The Hunt Swiftly Podcast
The Hunt Swiftly Podcast discusses everything to gear to camo patterns and everything in between
The Hunt Swiftly Podcast
The Art and Science of Calling Elk with Joe McCarthy
What separates a good elk caller from a great one? It's not just technical skill – it's understanding the emotional language of elk. Joe McCarthy, the innovative force behind Slayer Calls, takes us deep into the psychology and mechanics of effective elk calling in this fascinating conversation.
Joe's journey from rural Idaho law enforcement to revolutionizing elk call design began with necessity in the field. When reeds would fail during hunts, he started making his own, developing a unique ability to match the specific sounds of individual elk. This hands-on approach eventually led to his partnership with Slayer Calls, where they've reimagined diaphragm call design with their distinctive half-inch by five-eighths frame that maximizes both sound richness and control.
The most compelling insight? "The worst bugler on the mountain is the actual elk." Joe shares stories of massive bulls making thin, scrawny sounds while smaller elk produce deep, resonant bugles – challenging everything hunters think they know about "perfect" calling. This unpredictability is why Joe advocates for versatility over perfection, building calls that allow hunters to express the emotional context behind elk vocalizations rather than just mimicking standardized sounds.
We explore the revolutionary Enchantress call, which allows hunters to produce both bugles and cow calls without a diaphragm – making quality calling accessible to those who struggle with mouth calls or hunt infrequently due to limited draw opportunities. Joe's philosophy of keeping hunting affordable shines through when he recounts successfully calling in elk using improvised Lipton iced tea bottles when he'd forgotten his equipment.
Whether you're a seasoned caller looking to refine your approach or a beginner trying to understand the fundamentals, Joe's practical wisdom about practicing control before volume and focusing on actual elk recordings rather than human demonstrations will transform how you think about communicating with elk in the field. Ready to speak elk? This episode is your masterclass.
Yeah, I honestly don't know a whole lot. Taylor's the big computer guy. When it comes to all that stuff, he's the guy.
Speaker 2:I try. He's the guy I try.
Speaker 3:That's good How's things been going. It was in Red Lodge, right? Yeah Red Lodge, or was it? Yeah, Red Lodge?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. No, it's been fun. I've been out of the country for a little while and then just kind of got back and we were super stoked. We're actually leaving on a hunt on Friday for Nevada mule deer, so we're really we're super stoked that we kind of like had everything lined up perfectly with this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3:That's cool. So you got. Uh, what part of Nevada are you going?
Speaker 1:Um, I'm going like near South of Elko.
Speaker 3:So I have that 101 to 109.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll see I get a good deal there. Yeah, that's, that's the goal. Yeah, um, I mean I've heard there's good potential out there, just scarcity yeah, I think you gotta cover a lot of ground.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, you have decent optics, but that's probably more important than anything. You have is probably your binoculars or spotting scope or whatever you're using.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am. I actually just picked up a Zeiss Gavia. It's like the nicest spotting scope I've ever owned. I'm like scared to use it and hold it. Yeah, but we'll see. Hopefully it works. It's not a swirl, but I think it'll get the job done.
Speaker 3:Zeiss in the day was the. I mean they were the thing and I think they've built some stuff lower end to compete in that market, but their top end stuff is pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that Gavia was like their competitive one. So it's all Japanese glass, not the European, and I've heard the clarity is very nice, but it's just not comparable to like European glass.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I have a friend of mine that builds these. So he started night force, the scope company. Yeah, so that's in Orfino where I'm from. Jeff actually moved to Orfino because my brother was guiding there and Jeff was going out with my brother. They moved this company, started that there, and then there was a mix up on the owners actually from Australia, and so he kind of wanted more stuff in Australia. Jeff lost the whole thing financially but he started a company called Zero Compromise. So he went over to Europe for a bit and worked for Collis, which is kind of a branch of Swarovski, yeah, yeah. So he ended up basically getting connections for that European glass that you have. And I love my night four stuff. I absolutely love it. But when you lay it down side by side, I don't know. I don't know if it really matters at that level. I don't know if it really matters or not, because I mean, you still see the thing. Yeah, it's just the clarity of color and the separation of color and things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. I didn't really notice what good glass quality was until I actually went to the Swarovski factory in Austria oh, wow. And when I was there, they have the BTXs. You can look through them at the Alps. And I'm looking through and they're like oh, look up there. And they're like okay, do you have? Here's our comparison. They pull out this like unbranded one, and it was a leica, but they pull out the unbranded right spotting scope and put it next to it and it's like I'm looking between. And they're like oh, do you see that bush? And I'm like, yeah, they're like come look at it at the leica, and the leica you can't see it. Yeah, I was like hmm, okay, so there is something to it there's definitely so you.
Speaker 3:So you were there then. So Jeff worked over there and I guess Collis is right across the street. I'm not sure, but that's so. He worked on that side. There was the MOA scope that Collis built and Jeff's the designer of that. Basically, that scope is a night four scope of Paul's class it. It's a pretty good scope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's probably a pretty penny, though, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the zero compromise. You have that rugged durability that Nightforce is famous for, but you have that with glass. That's really uncompromisable. It's the best. That's why they call it zero compromise. Yeah, I um I've been.
Speaker 1:I've been kind of messing around trying to figure out like what optics I mean. I'm really just a bow hunter, like taylor he's, he's the rifle guy in this kind of situation. So he but I like have a decent rifle setup. But as I'm looking through I'm like, oh, maybe this brand would be nice on the rifle, or this one I mean it.
Speaker 2:It always gets better like it's. You know, you can be driving the nicest car in where you think you are, but there's always going to be someone that pulls up. Next you are in a newer truck, or so there's always. You can always go up yeah, no, I agree, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I archery, I mean I'm an archery guy, I mean that's kind of what it is. But my deer hunting it's two different worlds. I elk hunting to me is a full contact sport. It is, it is exciting, it is whatever. But usually by the end of september, first of october, I am beat and so my deer hunting becomes much more of a relaxing. Go outside on a ridge walk. Some ridges move around, but I'm very slow to move. I glass, I sit, I eat sandwiches. You know, I do all those things that you don't do during archery season, and so I use them as like polar opposite type things. The deer hunting kind of winds me down and it's actually a kind of time for my wife and I we've. We've literally packed in like lucky charms and milk into a ridge and eaten bowls of cereal on top of the river that's sweet, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1:I've actually never really have hunted like an early season archery deer hunt because, like in montana, we just got the general season deer, general season elk. You spend september for elk, october, november for deer. And so now I'm like I'm very interested to see like the differences of like before I had the fatigue of elk season and then I go deer hunting. Now it's like, oh, I have all my energy, I have all my season, and then I go deer hunting. Now it's like, oh, I have all my energy, I have all my prep and I can go deer hunt, we'll see what happens, kind of thing I do think the deer can be um that time of year.
Speaker 3:They're still feeding them. There's still that early season, they're still feeding a little bit, so they're a little more mobile or a little more out than they are. You start getting up in september they and they start getting a little pressure and they disappear. I mean they, they will just, they go nocturnal and they sit in a bush. I mean they literally sit and they just sit through a whole day find a place where they can you know, I mean they literally move. They find a place where they can have a bush in a water hole and they're, and they don't move, they just. And then when you do bump them, shit, they, they can go miles and then they find another bush and water hole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think early season you have a better chance. I've, um, I've been doing like a ton of research and they're saying that like early season they're moving. They sell velvet, they like will kind of re-bed and move around. Still they're not just fattening up and like I was super like interested in kind of like seeing the behavioral differences and they're just, I mean they're more visible. They're not really super worried about other bucks, they're like kind of hanging out together and just right before they start actually trying to get hard-horned and theuts come in and all that and that's an advantage with them being in a larger group, like they will have other bucks.
