February 6, 2001 — Seven-year-old Joshua Turner likes to ride his dirt bike.
He likes to play Nintendo, too. And basketball and soccer and baseball.
Little Joshua sounds like a typical second-grader — until he opens up his briefcase. That’s when he starts to sound like a turkey.
Joshua is a second-grader at Lanier Elementary in Gainesville. He is also a state champion. He earned that title last month at the Georgia State Turkey Calling Contest in Helen.
Joshua beat out callers twice his age. But, in many ways, he is still just a 7-year-old.
“It’s really like a little toy to me,” Joshua said, holding his “friction” call tightly in his hand.
They are actually quite unassuming, these friction calls. To the untrained eye they might be mistaken for a coaster, an ashtray perhaps. But in the hands of a state champion — no matter how young — they sound quite special.
“Basically, what this is is a musical instrument,” said Joshua’s grandfather Jerry Roberts, 45, of Oakwood, pointing to the three calls in Joshua’s black case.
Roberts should know. He built them.
For the past four years, Jerry and his brothers Tommy and Kenneth, have crafted Roberts Brothers Turkey Calls out of their Roberts Brothers Custom Cabinets workshop in Oakwood.
It was an act of frustration at first. The Roberts, all avid turkey hunters, were frustrated when their store-bought calls continuously fell apart — even more frustrated after the manufacturer, at a turkey show, claimed the only way to fix the calls was to buy a new one.
“We left the show at 4 o’clock,” Jerry said. “And by 11 o’clock we had made two calls and we was calling on them. Now they weren’t the best sounding calls in the world, I assure you of that. But I’ve been making calls ever since.”
And selling them, too. Roberts Brothers calls are a respected high-end product, and growing in popularity nationwide.
Perhaps the biggest benefactor of this business has been Joshua, who has had his pick of top-of-the-line merchandise from day one.
“They started making ’em and I started learning how to call,” Joshua said. “He (Jerry) teached me for a while. Then my dad, he started teaching. Then I said, ‘OK, this is easy now.'”
But not easy for everyone. Joshua learned that when he tried to teach me three calls — cluck, purr and yelp — last week at The Times.
As an instructor, Joshua was more of a doer than a sayer. He led by example, and didn’t yell when I failed to follow. He’s seen the friction call frustrate its fair share of adults.
Friction calls are circular, with faces of glass or slate. Sounds are produced by rubbing a pencil-shaped instrument of wood, plastic, metal or glass — called a “striker” — against the face.
Move the striker in a different direction, or with a different intensity, and the call makes a different sound.
“Turkeys are a lot like humans,” Jerry said. “All turkeys got different sounds. Like I sound really Southern and somebody else might sound like a Northerner. They’re that way, too.”
I’m not sure what dialect I used last week, but the turkeys I imitated were most definitely in some sort of terrible pain. I grimaced with each stroke of my striker.
“There might be a turkey out there that sounds like that,” Jerry laughed. “I have heard some awful sounds from real turkeys.”
And real turkeys, I have been told, are often more forgiving that contest judges. But Joshua isn’t fazed by judges, or crowds. Last year, as a 6-year-old, he became the youngest caller ever to compete at the World Champion Turkey Calling Contest in Birmingham, Ala.
“I think he has moments of getting nervous,” said Joshua’s father Jeff Turner, 26, of Gainesville. “But the majority of the time, he’s pretty cool. Especially when he gets on stage.”
This spring, Joshua is anxious to put his skills to the test on a different stage. The forest. The date March 24 — the start of turkey season — is circled on his mental calendar.
And he’ll also continue to compete at turkey shows, where he has become a celebrity of sorts across the Southeast. The big names in the sport of turkey calling — Preston Pittman, Joe Drake, Eddie Salter, and the like — visit the Roberts Brothers booth … and ask for Joshua.
“In the turkey world, all the big guys know this little guy,” Jerry said.
And Joshua is still just a little guy. While I spoke with Jerry and Jeff last week, Joshua became bored and restless. He jumped around a bit at first, and then walked off and searched through some cabinets.
It was time for this celebrity to take his toys and go home. He made that clear.
And so Joshua gathered his strikers and calls and placed them carefully back inside his briefcase. He snapped it shut and headed for the door.
He had homework to do.