fourth, fourth generation, fourth generation, fourth generation, pure joy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, and so uh for you to have done what you've done to be able to maneuver around and get the plate, all the work you've done on it. Yeah, and developing honestly, not off in the middle of like Turkey Central, although there's a lot of wildlife around there, and to turn it into that already, I could just see it on his face. He was it's so sweet.

SPEAKER_06

And I was I was planning on uh just taking one bird out there this year.

SPEAKER_04

The right one got it, the right one got it. Well, you know, but you know, he's never mentioned any turkeys to us, but he hasn't. Because that's not something he talked about.

SPEAKER_05

Well, I've got one one of our listeners uh wrote in about his son. Uh I think he's he's uh young, around 10 years old, but on a public land, South Mississippi, Michael McLaughlin killed a turkey, and then I think he had another hunt and killed another turkey. So he's had a great jump off to the site.

SPEAKER_06

Where was this?

SPEAKER_05

You know, he in his little text he told me, but it it was some private, I mean a public land of South Mississippi. I can't remember where I do I'm I put a little drop on the map where on where it was, Lanny, but uh I can't remember to be able to tell you where it was. So no, but that sounds it sounds like some folks are off to a good start. Yeah. Yep. Uh let's look at uh uh Mr. Lamar, ha have you been hearing any of any youngins down in that part of the world killing any turkeys?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, actually we have. Uh we uh the Gainesville chapter over in uh Gainesville, Gator Gobblers, they have they host a hunt every year uh for the for the youth and the women in the outdoors, both turkey and deer. And uh my grandson guides and my and my son and this past um Saturday my son and I had gone out on Friday and pre-scouted this place. They've got places to hunt that some of them are hunt club land. The piece we were on was water management land at about five hundred acres, and um nobody's allowed to hunt it other than these youth or the women. Um it's greater than water management to give uh permission to that gainsville chapter, gator gobblers, I should say, chapter to to do that. They had anyway, we heard uh I heard three gobblers. My son heard four, and the next morning they went in and the young man was able to kill one about eight thirty. Missed him the first time. He I looked at the video that my grandson had, he missed that turkey, and the turkey gobbled when he missed him, and the turkey but gobbled beside him gobbled. And uh in about a minute or so, I guess, that turkey got back into view and he put him down then. And uh that afternoon they went back, and uh he got another one that afternoon, so he's done for what's given a real good day.

SPEAKER_06

That's awesome. I that's too much excitement.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, low if the lows are the highest of highs.

SPEAKER_06

I I met some of those uh gator gobblers down at that event we went to in the working with Dr. Lashley down there trying to raise some money for those uh turkey that turkey pen research he's doing. Yeah, yeah, some good stuff.

SPEAKER_05

All right, well, uh so uh that's concludes our blood on the Jakes vest segment. That's right. Guys, if you've got a youngin', this the Mosic has brought back that little small Jakes vest. So you gotta get him one of those. I think you can go online and find that. This is just the Jake's vest got a cute little patch on it. Yeah, you need to get one of those.

SPEAKER_01

That's a good one for sure. It is a really good product. I looked one over because I guess this weekend had gotten one for each of his daughters, and so I was really impressed.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Game started young.

SPEAKER_01

You know, and it doesn't take a little ownership of having a call with them. And honestly, and Mr. Lamar would tell you too, you get like a one-sided box and like maybe a push button. It wouldn't take them very long to make a decent turkey sound if you, you know, coached them a little bit. And especially if they get out in the woods a few times and they hear some hens. That's uh ultimately it's not what I say who say is, but it's what they say you want to, you know, mimic.

SPEAKER_06

I remember I always had to ask, but I I enjoyed uh my dad letting me use turkey calls. Yep.

SPEAKER_01

I was so I was actually nervous at first because we never had anything but mouth calls when I grew up with it. And so I was always nervous too, and I would just be, you know, just like three little short soft yips to make sure I didn't spook everything.

SPEAKER_04

But I used Hayden was my official crow caller. Oh, is that we got it?

SPEAKER_06

I would get so nervous, you know, before I would hit that slate or box.

SPEAKER_04

I still get nervous when I'm out in the woods. If I'm in the truck, I'm a pro. But what did he say?

SPEAKER_01

Did he was like if you're I was walking in the woods, he would get on to me like pick your feet up, boy. You gotta pick your feet up. And then if I was trying to call, he'd say, You slurring it, son.

SPEAKER_05

Slurning it. Oh, that's good stuff. All right. So uh look, why don't we start with with uh Dudley and his rapid fires? Why don't we get to know Mr. Lamar a little bit better?

SPEAKER_06

All right. Uh, Mr. Lamar, I'm gonna ask you about 10 or 12 questions pretty fast. Uh, most of it turkey related. Uh, some of it's more personal, but uh, I just need a real quick answer so uh our folks can get to know you better. So are you ready?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_06

All right, what is your favorite preparation of wild turkey meat? Fried. That's the way to go. What is a favorite blooming plant from the spring woods? Dog wood. What shotgun have you taken the most turkeys with? 12 gauge bretta. What wood combination would you say you've used most over the years on your box calls? Honduras mahogany walnut paddles at the bottom. Uh name another species of bird you enjoy seeing or hearing in the spring woods. Cardinals. Uh what is your favorite species of wood and cut that you just like to look at when you're sitting in the shop? Walnut. Uh what do you carry your calls with and what do you sit on in the turkey woods? Are you a vest guy or what what do you do?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I carry them in a vest and I sit on a um on a chair. Uh I can't think of the brand name of it.

SPEAKER_06

I know what you're talking about. Those low-line chairs, turkey chairs, those things are great. Uh what form of chalk do you prefer using? I use white railroad chalk. Uh name something odd. Name a name a sound that that's just odd that you've heard a turkey gobble at that you thought was neat. Car door slamming. Uh and what is another spring activity you enjoy outside of the turkey woods? Fishing. And last but not least, when did you take your first all by myself spring turkey? 1982.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. And and where were you back then? I was here and I was I was hunting a WMA just just as close to me, 10, 15 miles from me.

SPEAKER_05

Excellent. All right. So why don't we go back around uh Mr. W I'm I am j your story about and the calls that you make is just incredible. Could you just walk us back to what got you interested in making your own turkey calls?

