Teamwork

By Gary Koehler, Senior Writer
All things considered, two duck callers can be much more effective than one

The morning dawns cold in northeast Arkansas duck country. There is no ice where we are headed, although a couple of degrees less would make for a close call. It does not take long, however, for the opening in the flooded timber to begin warming up. Not incidentally, I find myself surrounded by what must be considered the equivalent of a duck-calling all-star team.

On one side is Kent Cullum, who represents one-half of the 1999 World Team Duck Calling Championship duet. On the other side, left shoulder propped up against a tree, is his partner, Christian Curtis. Down the line is Charles Petty, a fixture in the final round of the World's Duck Calling Championship for a decade. And, among other assorted accomplices, no one need be told into which end of the call to blow.

Witness the mallards, gadwalls, wood ducks, and wigeon that arrive out of nowhere and flutter down through windows in the tangled overhang to see what all the excitement is about. Cullum, Curtis, Petty, and friends are hosting the party, greeting miscellaneous winged guests with a full-blown repertoire of duck talk that many birds cannot resist. No one person assumes center stage. No one person directs the overhead traffic. This is a team effort, and the raucous method works wonders.

"You can practice it [working with a teammate] but the best thing you can do is hunt together and learn what works that way," says Curtis, a Missourian who spends a good part of each waterfowl season laboring as a guide. "When two people are calling, and you are working as a team, one can be calling like one or two different ducks, and the other can be calling another way. That sounds like several different ducks."

And that's the whole point of this exercise: creating auditory enhancement so convincing that ducks passing by figure that they owe it to themselves to join in on the fun. This is accomplished by creating the illusion that your decoy spread is a flock of resting or feeding ducks. Mallards, in particular, perceive safety in large assemblages of their brethren. Efficient team-calling techniques enhance your chances of bringing birds to the gun.

"You learn to tell what's going on just by listening to your partner call," says Cullum, an Arkansan who teams with Petty to manage a waterfowling guide service headquartered in Jonesboro. "You blend in your calling with what he's doing. It's not a back-and-forth thing. When we are calling together, I listen to him-to what he's doing-and I try to do something opposite, to sound like more ducks. If he's doing a lazy hen, then I might be doing a coarse hen, or a bouncin' hen."

Both Cullum and Curtis, after spending countless hours listening to live ducks, say they have categorized four types of sounds generated by mallard hens. Recognizing that ducks, like people, speak in different pitches and tones, they have developed a calling style that is a mix of what they consider the basic sounds. This is a personalized method that works for them.

"There's what we call a fine hen, who hardly opens her throat, and whose call tapers off at the end. And a coarse hen, which will open her throat more wide open. A lazy hen will drag out the notes. And the bouncin' hen, she'll hit a couple of notes and then just bounce it all the way to the bottom, excited," Cullum says. "Those are the four main sounds you'll hear. Get them together with two guys calling and it sounds like a lot of ducks."

Game-call maker Will Primos of Jackson, Mississippi, says team calling may have been around as long as duck calls themselves. Putting a label on this technique may or may not be appropriate.

"No doubt, it's more effective to have more than one caller," Primos says. "I don't do anything but team call. But, we don't really call it that, because we probably take it for granted."

Primos and his cohorts observe a few basic rules when working together trying to pull ducks to their decoys. "There is definitely a right and wrong way," Primos says. "What we do, let's say one guy sees a group of six mallards. He knows right then they need a certain call. He latches on to them. The first thing I do is look at that person to see where he is looking, where the ducks are, because I don't want to be moving around and having them see me. I want to know where the birds are. Then, we key into the birds, feeding off what he is doing. You don't want three guys doing the comeback or the hail call at one time.

"What we are trying to do is add to what he's doing. The guy who latches onto the birds first is in control, and the rest of us are supporting him. If you watch and listen to ducks on the water, one old hen is doing most of the work. We try to mimic that."

Duck Calling Instructions Only a Phone Call Away

Waterfowlers seeking to improve their calling skills would be wise to receive instruction from accomplished callers, not necessarily the guy next door. A number of learning tools are on the market, with three of the most recent additions being Rich-N-Tone's calling package The Right Stuff. Hosts Butch Richenback and John Stephens, both former world champions, lead you step-by-step. Available on CD or cassette tape by calling 888-RNTCALL. On the video side of the ledger, Will Primos and staff have developed The Truth 1 -Incoming-Ducks & Geese. Primos can be reached at 601-366-1288. And finally, Louisiana call maker Shane Roten is offering the video Fowl Language. Call 318-377-8169 for details. Call Selection, Practice Are Key Components

Over the years, Charles Petty, a Georgia native, has won just about everything there is to win in the world of competitive calling, except the finals in Stuttgart. He is now also involved in a northeastern Arkansas waterfowl guiding operation. At age 51, Petty is the voice of experience.

