Name/Title
George "Fritz" Fleisher trough call prototype of Penn's Woods Sweet TalkerEntry/Object ID
VTC001A0024Description
George “Fritz” Fleisher’s Sweet Talker as documented by his friend Rob Keck
My life during the 1970’s, while living in Perry County, Pennsylvania, often referred to as the turkey calling capital of the country, was greatly impacted by legendary turkey call makers, competitive turkey callers, and very accomplished turkey hunters. Those people changed the trajectory of my career as well as my life. They also helped set the stage for the golden age of turkey calling and turkey hunting.
Among those talented people was George “Fritz” Fleisher of Millerstown, Pennsylvania. He was a finish carpenter by trade, but his passion was the wild turkey. That passion led him in search of duplicating the voice and vocabulary of the bird with a variety of calls. He was driven through competitive turkey calling, which led to his inventive nature of searching for and building the ultimate turkey call, which aided his skill and his success on stage and in the turkey woods.
I spent many hours and days with him in his shop and the woods. He was always in search of different materials, various designs and combinations of ideas in building mouth calls, tube calls, bellows calls, pot calls, scratch boxes, and strikers.
From his collection of calls that he acquired from other call makers, there was one that he loved the sound of, but didn’t like its size. Fritz felt he could improve upon the design by making it more compact, and still retain the quality of the sound. It was an aluminum and wooden trough call designed and built by Raymond Chisholm from rural Laurel, Mississippi. Ben Lee made an adaptation of that call sold under the name of the Super Hen.
The striking surface in the trough was aluminum, but he experimented with other materials as well.
Fritz flattened the wooden shape of his trough call from what Chisholm and Lee had designed and after experimenting with various woods on his prototype, cherry was his favorite. The striking surface of the trough was aluminum, although he tried other metals and glass and plastics as well.
Once he perfected his prototype, I shared it with Frank Piper, the owner of Penns Woods products, the largest turkey call manufacturer at the time, and Frank worked out the financial contract with Fleisher and it became one of the new calls on the product line. Together, we settled on the name of “Sweet Talker.”Collection
Brent Rogers collectionCataloged By
Brent RogersCreate Date
May 27, 2026Update Date
May 27, 2026
