The Original Gator Gobbling Stribling
Most on here know that I love to tell stories, especially stories with a little history in them. The following one will show how one style call that I make got its name. Like all of my stories, it is a true story. As soon as I run out of real ones, I guess I’ll have to start making them up. But that is not I, and it may be someplace in the future.
I hunt with Wade S. Wineman Jr. at his private land in Tunica, Ms. I hunt other places, but spring in and spring out for the last 25 years, you will find me hunting with my friend East of the Slash as he has written about so vividly.
For the last 3 years, Mississippi River clubs have had extreme high water conditions. This is good and bad for turkey hunters. The good feature is that high water tends to concentrate the turkeys on the higher ridges. The bad is that the rise destroys most of the hatch for that year. After a couple of years of no birds hatching out, all you have is birds that are carried over from the previous years. Most of the birds that you hunt will be 3 year or older birds. I call these veterans Mississippi River Monarch’s. (I put a story with that name on a Ms forum.) Such was the case in the spring of 2009 and this year 2010.
Back to the story at hand. At the first of the 2009 season I had started the season off with a bang and killed a bird, a nice three year old bird, near the Boy Scout field in Bailey’s woods in Tunica. He came in silent and jumped up on a log about 20 yards from me. That morning I heard a good bird sounding off a couple of times across what we call Old River to my West. It was in a section of woods named Earnhartsville. That section of woods was named for two Earnhart brothers that hunted there in the 50’s because they were afraid of getting lost. In this section of woods you are bounded by 4 natural barriers, so you cannot get lost. The next morning I went in with my son Kirk. Upon walking into that section of woods, there was a huge wad of gobblers sounding off over Earnhartsville slough to our south. I sent Kirk to them and headed North up Earnhartsville until I picked up the gobbler sounding off over Old River where I had heard him the day before. He gobbled good on the roost, and I did not call to him until flydown time. He answered a light flydown cackle I made, so I did not call much more until I heard all of his hens. They had all pitched towards me with the gobbler close behind. They pulled up about 60 yards behind some tops. I started getting aggressive with cutts and excited yelps and he would close to about 50 yards and then would go back on his strut line toward the hens about 70 yards away. He followed the same pattern for more than an hour. I then tried doing the same and mixing in gobbler yelping. This would bring him back on the same line to about 50 yards where I could see the top of his fan and then back he would go. This continued a while and said to myself, you could kill this gobbler, easy, by crawling over to a big tree 15 yards closer to the top. When he came back, he would be in range. I said NO you are here this fine morning to work turkeys. And so I went back to the task at hand for another hour with the same results. And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I had a put in a second box in the bottom of my vest that I wanted to field test. It was a mistake box. I had cut the mahogany blank too low and had to cut the cavity deeper. In so doing the bottom had become thinner, I compensated with a little thinner sides and a 1/16 of an inch thinner paddle than my East of the Slash cutting box. The result was a box that was not quite as loud on yelps and cutts as my cutting box, but boy did it have a mature gobble. Reaching into my bag, I pulled it out and decided on a new sequence. I popped a true double mouth call in my mouth, and then started yelping on it, answering my own yelps with raspy yelps on my old box, followed by gobbler yelps on it, and then picking up the new box and gobbled like a mature bird twice. After two series of this, that bird left his hens and came marching up to 15 steps. He was one of those left over Monarchs, 11 inch beard, with 1 3/8 inch curved needle sharp hanging spurs. NOW FOR THE REST OF THE STORY as Paul Harvey used to say.
I had just joined a forum site in Ms. My son had gotten me looking at duck posts etc. on it and he had met a member on there named Justin Harrison. Justin was a young fellow, about Kirk’s age, and they had become friends and talked ducks and turkey hunting in their spare time at the University Medical Center in Jackson. Kirk mentioned to him I made turkey calls. Justin said he would bring his and they could run them when they got a break. Kirk took the two calls that I had made for him. One was and an East of the Slash Stribling style and the other was a reproduction from an original Turpin that I had made just for him. Probablly two of the best sounding boxes that I have ever made. The next day Justin began to run Kirk’s two boxes and told him he wanted one no matter what it cost. The next week I sent Justin some e-mails and we decided on a trade. One of my boxes for one of his pot calls and one of his duck calls. Time passed, I finished my part of the trade with a very good cutting call. Before heading to Jackson, I decided that since Justin was veteran turkey hunter that he should have a good gobbling box also. I feel naked in the woods if I do not carry both types of calls. So when I dropped off the call, I dropped off the mistake call also. I put a note with the call that he needed it too, and that I had killed a nice 4 year old with it. The call had a notch in the side of the call as I usually did this when I killed a long beard with one of my calls.
Upon receiving the calls Justin posted a long story with pictures on the Ms forum, and I started getting orders for my calls. The activity was unreal. Needless to say, I thanked Justin for all the activity. There was one MAJOR problem. In my haste to get him his calls, I had forgotten to make patterns for all future calls. It was at this point that I e-mailed Justin and asked him if he would stencil the patterns for me. He did and so I now make the two types of Stribling reproductions. OH, and the sign on handle that Justin uses on the Ms forum - GATOR . So I asked Justin if he would not mind me naming the new model Stribling after him. He said he would be honored and thus the name and new style gobbling call was hatched. The Gator Gobbling Stribling. Thanks Justin.