Speaker 3:But there'll be three, four other bucks in those kind of groups and so all it takes is one buck to show themselves and that can kind of give up the other three or whatever's there. I've never hunted august for deer. I have a couple friends that have here in idaho and that's the same kind of thing. My, uh, my daughter-in-law, she drew unit 44 which is out of fairfield kind of central part of the state. She drew that this year for deer. She drew it two years ago. This is a crazy thing. She, she drew it two years ago got it. You have to sit out a year and then she put it in this year and she drew it again.
Speaker 3:It's like it's like that's a one percent chance to get it, and she did it twice.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what kind of happened with me. I did the second drawing chance in nevada 0.0 anything and I just got the notification at tag like oh, you pulled nevada. And I look over at taylor and I'm like dude, I just pulled nevada. And he's like I hate you.
Speaker 3:Well see, I've never drawn a tag. I've never drawn one ever, like I've been putting in. So 18 years old, in 1985, and I mean there's some years and myths and here and there you might, but I've never drawn a tag putting for deer and elk second chances. All that never drawn. Here she draws twice in a row, you're just like.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I wonder if it's like statistics or anything, because I saw this thing where I forget what state or but someone had like a theory that like, because they're trying to like promote women in the outdoor industry, that like you have a higher percent chance if you're a woman at certain tags right now I would buy anything you tell me space aliens are the one I'm gonna say yep, you're probably right, because I it's all the algorithm.
Speaker 3:I am the absolute failure when it comes to, uh, drawing tags yeah, um, sweet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, haylor, you want to hit us with a normal intro and we can jump right in.
Speaker 2:I think you should hit the intro for once all right, sweet, um.
Speaker 1:All right. How's it going guys? Welcome to the hunt swiftly podcast. Today we're joined by joe from slayer calls. We're really excited to have him. We connected with him at tack red lodge and we invite him on. He's grateful enough to give us like his time and we're gonna ask him some questions about slayer calls and we're gonna have a great time yeah, sounds good that is all improvised yeah that's the best kind.
Speaker 3:Just fly from your seat of your pants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always. Swifty's our usual intro guy. He has it all dialed in with the script.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm far from dialed in.
Speaker 2:Oh sweet.
Speaker 1:So, Joe, do you want to just give a quick intro for the listeners?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my name is Joe McCarthy. About four years ago, um, I met with bill the air, who's the owner of slayer calls, and we ran into him at the um. It would be the salt lake show, um, down there in the it's the expo, like he just texted me. So that's what was my distraction there, um, so I run into him. Actually what happened is my son had gone and done a podcast with christy titus. They talked about turkeys and he was walking back and cody saw the shiny duck calls on the on the table and it drew him in because duck hunting is kind of that's kind of where our foundations, I think, in hunting just I think honestly for everybody kind of starts because it's your kid, you can go out there and shoot ducks, it's the first time handling a gun, all that kind of stuff. But so Cody met him. He talked to Cody about, you know, if Cody could help him. At that time.
Speaker 3:Cody was kind of tied with Rocky Mountain Game Calls and kind of my whole family's kind of been tied with Rocky, with the Jacobsons, for a while, just because we're from Morfino and we have a lot of connections. My brother was one of the first ones to build calls for Rocky, before Rocky even sold his patent to Primos. And so Cody kind of passed. But he said hey, my dad just retired. I worked for 30 years as a cop in Idaho. Basically I guess it'd be like 13 years in rural part of the state and then the other 17 years in the city of Boise. And so I moved down in 2003 from northern Idaho or central Idaho to Boise and finished my career down there. But I had just retired. So, cody, I, he took me to him, didn't tell me what he was doing, but he goes hey, I want you to meet this guy. I went, met him. Bill said hey, you, you're the guy that's gonna build elk calls for me. Huh, and I was like what? And anyway, it kind of started from there and so I all the elk calls basically my son and I designed and you know, put out there. We redesigned the frame of the call there which was kind of interesting.
Speaker 3:Every other call in the market is basically a half inch by half inch design or five eighths by five eighths design, just the width and the depth of latex. We actually went half inch wide by five eighths long, trying to take advantage of a little more latex and the five, eighths calls because the more latex you have, the better, the more like richness and the sound you can get. But the width is what gives you control. And so 5-8s calls. You know, when you're looking at people that have them, if you can run them they sound really great because they have more latex. They're just harder to run. It's a lot more like a turkey call where you have sections across the middle. So you've got to kind of divide the call up into thirds. A half-inch call you don't have to do that, it's all straight down the middle. Turkey hunting is kind of a five-eighths thing. That's why they've all done that and I'm getting really crazy technical and all this stuff.
Speaker 3:But, um, yeah, so we redesigned that and then we did a tongue and groove thing on the on the inside of the frame. So in the past you've had this structural ridge that goes around the outside of the rid, outside of the frame, and you bend it over. It makes a u and you have that ridge that runs around the outside. Well, we inverted the downside to go up. So we got a tongue and groove type thing to hold the latex better.
Speaker 3:And so we we like to think that our calls are have a lot more longevity than some of the other ones. Um, not that the other ones are bad, but we're trying to get longevity out of that. Uh, what we found though. Um, so we I think we get longevity, but from when you have two ridges like this versus this, this becomes thinner. So we are the actual profile of the metal frame in your mouth is a thinner thing. By being thinner, you're actually able to get to the latex easier with your tongue, to manipulate it, which we think gives you more control, and so and I think it's also just a when it's not as thick, it's more comfortable in the mouth as well. So that's kind of our, that's kind of what we did. We designed that and kind of of built that, and now we're just kind of trying to grow it. We've done some things with the tubes. As far as adding acrylic, which amplifies sound, doesn't change it and alter it. You know other. Yeah, there, it is right there that's the yellow one dude.
Speaker 3:That's the one I used too huge fan of it.
Speaker 1:I. That's what drew me in. I saw that acrylic and I was like, ooh, that looks really cool. So, kind of getting back to the beginning, did you break elk and turkey claws before working with Slayer, or did that kind of just naturally occur?
Speaker 3:No, it was something I'd been doing for a while. So my like I said back in the way, back like in the late eighties, early nineties, when Rocky was making his pallet plate and all of this was done by hand back there it was a whole different process, but my brother actually was one helping him stretch that. So I was like, oh, how do you? You know, I kind of learned, you know kind of watching Rocky, and then you hang out with Rocky Jacobson enough, and the people around him and you kind of start learning how to do this.
Speaker 3:And ultimately what I did is it became a more of a thing about necessity. So if you're out hunting and you know reed went bad, I didn't want to have to go back into town to get another reed. So I bought the presses and stuff and I made reeds in camp and what I would do is, you know, if I wanted more higher notes, I was build do things to stretch the things higher and get higher notes. If I wanted more buzz or whatever was working, I was trying to build calls to fit that and I kind of did it on my own.
Speaker 1:Incredible so you were like actually in the field and you're hearing these different elk communicate and you're like, oh, they are. Grab, they have more of a gravel in the throat. I'm going to stretch that. Do that, or it's super high, that's really cool, that's just matching.
Speaker 3:You come back from camp, it's 1 o'clock through 2 o'clock, whatever. I actually killed more elk between 10 and 2. But you know, when you come back in the afternoon or you, if you are back in camp, you come back at night. I, you know, in my, in my base camp, I had my presses and I would make those calls, try to match that bull at that time and I did a lot of weird stuff. Some worked, some didn't. I've actually posted some stuff online where I made some calls that sounded like elk. I heard in the field and then I posted online and had people go. I don't know who you are if you're just learning how to elk to bugle, but that doesn't sound right and it's like, yeah, you know. So you know, it's funny because the elk the elk that my wife killed last year it actually sounds like a pterodactyl. It doesn't sound like an elk. It's pretty crazy sounding. It actually sounds like a pterodactyl, it doesn't sound like an elk.
