An Autumn Classic: Assembly Yelping

This long, loud call is a staple of calling contests, but it also has a special place in the fall turkey woods. Knowing when and where to use it is the key.

Fall hunters get to expand their turkey vocabulary, commonly using vocalizations that don’t get much play during spring. That autumn playlist commonly includes a unique call: assembly yelping.

The adult hen assembly call is a long, relatively loud series of yelps that brood hens use to assemble their poult flocks. That sounds relatively simple, but top callers agree that producing realistic assembly yelping requires special technique and timing.

“The old-timers always referred to hen assembly yelping sounding like an alarm clock,” said Marlin Watkins, an award-winning call maker and avid fall turkey hunter. “It just won’t quit, and I have to agree that I have heard turkeys sound like this.”

Josh Grossenbacher, 2015 World Turkey Calling Championship winner and Rolling Thunder Game Calls pro-staffer, said several elements of the adult hen assembly call differentiate it from other types of yelping.

“The way assembly yelping differs from a plain yelp or excited yelping is the pleading,” he said. “And the amount of notes that hen emphasizes in her yelps is a lot more prevalent than in a plain yelp, which can be soft and just a few notes, or excited yelps, which are very aggressive. When I’m doing an assembly yelp, I like to build into them starting fairly soft and then getting into deep rasp at the end of my series.”

Watkins agreed.

“This call can be made on mouth yelpers, trumpet calls or either type of friction call — box or pot,” he said. “With all these calls, the instrument and the caller working together to add a pleading to the yelping is the difference between realism and just someone nonstop yelping on a turkey call. Some calls just have that pleading in them and make producing a realistic assembly yelp so much easier.”

Grossenbacher said some callers neglect to add life to assembly yelping, making it less realistic.

“When I’m assembly yelping, to add realism, I like to have a strong, clear front end that rolls into a deep raspy back end,” he said. “While presenting the assembly yelp, I also like to break in and out of raspy to clear notes like a hen in the woods trying to assemble her flock. By just doing the same note over and over again, it takes any realism out of the equation. This is something that took me a long time to get through my head, but when I did, my scores on stage improved greatly, as well as my success in the woods.”

Watkins said his go-to assembly yelper is a box or a trumpet, with the former being his favorite.

“I’ve had my hands on so many different box calls that it’s easy for me to recognize that plead,” he said.

Grossenbacher likes diaphragms for assembly yelping but also runs box calls, as the sound a good box produces at a distance in the woods is incredibly realistic.

Some fall hunters use assembly yelping after scattering a family flock, hoping to pull young birds into their setup. However, Watkins eschews that technique and never assembly yelps around the scatter, preferring instead to use the kee-kees of young turkeys.

“Those young birds have heard their mother’s voice since they were in the egg, and they will know you are not her,” he said. “The only exception to this might be a very windy day where the sound is distorted.”

However, Watkins uses assembly yelping in another autumn situation: when hens and their broods are ready to group with other hens for winter.

“During this time, excited hen yelping or assembly yelping will usually get immediate results from these hens,” he said. “If you would slide down the closest tree, she and her brood will most likely come directly to you. You can actually just walk and call every 100 yards or so, just as if you were trying to strike a spring gobbler. This period is generally toward the end of the fall season, but each year and each group of turkeys can be different, and it might work on any particular day.”

And that’s reason enough to keep realistic assembly yelping in your field-calling bag of tricks.

Hear the Assembly Yelp

Check out the assembly call and other wild turkey sounds here.

Listen to Matt Van Cise’s hen assembly call at the 2023 NWTF Grand National Calling Championships (beginning at 20:55 mark).