Name/Title
It Was Quite A Party By Neil D. "Gobbler" CostEntry/Object ID
WTL001P0027Secondary Title
As told to Scott Branton and Ray BerryhillDescription
1999 saw the release of the book Making Turkey Callers in...The Gobbler’s Shop, which would be the first of a four-part series on the life and callmaking journey of Neil D. "Gobbler" Cost. In 2021, the fourth and final volume, It Was Quite A Party, tells us “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey would say. Cost is posthumously credited as the author, given that the material is from original notes and interviews with him. Scott Branton and Ray Berryhill have skillfully woven the story together for us. Holding a Neil Cost box call in one’s hands is to hold a grail of turkey hunting. Neil’s calls helped revolutionize and popularize custom callmaking, and he graciously mentored many of today’s finest call craftsmen. “It Was Quite A Party” is a book that, likewise, puts a literary chalice of intriguing stories about the famed Cost in your hands, and it is one to savor.
For turkey hunters who desire that perfect caller, like those made by the late Neil Cost, we are given the next best thing by Branton and Berryhill: the story of who Cost was, as a man and a callmaker. As a result of their fathers working for the same timber company, Branton and Berryhill began to hunt turkeys and deer together in the mid-1960s. Turkey hunting and their pursuit of the "ultimate" turkey caller eventually led them to Neil Cost. In attempting to discern the attributes that made Neil's turkey callers so desirable, a relationship developed that led to the publication of four books about Cost, as well as one on the Ocellated turkey.
“It Was Quite A Party” tells Neil’s story with a deeper dive into his roots. We meet Neil as a boy of seven who takes his first wild turkey, and we are deployed with him during his soldiering days, through two wars. We gain an appreciation for the many scars he develops, both emotional and physical, from the trials he navigates. And, we learn his determination and resilience, both personally and as a fledgling callmaker. His status as a titan among callmakers is complemented in the book by a portrayal of how modest Cost actually was. For Cost, the love of the wild turkey and of pursuing the perfect caller was more about the “party” than the payoff. He truly loved life and the turkey hunting community, and we love him for it. Cheers to you, Mr. Cost, it really was quite a party.
The book was initially released in a numbered, limited edition of 1500, in a hardback with a dust jacket, consisting of 192 pages.Collection
Brent Rogers collectionCataloged By
Brent RogersCreate Date
May 15, 2026Update Date
May 15, 2026