"People should not be intimidated when they are learning how to blow a duck call, because they are not going to learn, not going to get better, if they don't get that call out and practice," Petty says. "One of the most important things is getting a call capable of making the right sounds. If you don't have a good call, you are going to have a lot of difficulty."

"Get a call that you feel good about, that you can have confidence in," Petty adds. "Different people like different kinds of calls. But, the more you practice with that call, and the more time you put into it, the better off you are going to be. And that goes for people who are just starting out, and those who have been calling for years."

NEW
Brand new to the market is "Waterfowl Workshop," in CD and cassette versions, offering personalized instruction from Rod and Eli Haydel, who produce the popular Haydel's Game Calls line. For details, call 318-746-3586, or check out the company's Web site at www.haydels.com.
 

If melding sounds to create a convincing medley is one of the keys here, so may be the level of duck-calling proficiency. Two accomplished callers will most definitely have more impact than one, and so, too, may two callers of average skill. A wide variation in talent, though, may cause problems, according to at least one other highly regarded caller.

"I think it's better to have a team in the blind where both callers are of the same caliber," says 1985 world duck-calling champ Mike "Big Guy" Keller of Kansas City, Missouri. "It's easier to complement each other that way. If one caller is much better than the other one, the guy who's not as good may get intimidated and not know what to do." Learning what your partner is capable of doing, and then making the most of your combined skills, takes time and patience. The benefit of being able to simulate an entire flock of ducks is well worth the investment.

"Two accomplished callers in the blind are definitely an advantage," Keller says, "but if you don't hunt together all the time, you probably aren't in sync. The more you hunt with someone, the more you are going to get in sync."

Keller also says that the more competent one becomes with a duck call, the better chance that hunter has of persuading birds to drop by for a look. This is not a revelation, but those who put their call away at the end of the season and do not pick it up until the start of the next one are likely to remain inept. Too many folks do just that, and suffer frustration as a result.

"Accomplished callers have an advantage because they can make any sound that's in their call," Keller says. "They know what it can do. And they are confident with what they can do. They will try different things to get the ducks' attention. "There are days when we try everything in the world-squawking, screeching, loud hail calls, soft calls, no calls. You learn to try everything that you know, because sometimes what you might not expect to work is exactly what they want to hear."

Cullum, Curtis, and Keller all agree that being aggressive with the call can pay off-if you know what you are doing. But remember, being aggressive is not necessarily synonymous with high-volume calling.

"When the ducks are way out there, you can be more aggressive, and louder," Cullum says. "You want to sound realistic, just like mallard hens. It's like talking to a person: You can holler into the call, or whisper, depending on where the ducks are. But you can still be aggressive and snappy, even when they're close, just by toning it [volume] down."

"In timber, you can pretty much call all the time," Curtis says. "Sometimes, you call even when you don't see ducks, because down in those trees, you can't see far away. You want to get their attention if they're out there. I think you have to be aggressive, and call them all the way down to the water."

Timber hunting is one thing, but gunning over open water, fields, or marsh sometimes requires different strategies and considerations for team callers. For one thing, with the sky wide open, the callers must first be sure they are calling the same ducks. If one person is looking one way, at a flock 200 yards out, and the other caller is looking the other way, at wings-cupped mallards at 50 yards and dropping, the hazard is obvious. Communication is essential in this scenario.

"In a rice field, you have to read the ducks a lot more," Curtis says. "In timber, you do some, but in the rice fields you really have to watch them. If they get off line, you call at them to get back on line. In a rice field, it's a lot more like directing traffic. You have to be able to pick up what the ducks are responding to."

"There might be 300 acres of water in that field," Cullum says. "Ducks are going into the fields to eat, and they really don't care where you want them to light. You've got to have your decoys right. You're going to have to be hidden. And you and your partner have really got to stay on them when you're calling in a field."

Primos figures that field hunting provides an opportunity to mix in other types of calls.

"Anyone who has ever sat next to a flooded cornfield and has seen ducks coming into it will probably see teal, wigeon, mallards, spoonbills, and more. They are all saying something," Primos says. "When you get in those situations, you can use a pintail or wigeon whistle, or do a fast teal call. Ducks are used to hearing a lot of sounds, and when you can do that, it's convincing."

Keller knows that team calling works, but also believes that too many members in a duck blind orchestra can sometimes become a liability.

"I think you can have too many people calling at once," Keller says. "I don't think it will bother anything to have three or four guys calling if the ducks are way off. But the closer the ducks get, the fewer callers the better. Two is OK, but any more than that and chances are somebody is going to say something too loud. The exception is a windy day, when I think the more callers the better. On windy days, you can often scream at them all the way to the water."

This is, then, a multiple learning experience. The keys to team-calling success include learning what your call can do, learning what your partner can do, learning to read the birds, and deciding what they want to hear on any particular day. But every rule has exceptions.

"Some days," Keller says, "the ducks don't like anything. That's just the way they are."