Why Are There More Than 250 Patents for Turkey Calls?

​There are a lot of turkey calls out there. Think little whistles or handheld noisemakers that mimic turkey sounds to lure birds for hunters. There's a lot of them. I'm talking hundreds.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office's online database lists over ​100, while a private database s​​​earch pulls up more than 250 matches. And at their annual convention each year, the National Wild T​urkey Federation gets more than 800 entries in their turkey call-making competition, most of which are hand-made.

"The winners even outdo themselves year to year," Karen Cavender, Special Events Coordinator for the NWTF told me over the phone. "It's a lot of calls."

The competition has four divisions—decorative turkey calls, hunting turkey calls, decorative duck and goose calls, and hunting duck and goose calls—and then those are broken down into specific categories. For the decorative turkey calls, which are functional but are mostly judged on their looks, there are 29 different categories alone.

One reason for the glut of turkey warblers is that different styles of calls produce different sounds. There are mouth calls, which are little discs you stick on the roof of your mouth and vibrate using your breath, kind of like a clarinet reed. There are box calls, which are wooden boxes with a lid that you drag across the top to make a goose-like squawk. Striker calls are used by dragging a wooden peg across a metal or glass surface that has its own amplifying dome attached, making little clucks, chirps, and yelps like this (skip to 4:50 for the clucking sound):

And that's just a handful of the different styles out there.

"Each different call sounds different. It's like comparing apples and oranges," Cavender said. "And each call works differently. A striker certainly works very differently than a box call."

So why are there so many different types of calls, with hundreds of new designs being patented and entered in competitions each year? Cavender says it's simple: it's because wild turkeys have a wide vocabulary. They can produc​e 30 different types of calls, and each call can be replicated in various frequencies. Combine that with the desire to make calls easier to use, more portable and have their sound travel further, and the possibilities for innovation are pretty much endless.

And despite an abundance of turkey ca​ll apps available for download, there's still a big market for the old-fashioned wares, with handmade calls selling for upwards of $7​0 apiece.

So if you're inventor looking for a new market, turns out turkey calls can be a pretty good racket. Who knew.