Harold grew up in the land between the rivers near the community of Golden Pond area of Trigg County.
He was one of 10 children until TVA bought all the land and moved everyone out.
He loved hunting and fishing from an early age and would listen to many older men that knew how to fish and hunt as a necessity to feed their families.
He credits his neighbor Maurice Calhoun for teaching him how to hunt by the time he was 12.
He went to Golden Pond Schools from the 1st through the 8th grade.
He is a 1962 Graduate Trigg County High School, but didn’t want to go to college so he went to Barber school in Henderson for a year. He will tell you that he didn’t want to go to college and he doesn’t think everyone is suited to go to college.
Harold Started as a barber 1963 as a Barber at Cadiz Barber Shop with Lexie Bush, Ollie Cunningham and Avery Francis.
He purchased shop in the mid 1970s continued barbering until 1984.
Harold coached Little League, Pony and Colt baseball league teams and instilled into his teams a desire to win in the right manner.
In 1971, David Hale and Harold Knight had become friends and hunted turkeys in some of the same areas of LBL. David came out of the woods and was waiting by Harold’s truck when a man drove up. He asked “what’s that hanging around your neck?” David told him that it was a turkey call. He asked me to blow it for him. I told him that I wasn’t very good with it but he persisted, so I gave him a little sample. He said “Man that sounds great.” He said, “I’m Dave Harbour, contributing editor for Sports Afield Magazine.” David remembers thinking, ‘THIS IS A BIG DEAL.’ I told Mr. Harbour, “If you’ll wait here a few minutes the man that built this call will come along, and he’ll give you one.” Harold didn’t show up, so I told Mr. Harbour that he could find Harold at the Cadiz Barber shop. Later that day, he dropped by the barber shop and Harold gave him a call.
In 1971, there were six gobblers killed in LBL. Mr. Harbour killed one with Harold’s call. Dave Harbour wrote an article in the Sports Afield magazine entitled ‘How a New Tube Tricked an Old Kentucky Gobbler.”
Instantly, that story put Harold in the turkey call business. He got close to 2000 letters from hunters around the country wanting a call. Harold and David put together calls in the basement of Harold’s house and their little business survived off that one call for the next three years. Harold and David wanted to make enough money off the calls to go to South Missouri Turkey Hunting.
This was the beginning of Knight & Hale.
In 1979 Harold designed a goose call and went to the World Goose Call Contest in Chesapeake Bay and won and then won 4 more times over the next few years.
In 1984 Harold and David decided they had to become full time Game Call Makers.
They decided to try to make other calls, so they decided to make a deer call but needed $35,000 to make a mold. Hesitantly, they sold a piece of hunting ground to do this. This call was somewhat successful, but Harold came up with a different type of call that they could patent.
This call became their biggest seller that they had because there were more deer hunters than fowl hunters.
With this call, they learned what the magazines wanted and how to deal with the outdoor writers.
They determined they needed to be on the TV, so they started Commonwealth Productions with 5 employees and was on the Outdoor Channel. Many major companies became sponsors of their show. Some of these companies were Winchester, Mossy Oak, Browing and Shefield
They designed the first push pull turkey call and thought they could sell 12,000 sets. David called different magazines and seven (7) magazines ran a feature article on the product in the same month! They sold 60,000 sets and could have sold another 50,000 if they had the ability to produce them.
This was when they started selling calls and VCR tapes to businesses like Wal Mart
Harold is the Inventor of;
Tube Goose Call – won World Championship 5 times
Other calls that won Grand National and other awards are;
Inhale/Exhale Deer
Call Fighting Purr Turkey Call
Double Cluck Goose Call
In the 1990s their game calls became the top game calls in the world
Sadly, on December 15, 1993, a tragic automobile accident claimed the lives of seven young men near Canton, Kentucky. While on a break from Knight & Hale Game calls, these employees go into one vehicle and drove a mile up the highway to purchase dinner. They never returned. They were; Steven Wallace, Joey Rogers, Jeremy Gordon, Dale Garner, David Lawrence, Jesse Lawrence and Patrick Perry.
They worked at Knight & Hale Game Calls because of their superior work ethic, their ability to hold a part time job and maintain high grades in school, and their love for the outdoors.
In 2009 Harold Knight and David Hale were inducted into the inaugural Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame.
In 2020 they were inducted into the National Wild Turkey Hall of Fame.
They retired in 2018, but still make appearances and keep up with the industry.
Harold will tell you, “I was very fortunate to have as a hunting and business partner my good friend David Hale, whom I feel closer to than a brother.”
Wade Bourne in his book Harold Knight and David Hale’s Ultimate Turkey Hunting tells the story of fishing with Harold on Lake Barkley.
‘We were trolling along the shoreline …we came to a stretch of the bank where the backyard of a lake cottage ran down to the water. Riprap rocks were piled up to prevent wind and waves from eroding the shoreline. Suddenly a quail started whistling its bobwhite song off in the woods beside the yard. “Batcha a dollar I can call that quail up here beside the boat” Harold said nonchalantly.’
“Okay, you’re on.” I accepted blithely. At that, he began whistling a perfect imitation of a hen quail answering her suiter’s call. Immediately, not one, but two quails flew from opposite sides of the yard and landed on the riprap less than five yards from our fully-exposed boat.
This is an example of Harold Knight’s ability to communicate with wildlife.
