Duck Calls???

[stickman]

I love duck commander's calls and they all have a place in the field but for a beginner I would suggest a simple pintail whistle/teal peep. I believe in calling ducks, less is more, so start with that and graduate yourself into the classic commander or brown sugar.

[lil_armond]

Tell you what Texas Bound you shoot me a msg and tell me what kind of places you will do most of your hunting. There are a lot of variables to choosing a call and where you will be hunting will help in selection. For instance if you do most of your hunting on big open water you will want a call that will reach out and if you are hunting stock tanks and tight pot holes in the marsh you want more of a finishing call or what we call a meat call subtle mellow ducky sound.

As a beginer at calling you need to know a few things.
1. There are two styles to blowing, volume meaning the amount of air you put through a call to get the desired result and finess which would be lighter controlled bursts of air blown through a call. The longer a reed set is the more air it will take to break the call over and the shorter the reed set is the less air but more control it will take to break the call over.

2. To correctly blow your call you must pick one of the 2 styles of blowing and tune your call to your style of blowing that suits you. Tuning the call would consist of trimming your reed or reeds to fit your style of blowing. Tuning also includes fileing your tone board one of three different directions and each will give you a slightly different sound. You can also manipulate the bore of your call to slightly fine tune as well, the smaller the bore the softer, richer and ducky the sound will be and the larger the bore the louder, raspier and ringing the call will be. Lastly never trim your reeds from the front always trim them from the back.

3. The material a call is made of effects the tonal quality of the call as well. A wood call is hard to beat but not all woods are created equal. The denser a wood is the better sound quality. You also have acrylic infused woods, and straight acrylic calls.
Your cheaper less dense wood calls and injection molded plastic call tend to have a hollow vibrating sound to them due to the lack of material thickness and density of the material.

4. Lastly it is amazing how many people will tell you to grunt as you blow your call, that is a no no ducks do not grunt. You should learn to blow from your diaphram and teach yourself to pinch your notes off with the back of your throat. Also using your hand on the barrell to create back pressure and give your notes a little twang.

To take it one step further you figure out what you want and PM me and I will give you a high end acrylic call in the box with warranty, extra reeds and cork for free. If there is anything I love more than Bowhunting it is waterfowling and if you are dedicated to learning and are going to stick with it this $130.00 call is yours my friend.

[b.latiolais]

I have a brown sugar too. Nice call... till my dog chewed it up.

[Mailman]

We used to duck hunt quite a bit, and we killed a ton of birds. Everyone in our group blows Duck Commander Calls. I have spent a ton of money on other calls, but the one that makes me sound the best is the Duck Commander "Brown Sugar." I have a lanyard with 4 Duck Commander Calls, "Brown Sugar", "Salt & Pepper", "Cutdown Reacher", and DC "Teal Call." I always come back to the "Brown Sugar" for lack of a better term, it is SWEET!!!

I make them do flips with that call. Like everyone else has tried to tell you, find the call that you can make sound the best. Focus on the the quack and feed chuckle. I hear these guys in the marsh all the time, playing these 15 or 20 note hail calls. It is just not needed. Ducks don't sound like that. I always go with the strategy, less is more.

Good luck finding a duck call that works for you. It is a pretty good feeling when you are done at the end of the hunt and your buddies tell you what an awesome job you did calling that morning. Being able to work those birds is a really cool deal...

[bloodtrail18]

I like Haydels and Quackhead calls. They are inexpensive, easy to blow and sound great. Stop calling when the ducks are coming your way and you'll be fine.

[b.latiolais]

Tell you what Texas Bound you shoot me a msg and tell me what kind of places you will do most of your hunting. There are a lot of variables to choosing a call and where you will be hunting will help in selection. For instance if you do most of your hunting on big open water you will want a call that will reach out and if you are hunting stock tanks and tight pot holes in the marsh you want more of a finishing call or what we call a meat call subtle mellow ducky sound.