SPEAKER_03

I actually made my first turkey call in um high school shop in the tenth grade scratch boxes. Uh it was a shop project. And I didn't make another turkey call till 79. And that was a wing bone. And um that got me started and I I I made wing bones along and along, trying to make box calls. And I glued together box calls and uh made my first box call in uh eighty two. And um the rest is really history. I ch I the the box calls I made back then were crude compared to the box calls I make now. Uh they were they were solid body rather than glued together, and I had met Neil Cost in uh in 79 at the uh at the uh NWTF convention in ga in Gainesville, Florida. He was a vendor there, and I was I was in that chapter and I was helping them uh helping us put on that show. And uh anyway, I met him and uh spoke with him some and uh didn't really strike up a friendship with him but uh he I I saw the calls that he made and how they were solid body and uh he made some great calls and it it so I decided to try to change things up a little bit and I did and uh but I really struggled with it for a while. Didn't uh and but I didn't have a lot of time back then because I was uh I worked with the railroad. I was in the Florida National Guard and I spent a lot of time fishing too. So it was just uh something I it's something I wanted to do was make the make the turkey calls. Um so I just started focusing more on that than going fishing and um taking you know family things, things like that. We were always uh close family, camped a lot and so forth. But uh I um I met Neil again in eighty at the same location. He came back uh to to Gainesville and we visited some more and uh I didn't feel I didn't order a box call from him. I just uh more or less I would call him from time to time. And then in eighty one I met him again. He came um he came to the uh convention in Tallahassee and we struck up a good friendship then and um I told him that I was interested in making a good turkey call, box call, and uh asked him if he'd mind helping me, and he said not at all. And he did, so that started our friendship, and I um and I started I just changed the way I did things. The I started making calls were about the same length, they were they were not as deep. I used it I was using a spade bit to drill calls when I should have been using the foresner bit. I went to Forsener bit and uh and uh from that point on I just started. Um I started making box calls and I I did after that several years later paddle calls. I made my first handled box in '84. And um that's a different story altogether because I didn't sell any. I something too, when I started um making calls, I made them under Widowmaker Turkey Calls. And that's that's what I was making when I started going to shows in uh in '82. And um I was most I sold a number of those calls under widowmaker turkey calls, and then I uh changed my name of the company to to Lamar Williams Turkey Calls. I never I sold a number of those widowmaker turkey calls, but I didn't sell a lot of them because I changed I had changed the way I was doing things, so I kept those calls. And I I still have I've still probably got close to 25 of those box calls that I made back then under that name. And uh I have people from time to time want to know if I'll sell them one, but I I haven't I haven't sold any. I just keep them for the family.

SPEAKER_05

Do I am I to understand that you were really the first person that uh Mr. Cost showed, maybe gave some tutelage about how to build a box call?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, he told me that uh that I was the first one uh that stayed with him. He said several people had come to him and asking him his assistance and making calls. And uh he said, but none of them stuck with it. They quit calling, they quit coming around. And he told me later, he says, I figured you'd do the same thing. He says, but you stuck it out. So as a result of that, um, you know, he he would uh we became great friends. He was very close friend of mine. He was like a daddy to me in a lot of ways. Um and I could I would have a little trouble from time to time trying to tune a call, and I would call him up and I'd say, having a little trouble with this call, can you tell me what I need to do? And he'd say, Well, run it for me. So I'd run it for him. He says, Yeah, that right side needs a little work. I said, Can you tell me what I need to do? He says, No. Wow. He says, That's for you to figure out.

SPEAKER_07

I said, Okay.

SPEAKER_03

So I did, and that was that was that was good for me. And um we just uh we just were great friends. I mean, we fished together, we hunted together. He lived six, six, six and a half hours from me, north of me up in Greenwood, South Carolina. And uh as our friendship um progressed, we just he would come down here and save me, hunt with me, fish with me. I'd go up there and hunt and fish with him. I'd take my son with me when we would go up there, and uh it was just a great time. It was a it was it was just a good a good time overall and just a great friendship. And uh at some point uh um I remember that he I was using like a number 10 screw in my cause. He was using number 12 screw, and uh he went to number 10 screw and then he asked me to start uh asked me if I could get some springs for him. I mean I was getting springs from the same place he was. He just didn't want to order anymore because you had to order a run, and a run might be a thousand or fifteen hundred. So I would I would furnish him with springs and screws. Uh so it was it was just a great relationship.

SPEAKER_06

That's interesting. And I yeah, I I feel like when you see these custom callmakers, uh whether you're at the NWTF convention or you know, wherever the the turkey tailgate, they're all buddies and they all uh like to help each other out and help each other become more skilled at their trade and and more successful. And I I think that's I mean, that's the way to do things, you know? That's great.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think you see that a lot with artists and and with with people that work with their hands too, because you you want to pass those things down. But to your point, Mr. Maher, you got to have somebody to hang with you. It won't happen easily.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. All right. So look, what is it about Neil Coss calls that pe I mean the obvious answer is they sound great, but what is it about them? A lot of these other manufacturers have tried to mimic or imitate, or is that just a tried and true formula for a successful call?

SPEAKER_03

I thought what set his calls apart was naturally the sound, but it was he was the first one to my knowledge that was making decorative calls. He was uh by that I mean he was checkering them and inlay them. He was making he was double inlaying paddles, double inlaying the sides of the box. He was laminating bottoms. Nobody was doing that. Plus, he was hand-hewing the calls. Nobody was doing that. I was gonna say so. The other ones were were glued up, correct? Yes, a lot of most people were were gluing calls back then. Um some of them were probably using some sort of sort of high-speed wood removal, CNC or mortising, something along those lines.

SPEAKER_05

I tell you, the I I watched some videos of you building some calls and then you just laying a lid on one, screwing it down, and it sounded so henny, just uh just without a lot of with no tuning, just just straight out of the it is it can talk to us about a box call. Is there a better way to hold one or handle one? Does each one is you can it be run differently, or is each one have its own special way that it needs to be held and run?

SPEAKER_03

As far as holding the calls, I don't think so. As far as running the calls, I think we all run calls a little bit different. I have people, friends of mine, that run split finger. I never learned to I mean I I can run one split finger, but I just learnt run it with my thumb and my index finger, thumb on the left side, index finger on the right side. Um tuning a call, um it's just different between each each wood. I mean, whether it's mahogany, poplar, walnut, cedar, all of them are a little bit different because the the the densities of the woods are a little bit different. So and and even within each of those species, you get some or some forms of walnut or or like yellow, like poplar. Comes mineral popper, yellow poplar. Mineral popper for the most part is harder than yellow poplar, so you would tune it a little bit different. You would you probably take more out. Where yellow popper you might not remove quite as much. But uh I normally take a call down to where I where it needs to be, where I think it needs to be based on the density of that particular call, and start trying paddles on it. And uh based on how it sounds, uh I might leave one side alone and then go to the other side and think I need to take a little bit more out to get a uh just a better sound out of it. So I will do that. I have done that to the point that I would ruin one side or the other, and I'd toss it over on my burn pile, and I'd end up burning that one. But sometimes you have to change paddles um several times. I've changed paddles 15 times on call sometimes. Uh but normally that doesn't happen. It's just um it's a it's a tedious process chiseling. Those could you know once you drill it, everything from that point on is is all the stock is removed with a chisel. And then when you get down to the get on the bench and start tuning it, and you get in the the uh get to the point where you need to be, you uh you need to know when to stop or when to start testing paddles, and from that point on, uh judging by the sound of that call, where you need to remove more wood or leave it alone. I tell you, I bet that is a tedious process.

