When I first started hunting turkeys here in South Carolina’s Lowcountry I didn’t have a clue. I was armed with a 12 gauge, a borrowed Lynch’s box call and the curiosity sparked by turkey tales told by an elderly gentleman from Williamsburg County.

With no mentor or social media to shorten my learning curve, I hit the woods green and learned like Colonel Tom Kelly says, by ‘messing up in front of turkeys’.  

Swamps and cutovers and fields and pine woods were the classrooms and the longbeards encountered there provided the education. And while at times the lessons have been painful, I’ve never had more fun learning.

There’s always been something magical about the time I’ve been able to spend in the woods with turkeys. The memories of those days have managed to sidestep much of the eroding effects of time and appear to me as vivid as the day they happened.

Like when it all began, on my first turkey hunt. I know it’s cliché, but I do remember like it was yesterday….

The chilled air… The sunlight slanting through the pines… The gobble that smacked my brain awake to all I’d been missing up until that moment…. The expression on the tom’s face when he stepped into an opening and saw me instead of the hen he thought he’d heard… My own surprise when the bird appeared a second after I put the gun in my lap and picked up the box call…  The gobbler’s explosive take off and swift flight to safety beyond the tall pines at the field’s back edge… The longbeard I did manage to harvest later that morning after resisting the temptation to call ‘one more time’ after he’d answered close by… The beard I shot in half because I didn’t know where to aim… The veteran turkey hunter at the clubhouse that morning who directed me to the spot where, unbeknownst to me, he’d roosted a bird the night before…

Yes, I was blessed to encounter those gobblers on that beautiful morning. Especially considering all I didn’t kmow at the time. And it forever changed for me the meaning of Spring.

Before the next season rolled around an important thing happened as it relates to this story. I discovered the diaphragm call. It wasn’t long before it became my favorite way to talk turkey. The search for some to enable me to effectively produce the hen sounds I was hearing in the woods eventually led me to start making my own.

I worked at it until I’d built a handful I was confident to use in front of turkeys and then made some for hunting buddies as well. Their enthusiastic reviews led to the creation of Strut Buster in 2011.

For over a decade now Strut Buster calls have been used to lure in longbeards throughout the Lowcountry and beyond. And that’s the mission; to provide the die hard turkey hunter with reliable, high performing mouth calls to help him or her fool turkeys.

To this end, every call is handmade and cut one at a time with reeds stretched on a competition call press to a specified tension for each diaphragm style. The result is an authentic sounding, versatile line of mouth calls designed to equip the passionate turkey hunter for any calling scenario.

From the beginning I’ve desired to make Strut Buster calls available primarily through independently owned ‘Mom and Pop’ stores, directly to the customer and online. Because I believe, where we can, it’s a good thing to support the small local business owner.

I’ve been hit with the familiar phrase, ‘go big or go home’ a time or two. But what’s wrong with home?

Strut Buster calls aren’t made for the masses; they’re made for my turkey loving neighbors, here in the Lowcountry and wherever else they may call home. And to hear the stories of how Strut Buster helped them find success in the turkey woods, has been one of my greatest rewards. I’m grateful to share in those memories.

I look forward to the ones still to come.

Thanks for visiting and good luck this spring as ‘We Talk Turkey’.

Geoff Burden