I'm a new member and this will be my first post, so bear with me. I just wanted to tell a few things about some of the callmakers from Eminence. I grew up in Eminence and went to a one room school my first five grades. Swiney Rayfield was my teacher three of those and Jim Chilton one year.
I went to work on a carpenter crew in 1974 for the National Park Service with Cecil Fry and Walt Winterbottom.
Me and Cecil fished together and hunted elk in Colorado that fall. I helped him build a wooden john boat or two. I watched him build turkey calls but didn't really help.
The first turkey that I called up and killed I was hunting with Walt. Cecil was there too but went by himself. I was pretty proud of myself. Walt was all smiles too. He wanted to make me a call and like a dumb kid, I said, " I don't need one Walt, this old lynch does a pretty good job." We were hunting over on little Blair creek at Walts cabin.
Cecil used that old original fencepost call, I called with it several times myself. It was almost 16" long, I used to say that we could use it to lay out with if we forgot our tapes. Walt would bring callers to work with him and tune them at lunch hour. He made a lot better lookin call than Cecil.
I missed a golden oppurtunity to learn from those guys. I worked and hunted and fished with Cecil for several years, Walt was older and only worked a year or two and retired. I would like to say they were great men to know and I learned a lot about carpenter work from them.
Doug