SPEAKER_06

And just a lot of learning by doing and and listening, you know. I'm I'm sure he did it for a long time before he, you know, mastered it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, it occurs to me, too, that uh because you're working with wood, even though it's all walnut or all Bodok or all mahogany or whatever, all some kind of oak, every tree's kind of a snowflake, you know, to some degree. It's not a perfect resin like some plastic you'd make it out of or whatever. So that's the good and the bad. It takes it to a whole new level, art form-wise. Yeah, you're working you know, but it but it makes it more difficult at the same time, too. So I mean it's it is to me, it makes it even so much more special that, first of all, that's gonna be your best sound. I've heard everything known to man. I have heard some, not a lot, but some aluminum, but it's not it's aluminum on wood to sound really good. But the natural wood sound from a box call is just incredible. Done right. And I was gonna ask you, it just seems like in general, and this is a very generalized statement, the ones I've heard that kind of almost took your breath, they sound so good, tended to be thinner than ones, you know, that just sounded good but weren't super special. I don't know. Is there anything to that? I guess the kind of wood you have to have to be able to make them thinner.

SPEAKER_03

The density of the wood determines the thickness of those tone boards. Um for the most part, if you were teening a walnut goal, the tone boards would be a little thinner. You're gonna have it just varies, like I said, even even in the same wood groups, uh walnut can walnut from say New York State might be a little bit denser than walnut from Missouri. And I guess that has a lot to go to to to do with where it's grown as far as uh the declimate and so forth. It's the same thing. That's that's really true. That's that's really true in in like butternut. Hard to get really good butternut. Uh best butternut seems seems to seems to grow in the coldest climates. Um but anyway, yeah, tuning a call, um, like I wouldn't, if I was tuning a mahogany call or popper call, for the most part, taking everything into consideration, uh it's just just a normal block of walnut or normal block of wal of uh mahogany or or poplar. Um I would I would I would tune, like I said, walnut a little bit thinner. Yellow poplar would probably be a little bit thicker than mineral poplar. Uh some of the densest mineral poplar I ever worked came from Alabama. And uh and I guess that's that's got so much to do with you know, mineral poplar grows down in the l in the bottoms. And that that color of mineral poplar, greens and purples and so forth. Of course, that's just uh uh you know, just the soil, the minerals in the soil. So it's tuning them, tuning each call, each call is an individual. No, no two are gonna be alike. I couldn't make two calls that sound alike if you gave me a million dollars. It's just it just doesn't happen. I can get them close, but I can't. Even the rollover's different. Uh the rasp is different. That's why when a uh when a customer orders a call from me, I'll ask them, you want a lot of rasp in a little rasp in it, or whatever. And they will tell me, so I'll write that in my book, and when I get to that call, I know this person wants wants a call. That's that's that's that's not real raspy. So when I'm making calls, uh, I'll make one like he wants, and I might have another customer who wants a lot of rasp. Um so I'll I'll I'll make that call that way because I normally work six or seven, eight calls at a time. Um when I'm when I'm uh on my bench and it's just and and different uh spraying a call when uh once you send the call. Um uh once you once you finish, put your finish on it, uh that finish makes a little bit of different because it's gonna tighten up that wood green. And it's it's it's gonna be a little bit different. Now that you know, the average person, you know, they might not pick up on that, but when you work calls day in and day out, and you've done it for all the years I have, you can tell the difference. Did that answer your question?

SPEAKER_06

Yes, sir. Did you uh do you normally just purchase kiln-dried lumber or do you uh do you try to harvest some of it yourself, or or how do you how do you do that process?

SPEAKER_03

I buy them from from like wood dealers. Most of the wood I get is uh is is kiln dried. Um I have some like yellow popper I get from a friend of mine who has two hardwood mills in Mississippi. And um my son and I'll go hunt with him about every three years or so, and I'll always pick up yellow popper from him.

SPEAKER_06

Uh does he set aside some of the prettier mineral stuff?

SPEAKER_03

I get yellow popper from him, not not mineral poplar. So um got it, got it. So now getting wood's wood's difficult, getting good good wood walnut, extremely difficult to find really good walnut. I can get walnut anywhere. I can get walnut in Jacksonville, but I can't get uh I can't get the uh grade of walnut that I want. And um I was do you mind if I tell you this little story? No, I would love stories. I was up in uh in Georgia visiting Billy Bice with a friend of mine, Darren Dawkins, who's another callmaker, and uh we spent the night um that night in uh Kennesaw and went to a to a hardwood dealer the next day that I'd been to be to before. And this this this place they're a wholesaler, so any given time they've got four or five thousand board feet of walnut on hand. So they set out two stacks of walnut. We went through both stacks of walnut. Now these are ten-foot boards, eight quarter, two inches wide, anywhere from ten, twelve inches wide, two inches thick. And uh we went through probably twelve to thirteen hundred board feet of lumber, and I bought seven boards.

unknown

Wow.

SPEAKER_06

Well, uh, if you don't mind divulging, uh what what are you what in particular are you looking for? Uh in, for example, the walnut.

SPEAKER_03

Down that two-inch side, I'm looking for straight green. I don't want any knots in the board if I can possibly avoid it, or as few of knots as possible, uh, so I can cut around them because every one of those knots is a hard place. Not gonna make good paddles, so they'll go into bottoms. And I want I want the the color to be um a grayish color, a kind of a dark gray color. Um I have had some um some walnut that was a little darker, make good paddles. Um because I buy I buy walnut strictly for paddles. I don't, I don't anything that that that will not make a good paddle, I'll try to make bottoms out of. I'm sorry, I'll try to make bodies out of if if possible. If not, it would go into bottoms. So it's uh uh it's just difficult for me to find good wood. I've got I've got uh I've got enough of every wood that I'm gonna use till I quit making calls, but uh I don't I don't really need any more wood, but I'd always buy good walnut if I had a choice, but I'm not driving I'm not driving to Atlanta to buy anymore.

