Don Napp is a turkey hunter. This news evokes either loathing or empathy in those who know what it means to be labeled a turkey hunter. Those non-participants who have perennially observed our ways and are unable to understand us most often loathe our habits. To others of us who understand and are so afflicted, the word is empathy. For those readers who don’t know the difference between a turkey hunter and a door knob because they have never cared, please read on so I can properly introduce Mr. Napp.

Turkey hunters are fanatic about their endeavor; maybe not about other areas of their lives, but about turkey hunting. There are no half way turkey hunters. You go every waking minute you can and you keep getting beaten by the quarry and you like it equally when he wins or when you win. Turkey hunters are sensitive, right brained persons who will hunt spring gobblers often when other important life responsibilities go undone. They are likely to be involved in the arts.

Don Napp, who lives between Quitman and Stonewall, displays this propensity by making turkey callers, a widely practiced, respected art form among wild turkey enthusiasts. The above mentioned passion is what moves him to spend hours meticulously fashioning his wooden works of art for fellow hunters who appreciate fine callers. Like the others of us who are slaves to the turkeys’ wild spring calling, Don gets fidgety, a symptom of intense anticipation, prior to the opening of spring gobbler season.



Turkey fever therapy



“When deer season closes, I get hyped up and go to making turkey callers,” he said. “I make some and try them outside and some in the house until my wife, Bernice, fusses at me. It’s just a hobby. I don’t want to turn it into a job.” Napp makes about 25 or 30 callers between the end of deer season and the beginning of spring turkey season.

Some five years ago he was in a Meridian store and noticed a small box caller that he “couldn’t live without.” At home he tore off the tight plastic covering and when he tried it he said, “It sounded more like a buzzard than a turkey!” He told his wife, “I believe I can make one of those things.” His first one was made of poplar and walnut. “I like poplar because it is more forgiving when you call with it. Some other woods squeak if you make a mistake,” he said.

Soon he was selling his excess callers, sometime at a table set up at a coffee shop in Quitman and to hunters who called him because of his call making reputation. His callers are priced ridiculously low currently. Of interest to him are the different sounds, especially pitch, that please different hunters. “I had one caller made out of sassafras which gave it a very low pitch,” he said. “It was so course it didn’t sound good at all to me,” he noted. But a fellow bought it .Some are looking for a course sound and some a high pitch. If you have faith in a caller you will usually be successful with it,” he added.



Early lessons



Napp started hunting when he was 14 with his uncle Tollie V. Carlisle, his first hunt taking place on Billygoat Mountain east of Quitman. There were very few turkeys and the two would sometimes hunt all day long. He soon began using a Lynch Foolproof box call made by M. L. Lynch in Birmingham. “I killed a few birds with it and then went off to college. I put the caller on the water heater where it would stay dry. I couldn’t find it when I came home and asked my mother about it,” he remembered. “She said, ‘Oh that old piece of wood? I threw it in the trash’ ” Some of those callers are collectibles today.

The 2009 season saw Napp make an unusual miss on a fine gobbler. “He came in on my left side from behind,” he recounted. “I said to myself there is nothing to keep me from rolling over fast and shooting this turkey.” Don’s roll wasn’t fast enough and he missed the fleet tom. “I lay there and thought what did I do that for? It worked well when I was 20. But now I am pushing 300 pounds!”

Napp says when someone tells him about a gobbler they took with one of his callers, he feels as if he took the bird himself.

He praises the new camouflage patterns and the law that prohibits the use of rifles to take spring turkeys, a dangerous practice in his view. And, like all true turkey hunters, he would go just to enjoy the beauties of the spring woods and the animals and birds that come to life at dawn each day.

Anyone interested in one of Don’s few one sided box callers can reach him at night at (601) 776 – 2843.