Speaker 1:It's pretty crazy sounding my favorite, I think my favorite saying is that the worst bugler on the mountain is the actual elk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Remy Warren always talks about that. It's like if you hear something bugling horribly, it's probably the biggest elk on the mountain.
Speaker 3:That's it, that's 100% Elk by mid-september. They suck at dribbling. Now this is one thing about calling I get this in seminars is that cows don't. Cows stay consistent all year long. I mean, there's they'll make some crazy sounds once in a while, but their consistency and what they do is much more consistent year round. And I think vocalization, consistency, vocalization and how they sound from a their note, from, the more it's that yeah, yeah, that kind of, or that yeah.
Speaker 3:You know the, the way they, they, they talk it's. I think it's a much harder to cow call than it is to bugle. I think you can. You can be a terrible bugler and you can get out to respond if you can't cow call. Right, elk, you're going to figure that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very true, so, um, that's actually fascinating that you would actually mimic the elk in the field. I might still try to get over that. Yeah, um d I would you do like the same thing with, like turkeys, or is that just an elk thing, you think?
Speaker 3:it's just an elk thing. I've made turkey calls and you know the reality is I think I don't know. I'm not gonna say turkey hunting is easier. I live in idaho, where turkey hunting isn't, as isn hunting, doesn't have the pressure that they have in Georgia or Florida, and so I think our turkeys I'm not going to. I'll start a whole bee's nest if I sit there and say turkey hunting is easy.
Speaker 2:I'll say it for you turkey hunting is so much easier than elk hunting our podcast is pretty notorious for being not super into turkeys.
Speaker 1:Swifty has a personal not super into turkeys. Swifty has a personal vendetta against turkeys.
Speaker 3:I like turkey hunting because it gets me out. Where we hunt turkeys is literally the same place we hunt out, and so it gets me out in the field, in those same places, and there's a lot of there's actually times I have found wallows or I found trails or whatever where I was actually turkey hunting, not elk hunting, and that's because you're out in the spring and you're just. It keeps you moving, it keeps you hunting setups. We hunt the same way. I don't. I don't hunt from a blind, I don't hunt. Yeah, I I move, I hunt them just like I do elk. Um, we actually have a video coming out before too long of this year's turkey hunt where we're doing this. Um, but yeah, yeah, turkey hunting. You know, as far as the reeds go, it wasn't as imperative. When I'm, when I'm elk hunting, it's a lot more.
Speaker 1:I'm more dialed in yeah, I, um, I I've been turkey. So what kind of like we started this podcast is like I'm a pretty new hunter and like my first year ever hunting when I was 18, it was like I went out turkey hunting and I was like, oh, this is kind of like elk hunting. And then I went actual elk hunting and I was like, okay, this is so much. It's like like you're saying like a full contact kind of sport you're, you're locked in, you're moving, you're constantly following, like a full contact kind of sport. You're locked in, you're moving, you're constantly following them, moving around with them. I feel like with turkeys, like sometimes you can move towards them but then they'll be like right over there and then you sit and wait.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and honestly you've got to kind of face it, if I go in and blow a turkey shut up, I'm not that mad. You know it's more fun and I'm going to go find another turkey and I'm going to go do that Elk hunting. You spend a lot of time trying to get into an elk or an indoor group of elk and you blow that setup and just by your location you may not get another chance and so, yeah, the stakes are a little higher, I think, for an elk hunting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we're three big game guys completely doing on this and there's some turkey hunter listening to this, being like these guys don't know what they're saying and if you're a turkey hunter.
Speaker 2:good for you, man, but for me in the springtime I'd rather be bear hunting.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 2:And then fog rolls around and elk and deer are my priority, so it's hard to fit turkey into the schedule for me.
Speaker 3:I like bear hunting. You know this is a funny thing, though. I guided for bears for several years and I've never shot one Really. I guide for them, I take people out and shoot them. I've caped them. I've done all the work you're supposed to do as a guide. I've never shot one myself.
Speaker 1:I usually have somebody giving me meat and stuff and then you just have an interest, or is it like you're looking for the right one kind of thing?
Speaker 3:the thing with turkey hunting is that you can call and and the bear hunting? You know it, you're not calling. Um, yeah, I will.
Speaker 1:I will say calling. I will say that this year I actually did call in my bear. Oh yeah, with a predator call with a predator.
Speaker 3:Call, yeah, yeah we've done that hunting I mean hunting we were called. You know you'd make sounds and then elk sounds or cow sounds, whatever they are, and you get you call bears in. Um, we actually called the. I actually was attacked by a cougar. Um, this has been probably eight years ago, but that's kind of what happened.
Speaker 3:This um elk was coming down the hill and I'm setting up on the elk and I can't figure out what's going on with the elk because it's acting like it's winding something and I'm upwind. It's not, I'm, you know, there's no way it's me. I'm looking at the elk. I got my arrow on my knock, my brother's beagling behind me and all of a sudden that bull blows out and goes past me, kind of off from my right to left up the hill and that cat ran right up the creek bank and literally hit me with his tail as he went by me and I was like whoa, like that happened. And then it turned around and it was an older cat that had a bunch of porcupine quills in its mouth and stuff. It was an older cat that had a bunch of porcupine quills in its mouth and stuff. Fish and Game guy said that he thought the thing was just looking for an easy meal and probably I was easier, so I ended up killing it at about four yards.
Speaker 1:With a bow.
Speaker 3:With my bow. Yeah, Shot it as it was coming into me. It was literally running at me and I shot him like a carp. You know you ever bow fish, that's exactly how I shot him.
Speaker 3:I just snapshot him and hit him right here and it came out down the pelvis so it went, yeah, vertically through his body, literally died at like three feet from me. Damn, did you get to keep the cat? Uh, yeah, actually we did. We, uh, we tagged it and I took it out, checked it with the fishing game biologist told the story and he's like, yeah, I can kind of see that the cat was nine years old and so it was a quarter. It was a quarter inch off of boone and crockett as far as the skull measurement. Wow, I have the skull right back here. But, um, it was a crazy story. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty wild, is there?
Speaker 1:um, I is there quite a bit of cats where you're at with like with your elk hunting, just kind of they'd cruise around yeah, we.
Speaker 3:We have idaho's full of predators, so you have bears, cats and wolves. So we've had all three, you know, at some time come in. I've had less issues with bears, you know, I've seen them come in Usually, they see you, they're hunted fairly well here in Idaho, so they go away. Cats, especially the younger ones, they're you know they're not as tuned in that you're a hunter. The one that actually attacked me was old, but most of the time it's the younger ones that are the ones that are the problem. And then we've had wolves, uh, sneak in kind of surround because they're chasing the elk, same as we are, and so we've had them come in. We had my wife had a dog come in I mean literally 10 yards behind her and do that like snort thing the dogs do that you kind of thing.
Speaker 3:And you know it, it was a big white kind of kind of a gray wolf and everybody's like why didn't you shoot it? And it's like, by the time you see it and the they are, they are gone. When you, you know, they see, you see them, they, they split. But it's a little unnerving. When you see them, you know you just get flashes of them. But yeah, our bears are a little slower. You see the bear, it's like, oh, there's a bear, and the bear looks at you like, oh, that's, that's a guy. And they walk you. You kind of do your go the other way. Cats are a little more sneaky yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 1:I haven't personally had any issues with cats, but I've had my run-in or two with the grizzly out here in montana, but those ones are a little bit more like oh yeah yeah, I've seen grizzlies, so I hunted the panhandle of idaho and obviously grizzlies up there.