SPEAKER_06

There you go. Well so when you when you were describing that uh walnut for lids, is that uh you said straight grain, would that be like a uh a flat sawn piece of wood or a quarter sawn piece of wood?

SPEAKER_03

It's gonna be flat sawn piece of wood because the it the the you can imagine uh a sawmill cutting quarter sawn lumber. And to cut quarter sawn lumber, he's got to he got to cut as much of the sapwood off as he can get. Okay, and then he's gotta turn that board every time he cuts, he's turning it a quarter, turn to quarter, turn to quarter. Now, if he if he quarter sawing everything, he's losing money. Because if he flat sawed it, he just goes right through. He brings his carriage back, cuts another one, brings the carriage back, cuts another one. Um so most I think most of the wood that that hardwood dealers have are flat sawn wood, and that that two-inch side is going to be the straight grain. If it was flat sawn, that that straight grain would be on top of the board, it'd be the width of the board.

SPEAKER_04

Well, we learned a lot there. Yeah, I'm actually looking up uh quarter sawn versus flat sawn. I just yeah, never even thought about that. Thank y'all guys. Well, Mr.

SPEAKER_05

Lamar, can you can you walk us back? You told uh Dudley that you you about your a little bit about your first turkey, but can you tell us about that hunt and then maybe back up a little bit further?

SPEAKER_03

And how did you get interested in turkey hunting? My dad didn't hunt, nobody in my family hunted except an uncle. He had a bird dog, and uh me and a couple of my friends go get his bird dog from time to time and quail hunt. But um, I've always been interested in turkey hunting. I just and and it just fascinated me. Um so I was um remember the church that I was going to, I was in I was in high school in the tenth grade. He hunted, he hunted deer primarily, him and his son and some more of his friends. And uh, and they they turkey hunted too, but the way they turkey hunted, they we turkey hunt in the fall, but we would rooshoot the birds, which was legal back then. So that you know that's that's not a big deal. It's they didn't call birds, that's just the way they did it. And I've killed birds like that back then. But um I really became interested in in turkey hunting. I didn't uh I didn't have anybody to teach me so I made a lot of mistakes and um I killed that I killed my first gobbler. It was a WMA and it was um in eighty two and um and it was up in the it was up in the morning, about ten o'clock in the morning, and uh I was sitting down close to a creek and a in a in a uh with some oak trees. It was it was um blackjack oaks, small oaks. And uh I'd been calling, I didn't I didn't hear a thing. And I was looking around and I saw this gobbler walking down the road. He was coming, he just wasn't saying anything. And when and he got close enough, I got my gun up and shot him. And I knocked him down and he got up, so I shot him again. And that was my first turkey, first gobbler.

SPEAKER_04

See, Bobby, some other people shoot twice. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I've had a lot of those. Hey, walk me back to this roof shoot thing. How how did that happen? Would would you just sneak in on them in the on the roost and shoot them off the limb? Was is that how it was done back in the day?

SPEAKER_03

It was, but what they would do, they would roost those turkeys the night before. And then they would go in, we would go in the next morning and go down to where they were roosted and wait for it to break daylight, and when they started calling in those trees, we tried to get as close as we could to them and and shoot them off the roost. But that's an you know, like I say, that was an acceptable practice back then. A lot of people did that.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I wouldn't dare do that now.

SPEAKER_04

My dad. Yeah, that's how my dad describes his first turkey. Is that right? Yeah. I was like, really? He said, Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Well, all that sounds like something I might do except shooting him off the limb. I mean, I try to get close to them. Yeah, yeah. That's a bad thing, but uh I need to break that habit in myself. What, trying to get close to them? Trying to get always like I can get a little bit close to I end up spooking one every year. Yeah. But anyway, I do love to but I I if if you can actually see one, that is so good. Well, Mr. Mr. Lamar, have you got a favorite turkey story that you could tell us? All these years are you turkey hunting?

SPEAKER_03

I was hunting Davis Love's place in Georgia with my grandson Tate. And Tate was I think Tate was ten. And he's thirty now, so that was twenty years ago. And we were hunting uh a swamp just probably fifty to seventy-five yards from one of Davis fields. And um we we had gone in at dark. Turkeys turkeys were all turkeys always roosted pretty much in that same location. Uh you just didn't know exactly where they were gonna be loosing uh roosted on the back side of that field. So Tate and I eased in there before daylight and sat up and waited for them to to gobble. They started gobbling and um we waited to the right time. I did some some uh tree yelps and turkeys would gobble and uh they flew down. They flew down about uh a hundred yards from us, and I started calling them and they they they started coming and nice gobbler, he he's probably a four-year-old gobbler, came in. There were three gobblers, but he was the closest, so he came in and Tate shot him. And while we were hunting those turkeys, there was a turkey gobbling behind us across the road about two or three hundred yards down the road. And I told Tate, I said, Tate, wait here. You stay right here. I'll be back. I'm going after that gobbler. So I left and I went to that gobbler, and uh I called him in and killed him, so we got a double that day. So that was a great hunt.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that was a good day. No doubt about it.

SPEAKER_05

Seemed like there was a lot of turkeys down in that part of the world, Bobby. Back off. Here we go. Here you go.

SPEAKER_04

Look at him smiling over there. That's right.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Uh it it that that's a great story. That did you regret leaving Tate? Would you was there a side of you said want to take him and uh what was your thought price there and making him stay? Was he uh did he move a lot? Lanny moves a lot. I would have told Lanny just stay right here.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, you would have. And I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_03

Tate didn't move a lot, but you know, turkey hunting too was a crowd. So so Tate was Tate was very good about staying still. He was he was uh his his dad would take him turkey hunting when he was carrying him on his shoulders. And when he killed his first turkey when he was six. And um uh anytime we go scouting back then and we leave the woods, even turkey hunting, we leave the woods at one o'clock or two o'clock, he'd cry. He didn't want to leave, he wanted to stay there all day. He didn't for him to do at home. He could do stuff in the woods, you know.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so I bet he so like from a young age, he probably learned to run a box call. You probably gave him some i uh invaluable lessons. Could is could he pick up on it so quick at a young age?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, he he picked up on that early on. I don't know how old he was when he killed his first gobbler by himself, I'm not sure. Um but he some people just have an ear for that. Yeah, it's a musical ear. I mean, it really is. He worked in the shop with me quite a bit coming up. Um he was always in and out of the shop, and and um when he was in uh college um and some in high school, he would come and sit with me and learn to make calls, and he's made scratch boxes and he's made box calls. And uh right now he's he's been making trumpet calls for the last last four three or four years, he's been focused on trumpet calls, but he can't he doesn't make a lot of trumpet calls. He he's got some lot of orders, but he just doesn't have the time to do it. Well, that one's just gotten real popular. Yeah, too.

