Cluck And Yelp

The cluck and yelp are the basics of turkey talk and the building blocks of good calling technique. If you think about it, such advanced calls as cackling and cutting are mere variants of the cluck and yelp. The cackle is a rapid series of yelps and cutting is mostly a staccato series of clucks.

The yelp is a two-note call that starts high and ends low. The two notes run together, sounding something like "KeeOak." Both gobblers and hens yelp. The gobbler yelp is deeper, coarser and less rhythmic and usually given in a shorter series. It sounds something like "Yawwk." Many compare it to a small dog's bark in the distance.

The cluck is a single clean note that sounds something like "Pock." It may be one of the most useful of turkey calls. The cluck is very effective late in the season when the gobblers have been yelped, cackled and cutt at for weeks and are pretty tired of, or actually call-shy of, the whole thing.