Speaker 3:I've seen them at a distance. I've never had a run-in with one yeah, I was.
Speaker 1:I was fortunate where I came around this bank and I look on this hillside and on this knob there's a sow and cub just hanging out there going into the back basin that I had heard this elk bugle from and I was like you guys can have that one. I'm going to walk that way.
Speaker 3:That's the thing over in Eastern Idaho. Over there, by Wyoming, you know, they say obviously that those grizzlies hear you bugling and they kind of key on what's going on. You shoot your elk, you'd make a pack out and you come back and the grizzlies will get your. They'll pull it down from the trees or they'll do whatever, but they kind of get the idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's going on. I was in. I had that. I had a deer tag down in Island park last year and I was at the trailhead and I saw this group of guys go up, that group of guys actually. They killed a bull and got attacked by a grizzly. They were the ones that got attacked last year in Island Park. I was thinking that's way too close for comfort. It's a thing.
Speaker 3:It's kind of funny I did the police thing. I did that for 30 years, carried the pepper spray when it first came out. In fact there's actually an article in like the 1993 Spokane paper. That was about me pepper spraying a Brahma bull Because two bulls. It was typical county work, right, county deputies, you do whatever. We got called into it where two bulls had gotten out of their pens and they were fighting and the one was going on the other and the ranchers like hey, I want these off my property. And I'm like dude, I'm a cop, I'm a cowboy.
Speaker 3:I sprayed that because I'd heard that you know, pepper spray works for bears. And so I sprayed that bull and I've sprayed no, I haven't sprayed people, but I've seemed to never have done that part. But I've watched guys get sprayed a lot and you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, no, and so I'm a big proponent of carrying my gun. I look at it going, I practice one. I practice with a gun a lot more than I would practice.
Speaker 3:I think most people buy pepper spray or bear spray and they don't ever try to use it.
Speaker 3:I think if you're going to carry it, you should buy two or three of them and you should practice with two or two with. You know, save one for taking them out, but you need to practice with it, because if you're downwind and you spray a bit spray wherever you're spraying, you're going to get sprayed too. And so, um, no matter what happens with anybody deploys pepper spray, everybody in the room gets it. And so, um, understanding that feeling of oh god, that kind of burns that hurts, um, and the fact that a bear may or may not, I mean that Brahma bull it took I was spraying with stream and their eyes are about that big and so I'm spraying that stream into its eyes and it, I mean it took several minutes before it actually started to like go away from me. I mean it kind of got mad and I think you know my gun, I carry a 10 and Springfield, you know I got 16 rounds. That's a lot of discouragement. You don't have to kill the bear, you just give it some discouragement to go away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just here's the loud sound and that hopefully we'll just cruise away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you practice with a gun. People practice. They don't practice with pepper spray, you know I mean cops practice with it all the time and they hate it. But you know it's not the, it's not the the. You know end all, like everybody may think it is because I've actually played at dogs. You know, like I said, brahma, bulls, people, yeah it, it's kind of variable in the way it works.
Speaker 2:I will say bear spray does suck to get in your face yeah really badly I've been downwind of it a couple of times and it's never a good time.
Speaker 3:Cause it will. It chokes you out. Oh yeah, you can't see. You know, it's a, it's a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And also another thing is like when people strap it on like their pack or their chest harness or something. It's like you like my friend did it and he threw his backpack into the truck and pop, oh God. Yeah, you like my friend did it and he threw his backpack into the truck and pop, oh god, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then it's like people that you know comes with the little holster, they strap it on somewhere. They never try to pull it out of the holster so they're gonna have some cord caught on it. Yeah, like it's just, it's not. The pepper spray itself might be an effective deterrent, but all the things pulling the lock off of it, all that stuff to get to the point where you're actually deploying it like people don't think about that yeah, whatever you're using, you got to practice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to practice. Yeah, and I just don't think people necessarily practice with you. Get a gun. First thing you do is buy bullets and go to the range.
Speaker 1:You know people don't do that with pepper spray yeah, speaking of practice, um, one of the really big questions I have for you is when you're practicing calling, what do you kind of recommend, like one newer callers or just in general, like people that want to practice and get more proficient with their calling, because I feel like everyone knows the trick you go around in the car and you start bugling. But I feel like there has to be like a little bit more than just that.
Speaker 3:I think it's listening to elk. I mean, really listen to elk, listen to where that note starts and listen to that. You get a cow sound and just one call and you listen to it over and over and over and get the pace, the speed at which it comes out, the duration, the length at which it comes out and then the volume and how it comes out. I think a lot of people when they're bugling or calling, it's all kind of the same thing over and over and over. Same thing over and over and over, uh, mixing up your calling to be able to function. Really low volume, a high volume and the pace and all the, all the lengths and stuff. It all means something. It's not what you say, it's how do you say it. And you know when I say hey or I say hey, right, it's a. They're different, um, they're different meanings and it's the same thing in elk. You know they bugle or they. So if it comes out loud and short, it's much more aggressive than long and quiet. And you know if I am, you know you're in an area where elk are being pressured by a lot of people and I hunt a lot of public ground in idaho, so they're pressured you. Elk don't necessarily go. Wow, they are a lot quieter. It's think of it.
Speaker 3:If you're in your house, right, and you think there's an intruder in your house and you're trying to find your wife, you know you're like, hey, where are you at?
Speaker 3:You know you're trying to like sneak around the house and using that kind of tone of voice and I think elk kind of do the same thing. If they think there's an intruder in the area, they're going to be a little more quiet, trying to talk to each other back and forth versus when they know. You know now you're down at sixth and main in downtown boise and you see a dude you don't like and you're going to get it on with them. You know it's a whole different volume, it's a whole different pitch, it's a whole everything. So being able to listen to an elk and what they do, but then be able to change that three-dimensionally on how you call because, yeah, so many people are this when you're in the car it's like the same thing up and down, up and down, and nothing wrong with that's where you start. But being able to vary that a lot, you know in what you do, try to speed it up and do whatever.
Speaker 1:But and so you like practice different tonages, different like pitch, volumes and as well as duration.
Speaker 3:You're kind of saying is like so it's like short and fast, sometimes like long quiet okay, if I'm locating, if I'm an elk and I'm locating and I'm trying to just say, hey, where are you? I'm going to drag that out high and long because I'm trying to get that note out to say where are you hey?
Speaker 3:100, so I can't submit. Versus you're across the street from the guy and you're pissed, it's like hey, you're, you're, it's short, it's loud, it's short, it's, it's aggressive, and so, understanding that it's like, again, it's not what you say, it's how you say it, and cow calls are the same way. I mean, you get those cow calls, you'll hear it all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you hear, yeah, you know, so it has a different meaning. So, understanding that you know, being able to change a lot of that up, I think that's something a lot of people don't do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you have like? So obviously you're going to have to be in the field, you're going to have to listen to elk. Do you have like some things that you kind of wish you knew while you were like starting to get into the process, like trying to understand elk or something? Or is it just you got to go and you just got to figure it out?
Speaker 3:or something, or is it just you got to go and you just got to figure it out? The one thing with with today and I mean going someplace where there's elk and listening to him, is one thing. I mean that is 100 the best way to do it, but most people don't have that. Youtube now, though, has a ton of it and no offense to any of the, I mean we. My son has a video thing on youtube about how to call elk, which is great, I mean, and they teach you how, the mechanics of working your mouth. But listening to a caller call is not, in my thing, the best thing. There is a ton of video of people with elk in estes park or wherever they're at, where they're filming elk. Listen to those elk and listen to that.