SPEAKER_04

So listening to to your kind of chronologically, your call making history and your turkey killing history, is it safe to assume that you were making your own turkey calls before you killed your first turkey?

SPEAKER_03

Yes. Yes, I was making I was making calls then. Making scratch boxes and uh um and and and some box calls, yes.

SPEAKER_04

So the first turkey you ever harvested was on a turkey call you had made yourself.

SPEAKER_05

Wow. Yeah, no, that's the horns. That that really is good stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's good stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I've always bragged about that because that's what Diddy was 14. He had somebody told him how to, but he took made a mouth call himself. Copper wire and uh medical tape, prophylactic, and uh condom. He had a great story about it because he baited in this man named Neil Frederick is legendary back in those days in the lower Alabama swamps, and he couldn't get it to uh sound like Mr. Neil's wood. And he said, Boy, I told you before you make a call at that Compton condom, you gotta go out there and temper it first. He he I bet I've heard Daddy tell that story a thousand times. He just laughs and laughs when he tells it. Oh my goodness. That's good stuff. Wow.

SPEAKER_05

Well, let me go back. It's just one thing I'm trying to when you're tuning a box, call are you messing with that screw in the are you tightening it a little bit or you loosen it a little bit, or do I'm just always scared to do too much with that screw. Yeah, I always have to mess with them.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I always mess with it.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I don't think you should mess with them. I glue mine in place when I'm through tuning it. Uh now you can you can break it loose, but but it's but uh but I put a little drop of glue in the in the screw hole when I'm finished, but uh but but just adjusting that screw um to me when I make a call that's where that's where that lid's adjusted to, that's where it needs to be. You don't need to move it forward, you don't need to move it back. And most most all calls, box calls are gonna sit rear of center anyway. You don't you don't you don't find right maybe some production calls or something might be in the center, but uh that's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_01

Rear of center back of that way. Oh no towards the screw. Back in the screen, the opposite end of the screw. Yeah. Oh really? That's most of the things.

SPEAKER_05

So the closer, closer side to the user.

SPEAKER_01

Well, like plus as you run it, it moves down the lid too. So I mean, some of them have a lot longer kind of stroke to them than others, too.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. So so Mr. Lamar, let me ask this. Can can uh can a box call like if a guy bought one of yours 30 years ago, it it can it wear out? Will it will that tone change over time? And I'm I'm saying your call because you probably make one of the best out there. It depends on how much you used it.

SPEAKER_03

Uh I'd say typically, the typical turkey hunter. Now I click you know you've got turkey hunters and you got people that hunt turkeys. Now they're two different groups of people, in my opinion. So um so anyway, the average turkey hunter, you're not gonna we're out of box call. I've I've seen I've seen Neil Cost calls that were 40 years old, and and they're not worn out. But but let me tell you a story. Had a friend of mine, uh he bought a number of calls for me over the years before he passed away a few years ago. And um he lived by himself and he ran turkey calls every day of his life. And he'd run them several hours a day switching back and forth between different calls. And if he got one he really, really liked, he'd use it more. Well, he called me up one time and he says, Says, Lamar, something's wrong with this paddle on the right side or the box on the right side. It was a paddle call actually, it's a mahogany paddle call. And I said, Well, run it for me. On the phone, he called me. I so he ran it and and he was right, it sounded awful. I said, run that left side and he ran it, it sounded good. He said, I'm not having trouble with the left side, it's right side. I said, Okay, send that call back to me. So he sent it to me and I took I looked at the call and I said, He had worn the right side of that call flat. There was no way to repair it. So I called him up and told him, his name was Blake. I said, Blake, you have you have worn the right side of this call out. You could I said, You you know, you call on it every day, day in and day out, time and time again, and I know you you've got a lot of other calls for me, you call on as well, but but you've just worn this one out. And I said, I'll make you another call and I'll send it to you. So I did. I made him another call, sent it to him. He didn't charge me anything for it, just sent it to him, replaced it. And uh I've still got that call in my shop that I show people. Well, you can wear them out if you just you know play with them all the time, day in and day out, but the average hunting with them, you're not gonna wear one out. That makes sense. Did you say he was single? He was single and he was retired, and and he he had medical issues, had a tough time getting around, so uh uh he was just as happy as he could be sitting in his house all day watching television, turning it off, and bring tur turkey calls. He had turkey calls from from from different makers as well. But uh he was tough on turkey calls. I bet. Yeah, my wife wouldn't put up with that for sure. So do you get to travel much in turkey hunt, Mr. Lamar? I don't do that much anymore. I I did it one time. Never traveled a lot. I try I've hunted in Mississippi and Alabama and South Carolina and um Georgia, uh Alabama, um, but I don't I don't I don't travel much anymore. I it's uh I've got all the turkeys I need to hunt right here, and I've never had an interest in getting a slam or anything like that. To me, a turkey's a turkey.

SPEAKER_01

So whether I kill him here or kill another thing like my dad. What did he say about the ducks? I've told that story when he's the point of it is a duck's a duck to me, son. Yeah, but he would always say, you know, well, if there's three long beards, is you can see the spurs are long or the beard, which one would you shoot, or the strutter, or that he would say, You you f shoot the fish, legal. That's what you put your beast on, son.

SPEAKER_04

I live by that.

SPEAKER_01

He was just he was he wasn't into the trophy thing whatsoever. He was just like, Yeah, you know, a two-year-old was just as much fun as a, you know, I know you can brag on the long spurs, but to him they're all just I love a two-year-old.

SPEAKER_06

I do too.

SPEAKER_01

Never lost that boyish enthusiasm for it ever. That was so much fun to do. They sure behave better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So Mr. Lamar down there in in Florida where you are through all these years, have you ever had any encounters with a panther?

SPEAKER_03

Never I've never seen a panther. I've got a friend that uh has some property down in uh down around Okeechobee, and two years ago, uh his family farmed about 25,000 acres down there. And uh had a lot of turkeys on that property, he said. I never hunted down there with him, but uh he came up to visit with me several years ago and showed me a picture of five panthers around a feeder in one field. A lot of panthers. I don't I don't wow I don't buy into there's I mean they might be an endangered species, but I think there's a whole lot more of them out there than than the they let on there is.

SPEAKER_06

We have heard that before as well.

