Knowing the turkey’s vocabulary is essential for those who plan to call a gobbler to the dinner table.

Jason Rushing has mastered that vocabulary. And, he’s done it with a turkey call that he designed and makes on a jig that he keeps tightly under wraps.

“I’ve been turkey hunting for a long time and I’ve tried a lot of turkey calls but I had to make one myself to get what I want in a call,” he said.

Rushing prefers a mouth call to a box call because it frees up his hands.

“With a box call, when the turkey gets close, he can see the movement of your hands,” Rushing said. “And you’ve got to let go of the call to shoot. With a mouth call, you can sit as still as a mouse while calling the gobbler to you.”

Rushing has found that most of the mouth calls on the market take a lot of air to blow.

“You don’t want to have to blow yourself to death,” he said, laughing. “A mouth call is like a musical instrument. You have to be able to tune it to get the sound you want. My calls are made from latex and I use a split V cut to get the sounds I want. And they are easy to blow.”

With his mouth call, Rushing said a hunter can speak every “word” in the turkey’s vocabulary – the cluck, purr, putt, tree call, yelp, cut, assembly call, fly down cackle, Kee Kee run, gobbling and the cluck and purr.

“Turkeys are smart birds,” Rushing said. “You have to outsmart them. You won’t fool them put once. One day, a gobbler will be as dumb as a brick and, the next day, he’ll be on to your call like a Harvard graduate. That’s why you’ve got to have a good turkey call and know how to use it.”

Rushing has designed three calls, the raspy hen, a three-reed, split V call; the hen in heat, a three reed trimmed split V; and the pro-youth, a three reed split V.

“With any call, you’ve got to be in rhythm,” he said. “You’ve got to know the cadence of the call. You can’t be out of time. Calling turkeys is an art.”

A turkey hunter is reversing Mother Nature. A gobbler calls the hens to him. A hunter calls gobbler to the “hen.”

“You’ve got to be a good woodsman to let the gobbler know there’s a fine hen waiting for him,” Rushing said, with a smile. “When you do that, you’ve really done something.”

Rushing has made and sold a thousand of his “Break the Silence” game calls. They are available locally at Troy Sports, Cabin by the Lake and Banks Buy Rite.

He won’t guarantee a harvest every time the silence is broken but he stands by his calls as the best he’s ever seen at making music that even a turkey can’t resist.