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duck calling

skimerhorn

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
697
Location
Ashland Va
Been tryin to learn my way around a duck call. Any advice for a beginner. I'm not looking to do contests or anything, just convince a few ducks to check me out.
 
get a call and practice, practice, practice!! Drive the neighbors, co workers, etc crazy!!!:D
 
Stop "blowing" your call and learn the fundamentals first before bad habits are formed. YouTube is loaded with good instruction. Good luck and have fun
 
Listen closely to hen mallards when they are calling to other mallards especially as they fly over head. Then practice constantly trying to mimic the hen mallard call exactly. Don't be afraid to try your call in the blind.
 
I've been trying by using the words ten and hut coming from my gut. It's just hard for me to judge it if I'm sounding good to myself? But I mess with it for a while each day, just don't want to be doing something wrong and not know it and make it worse.
 
I used the words Quit or hit and for a feeding chuckle it is more a duga-duga-duga sound into the call.
 
No one has mentioned the obvious. Get a Haydel's DR-85 call. About 15 bucks and will put a bunch of birds in the pot. It is the easiest to blow, best sounding meat call there is.
 
Once you learn how to get started, keep it in your vehicle and practice before you hit the field. Nothing worse then working your butt off setting up decoys and sounding like a laughing duck. Best piece of advice is youtube and practice, practice practice. Then learn when not to call while hunting.
 
The Ducks Unlimited website also has some good sound clips of different types of duck sounds.

Practice a lot. Your family will love you for it. Also, try different things during your hunts. Sometimes, calling sparingly is the way to go and other times you'll be calling non-stop to bring them in.
 
1. Get a single or double reed call.
2. Listen to live ducks
3. Imitiate live ducks
4. Do not imitate other callers or call sequences you may here on tapes, DVD's or out hunting. See #'s 2 & 3.
5. Find a good instructional tape (when I started in 1980 the best tape I found of was of Phil Robertson and a fella from Wash state. Very primitive by todays standards but fundamentally spot on.)
6.Spend time at a refuge or where plenty of puddlers are staging. Listen to their cadence and watch when & what call they use when birds are passing by or on the swing.
7. Have fun and don't be afraid to call.
8. When all else fails a good quack is hard to beat. Sometimes, especially on pressured and sensitive birds, a soft quack sequince is much more effective than highballing/comebacks and fracks.
9.Read up on where to locate your setup and really focus on decoy sets/the wind and your shooting position. Good setups beat good calling most every day.
 
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I am going to post up here although I don't really have much to add to what has been said. The best advice you've gotten here is to get some proper instruction right off the bat. Some of the contest callers, I'm talking about Stuttgart here, put out good material and they have the resume to back up the instruction. They will usually differentiate between contest and hunting sequences but the mechanics of air development and control are the same. Those contest callers are good hunt callers also. Learn the mechanics right the first time. Learn the mechanics right the first time. Learn the mechanics right the first time.

You must have a quality call. Double reeds have come a long way and there are some fantastic options out there but if you master the single you will be able to blow both. It doesn't always work the other way around.

Modern calls don't require as much grunting to sound ducky. They do pretty well blowing air straight thru the call. It can vary but something to remember.

Finally, remember calls save about as many ducks as they kill.

Did I mention learn the mechanics right the first time?
 

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