Speaker 3:And then the cow calling side everybody wants to bugle, but I, like I said, I think you can suck at bugling and still do okay, calling elk in, but if you're going to cow call, if you're going to do that, make sure you're doing that right. And it's not yeah, you know it's not just like up and down. Sometimes you get some sounds that are that, and I can when I'm hunting, you know, I hear a bugle. I'll question it because I've honestly I've said that that's not an elk and I've gone down there and some elk is bugling, but the cow, the cow sounds. I mean, yeah, I can and I'll hear. I hear somebody cow call and I know it's the person are you?
Speaker 1:Are you more of like a diaphragm call for cow calling or are you more of like an external?
Speaker 3:Diaphragm call. Not that I disagree with using the external calls. The external calls are actually easier and if you don't operate a diaphragm call, well, I would use an external call because it it's a lot easier to use and you're going to get the sound. You know that hoochie mama, it killed a lot of elk now. It's repetitive and the same sound over and over and over, but it starts yeah, it's a straight note, it doesn't do a bunch of up and down stuff, it's yeah, you know, and I think that's what you, that you know that's what a cow does. Um, and there's a nasal thing that you can get with externals that sound really good. Um, I, I like, when I'm calling them to be able to hit higher notes. I think it travels better and I can do that better with a diaphragm call. Plus I. I just I have a diaphragm working, so I'm not switching them back and forth with a lot of stuff. I do switch diaphragms a lot, but I don't switch to other things. A lot.
Speaker 1:Do you have a specific diaphragm that's kind of your go-to? This works really well for cows and this works really well for bugling. Or is it just kind of like mixing it up?
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of marketing that goes into this. This is a big bull, this is a little bowl. This is a cow call, this is a. Whatever all diaphragm reads should all make the same sounds. They all are going to be able to bugle. They're going to do them in different ways though, and so and it goes back to the it's not really the size of the elk, it's the emotional tone of the elk, and you know, my wife killed a spike and we heard these two bulls going, and we picked the big sounding elk and we went after it and it was a spike.
Speaker 3:She shoots at seven yards frontal. It dies right there, and we are sitting on it and I start bugling because the other elk is still bugling. So I bugle, and that elk came right into us at 30 yards and it's a huge six point and it sounds like a scrawny thing. Um, but the different reeds if you have a light, like very light latex, light stretch reed, it's going to give you lighter, softer sounds than a heavy re with a heavy stretch, and so having the range in between allows you to change that emotional level, okay, and so I I try to use them all, and I obviously I use Slayer calls because I build them and that's my and that's my, that's my commercial thing.
Speaker 3:The way I build a frame, the way Phelps builds a frame, the way Travis O'Shea with Wapii River builds a frame, or Mile High down there with Eastling, everybody builds them a little differently and if you can get different sounds, it goes back to what I said in the very beginning.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to match those elk in what they're doing and the more variability you have in your toolbox toolbox, the better you can match yeah, I think we had that kind of conversation when I was able to talk to you at tag and you're kind of like going through and you're talking. I was telling you like I've been using the maverick or the pitch black for like the past few years and like it works, and then I started to try yours and it made one. It's like a completely different mechanic. I feel like out of slayer, but once I figured it out it like actually sounds a little better. I have more like sound, like you can kind of work it, but it's complete, it's a different mechanic and I think it's based off of that design change that you guys made. It could be.
Speaker 3:Uh, I just think that, having being able to recreate sounds and and when I'm listening to elk, I listen to what they're doing and I try to match that sound and having the ability in my pocket to do that, versus just the one call when I was brand new, you know, I, you know rocky had a brown reed. I think I can't remember what they named, what they called it. It was the one that was most popular. It's literally the most popular reed ever made. It was a brown palette plate call. I carried that thing with me everywhere that I didn't buy any other reeds. That was it.
Speaker 3:I will say this I think in today's world, because of the way they build frames and I'm not just saying me, if we're all building in the same kind of way, but it's a lot more specific, I mean you can dial to thousandths of an inch, and so the consistency is better, and so with that, I think, being able to pick a range of calls, you have a better chance of making all those work than you did in the day when they were kind of handmade in a way. The art side of that is amazing, those guys that did that kind of stuff, but it's a lot harder to build back the way they did it back then so when you go out, how many calls are you taking with you?
Speaker 2:a dozen, just all different. Are you taking duplic?
Speaker 3:they. Everybody says it looks like I have skittles in my body because they're all different colors and I'm taking out a lot. I take out a bunch of calls and I'm in our this is goes back to the cop in me one is zero, two is one, and so I will carry. You know what we've carried in our lineup, what I've made. We have seven calls. Now we have eight because we have the muscle shell in there, um, but so one is zero. So if I have one of each of those, it means I have none, and so I carry enough to have two of each, one of each. So in case something does go wrong, um, you know I have a backup, but I do, and bill he thinks it's funny because he'll be calling and he'll watch turn around and I'm digging through my pockets and I'm changing colors because the elk is changing, we're now closer or farther away or something's happening, and so I'm changing the reeds so I can get different emotions at them and um, you know, do you have it?
Speaker 1:um, sorry to interrupt, but so on the colors, do you kind of have it like labeled like this color is like a deeper raspier and this one's like a very light one, so you can kind of like immediately go to like that color, that color, that color yeah, the biggest thing with the colors in the tape is that's all just subjective, so you know what the color is and that's just so that we name them.
Speaker 3:The latex knowing what the latex is in the call is the biggest thing. And so latexes will come in variable thicknesses, from 25, 10 thousands to 6 thousands in thickness. But when you dye them you add color to them, so they all come natural, kind of a creamy-looking color. You put a dye in it, turn it black, or you turn it blue or you turn it red. The consistencies of those dyes are different densities, and so you'll thin out latex or you'll thicken it up in density, not thickness, so you'll have they're all measured in thickness, so you can have a four thousandths thick reed but yet when it's in purple it's actually heavier. And so understanding the thickness and the color of your of your latex, that's working. That once you start seeing, looking at calls from a latex point of view, then you can really look at all the different companies and figure out which ones you want. And then there's a stretch to it that changes Obviously. Higher stretch, note, goes up. Lower stretch, it goes down.
Speaker 3:But you know, knowing what's in the each one of those calls is what that's going to be.
Speaker 3:And so, like when I, I'll switch to like that's what we call it the Locksaw, the Locksaw River, there, the headwaters of the Clearwater, that canyon is very steep and confined, and when that water is raging and the Locksaw is large and hard and so I named the 6,000 slatex call we have the Locksaw after that. It's a very hard call to run. It takes a lot of air and a lot of force, but that air and that force increases volume and it increases the, the like aggression of that, because it comes out hard and it comes out very hard. And so a couple years ago with bill, when I was hunting with him, um, we had called these elk all day long and we could not, I mean, and we'd kind of gone from elk to elk to elk and bound it around and we'd go back towards the truck and the same bull that started off in the morning he's still answering. And then we move in closer and nothing, I mean zip, I mean we can't get nothing.
Speaker 3:And I'm trying everything, going through the cow call scenarios, going through little bugles, big, you know whatever, which to put that locksaw, read in and went, yeah, and hit it like that, and that bull bang immediately went and as soon as that bull went, the entire hillside opened up because there was probably 50 cows in there with him and there was a couple other bulls. And as soon as that, that, that change of aggression, that change of, instead of just the same thing over and over, I changed that up and it just it triggered him and that's something that you know, because that read is made for that. That purpose it's not, it's not the every, you know, it's not the everyday call, but it serves a purpose and it once it triggered that elk, then the game was, it was went on. Now everything worked and you know, and that worked out really well. Um, but you know, having those changes that change up, I start very soft making little cow calls, make little things, little squeals and bugles a lot of times because I don't want to make a lot of sound, real loud sound, if there's an elk like 20 yards away from me, and so I make that little sound to see if I can hear something else. And I just kind of slowly graduated up and you know I don't go, you know, full crazy on things at the very end, but I did.
