The loud, challenging yelping was the first verification I had that morning that there were turkeys in the woods. It was a hen. Something had upset her and I yelped back hard and fast.

She answered immediately and I stepped on her sounds with a challenging yelp of my own.

And so it went for a while. She yelped and I answered back on the diaphragm call, cutting into her every remark and, therefore, challenging her boss hen role.

Soon she stepped out from the edge of the trees and began to walk in. Behind her, as I had hoped, was a big tom following her dutifully. She was visibly upset and stepped purposefully toward what she thought was an upstart hen to teach the newcomer a lesson.

The calling, hers and mine, was almost continuous until she was only 20 yards away with the tom right behind her. My gun came up and another tom turkey added his spurs to my collection.

That experience, early on in my turkey hunting career, burned one impression into my mind. That is, sometimes you have to call in the hen to bag the tom.

Later I learned a name for that kind of calling. It"s "cutting." Fast paced, excitable yelping and there are even calls designed to do just that, although the procedure can be done on any turkey call.

It"s just one of the calling techniques you should have in your bag of tricks when you step into the woods in pursuit of the wild turkey.

Ask any spring turkey hunter what makes the hunt most enjoyable and they"ll tell you its all about calling.

In the springtime, tom turkeys have hens on their mind. They"ll strut and gobble and pirouette in grand displays, all for the purpose of attracting a hen with which to mate.

If they hear hen talk, they"ll come. Often on the run.

Unless, of course, they have hens with them. They often do.

That"s when the calling game becomes a little complicated. That"s when that big old gobbler just might ignore your best calling efforts.

Hens can drive turkey hunters to distraction.

It"s hens, you see, that prevents gobblers from strutting in dumbly just like those you see on turkey hunting videos on TV. If there"s one thing you should notice about those shows, it"s that toms always show up to the decoys with no hens in sight. On the rare shows where hen turkeys come into the setup with toms in tow (and that"s always the case, the toms are following the hens), it"s the hens that are doing the talking, not the toms.

That"s why cutting is a call you should learn. Let"s consider some others.

If you hunt begins in the predawn hours before the turkeys have left their roosts, these two calls should be in your repertoire. The tree yelp and the fly-down cackle. The tree yelp is a very quiet yelp, no more than three in a slow-paced series and barely loud enough to hear. You should take up a position no closer than about 100 yards from the roosted turkeys. If you are close enough, you may even hear their own tree yelps. If you can, you may be too close, however.

At any rate two or three series of these yelps just after you here the first gobble is all you should do. The call signals there is a hen there (you) and it has just awoken. When turkeys fly down from the roost, they make what is called the fly-down cackle. It begins with a slow series of short yelps while they are still on the limb and continues in a fast paced version as they fly to the ground and then slows up for three or four sounds as they take the first steps on the ground.

When you do the call, it tells the toms the hen (you) has left the tree. After a few minutes of struttin" one of the toms may come looking for you.

There are three other calls you should learn. They are the cluck, loud yelp and the purr. There are variations on all of those calls and they can all be combined to make turkey sounds that will bring in a tom. Practicing all those calls is something all turkey hunters are doing right now as they await the opening of the spring season.

Whether your call choice is a friction call such as a slate or box or a mouth call such as a diaphragm these calls and all their variations can be done. Most of us carry all three types of calls in the woods and use them. Every call will sound different and it often pays to mix it up. A reluctant gobbler may come in if he thinks there are two or three different hens calling to him.

The call most hunters use most often is the yelp. Do these in a series of five or six yelps at a time. Then wait to hear an answering gobble. Some days speeding up the cadence will make a gobbler answer. Getting some excitement into this call can often trigger a tom to gobble.

The yelp is the standby call of the walking hunter. Before you call always make sure you have a place to set up immediately in case a tom answers nearby. That"s why my first series of yelps are rather quiet. If there"s no answer, I turn up the volume and then wait for an answer.

Some days it seems the toms will only answer a purr. So, it pays to mix in a purr or two each time you call. Same way with the cluck. I often insert the cluck with both the yelping and purring.

There"s really no one way to call turkeys correctly. You have to experiment and try to find out what is working each day.

And don"t be too concerned if your calling skill is not picture perfect. If a wild turkey entered a calling contest he would finish dead last every time. They just don"t call with the sweet purity a skilled turkey caller will bring to the woods. On one stand I thought I heard another hunter calling at the edge of the woods. "Must be a beginner," I thought. "That calling is terrible." And then a hen stepped out.

If you really listen to wild turkeys, you"ll find out they are not as good as the calling you hear on the training tapes. Don"t worry if you"re not that good either.

There are calling mistakes you can make which might cost you that trophy gobbler. The putt is the alarm call and that will send them running. Calling too loud when doing the tree yelp is another. So too, is not finishing the sequence on the fly down call. If you don"t finish that call it tells the gobbler the hen just evaporated on her way to the ground.

Learning to call well takes lots of practice. It"s another skill which will make you a better hunter.

Larry Myhre is outdoors editor of the Journal. Reach him at (712) 276-5965 or email: llfentfish@msn.com