As a beginer at calling you need to know a few things.
1. There are two styles to blowing, volume meaning the amount of air you put through a call to get the desired result and finess which would be lighter controlled bursts of air blown through a call. The longer a reed set is the more air it will take to break the call over and the shorter the reed set is the less air but more control it will take to break the call over.

2. To correctly blow your call you must pick one of the 2 styles of blowing and tune your call to your style of blowing that suits you. Tuning the call would consist of trimming your reed or reeds to fit your style of blowing. Tuning also includes fileing your tone board one of three different directions and each will give you a slightly different sound. You can also manipulate the bore of your call to slightly fine tune as well, the smaller the bore the softer, richer and ducky the sound will be and the larger the bore the louder, raspier and ringing the call will be. Lastly never trim your reeds from the front always trim them from the back.

3. The material a call is made of effects the tonal quality of the call as well. A wood call is hard to beat but not all woods are created equal. The denser a wood is the better sound quality. You also have acrylic infused woods, and straight acrylic calls.
Your cheaper less dense wood calls and injection molded plastic call tend to have a hollow vibrating sound to them due to the lack of material thickness and density of the material.

4. Lastly it is amazing how many people will tell you to grunt as you blow your call, that is a no no ducks do not grunt. You should learn to blow from your diaphram and teach yourself to pinch your notes off with the back of your throat. Also using your hand on the barrell to create back pressure and give your notes a little twang.

To take it one step further you figure out what you want and PM me and I will give you a high end acrylic call in the box with warranty, extra reeds and cork for free. If there is anything I love more than Bowhunting it is waterfowling and if you are dedicated to learning and are going to stick with it this $130.00 call is yours my friend.

That's a nice gesture. Just curious which $130.00 call you are going to give him?

[lil_armond]

I'll give him a "Coke Bottle" Crooked Slough Acrylic double reed. Latiolais what is your first name I probably know you.

[b.latiolais]

Blake

[lil_armond]

Thats what I was thinking, this is Jeff Richard how have you been.

[txdukklr]

here's my advice,

not many high end calls that won't work. I've got one of a kind rnt's in boxes that I've killed many ducks with.

My advice is not to worry about that for now. Got get you a double reed duck calls and learn how to call. dr-85 is a perfect call, requires very little air and is cheap.

learn to blow from your diaphragm, learn the sounds your trying to replicate. hoot and hit the t is a quack, tick or chick for a feed. Not a rolling ticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick at a million miles an hour. just tick tick tick chick tick chick chick. thats the sound of a feeding duck.

hooot hoot hoot for a decent soft hail call.

learn that with a double reed then start worrying about spending some money on high end calls. My lanyard for geese and ducks is around $1k of calls but sometimes I don't pick up a single one and the birds will work straight up to me.

double reed anything is where you need to start.

[SwineAssassiN]

primos makes some good calls, i personally like the ducks unlimited special addition yo' sista. $30

[Flash]

Tell you what Texas Bound you shoot me a msg and tell me what kind of places you will do most of your hunting. There are a lot of variables to choosing a call and where you will be hunting will help in selection. For instance if you do most of your hunting on big open water you will want a call that will reach out and if you are hunting stock tanks and tight pot holes in the marsh you want more of a finishing call or what we call a meat call subtle mellow ducky sound.

As a beginer at calling you need to know a few things.
1. There are two styles to blowing, volume meaning the amount of air you put through a call to get the desired result and finess which would be lighter controlled bursts of air blown through a call. The longer a reed set is the more air it will take to break the call over and the shorter the reed set is the less air but more control it will take to break the call over.

2. To correctly blow your call you must pick one of the 2 styles of blowing and tune your call to your style of blowing that suits you. Tuning the call would consist of trimming your reed or reeds to fit your style of blowing. Tuning also includes fileing your tone board one of three different directions and each will give you a slightly different sound. You can also manipulate the bore of your call to slightly fine tune as well, the smaller the bore the softer, richer and ducky the sound will be and the larger the bore the louder, raspier and ringing the call will be. Lastly never trim your reeds from the front always trim them from the back.