SPEAKER_05

Yes. Well, I've got one more question about box calls. After the season is over with, is there a a certain way a guy should store his box call? Should he put it in a gun safe or put put it keep it in the air-conditioned house? Or can something go wrong if you stored it out in your storage building?

SPEAKER_03

Well, you want to keep it away from moisture, from you know, you need to keep it in the house or someplace that's you know, you have humidity controlled, temperature controlled. Um and it's like my calls. I send my call in a plastic bag that that that fits the call. Now that, and then I wrap it in in um in bubble wrap, but that is for for shipping purposes only. Nobody should should store those calls in that plastic bag. Take that plastic bag off and throw it away, and just put the call back in the box when you're through hunting with it, or you can leave it in your holster, you know, on your on your vest. I I've got a a belt that I use to to carry calls on, carry compass, a knife, things like that. But um mine stays in my shop year-round. Of course, it's it, you know, I have AC and heat in there. So I wouldn't I wouldn't, for goodness sakes, you know, during the season or whenever, don't keep them in your vehicle. Because that that heat will affect that that call.

SPEAKER_05

I've found myself worrying about that too.

SPEAKER_04

Especially the the glued up. That Lanny, what's that look like? I need to be worrying about it.

SPEAKER_01

He's got a long face all of a sudden. I try to be sure I park the uh vehicle in the shade and not let the sun come in on it, because I can see that happening too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So, Mr. Lamar, through the years, have you ever have you ever been building a call and screw that lid on there and run it and just go, oh my goodness, nobody's gonna buy this one. And you just have have you ever just hit one that was just like it's this is her right here?

SPEAKER_03

I've had both sides of that. I've I've spent hours and hours on one and end up throwing it away, burning it. Um, and then I've some I make I don't want to ship it out, I want to keep it.

SPEAKER_06

I bet I bet so do you have a question? Well, I was I was gonna ask him exactly that. Does he have a bunch that he's kept? And he he answered it for me. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01

And I don't blame him for that. Hey, yeah, I do have a question along those same lines you're talking about. Um any advice to us if we inadvertently trip and fall in the water, or you know, you slip on crossing a log in the creek and you get a box call really wet or a wood call. I mean, any advice to try to salvage it?

SPEAKER_03

Probably put it on on a on a low heat source, like your hot water heater. Something like that. You don't don't leave it out in the sun to dry out. Don't you know, just a low heat source. And it it it should it should come back. You might you might have to um you might have to to re I know most most people have calls aren't going to do this, but you might have to maybe touch up the uh top of the tone boards on them with some some well-used sandpaper or something. Uh maybe even uh on the bottom of the paddle. Just cup your hands to the to the curvature of that paddle, put a piece of 150 in there on your in your hand, wipe all that chalk off and then take and read redress that paddle. And uh it should come back. I had a another story. Um I had a guy from um from Alabama last December. I I had made him a cypress uh paddle call uh this this past December was a year ago. And uh and he hunted with it during the spring, and then when the gobbler season was over, he called me up, he said, there's something wrong with my with my box call. And he says, uh it just doesn't sound right. I said, Okay. I said, uh, run it for me. He tr he ran it, and sure enough, it didn't sound good. He says, but let me tell you what happened. He says, I got I got caught in the rain, and my call got wet, and I I I just put it up like you told me on a on a low heat source hot water heater and uh let it dry out for several days and then I I rechalked it and uh but it still doesn't sound good. I said, okay. I said send it uh send it back to me. So he did. And I opened the box when I got it, and he had chalk from the handle to the screw, and it was caked on there, and I said, my god, and it would to beat that, it was red chalk. I have nothing against red chalk. I like red chalk, it's just it's good chalk, but but anyway, uh I had to get all that chalk off the best I could, and and and then I I redressed, I redressed that, resanded that with 150, touched up the tone boards, and uh tried it, and it was good. It sounded good, but there was one one thing that went wrong with that call, and I couldn't send it back to him. When that call came in, I was not at home, I was in town, and my five-year-old great-granddaughter was here, she was four at that time, and that bot came in, and she likes to open presents, and she unbeknownst to my wife, she reached in a drawer and got a butter knife out and punched holes in that box. And I'd asked my wife, I said, How'd these holes get in here? She says, Well, McKinley did that. I I didn't see her doing it. I said, Okay. So when I opened the box in my shop, it had little dents in it with that with that knife blade. Now it didn't hurt the call, but I didn't feel right sending him back that call. And I called him up and told him, and he said, he said, no, I want that call back. I said, I'm not gonna give it to you back. I said, this is gonna be my granddaughter's call, my great granddaughter's call. I'm gonna I'm gonna sign this over to her. And he said, Well, I sure would like to have. I said, No, no, she damaged it, and I've I've made you another one. I said, When you get it, let me know if you like it. And he he called me up. He says, Yeah. He said, but that's he kept saying that that call's got a story with it. I said, I know that's why I'm gonna keep it. So I put her name on it, and it's hers now. I'm holding it for her.

SPEAKER_06

That's good stuff right there. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_05

Well, I tell you what, there's a lot of there's a lot of good uh videos on Lamar Williams that you can go watch, Landy, like on YouTube and whatnot. Those YouTube guys are everywhere. But he's an incredible story. So Mr. Williams, how would how would a guy have you got a website or just call me on the phone?

SPEAKER_03

I do not have a website. Um he can just just call me. Uh, but I can I can give you my phone number and uh and y'all couldn't.

SPEAKER_05

We'll put it in the show notes. Uh yeah, we'll we'll do that. Then if somebody wants to get in touch with you, they they can. It's a great story. Um Golly, have have you ever hunted but down in that part of Florida, was Lovett Williams somebody that that you paid any attention to?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, I have. Um I I hunted um I didn't hunt Lovett's place down at Fish Eating Creek, but I've hunted several places down there in that same general area out of Okeechobee. Um there's a number of management areas down there that are that are good management areas. Uh and kill we've my son and my grandson and I have killed a number of turkeys down there in the past. It is but that that answers your question, but it is so difficult anymore to draw uh a permit, a quota permit for those areas. Uh a resident has to have five or six, maybe seven points to draw an area down there. So that's that's five or six, seven years in between hunting down there. So I quit applying for it. Now there's special opportunity hunts down there that uh that you can you can send five dollars in for every application. You can send as many applications as you want. But uh and you might get drawn, you might not get drawn. But that's that's South Florida's a great place to hunt if you can get in down there. Most of the land down there is private. But there are a few management areas down there.

