
Sit in the blind, go out to the marsh, lake, or duck creek, and pick up cues from wild birds. Vocab class occurs in the field, and the process begins exactly like how you learn to set up a natural decoy spread. Learn the Vocabulary of Ducks for Callingīefore becoming bilingual in duck chatter, you need to learn the vocabulary. Once your call is picked, it’s time to focus on mastering the language. When selecting a duck call, choose based on the accuracy of tone, pitch, and volume to real live ducks. Among the top rankings of calls, acrylic came in at number 5. Of those studied, the researchers identified cocobolo, osage orange, pecan, and bocote wood as the best materials. The researchers found that calls made of more rigid, denser materials, with a double reed insert, sounded most like a mallard hen. The researchers compared the vocalizations of hen mallards to 38 duck callers who used single and double reed calls crafted of various kinds of wood and casted acrylic. Duck hunters have their preferences, but a 2013 research paper aimed to put the debate to rest: what kind of duck call sounds most like a duck?

Today, we’re inundated with models ranging from single reeds to triple reeds, different lengths and bore diameters, and diverse barrel materials such as acrylic to exotic woods. The tone and pitch of a typical duck call are predictable and easily imitated with quality calls. Most folks don’t need to go out of their way to find a call tailored to their local ducks’ dialect. To make a sound like the Cajun Squeal, some companies like Haydel’s Game Calls have created calls specifically to mimic that higher pitch. Hunters call it the Cajun Squeal, and it’s basically a hail call with subtle squeaks marking the end of each note.
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Instead, these birds talk with their mouths full of grain, and their calls squeak. Ducks on the Gulf Coast are gluttons, and when female dabblers call at incoming birds, they rarely produce the sharp and concise tones typical of other parts of the country. Nature will tell you the cadence and tone of duck calls. The right duck call needs to sound like a duck, and there are two ideal sources you can turn to when figuring out which calls work best: nature and science. Of course, choosing a good duck call is important, but what does that mean? Truthfully, it’s not all that complicated. Choose the Right Duck Callĭuck hunters preach so much about choosing the right duck call that it’s become a cliche. Luckily for us, learning duck speech isn’t all that hard, and in terms of hunting, it can be broken down into five simple core principles. You can sound like a duck, but unless you can speak with them, you might as well leave the call at home. The trick is bridging the gap between making duck sounds and speaking duck language. Putting it all together in a way that fools wild birds is a much bigger chore. Matching your duck call to the same cadence, tone, pitch, and crescendo as real ducks are one thing. It took several more years to actually become a good duck caller that’s tough.
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Yet none of that mattered because, by graduation, I had finally learned how to use a duck call the right way. I looked like a duck-hunting fool to my friends who wanted to listen to the radio. Pedestrians rubbernecked at the cacophony of croaks and purrs, whistles and chatter coming from my car.

I’d rip hail calls at stop lights and let quacks form a symphony on the highway.

I mimicked the sounds with my double-reed Echo call, which I kept slung over my rearview mirror with a lanyard. I’d play recordings of mallards over my car’s stereo system. It took my entire senior year to get it right. But when I picked up my first duck call in high school and tried to teach myself how to use it, it sounded like a kazoo. Hearing those stories and watching my dad use a call as effortlessly as a chef using a knife, I got the impression that duck calling was easy. That bird became the first duck my dad ever shot. When my dad was ten, his grandfather quacked and hummed at a lone mallard drake by hand and mouth only on an icy, briny creek. However, his grandfather preferred the old-school method. He’d take a thirty-year-old, single-reed duck call caked in gray mud and turn birds around from the other side of the marsh. Learn how to increases your duck hunting chances with these basic tips in duck calling skills for this hunting season
