Wing bone calls

[Aaron1726]

A few years ago I made my brother a wingbone call from a turkey he got.  He's a big turkey hunter and has every call you can think of, but never really thought the wingbone call "sounded right".  Well...  fast forward to this past spring and a particularly difficult bird he and his friend were trying to call in.  They tried everything they had and that old bird wanted nothing of it, that was until that old wing bone call I made came out.  He told me he figured why not give it a try (I was surprised he had actually took it with him, lol).  But low and behold, he managed to call that old Tom in with that call and his buddy got a nice trophy bird.

So his buddy then had to have one of those magic calls so I told him to give me the wings and I'd make him a couple.  I just got around to it this past week.  The bird had one wing that had been broken and healed so it made a cool looking call.  Was a little challenging to clean the bone out but I managed to get it.  Anyway, here's the two calls I made from those wings.  Hopefully he can get another bird using one.  These are fun to make and pretty easy.  Cool that you can use a harvest to get your next.

[JW_Halverson]

Wanna know some background information on that broken wing? A bird can completely heal a major bone fracture like that one in as little as 14 days. They can efficiently strip calcium from strong and healthy bones and transport it to the site of the break faster than any other group of animals with skeletons on earth!

Being egg layers, their bodies are designed with this super-power. A hen turkey lays down ALL the calcium on an egg in under 20 hours! Just a day before an egg is laid it is in that thin membrane you find on the inside of the egg. Her body ramps up, stripping calcium out of storage in her bones and depositing it rapidly on the membrane until it's finished. Human babies are almost as fast, but that's because their bodies are a maelstrom of growth hormones burning like the booster rockets on the space shuttle, and it's for a short period early in life after being born.

Yeah, birds are waaaaay cool.

[Piddler]

Like those. I have some bones in the freezer that is on my list to do. Any tips would be appreciated.
Piddler

[Aaron1726]

Wanna know some background information on that broken wing? A bird can completely heal a major bone fracture like that one in as little as 14 days. They can efficiently strip calcium from strong and healthy bones and transport it to the site of the break faster than any other group of animals with skeletons on earth!

That's pretty cool, I didn't know they could heal up that quick.

[Aaron1726]

Like those. I have some bones in the freezer that is on my list to do. Any tips would be appreciated.
Piddler

Thanks.  I can tell you my process.  I toss the bones in a pot of water and add some dishwasher soap and then boil them for about 5 min or so.  I tried dish soap before and it worked, but once it comes to a boil its a bubbly mess.  Then I pull the bones out and let them cool just until I can pick them up.  I use a spoon to scrape the remnants of meat and such off, which should come off really easy if they boiled right.  You don't have to get them clean all the way out to the tips, that part will next get cut off.  So then I cut the ends off to where it looks right.  Then you have to clean all the stuff out of the inside of the bones, this part is a mess and the best way I've found is a coat hanger wire and keeps working it through, rinse and repeat.  Then fit them together with some sanding, and then I hot glue the pieces together, or use pitch glue, that works too.  Then these I wrapped the joints over with artificial sinew. 

Good luck on yours, let us know how they turn out.