ATLANTA With a rain falling outside, the calling competitions for the 32nd annual National Wild Turkey Federation Convention (NWTF) are well underway.
On Thursday, 30-year old Matthew Van Cise opened the festivities with a performance as steady as the precipitation outside.
At the conclusion of the Wild Turkey Bourbon/NWTF Grand National Friction Calling Championship, Van Cise stood tall as this week's first but certainly not the last calling champion.
"This is great," Van Cise said after besting 25 other callers using slate, glass, aluminum, and box calls in the competition.
"This is the first time I've ever called in this. I won the (World Championship) in friction. It is nice to have both of them now."
With a "middle of the road" style of calling in terms of loud versus soft calling, Van Cise credited his cluck and purr routine for giving him this year's Friction championship.
Amazingly enough, Van Cise a Brookvile, PA resident that took the 2005 Senior Division Grand National Calling Championship nearly didn't compete in this year's friction event.
"I've been working very hard at the Open, that's where my heart is at, in the Open Division," Van Cise said.
"I haven't put the time into this that I needed, too and I probably just got lucky today that I had a good round."
To support his claim, the Woodhaven Custom Calls man indicated that as recently as one week ago, he considered backing out of Thursday's event.
But shortly after that thought, he placed second in a Pennsylvania calling competition.
After that showing, Van Cise decided to strut his friction calling skills in Atlanta.
In doing so, he proved today that sometime it is good to be both lucky and good.
With today's Grand National Senior Division finals looming, Van Cise is hoping to capitalize on both to keep his calling momentum going for another trip to the championship podium.
On Friday, 16-year old calling phenom Dakota Clouser who won NWTF Junior division calling titles four-times including in 2007 followed in Van Cise's footsteps to that coveted spot at the 2008 NWTF Convention.
That's because he captured the 2008 NWTF Grand National Calling Contest Intermediate Division title open to callers from ages 16 to 20 on Friday on his first attempt at capturing that particular title.
"It feels really, really good, especially stepping up and winning it (Intermediate title) in the first year calling," Clouser said.
Even so, the Danville, Pennsylvania teen admitted that he had a case of "caller's nerves" prior to the competition.
"Let's just say that this is the most nervous I've ever been in a contest," Clouser said. "Lance Hanger (the 2007 Intermediate champion and third place finisher this year) came up to me behind the curtain where I was sitting up against the wall all white. He put his hand on my chest and said 'Boy, you need to settle down there for a bit.'"
Clouser had trouble doing so as his battle of nerves continued, but he fought through and wowed the judges enough to capture his first Intermediate title by the afternoon's end.
When asked, the teenager immediately identified the key to his victory.
"My yelping," Clouser said. "I think my yelping is what brought my scores up. I've really been working on that for a while, doing some different things with it. I finally found a sound that really, really works and that's what really helped today."
Clouser, who has been calling competitively for 10 years, got interested in doing so after listening to his dad Michael call and after attending a few sport shows that featured turkey calling events.
Early on, he decided that he would like to give calling contests a try. Today, with some three dozen or more calling titles to his credit, Clouser says he practices " a lot."
"I go about three hours a day when the competitions get really, really close," Clouser said. "I start in about December to January really hammering the calls. Earlier than that, you pick up a call just about every day and just kind of work with it for half an hour or so."
During those practice sessions, Clouser said he works on such things as his routine's various calls, its overall sound, its rhythm, and its cadence.
Today, coached by Damon Davis, Clouser hopes to one day continue his calling dominance on the big stage of the Senior Division championships.
"Hopefully I'll be practicing," the teenager smiled.
With plenty of calling dominance already on his resume, there's little doubt about that.