Speaker 3:In that case I just I was actually really frustrated because, like you know, we were getting out to respond. You get them, you start closing that distance and everything would go quiet. And you're trying to figure out, you know what to do, and the guy that was kind of working us on that ground was very much about keeping things quiet, don't. And I, you know, I'm like, okay, I'll follow what you want, and and then at the end, you know, end of the day. So I'm like I'm just going to rip it. And I ripped it and the next 45 minutes was nothing but cow calls and bugles and it was nuts. And when people talk about bugling like too loud or too aggressive, if you've ever listened to an elk, we can't match that. I cannot make sound that literally hits me in the chest, like I can't do it. Um, elk do. And you, I mean you feel it, it's like boom, it's like you hear that. And yeah, I mean elk are loud and they are aggressive. And you know you're trying to act like an elk.
Speaker 1:Don't act like a person, don't act like a caller, act like an elk yeah, um, so when you guys are going through and designing these different calls, like for the different purposes, what's that process? Kind of like, do you like make a bunch of like, okay, I want to have something that's a little bit less aggressive? So you go out and you try the different, like, okay, this stretch, this stretch, or do you have like a specific way of doing it?
Speaker 3:so you know and this is a little backwards a lot of calls, companies, like in my son's case. Um, you know, he has a brain, he has a read that he really likes and we made, we built, he stretched it and he gets that read right where it's the north fork, it's that purple latex. He built a call that works very, very well for him. He wants to read that he can work and do a lot of different things on stage with and that works for him. Other than that one call, every other call we did, I would sit at TAC, like those TAC shows, northwest Mountain Challenge shows, and I would sit there and build calls and I had people come to the booth and they're like, yeah, I've never done this before or maybe I'm. You know I'm.
Speaker 3:How do I try your calls? And I make a call, stick it in their mouth and then you see if when they run it are they is, are they getting too much? Are they pushing too much air or they they not? They don't have enough air to push to where they can't make it run. And I start, start tweaking it and I'll, I'll change, I'll move. Latex is down, I'll move, latex is up, and I try to match that person's ability to call.
Speaker 3:And so then, when I did mine would find the, that certain latex and that certain stretch, I would make an, I would make a mark and I basically built bell bell graphs, uh, with and it was literally thousands of calls I built and I built those bell graphs and I took the top of the bell graph and said this is what most people can work and run.
Speaker 3:And we built a lot of those calls on that bell graph, um, and I tried to do it from a very low, uh stretched, and low, low thickness all the way up to a very high stretch and thickness, um, and it's goofy because some people just naturally run on the top end of things and some people don't, and you can't look at the size of the guy or the girl. I mean it doesn't. I've had gals that I'm trying my, my light stuff and it. They just blow right through it and then you give them a big heavy reading. It's like, well, that works. You know, it's just depending on how that person's biology makeup and how much air they use in their lungs and that work. And so we try to build it through that whole stretch. And so we try to build it through that whole stretch and we try to and we're really building those calls to try to fit more people not necessarily the elk towns, cause I think you can make elk towns with all of them.
Speaker 1:So you, you kind of did like a, like a big crowd research data and then just you built it for people, not for elk, because it's up to the person to kind of like make it work make it work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you, you know tony gilbertson. He's a friend of mine and he has a. You know I'm gonna, we're gonna hunt together this fall, you know, and no, and tony's one of the he's, he won worlds, he's, uh, the reigning world champion bugler. But if you don't bugle like tony, if you bugle more like beau brooks, who also won worlds, or my son, who won worlds, you bugle like them. They don't bugle like tony. If you bugle more like beau brooks, who also won worlds, or my son, who won worlds, you bugle like them. They don't bugle anything the same. They, cody and beau push a ton of air and they are, I mean it is like wow, I mean it's full contact, bugling. We're tone, we're like tony and and cory, much more control, and it just kind of depends on your makeup. They both get to your same point. But it just kind of depends on how they practiced, how they learned and kind of what works for them best. And so we're trying to build calls for the caller which works best for them yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you're, when you're going through this process of like, when creating different calls for all these different people, do you have like you know, do you have like this baseline, one that you put everyone through and then build off of that? I wish I did.
Speaker 3:I wish I could find that because it's so variable. I do know, as a general rule, if I have a, I've had a little girl that came two years ago to one of the shows. Her dad was an outfitter, a couple of booths down. She was bored because she's just, she's like six, right, and she's in a sports show for three days and she doesn't know what to do. So she came down and I started her with a very light read and trying to get her to learn how to control the read first before putting air into it. And after doing that I told her like if you look at the way we market our stuff, it's on a scale it kind of goes up and down, and I told her you just graduate to each read up and by the end of the show she was three reads into our lineup. She came back this year and she can run every call we have and she's like seven, you know.
Speaker 3:But learning control, I think, is a big thing. I think a lot of people, when they're bugling, want to push a lot of air through first, and that can be. You're going to get a sound. But until you know how to control that sound, um, you know you're not going to get the sounds you want. Or if you can start with a really light read, really light stretch and just control your air to the minimal amount of air you can use, with the lowest amount of volume, because to be able to call with no volume is the most control you're going to have in calling. And so being able to do that, start there and then graduate yourself up with more air each time and do it with control, it'd be a little bit like golfing.
Speaker 3:You know. You go out there, like I do, and try to swing as hard as you want. You don't. You're not necessarily gonna. You know, sometimes you get that connection yeah, 90 times, 90, 90% of the time it's going to be slicing off into the highway and so if you can learn that, control first and then working way up, so starting low and working high. But the crazy thing is there's some people that just, they just can't do it. They, they're just naturally pushing out more air and they just eat reeds up. So you have to have that, you have to have that heavier reed. Um, you can, you can usually hear it. You'll, as soon as they put it in their mouth. You'll hear it because you'll, you'll see them just blowing the reed out.
Speaker 1:It's like, oh yeah, you're, you definitely need a heavier latex yeah, um, so my one of the questions I really was hoping so I know a few people that are kind of like this and they for some reason they just cannot use a diaphragm call Is that where that Enchantress that Slayer sells comes in to play?
Speaker 3:Yep, that is, and that's when Bill and I first started this whole adventure. And looking at elk, when I first started, or this whole adventure and looking at elk, you know the push was for the reeds because the reeds, a lot of people use them and it's kind of where you graduate to. But the reality is there's a lot of people that just can't use reeds and I told them, I said, if you want to really make money, let's try to figure out how to make a reed this reed work where you're not putting it in your mouth. There's how to make a read this read work where you're not putting it in your mouth. There's no, nothing you're sticking in your mouth, it's all just blowing out air like you're blowing out a birthday cake. And so that's how that came to be and it's. It's definitely, you know it. I hate.
Speaker 3:In a way we've kind of become a one-trick pony, because that all sells a ton and there's a lot of people that use it and it's a great call.
Speaker 3:I, you know it's one of those things with a new company where we put a lot of money back into that, trying to keep that thing, you know, available. But that is kind of what we're known. We, you know, we've really become known for that enchantress call and all it is. It's just we've made the mouth external. You just add air to it and run the pressure, switch up and down on the reed and it works. The crazy thing is that when we first made it, we made it to bugle and we were looking for the bugle thing and what happened is we realized right away that it calcals so well, I think from a calcaling thing it it is, in my opinion, one of the better calcals on the market and take it off the tube and run that and it's super easy to run and it makes great calcals. It just does, and that was the that was one of those things was like.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a nice benefit, because now we have this, we have one call that cow calls and bugles, which everything most externals on the market are either cow call or bugles and large yeah, I mean, when I was looking at it, that was one thing where, like I know, as a person who just got into hunting, I've had to figure out the diaphragms and I've been still I'm still figuring it out, like I'm not proficient at it at all, but I knew that like I saw the Enchantress and I was like if I had known about that when I first started hunting, I don't know if I would have even dove into the diaphragms, because you get a two for one, you have a really good calico, and then you get that pressure control and I think that, like, pressure control is crazy because you know there's other things on the market.