SPEAKER_06

You know, I hear of people winning from time to time, and yeah, it's a magical place if you can get in.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. So well, why don't we do this? Uh this has been so much fun to talk to you. We've got a trivia question that we could uh we could ask. Uh you know, let me just go back and say uh the rapid fire is brought to uh brought to us by Nutrient Ag Solutions. I don't know that we said that back in the Mitchell remembered. Yeah. And then so as we approach this, uh the trivia question is brought to you by the Peanut Patch. Our buddies at the Peanut. They are famous for bowl peanuts. Yes. And uh Mitchell, we'll turn it over. You got the question. Let's see what you got.

SPEAKER_02

Well, before we start the question, I have a user review from YouTube.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, are we on YouTube? I think so.

SPEAKER_02

Man, you should go check it out. But PES Hunter Outdoors on YouTube. I learned a lot about turkey calls on this episode. Keep up the great work.

SPEAKER_04

Is it pest P-E-S or P-E-Z?

SPEAKER_02

P-E-S-T. Like pest.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, pest hunter.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02

But what did he win, Bobby?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, so we're still with the Newcomb blinds. We've got several more of the nucleum blinds to give away. So uh if you'll uh pest hunt or if you'll get in touch, we'll get that sent right out to you. Nice.

SPEAKER_02

But the trivial question today is from Bobby. Of course. It's a true or false.

SPEAKER_04

50-50.

SPEAKER_05

All right, Mr. Lamar, are you paying attention now? Okay. There's a lot at stake here.

SPEAKER_02

Possums can give birth up to 25 babies, but can only nourish 13 to reform.

SPEAKER_05

Hmm. That is true.

SPEAKER_01

True. Wow, he barely hesitated too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Wow. What I read is they give birth to 25, and then it's a race for those first. Top 13 to get to a T.

SPEAKER_04

Survival of the fittest. Yeah. It probably is a survival mechanism.

SPEAKER_05

And she does that twice a year. Ali, that's a lot of possums. It is.

SPEAKER_04

So what what happens to the ones? 26 possums a year.

SPEAKER_05

When I saw this, it uh it surprised me. I said this will make great dinner conversation for our listeners.

SPEAKER_06

So what are the what happens to the other 12 that don't make it to a TV?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, cowed bait. You didn't speak about them, did you? I just say it's a little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

SPEAKER_06

Well look, we may we made it. Honestly, I expect we need to find a surrogate possum mom. I don't know. We don't need any more.

SPEAKER_01

I'm sorry, but if it eats a turkey egg, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05

It's got to go.

SPEAKER_01

It's got to go.

SPEAKER_05

Did y'all notice we made Lamar Williams last? We did. How about that? Well, I tell you what, Mr. Lamar Williams, what a treasure you are. What up that an interesting story. And just it's like a gym in the turkey hunting world that hearing these old school callmakers, these custom callmakers, and the way they do it, and most of them don't have websites, Lanny, most of them don't have a Facebook page, Lanny. And and they're just old school, Toxie. That's so special.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I thought about it listening to him talk about the the craft of work wood and working with wood. And I think while some would think it's frustrating because it's not a perfect science, you know, they're all different and whatnot, um, that leads to great artists and only the great artists that can you know get to the top of the game and everything like he is. I always loved sayings out of a movie where it came from. There was one in a movie that it was actually that one about the women's baseball team. But the point was they were complaining about how hard it had gotten, and he goes, Hey, the hard is the only thing that makes it great. If it was easy, everybody could do it. And I think about there's so few to his level. And uh there's there's some, and you know they're all buddies and stuff too. They share stuff and all, but it there's not many that can do it, you know, because it takes that art, science, patience all combined, and someone who loves it so much they just stick with it.

SPEAKER_06

One of the biggest words I learned, you know, in that degree I got a long time ago uh in art and photography. Um craftsmanship. Oh, that's exactly craftsmanship was the word. And and Bill Lester was one of my professors.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I didn't know my son Neil came and spent a day in your shop. He just I texted them that they that we were doing a podcast with you, and they were like both of them the best of the best. That's what my text came back saying. I thought I'd pass that along to you.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, and then I I had another professor, uh Dr. Laurie Grace, uh, who let me make a scratch box call in the in the wood wood forest products class. Oh, nice. Pretty cool. And one of her famous or favorite quotes was you know, her therapy was making shavings.

SPEAKER_04

Oh making shavings was her therapy. It is therapeutic. I'm gonna go and take it. Bobby, you've experienced a little bit of the making shavings. It can be very frustrating. But it does. Once you're done, it's very therapeutic. Yeah, that's right. I love that wood.

SPEAKER_06

It's kind of like, you know, fishing. You you just a lot of your worries go away. Um, so you know, making shavings, fishing, but whatever you like doing.

SPEAKER_04

It it's uh there is something therapeutic about working with you.

SPEAKER_01

You know, something about when you you know you figure out why God put you here and what your calling is. People just it's amazing how zoned in and productive and everything works that they are in life. And it's gotta be a feeling sometimes for you after a lifetime of this and and all this come about that you feel like that's kind of been your calling for you. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. Uh I see in Psalms 139 where it says that he knew us before he placed us in our mother's womb. All our days were planned for us before a single moment passed. So, yes, we've all got a calling.

SPEAKER_01

Chill bumps. Chill bumps. Thank you. Yes, there you have it. Yeah, that is really good. That's a song right there, Bobby.

SPEAKER_05

All right, uh, Mr. Lamar Williams, we're looking at you. Is there anything you'd like to say before you get off?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, I'd like to uh thank y'all for having me on here. It's very kind of y'all to do that. Um and Toxie, if you would just tell Neil thank you for me. You got a great son, he's a great young man. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

If I could just keep he's hard on my stock, is the only thing. He's a killer. Yeah. And he doesn't take note for an answer. I don't know where he got that from. I don't either.

SPEAKER_05

He can negotiate with the dust though.

SPEAKER_01

Well, he's a he's a great example of it's a lot easier to ask for forgiveness and permission, too.

SPEAKER_06

So what was the uh can you just briefly tell the story of that year when he and his friends uh killed all the Turks?

SPEAKER_04

Friends? It was Mac.

