In the woodworking shop in the backyard of his Wilmington home, Ralph Jensen spends several hours each week hand-carving wooden game calls that mimic the sounds of ducks, turkeys, crows and deer.

Jensen fields orders for his game calls from hunters and collectors across the U.S. He said it’s his expertise – honed by decades of furniture making – and unique materials that set his company, R.H. Jensen Game Call, apart.

Jensen likes to use materials with a “piece of history,” whether an ivory inlay made from the keys of a 19th-century piano, an inlaid woolly mammoth’s tusk or a turkey call box made from the original decking of the Battleship North Carolina.

A furniture maker by trade, Jensen got into the game call business by accident over two decades ago. Despite being an avid duck hunter, Jensen said he had never used a duck call until one day in 2000 when he bought a basket for $2 at a flea market. The basket had a duck call in it, and while the call didn’t work, it piqued Jensen’s interest.

“My curiosity got the best of me on trying to figure out, how does that make a sound?” he said.
He went to a music store, bought a clarinet reed and shaved it down to fit inside the flea market call. It worked, but Jensen knew he needed a reed that could get wet while duck hunting. He opted for a piece of water-saturated river wood that he shaved into a reed small enough to fit inside the call.

From there, Jensen experimented. He made reeds out of thick plastic before settling on the mylar material he uses today. The way the air flows around the double reed inside each game call produces a unique sound that mimics the calls of birds such as wood ducks, mallards, pintails, teals and crows. With the curved edges of Jensen’s turkey call boxes, hunters can create a sound mimicking a turkey call.

Jensen also got creative with the outside of his game calls, incorporating intricate inlays and animal carvings. Eventually, people started collecting his calls, and one with an ivory and ebony inlay garnered $1,700 at a Ducks Unlimited auction.

Each game call is marked with Jensen’s signature handlebar mustache, which he embraces, branding himself as the ’Stache.
 
“It used to be that everybody was growing beards all the time,” he explained, “and so I wanted to do something a little different.”

Jensen started his woodworking career at a lumber company in Greensboro. He was 21 and had just graduated from college with a history degree, but he felt called to the trade.

“I didn’t know anything,” Jensen said. “Really, it was just a desire put into my heart because I never really had any kind of background in woodworking.”

There, Jensen worked his way up, learning to make cabinetry and read blueprints. His next job was in a woodworking shop in Greensboro that made a range of furniture pieces for influential interior designer Otto Zenke.

When Jensen moved his family to Wilmington in 1978, it was his tie to Zenke that helped Jensen get his own furniture business, called The Master’s Touch, off the ground. The company created custom pieces and later specialized in furniture restoration.

While Jensen said he still works on some small furniture pieces today, he focuses on the game call business. A one-man operation, Jensen said he typically turns out about 10 calls each month from his backyard workshop – more if he’s trying to fill a big order.

Jensen built the backyard shop, which houses his tools, supplies and other pieces of wood, in 2020. Before that, he worked out of a small garage attached to his home. Today, that space is used to store finished calls and other merchandise.

Many of Jensen’s orders are for game calls listed on his website, which range from a $120 dogwood turkey call to an intricate $3,500 tree stand duck call display. But he also receives a handful of custom orders from companies looking for a unique gift for an executive or the families of avid hunters. He’s currently working on making turkey calls from a charred whiskey barrel for a Durham-based whiskey company.

Jensen said that most of his customers find him by word-of-mouth, but his website helps increase his visibility, especially outside North Carolina. For Jensen, crafting game calls allows him to keep working with wood, which he feels has been his life’s calling.

“It just gave me another medium for art,” he said.