As I sit in turkey setups I ponder “How Many Syllables are in a Gobble? Thanks to a text I received the other day from my buddy treerooster. Just what I needed as if I didn’t pay close enough attention to gobbling before this question was planted in my inquiring mind. Now the old ears are trying to feed every note upstairs for analysis. And it seems to be a depends on what the gobbler is seeking to communicate or how aggressive he is feeling. Some gobbles are short with few notes or syllables, while others are quite complex with short and long notes and syllables.
It’s a real legitimate question to which nearly all other turkey hunters have not thought about very much.
Please list your thoughts and observations in the comment section.
FirstBubba says
A true “gobble” instills such an adrenalin rush, counting “syllables” would only cause asphyxiation as breathing becomes shallow and all brain cells are burning oxygen to encompass the entire vocalization!
This past spring, sitting within 50 yards of a roost, the first “gobble” made me feel like a dog hitting the end of his chain!
Instead of the full throated, deep bass gobble, I got more of a garbled, tenor yelp! More “garble” than “gobble”!
Thankfully, it elicited the throttled up gobble of surrounding birds and oxygen flow to my brain resumed!
AND…”Fie upon thee Charles of the Elk!”
NOW! Instead of simply listening to the raucous, melodic gobble, my already stressed cranium will now begin trying to count the “syllables”!
I fear that now I will simply watch birds go by as my oxygen starved brain attempts to catalogue and retain syllable counts and fail to activate the shoot sequence!
“Nope! Can’t tell you weight nor beard and spur length!
But he had a seven syllable gobble!”
?????
Turkey hunting is getting more and more complicateder!
Syllables in a gobble?
Egads and little fishes!
Charlie says
Exquisite! When I get done laughing and up off the floor, I’ll try to come up with a suitable reply.
WRC says
Great question Charlie!
Being the old goofball that I am, I’ve been studying that for the last few years. Your exactly right saying that a gobble is very complex. A lot of hunters say you can’t tell the age of a bird by his gobble, I beg to differ. The older a bird gets, the more complex his gobbles become, and the softer they become. A 2 or 3 year old bird will gobble his heart out when he gobbles, he’ll blast your ears when he cuts loose, and it’s not a very complex gobble, it’s 80% blast. As that bird gets older, his gobbles become a more complex gobble. It starts out as a softer gobble, but raises in volume and pitch as he gobbles, and then starts to fade out. A 5+ bird will gobble very softly and very few times. He has nothing left to prove, he’s just happy he can still gobble. A jakes gobble is one of the most complex gobbles, because he’s still learning to gobble, they are a very short gobble with a high/low pitch and broke up, unless he’s an early born bird, more that a few hunters have been fooled by an early born jake when they hear them gobble!
FirstBubba says
My head hurts.
Charlie says
Usually, a jake’s gobble and a mature tom’s gobble are entirely different. Other than that I have not noticed a huge difference among mature toms as far as their age is concerned. Perhaps due to the fact I do not know any reliable turkey aging method. At one time I thought maybe spur length, but, a few years ago treerooster shot two banded toms that confirmed their age 6+ years and the spurs were only about an inch long.
So spur length as it relates to a turkey’s age is unreliable.
Add to that; the fact 80% of all turkeys are dead within two years of hatching whether or not they are hunted, aging a turkey beyond two years is sketchy at best.
Treerooster said those two gobblers had reticent muffled gobbles, perhaps WRC has a point about age and gobbling.
huntfishtrap says
I have not really noticed any correlation between what kind of gobble a tom has and the bird’s age. Maybe older birds have deeper gobbles, but I could be imaging that.
FirstBubba says
“…muffled reticent gobbles…?”
You guys are RUINING spring turkey season!!!
Charlie says
Don’t let it get to you 1stBub; this is just a few turkey nerds going off into nerd-dom. 😉
FirstBubba says
Yes, I know!
Sadly(?), I fit!
N.C.L.W. says
Hahahaaa!!! Too funny
Seriously though, it’s an entertaining question for sure… I considered a syllable as an exclusively Human thing that is designed to convey something within a word of a language. Yet I can easily figure how any vocalization created by any species could be considered a syllable, saomething I hadn’t really considered until reading this post.. Interesting!
huntfishtrap says
Just sitting here trying to remember all the gobbles I’ve heard (an utterly impossible task, but not a thankless one), I’d say the average gobble has 4 or 5 syllables. But they vary quite a bit, and I can’t remember ever counting them before. Guess I’ll have to keep that in mind next spring – gobbling is winding down around here by now.