SPEAKER_01

Mac was the straw that broke the camel's back, though. They were he was in college and they were, you know, they could skip class if you, you know, who knows what was going on. But um they had, I think, one, two, they'd already killed, I forgot how many, but he doubled twice. And the second time, I said, that's it, okay? No more. And he was like, Dad, I mean, I I don't even have to go. I just want to take my friends. You don't want to, you know, I got this pity party thing. And I said, in a weak moment, I said, fine, okay, you can still go, but here's the deal: one gun, that's it. Okay, whatever. Which means turkey, yeah. Well, I was out of town and came back, and he knew I'd just gotten back. I had to go with some customers in Texas, I think. And uh he was like, the battery's dead on my truck. Can you get someone to come out here or someone here or whatever? And so I got out there and he would be out there with Mac, and there were two turkeys, and I lit their tails up. And of course, I think Mac was kind of ducking for cover while I was had it focused on Neil. And I said, I told you that is it. You're done hunting this year. You're you may find somewhere else, but not on our place. You're you're done. I told you one gun, and here's what you do. He said, Oh, daddy, we just took one gun. I said, That's not what I'm meaning. You know it. So it ends up, Neil, they they had some that they were in a field, and they they they literally left the camp because it wasn't far from the camp and didn't even put their boots on. It was like 10 in the morning, and crawled down an old hedgerow and got close enough to where I think you got to about a hundred yards of them in a big field, and they came up and when just like they do, Neil shot one, and evidently the other one jumped on him, like they do sometimes. And as he kept on flogging the other one, he in a weak moment Mike was like, Come on, it's okay. It's just one gun, you know, like that. So, anyway, that's my story. And I did shut him down after that for the year. That was it for him.

SPEAKER_05

Good story. Well, Taxy, that's just your boy.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I mean, I got a lot of people and a lot of family, and so I'm just to the point where it's it it is so depressing to get to a year when you just don't have them and they're not gobbling, and you don't really have any jakes and you don't know where things are going with your life's work in that regard, and so I just got to the point where we're gonna get it to where it needs to be and we're gonna keep it that way. And if it means we back off on hunting, we'll just back off on hunting. Yeah, you know, for sure.

SPEAKER_05

All right, Mr. Lamar Williams, we'll put in the notes the show notes, Lanny. Remind me about this. We got a we'll put his phone number in there. And uh boy, I tell you what, I bet you're gonna get some phone calls. The box calls, but look, what I've lost my mind. What have you got a call there? Would you run a call for us, please? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Let me see here.

SPEAKER_04

I don't know what in the world was I think, Lanny. I haven't, you weren't. This is a walnut. You're thinking about all the turkeys in Florida. What you got? It's a walnut box.

SPEAKER_06

Oh my goodness, that that was like a high rasp.

SPEAKER_04

I mean everything in it.

SPEAKER_06

Can you can you describe what that sounds like to you? Like if you were describing uh you know, if a customer asked for that, what what would that be?

SPEAKER_03

That would that would be uh kind of a medium rasp call to me. It was um both sides a little raspy, one side right side, I think, raspier than the left side. Um but it's uh I think you need a little bit of that rasp in them. You don't you know we all have we're all very opinionated on sounds, but uh but uh I like I like that that's all walnut walls call.

SPEAKER_05

Walnut on walnut. So how does a guy buy a call from you? Is there a waiting list that you have to get on? Sure. Is is that how that works?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, sir. They need to be patient. Um I've got I've got at least a two-year back order. Wow. Um and I I it was a lot worse than that. I tried to catch it up some and I did. Um I've had several several people call me the last couple of months wanting calls. Um and I don't make the you know, I never made a lot of calls. I d if I made uh if I made a hundred and ten to twenty calls a year, I'd set the world on fire. But I don't do that anymore. You know, I make s uh seventy-five calls a year or something like that. It just depends. Uh I'm out in my shop every day doing something, but I might not necessarily be tuning calls. Uh I might be getting I might be cut uh cutting blocks out or cutting paddles out. Uh normally when you do that with with me when I've when I'm cutting blocks or cutting paddles, that's a that's a that's an all-day job. That that's six or seven, eight hours on table saw all day. And then sorting through all of them and it it's just a lot to do out there other than just sitting down and and and tuning calls, matching a paddle to it. Checkering. Checkering is time consuming. By the time you draw the patterns on them and then take a a chisel and cut those patterns out, it's it's it's uh very time consuming. So it's you know I I've got um it just depends. When you take everything into consideration that I do from getting the wood to shipping a call, I've got I've got five or six hours in most calls. So it's uh and and and something I wanted to do for you too. I've got a I've got a this is a plain sided box. This is mahogany, walnut over mahogany, and it's gonna probably sound a little bit different than that walnut box. Um but I like plain-sided boxes too. I'm starting I'm gonna start making some more plain-sided boxes. Um I like the way that's amazing, though.

SPEAKER_05

I like that mahogany sound. Yeah. Well, all those sounded great. Yeah. No doubt craftsman. Spitting feathers. Yeah. Wow. All right, guys. This has been a great one. I think we've all learned a lot.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Thanks for your time, dude.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and just love to hearing the perspective of someone who's had this passion his whole life and lived it. I mean, it's just so, whatever the word is, enriching to be able to sit back and listen to and kind of just you know, whatever, soak it up. Absorb. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_05

Well, guys, uh, look, uh, on the Sportsman's channel right now, Sunday nights, uh, what time, Mitchell? What time is that TV show airing on Sunday nights? 10 o'clock on uh Eastern time. Nine o'clock Central. That's right. So, Landy, you ever watch the Sportsman's channel?

SPEAKER_04

I do not, but I might need to tune in to watch to get more of you, Bobby. I mean, I don't get a customer's spending time with you.

SPEAKER_05

All right, but yeah, y'all check it out. Sportsman's channel.

SPEAKER_01

Landy doesn't Landy doesn't watch anything he has to pay for. No, he doesn't. That is true. Free TV. Some rabbit ears, Landy.

SPEAKER_06

What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01

For someone who's never paid for a haircut in his entire life.

SPEAKER_04

I paid for one once.

SPEAKER_01

Um, yeah. It's probably because your wife made you do it.

SPEAKER_06

You know, Landy can get 28 channels on his rabbit ears. 21. 21. 21.

SPEAKER_01

Our buddy Bob Dixon described him as uh squeezing a penny to a Lincoln Hollers. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_05

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. I only spend money on the good stuff.

SPEAKER_05

Well, Lamar Williams, we've thoroughly enjoyed this. And and and hope we get to see you sometime soon.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. Again, I thank y'all so much for for this uh interview, and uh I hope y'all have great turkey season. We will. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Just watching the woods wake up again is worth it. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_03

Don't have to kill them anymore.

SPEAKER_05

No. Although it's fun. Yeah, yeah, it is. All right, guys, for looking around the room, uh, why don't you say goodbye, Dudley?

SPEAKER_00

Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Mitchell. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Gamekeeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife magazine, and don't miss the Macio Properties Fistful of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Cud Strickland.