Speaker 3:You just blow air at bugles but just like to be able to control that pitch is wild yeah, and that's been a really cool thing for I mean, it's been a big thing for us and you know it's so cool to see people. We have a guy that he got kicked and he was an outfitter and he ran diaphragms for years got kicked in the face by a horse and so he broke his jaw, broke his palate, both. I mean basically broke everything, and he couldn't, just can't, hold a reed in his mouth anymore because everything's, you know, false and you know an enchantress gets him back in the game. I also look at it. If you live in a state like nevada where if you draw you can't put in for another seven years. I mean, at some point do you really practice calling elk for seven years, hoping to get another tag then it's so. It's a way that people, when they do draw, can get into the game quickly and and be proficient and be able to kill elk, you know. You know, call elk in now. On the other side of the coin, I will say this that the enchantress to me is a starter thing.
Speaker 3:The body of work that you can do with a diaphragm, once you become proficient with a diaphragm, is huge. I mean, bo brooks calls in snow geese with it and you know calls in woodpeckers and everything else. You know diaphragm can be used to call so much stuff that being proficient with the diaphragm is a good thing. It's just you're not hunting every year, you're only hunting every four or five years. It might not just warrant putting the time in. I've been calling out with a diaphragm for over 40 years and so you know, and it's a process, it's not. You know, I still work on my craft, so to speak, trying to get better. I think it's not a destination, it is a process of learning that a diaphragm is. So you don't just put it in your mouth and say, okay, I'm good to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. Did you guys have like a hallelujah moment kind of like when you're getting through this, where you're like, oh wait, this could be a really good cow call too, or was there like just kind of gradual buildup?
Speaker 3:no, when we so. Matt is the, the engineer that was the one doing the actual computer drawings and and building all this stuff. And we worked for a period of time, me showing him how to work a diaphragm and making that all work, and then him trying to conceptualize that and put it together and going back and forth, and he comes out with this product and goes, hey, I think this thing works. And then it's like Holy crud. I mean, it was right away, it's, we can calc all with this. We can do anything we can with a diaphragm, except for it doesn't grunt real well, but it it.
Speaker 3:It ran in and I told Bill, I said we just may have invented the next hoochie mama. Um, you know, because it it's a pretty easy to operate thing and it, unlike the hoochie mama which is a little more rhythmic like bang, bang, bang, you know, because you can vary the pitch and the tone and the length and all that stuff with the call with you, with your error, um, it's a lot more variable and so, um, I think it has a lot more upside that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's yeah, that was. That was one thing I was like that. I mean, I, for years, was like that would be the perfect thing. If you have a call, you could just go, like you have your bugle and then you pop it off and then you have your cow call right there and it would work great. And like after seeing the entranterist, I was like that's exactly, that was what.
Speaker 3:That's exactly it the other thing that we've seen is um, you get a hunting party. There's three, four people in the. In the party you have one guy that's really good at calling and so he ends up being the caller and he never ends up being the shooter. And what's going on with this is with that enchantress. That guy can give the enchantress to a guy that's not as good and he can still call an elk and allows everybody in the party to be able to to hunt. And we've had a lot of people have come forward and said, yeah, I'm the caller and I'm never, I'm never able to get the elk with this thing. You know he can call now and, um, you know, so now I'm able to actually jump in there and try to shoot too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um is there like favorite, um, the reeds.
Speaker 3:Obviously the reeds are what I use the most. I mean I and that's with, uh, turkeys and uh, the elk thing, the reeds, I, it's what I use, but the tube is something that the acrylic thing is something that I think was we built and it's it, uh, I think it's got a lot of upside and I would. I will say this we're working on other things with it and I think might improve it and do some things differently, and so I'll say this too the thing with acrylic is that other materials, metals, other materials they all change sound, and everything has a positive, everything has a negative. Acrylic is one of those things that doesn't alter the sound. It amplifies it, but it doesn't alter it. So whatever you're putting into it, won't? It won't resonate differently, and so I think acrylic is a big for us. It's a big thing. That's why you use it for all the duck and goose calls. As far as temperature and all the other things.
Speaker 3:It is very consistent, it's wet, it's not going to absorb and become dense, it's going to maintain what it does, and we're definitely working the acrylic side of things, and that's because Slayer started off as a duck call company and so Bill's tool to deal with acrylic. That's just what he works in. So you know, down the road we're working on things, definitely would like to push some of those things through. We have a lot of ideas with calls and things and you know, of course you're never satisfied, right? No, you sit there and say it can't be. What's the thing? I like, everything I like. I want to improve everything.
Speaker 2:For sure, as soon as I improve it, I'm going to try to improve it again and then I we kind of talked about like bugle tubes a little bit, but it seems like the last like three to four years, bugle tubes have been the thing that everybody is like I'm gonna reinvent it, whether it be metal tubes or wooden tubes, or like do you think that it's gonna keep going that way where, like, people just keep coming up with new material?
Speaker 3:I think it, I think it will. I think at some point, I mean, there's an end game, rightgame, right. It's the price point when you're getting into a bugle tube that is costing a lot of money. I was a cop, I didn't make a lot of cash and so to drop a couple hundred dollars on a bugle tube, I don't know if it was necessarily worth it. And I'll cut my own throat as a manufacturer.
Speaker 3:Last last year my wife self I talked about that we killed the one that looked like the pterodactyl. Yeah, I uh was out with my brother and my wife and we were going out and we, um, I was in the back of the truck and we were about halfway out to where we were going to go and I said, hey, um, can I borrow your tube? Because I forgot mine back at home and he's like tube. You're the guy that's supposed to bring the tube, because you're the Slayer guy and you're supposed to bring that. So I didn't bring mine. So we used Lipton iced tea bottles and cut them out and beagled that elk thing with those Lipton iced tea bottles and those cost 99 cents. After I drank the tea out of them, so I'm not going to say it sounded the best. Those cost 99 cents after I drank the tea out of them. Yeah, so I'm not going to say it sounded the best, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:But again, you know at some point. Yeah, you know you're paying for aesthetics of a certain way.
Speaker 3:And I say at some point where everybody's trying to be the best they can, and so you're trying to do the best, you can try to develop all that. But if you're, you know when you start price pointing, the average hunter out of things that's uh yeah and I really don't like that. I think we need to stay within the average hunter's price book price point.
Speaker 2:It can't just be a sport for the rich yeah, yeah, I mean, I think my first bugle tube was one of those ones that had the little blue bands remember those yeah I think if I probably dug through my garage hard enough, I could still find it in there somewhere and that call came out of.
Speaker 3:Abin son's calls was they were out of oregon and they developed a little bucket that you'd stretch the latex over and stick it on there. And then primos tried to make it better by making that blue band which was pre-stretched and did all that. But yeah, that call I, I used the naven sons, I used the power bugle, I used again, going back to that, trying to find the right sound I used whatever I could find to make the sounds I wanted. And so I think that's big, you know the, you know different materials, you know I am kind of big. It's like the metal tube. Yeah, they won the action. So that idea came out and I'll say I was there when the metal idea came out.
Speaker 3:But Abram Summerfield is a kid, that that works kid, he's my son's age, he's 30. Um, he was working at night force and he took that idea from rocky and kind of developed it up at u of I and then ultimately sold it to with dirk uh, they're over there at phelps, did that. Um, you know those kind of things. That tube can. That metal sound goes a long, long ways. But you know, it's just like the wood sound. The wood sound has a great bass.
