Tim Fralick Custom Calls

A little about me:
In 1985 I was introduced to turkey hunting by a good friend (Mr. Gary Rider) and became instantly hooked the minute I heard my first gobble. The following year I began making turkey calls for myself because I couldn’t afford to buy the limited types of calls offered in the local stores. Turkey hunting was new to Northern NY so many of the sporting goods stores offered very little in the way of turkey calls. My very first call was a piece of slate I hand cut to fit a snuff can, it sounded okay although very quiet. I noticed a short box call in the store one day and being an avid woodworker I looked it over very carefully so that I could try to reproduce it at home. Some of my first attempts were far from sounding like a turkey but with persistence I found where the mistakes were in my designs and was finally able to make a call that sounded pretty good. When the day came where I actually called in and killed a turkey with a box call made with my own hands, the excitement was almost overwhelming. After giving a few calls away to friends and family, I began to get orders from other hunters and I was on my way to starting a call company. Around 1998 I decided to try my hand at pot calls, but I didn’t have a lathe as most wood lathes were too expensive, not to mention the lathe tools I’d need to make calls. So with the little extra money I made from selling the box calls I purchased the next best thing, a drill press. So with the drill press, some huge Forstner bits and some homemade jigs for the belt sander I produced my first pot calls using a maroon slate from Canada, that was not only different from every other slate call available, it also produced a slightly higher pitched yelp. My pot calls were a thin call at only 5/8” which allowed no room for a sound board so after a lot of trial and error, mostly error, I decided to epoxy acrylic discs on the bottom of the calls as a sound board. My thinking in doing this was based on the fact that most turkey hunters at that time were using pot calls made with acrylic pots, so by adding the acrylic on the bottom of my calls they not only got the tonal qualities of the wood but also the familiar sound of the acrylic pots they were used to. With this the TPII line of calls were created resulting in fantastic results in the turkey woods. Once I introduced these first calls to friends on the internet sales were fast and furious, prompting me to delve into other call surfaces like glass and aluminum. In 2002 with a great deal of urging from friends and family and after winning a call maker's competition in Alabama, I entered 3 calls in the Nationals. I was a nervous wreck and when the results came back I was shocked to see I had placed 4th, 5th and 6th for my first attempt. But then came the recession and my call sales plummeted, I had to re-invent myself to get back in the call market, so I turned to my roots somewhat and looked at making calls that were different. In 2005 I made and sold my first long box turkey call and named it the Burrville Bomber. That first Burrville Bomber, a poplar and padauk call, has been the death of numerous long beards every year in the hands of turkey hunter extraordinaire Mr. Lee Geibel. Over the years the Bomber has continued to produce many success stories from turkey hunters across the country to include Hawaii and Alaska. In 2014 I began making a little scratch box call I’ve dabbled with in the past and I named the “Mighty Hen”. This little scratch box call allowed a first time turkey hunter to call in a very nice Arkansas long beard so his 85 year old father could kill his first turkey ever. I enjoy nothing more than to hear all of the success stories from my customers, which allows me to feel like I was part of their hunt and keeps me making calls so I can continue to experience these virtual hunts.
This past year I purchased my first lathe and have added crow calls and deer grunt tubes to my line of game call products.