Born From the Swamp
Green Swamp Turkey Calls began long before it had a name, with PawPaw. Charlie Parrish, an avid outdoorsman and biology teacher who passed his knowledge of the woods on to his grandson, Chad Willett. PawPaw taught the kids to hunt, build shelter, and read animal tracks and scat. He also showed them how the Indians lived, working leather, bamboo, and wood to build bows, blowdart guns, and other tools needed to live off the land. PawPaw taught Chad how to build turkey calls at a young age, starting with trumpet calls. PawPaw himself went on to make box calls, joined the NWTF, and became one of just 12 box call makers featured in a 2007 call maker calendar, creating the Green Swamp Turkey Calls name and building a reputation for himself in the call making world.
Chad had been making calls from a young age learning from Charlie, starting with trumpets before learning box calls and more woodworking techniques. The turning point came in 2013: Chad was riding bulls for a living, and began building box calls more seriously to cover his rodeo entry fees, giving several of his earliest calls to friends and family. After moving out of town and then returning to Green Swamp around 2024, Chad started cleaning up his shop and the family tools between jobs and got back to making calls. This time selling his box calls and wingbones through word of mouth and tagging his work with the Green Swamp Turkey Call name. By 2026, Chad had become one of only a handful of second-generation call makers — and rarer still, one of the only ones to learn the craft from a grandfather rather than a father, making Green Swamp a true grandfather-and-grandson operation. He carries his own distinct style and the skill to build calls to any specification a client requests. Chad plans to keep the name in the family and continue building the legacy of Green Swamp Turkey Calls.
