EDGEFIELD, SC – To say Joe Purvis Jr. is obsessive is putting it mildly.
When something grabs his passion, he is laser-focused on pursuing it to perfection. Once he got interested in turkey calling, that powerful mental preoccupation carried him all the way to first place in the Open Division of the South Carolina State Turkey Calling Championship in July.
“He basically came out of nowhere to win the championship,” said Matt Stewart, who supervises turkey calling competitions for the National Wild Turkey Federation, which is based in Edgefield, SC. The 2026 state calling championship was hosted by the NWTF’s Swamp Fox Chapter in Moncks Corner.
Purvis’ first taste of turkey hunting came when he was about 12 years old. “My Uncle Chuck took me hunting in the Sumter National Forest. We did not kill a turkey, but just hearing the owls hoot and the whippoorwills—I fell in love with it,” said Purvis, 26, who grew up in Blythewood, but now lives near Ridgeway.
As a teenager, Purvis and a buddy took up duck hunting, and he started learning to blow a duck call. He became enthused with the idea of hitting the right notes in the right sequence and in natural rhythm.
“I was,” he said in colloquial vernacular, “ate up with the ducks. I was blowing a duck call every day.”
When he was 16, a motorcycle accident left him with a partial amputation of his left foot and he decided to switch from standing in waders in near freezing water to chasing turkeys in calmer conditions.
“Little did I know turkey hunting involves a whole lot more walking,” he said with a laugh. About six months after the surgery, a friend invited him to hunt turkeys on his place, and he harvested his first gobbler there.
Calling that bird in to the gun lit a fire that won’t be put out anytime soon.
The search for perfection in turkey calling led to working a mouth diaphragm for hours every day, seeking the right notes and cadence. He studied YouTube videos of master turkey callers, read everything he could find on the art of calling and practiced, practiced, practiced.
And the time he spent practicing duck calling actually helped in learning the art of turkey calling, he said.
“In duck calling you push air from the diaphragm. Duck calling taught me how to push that air, a lot of air, and not only push it but control it.”
Turkey calling and turkey hunting consumed him, he said. His friends refer to him as the “turkey guy.” “Some say I think about turkey hunting so much they call me insane.”
Perhaps that is an overstatement, but they do have a point. Turkey hunters are notorious for dropping everything, including work, and missing birthdays, anniversaries and family reunions during turkey season. They readily admit the lure of chasing the elusive birds is obsessive.
“Since I was 19 years old, hunting turkeys and calling turkeys have consumed me,” Purvis said, adding that the lure of the sport has taken him far and wide. “One of my best buddies, Albert Pointer of Elgin, and I travel every year to hunt turkeys. We’ve chased those birds in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee.
“Who else would want to sleep in the back of a truck for two weeks, living on bologna and bread, just for the chance to harvest a bird with a brain the size of a pea?”
His pursuit of the wild turkey is so compulsive that he and Pointer proposed to their wives on a turkey hunt in Colorado.
“We took the diamonds with us. Bert and I were sitting in the woods in Colorado and we looked at each other and said, ‘It’s time.’ He proposed the next day, and I proposed to my wife the day after that.”
While hunting put him in the woods with the elusive turkeys, it was the calling that intrigued him. He practiced with a mouth diaphragm for hours almost every day.
“Guys were telling me, ‘You’ve got the sound. You just need to slow down and not focus so much on loud and fast. Try to be more fluent with the calling and get the cadence right,’” he said. “I’ve blown my calls every day now for the past six years. If there was a day when I did not practice calling, it was because I did not have my calls with me.”
Then it became time to test his skill, to enter a competition and see how he performed against seasoned calling competitors. In July 2025, he entered the Georgia State Masters competition in Emerson, GA – and placed seventh out of a field of 28 of some of the top callers in the nation.
That first year, he competed in seven different calling contests from Virginia, and West Virginia to Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. His placement in the Virginia contest qualified him for the NWTF Grand National Calling Championships in Nashville, Tenn., in February this year. He was sponsored by Pistol Creek Outdoors, a commercial call making company in Dahlonega, GA.
A month later, Purvis won for the first time in the NWTF Calling Competition at the SITKA Charlotte Turkey Expo and qualified for the 50th anniversary of the 2027 NWTF Grand National Calling Championship in Nashville in February. SITKA specializes in high-performance outdoor gear for hunters and fishermen.
With that first win, Purvis set his sights on the South Carolina State Turkey Calling Championship in Moncks Corner in July.
“When they called my name as the winner, I did not even hear it because of the adrenaline and the emotion that overwhelmed me,” he said. He also finished second in the Senior Open Division to Lee Vernon from Florida.
Purvis’ name was engraved on the rotating trophy, joining all the winners of the state title since the competition began in 1970, a list that includes some of the most iconic turkey hunters and callers in the sport from South Carolina.
All those hours and days of practicing on the mouth call paid off, he said. And now he is working to refine his calling even more with an eye to the Grand National Championship in February.
“It is so rewarding to finally achieve what you set out to do. Practice, practice, practice is so important.”
And it helps if you are really “ate up with it,” too.