75 year old Bois de Arc call I made

JTPinTX

JTPinTX

Custom Call Maker
I make a few calls here and there as a hobby. I had read about the very old, aged Bois de Arc from fenceposts that had been in the ground many years. I have heard it referred to as "green" Bois de Arc not because the wood is wet but because the minerals from the soil leach into the wood over the years and help stabilize it, and can give it unique colors. Supposedly it is very good wood for calls and sought after. So of course I wanted to try some.

I called an older rancher here that I have been calling coyotes on him for 10 years, and my dad called coyotes on him for 20 years before that. Dad passed away in 2013, him and this guy were pretty good friends. Anyways, the rancher said sure, they had been pulling and redoing a lot of fence the last couple years and he had a whole stack of old pulled "Bodark" posts behind his pens, just get what I wanted. I asked him if he thought they were 50 years old or more, and his reply was "At least 75 years on all of them, maybe 100 on some." Which was exactly the answer I was looking for.

So I went and got several good posts out of his pile and cut some blanks. The wood really turned nice. Fine grained, tight rings (you can tell it was old growth), with that dark aged look, yet also still with some lighter streaks from minerals. In my mind it is beautiful wood.

I put some on the lathe and spun up just a basic call profile. Nothing fancy, just sleek classy lines, no frills, which I thought matched the wood with it's history. Voiced it with a loud single reed. Sounds really good. I like this call a lot. Special wood from a special place to me.

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JTPinTX, good to see others interested in this wood. Here in Oklahoma it is sometimes referred to as Osage Orange, likely because of its color. I have used this wood several times for knife grips as well as pistol/revolver grips. It works really well and produces a nice finished product that no one will ever "wear out". Good looking call there.
 
Thank You! I would much rather local source wood with meaning to it for my calls than just buy blanks online, no matter how pretty those exotics might be. I really look forward to making more calls out of this Bois de Arc/Bodark/Osage Orange. Some folks around here call them "horse apple" trees too.

Also, Mulberry is a pretty close family relative to Bois de Arc I believe. My son had a big old Mulberry tree blow over at the house he bought a couple of years ago. The house had belonged to one of his best friends grandmothers. She passed away not long ago, and my sons friend was killed in a construction accident while they were both in college. That family still lives close by, only 3-4 miles away from him. This last Christmas I made Mulberry calls for all the guys in that family out of the wood from that Mulberry tree that was either their mothers/grandmothers/aunts tree. Most of them remembered climbing and playing in that tree at some point in their life.

I only live 15 miles from OK, and that place my son bought is only 3 miles from the OK line.

There is a precision gunsmith who is well known on this forum, that lady was his aunt, he was one of the ones that got one of those calls. I'm sure he has already killed several coyotes with his.

Here is a picture of those calls on the stump of the tree they came from.

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Thanks everyone for the complements. I prefer simple, straightforward utilitarian designs. DesertRam, I imagine there will be a few turn up for sale in the custom calls forum at some point in the future. I'm not a sponsor yet but working on it.
 
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Very nice bud! I’m a huge Osage fan! I love it for calls and use it quite a bit for call making. I have some green Osage but haven’t got to mess with it. Can’t wait to see what all you have to share with us. Happy to see more call makers around
 
So here is a twin to the first call I made and posted above. This one just came off the lathe last night. No yellow mottling in this one but the grain and iridescence in it is amazing. This call went out in the mail today as a gift for a long time friend. He has no clue it is coming. I'm guessing y'all may see pics of it again down the road somewhere though.

First picture is normal light you can see the grain structure, rings, and rays in the wood. Second picture shows how when the light hits it right the wood comes just alive with deep golden iridescence. Really amazing wood. I voiced this one as a single reed medium cottontail. Probably one of my favorite reeds for short to medium range work. It will go down real soft and smooth, yet can get decently loud if you really want to stand on it. Very nice tone.

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Kerry, even though you don't know it, you are indirectly responsible for me starting to make calls. I have probably half a dozen of your calls, I love them. Especially that little 220 Swift call. One of my favorite all time calls. Of course I used to watch the Custom Call forum all the time back in the day as well when it was really rolling. Seeing all the calls, and woods, and styles, I loved it. I bought several off here as well.

Last year after nearly 2 decades the reed in my 220 Swift call gave out. I ordered a new one but also got determined to fix the old one. No real good reason I guess, except I had a history with that call and wanted to. I had no idea what reed was in it. APC had a reed kit with several various reeds in it though so I ordered that and figured I would experiment around. I got it back up and running to my satisfaction.

But then I had a package of extra reeds. And I had some good blanks of exotic woods from back when I was making some knife handles and pistol grips. So I ordered a mandrel and took a stab at turning a call by jury rigging a setup after hours on our metal lathe at work. It actually turned out pretty good and I gave that call to a friend. It all just escalated from there. Next thing I knew I had a wood lathe and tooling over in my barn, and was searching all over for neat wood that I liked.

So like I said above, unknown to you, but you have had a big influence on me and one of your calls was indirectly what got me started turning.

So THANK YOU for everything you have put into this site and this industry over the years. It is very much appreciated by many of us.
 


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