Speaker 3:Everything has a, everything has its place, um, you know, and. But everything also has drawbacks. You know, wooden tube doesn't have the volume to reach a long, long, long ways, and a metal tube is getting close, is going to sound a little like metal, and so there's a place for everything. And I think that's where the experimentation with different things and trying to make things better. I think, from a personal standpoint, I think the market right now is trying to shrink things back like they were when I was younger. We've gone the big baseball bat things. They're big and cumbersome, I think trying to go to a smaller size. I think that's definitely something that the market's moving towards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will say from my experience I like, as a novice caller, like I think that's even being generous on my abilities but when I like tested out, I test out the metal ones. I've never used the wood and I've tested out now the acrylic and the plastic. I did find that the different tonages I did prefer the acrylic more because it was a little more unaltered yeah, and I feel like it was pretty valuable though to test out all the different materials and just kind of see, oh, it actually does make a difference yeah, it goes back to that thing I said you know why do you choose Slayer over somebody else?
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't know if you do, you try to pick and choose what you like the best out of things, and so you do that. The acrylic, definitely in my mind, is like what you're saying. The acrylic does not alter sound, it amplifies it, which is a good thing. It's also. The other thing we're able to do in that tube is we're able to shrink the actual hole size that you're blowing into to be small. It goes from a big opening to a small opening size that you're blowing into to be small. It goes from a big opening to a small opening.
Speaker 3:You can't do that in an injected, molded anything because it's all the same external diameters. If you start shrinking it down to that half inch, the handle becomes brittle and can break um, and so it's a harder thing to do so with acrylic. We start with a inch and a quarter stock piece of acrylic. We can bore the half inch hole and then funnel it into where you can compress that air. I think that makes a big difference that way too. But the best thing is just the fact that it it's going to amplify that sound when it goes into the tube yeah, 100, and it doesn't hurt that it looks very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no it does.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what my that's how I met bill was. Cody saw the shiny things on the desk. They're pretty and he sucked right in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how I approached you guys over in tack. I saw this to handle like this right here and I'm like that looks super cool, I'm going there the cool thing with that handle, though.
Speaker 3:So, again, that's a limited run. Uh, we initially had a bunch of those. That's kind of what we were using, but we're not able to find that acrylic anymore with the mesh in it, yeah, and so that is going to be a thing that's in a couple of years. Nobody's going to be able to find that, and you're going to have a limited copy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the mesh, like the look, the like snake skin kind of look. I think it's so cool yeah.
Speaker 3:I have that yellow one too. That yellow one is the one I like most.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we both bought one at TAC.
Speaker 3:So I like it and everybody's like, well, it's yellow, it's going to like scare the elk away. I'm like, well, actually there's some yellow grass, but if he sees this yellow tube it's too late. Yeah, he's way too close before he sees my tube and has to run away.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I um, I mean to be honest with you. I bought it for the looks. I had no idea the actual like tonage differences that I would actually find, but after testing I was like, oh, this actually sounds better and it looks cool.
Speaker 3:So it was like a perfect little like impulse buy that worked out very well I appreciate that because we definitely are proud of it and it is kind of it was our first thing we threw out there on the market as a slayer. Alcohol was that too, and it does. It looks good, but there is a purpose for it, yeah, yeah they're durable.
Speaker 1:Oh sweet, huge fan. Um, do you? So? If you're, if you have someone that wants to buy, like their first bugle tube, would you recommend the acrylic or would you like tell them to go with? Uh, if like say they know how to use a diaphragm, like like the acrylic or the plastic? Like to get that difference of opinions.
Speaker 3:Well, I would. If I, if somebody is looking to hunt elk this year and they've never used a diaphragm, call, I'm going to tell them to use the, use the Enchantress and then ultimately they're going to be able to call. I'm going to tell them, try to find a read that that that fits them as far as the way they can get sound out of it. And then I have a practice in that plastic tube because it's, I mean, it's going to work. I mean we had plastic tubes forever and so use that, get proficient with it. Once you find your proficiency going up, where the reeds become the thing you're using, then you can, you know, then move into an acrylic tube or some of the you know we.
Speaker 3:Hopefully by that time we'll have some something else on the market too, um, because we, we are working, we are trying to develop other stuff, um, and the acrylic thing is definitely our thing. So, um, yeah, moving into something like that which, um, you know, but definitely use the, use the enchantress, get out hunting, make some good calls, do that, practice, practice. You know, a year might not get you the, the abilities you need, because this is a lot, it's, if you're going to hunt elk, it's kind of a lifetime process. Yeah, you know, just treat it, treat it with a long game and just keep working it and you'll get it. I mean just, it just comes over time yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we're going to wrap it up on that. We I truly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on anytime.
Speaker 3:I mean, let me, you know, let me, if you ever whatever just, like ever whatever just like keep in touch, absolutely, yeah, eat anything on the outcall things or any kind of whatever. Just let me know.
Speaker 1:Definitely. And where's the next like are you guys going to be doing more expos around?
Speaker 3:My next expo is the game.
Speaker 1:It's the Super.
Speaker 3:Bowl. Yeah, I'm leaving on the 22nd and I'm going to have my. I'll be out hunting. I'm hunting my wife first, then I'm hunting with Tony Gilberson, after that my brother and Mel Stoudemire. Mel played in the major leagues. He's a guide there on the Clearwater now I'm going to try to get them elk and then I'm going to try to hunt my tag a little later in the season. But yeah, from about the 22nd to the 30th I'll be moving and I will look much different.
Speaker 2:I'll look skinnier and more scrawny and more hairy, and all that stuff by September 30th. Well, I have one last question for you. Yes, when you and your son are hunting, who's calling?
Speaker 3:If he's shooting, then I'm calling, and vice versa. So I mean we definitely mix it back and forth, Although I will say there are times we will call at the same time too. We do a lot of back and forth calling back and forth. Cody is very good at calling. He's very good. It's nice having him available and so to be able to call if you have two good callers. This is a technique that works. Is you don't have some elk just, for whatever reason, aren't responding, and what two callers call back and forth like they're calling to elk. That turns elk on a lot. When there's lulls, that kind of stuff works and you have somebody like cody on their side, that helps a ton. But yeah, I called his elk in last year, so nice right on for sure, perfect, cool, sweet, all right, thank you so much again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's good talking with you guys. Yeah, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 2:I hope to see you around soon yep, nope, we'll keep in touch, definitely.
Speaker 3:Yep, happy hunting. Yep, bye, bye. Let's see how do we?
Speaker 2:thank you guys for listening to the hunt swiftly podcast. Uh, this time with joe mccarthy of slayer calls. Hope you guys learned something. Hope you guys uh got a new insight into elk calls, diaphragm calls and elk hunting in general. If you liked this episode, make sure you uh give it five stars. On. On spotify, apple music or amazon, hit the like. If you're listening on youtube, uh hit the subscribe button, the follow button, wherever you guys are listening from, and uh, yeah, hope you guys enjoyed this is a good one.
Speaker 1:Uh, joe's such a cool dude yeah, remember, if you guys are in the market for any kind of calls turkey, duck elk, go check out slayer calls me and swifty are definitely going to be using them this season yeah, absolutely look at this cool bugle tube. How do you not like this bugle tube? And for all the people on spotify, go look up the arch angle, angel bugle tube. You won't be disappointed. Get the mesh before they're out. You can be a cool kid like us.
Speaker 2:If you don't know how to call, really well, check out the enchantress yeah, so massive, massive thank you to joe, thank you to uh, to slayer and uh. Yeah, hope you guys, uh, hope you guys enjoy the podcast.