3. The material a call is made of effects the tonal quality of the call as well. A wood call is hard to beat but not all woods are created equal. The denser a wood is the better sound quality. You also have acrylic infused woods, and straight acrylic calls.
Your cheaper less dense wood calls and injection molded plastic call tend to have a hollow vibrating sound to them due to the lack of material thickness and density of the material.

4. Lastly it is amazing how many people will tell you to grunt as you blow your call, that is a no no ducks do not grunt. You should learn to blow from your diaphram and teach yourself to pinch your notes off with the back of your throat. Also using your hand on the barrell to create back pressure and give your notes a little twang.

To take it one step further you figure out what you want and PM me and I will give you a high end acrylic call in the box with warranty, extra reeds and cork for free. If there is anything I love more than Bowhunting it is waterfowling and if you are dedicated to learning and are going to stick with it this $130.00 call is yours my friend.

VERY cool gesture right there!

[center punch]

Tuning also includes fileing your tone board one of three different directions and each will give you a slightly different sound. You can also manipulate the bore of your call to slightly fine tune as well, the smaller the bore the softer, richer and ducky the sound will be and the larger the bore the louder, raspier and ringing the call will be. Lastly never trim your reeds from the front always trim them from the back.

With all due respect, this is TERRIBLE advice, ESPECIALLY for someone who's considering dropping a bill and a half on an upper end call. While the info about the toneboard and bore may be true, that's a sure fire way to ruin a perfectly good call. As for trimming the reeds from the back, to each his own I suppose, but I've never tuned one that way for two reasons. 1. It's much more time consuming having to take the cork and reed out for every slight adjustment.
2. Handcut (as opposed to stamped) reeds fairly often are not cut at perfect 90 degree angles. If the reed isn't laying perfectly up in the corkslot, this will create a little left/right wiggle room for the business end of the reed. Why cause yourself that headache?

4. Lastly it is amazing how many people will tell you to grunt as you blow your call, that is a no no ducks do not grunt. You should learn to blow from your diaphram and teach yourself to pinch your notes off with the back of your throat. Also using your hand on the barrell to create back pressure and give your notes a little twang.

Forget about throat, voice, and hand inflection until you consider yourself a pretty decent caller. Way too many beginners get caught up in trying to control airflow by using the "wa-wa" hand.

FWIW, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Use whatever method works best for you.

[lil_armond]

#1 Center punch is the "wa-wa hand" accents the note your throat controls the airflow. I am giving him useful hints that will come in handy as he grows into his calling ability.

There is so much more to a duck call than telling someone to pull one out of a box and just blow it however feels best to you. The young man has already stated that he knows nothing about blowing a call and likes duck hunting so why not help the young man out and teach him the tricks of the trade so as he grows he is a little bit ahead of the learning curve.

Also he's not going to spend a buck fifty because as soon as he sends me his address I am sending him a high end acrylic double reed call along with my phone number so I can help him with tuning tricks to make the call his. So he really has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Your argument about the reed triming makes no sense what makes you think the reed is not going to act the same way when the cut is not a perfect 90 degree cut in the front. You will not mess up a tone board on a call by filing the board and it will actually help the call preform better when wet as well as enhance the sound.

Lastly when it comes to tuning a duck call the last thing I am worried about is the time it takes, it is not worth doing if you are just going to hurry up and fly through it. If your not going to take the time to do it right and get it to what is perfect in your mind it is not worth doing at all.


By the way here is the call I am sending you, I got your address and I will send it out Monday. Hope you like it and there is an extra set of reeds as well as a cork as stated.

[texas bound]

I would like to thank all of you for your input and advice on duck calls. I would also like to give a special thanks to lil armond for everything and for giving me a duck call. I never thought that would happen when I posted this thread. I was just lookin for a starting point on calls so I wouldnt go buy a junk call. Thank you all again.