Fink calls up a couple of crowns

MANCHESTER - For the second year in a row, Jim Fink of Rockford won the Iowa state and senior open turkey calling titles at the National Wild Turkey Federation-sanctioned contest Sunday in Manchester.

“I called as well today as I ever have, but the competition was so good in the open contest that any of several callers could have won it,” said Fink, 44, a member of the Mossy Oak pro staff.

Fink scored 414 points to edge runner-up Lucas Melm of Staunton, Ill., by a point for the open title. Doug Herman of Hoskins, Neb., finished third.

With 13 callers from five states competing in the senior open, “that was a tough one to judge,” said Gary Reeder of the Maquoketa Valley Struttin' Toms chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation, which hosted the event.

“Even though I felt I called pretty clean, I didn't have any idea whose name would be called as the winner of the open,” said Fink, who had a much more comfortable margin of victory in winning his fifth state title.

Fink scored 419 points. Runner-up Rick White of Cedar Rapids, a 10-time state champion, scored 399 points, and third-place finisher Curt Goettsch of Elkader scored 373 points.

Fink said he tried “to sound as ‘turkey' as I could,” replicating the sounds of a hen turkey as accurately as possible.

With all the good callers in the open field, “I knew I had to do a little something different to stand out,” he said.

Toward that end, Fink said he mixed some “lost whistles” in with his soft tree calls and used “gravelly aggressive yelps” in his adult hen assembly call.

“That's harder to do, and it's easier to make a mistake, but I figured it was worth the risk,” he said.

Scott Wilhelm of Chippewa Falls, Wis., the reigning national champion friction turkey caller, won the friction calling and owl-hooting contests.

Don Morshead of Platteville, Wis., won the hunter division contest.

Austin Woelfel of Fieldon, Ill., won the junior and intermediate competitions. Zack Fink finished second in both divisions, and Mike Fink finished third in the junior category.