Short and Sweet: Part 2

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There is no question among call makers that competition calling has had a major impact on the goose calling landscape. You don’t need to be a contest caller to lure geese to your decoys. But when contest callers switched to short-reeds, the game changed. Field callers are no longer limited by their equipment. Many sounds that the majority of callers could not attain with flutes are now available to nearly anyone willing to put in the time to learn them. Goose calling has reached a level never before realized.

“Goose calling has come a long way,” call maker Jeff Foiles says. “And there are more young kids involved than I’ve ever seen. This is a good thing. I think we all know that if we don’t bring the youngsters into this and get them involved, we are not going to have a sport left. Kids have gotten excited about goose calling, and it’s showing up in contests everywhere.”

Past world champion Fred Zink thinks that ease of operation has propelled the short-reed into the goose call limelight and made calling more appealing to youngsters and adults alike. “I think the main advantage of blowing a short-reed is that it is much easier to blow,” Zink says. “A flute, in my opinion, is the hardest call to blow at a really high level.

“I’ve heard many people blow short-reeds well,” Zink adds. “Blowing a short-reed is similar to blowing a duck call. I think that’s why many people have caught on to them so fast. If a guy has blown a duck call for a time, he can pick up a short-reed and, with a little practice, be pretty good on it.”

The list of buzzwords continues to grow for goose callers. Goose calling vocalizations have expanded beyond the basic honk and cluck to include the buzz cluck, stalled cluck, spit double cluck, spit note, quick spit, grunt honk, push moan, quick moan, train, Willis moan, spit comeback, and more (see sidebar). The short-reed has indeed altered the field of play. But what does all this mean to hunters?

“Notes are lures in a caller’s tackle box,” Mann says. “The better you can produce different notes, the better your chances of changing your luck. Geese respond to different things throughout each day, and from day to day. The more versatile you are, the more successful you will be if you can recognize when to say what.”

But Mann is quick to add that mastering the fundamentals may be the most important factor. “Walk before you run,” he says. “Goose language is very basic. Learn what the notes mean, not just how to make a million of them. More often it is how you use a few notes that gets the job done efficiently, not the number of notes you throw at them.”

Foiles is not so sure that the growing vocabulary isn’t as much a cause of confusion as an aid. “A lot of people have come up with names for all these calls,” he says. “The one problem I see in all this growth is that there are sounds in contests today that you hear and say, ‘I never heard a goose do that before.’ That’s the height it’s reached—it’s gone to the top and spilled over.”

Contests are one thing, and field calling is another. Most hunters don’t need to bother with many of the notes resonating from competitions. The real beauty lies in the options. Field-calling techniques can now be more readily improved and expanded according to a hunter’s needs and choices.

“I am a very basic caller in the field,” Mann says. “I try not to do something unless it means something. I honk, cluck, double-cluck, and cry or moan. I haven’t expanded my vocabulary in the field because I haven’t needed to. Many days I am using only a couple of notes that work. I don’t use anything that I don’t have to because there will be a day when I need those notes, and I want them to be fresh. If I throw them at the birds every day, they will not have any impact when I need them to have impact.”

Zink says years of competing in front of large crowds honed his calling skills, but time spent in the field made him an accomplished goose hunter. “Blowing on stage gives you the ability to operate the call at different speeds and volumes, to have finesse, to have air control, lip control, and control over the muscles in your mouth that allow you to blow for long periods of time,” he says. “Hunting is seeing how geese react to certain sounds in certain weather conditions at different times of the year. That’s what drives your ability to call geese—knowing when, how, and what to blow. The stage gives you the vocabulary. Hunting gives you the know-how.”

Taylor, who lives in the center of Maryland’s extremely competitive waterfowl hunting environment, expands on a basic calling strategy only when he has to. “It’s all finesse calling here,” he says. “The key is getting the birds’ confidence. We want to sound like geese. I’m convinced that if you can do clucks, double clucks, and moans well, you can kill geese. All these new sounds are fine, but most people are never going to call in a contest. When I do seminars, I try to teach fundamentals. It’s important to be able to make that call break from low to high when you want it to break. Once people work with a short-reed and figure out how to make the call break, they’re on their way.”

The consensus among the pros is that the short-reed has opened up avenues to those who may have previously struggled with goose calling. As calling confidence grows, so does enthusiasm. The fresh notes are welcome additions to hunters’ calling arsenals. Hunters can be as flashy as they aspire to be, but understanding what a goose wants to hear at a particular point in time remains the bottom line.

“People just starting out with short-reeds should concentrate on one thing at a time,” Foiles says. “Get good at one thing and then move on to another aspect of calling. Don’t try to do too much too soon.”

Hunters can derive personal satisfaction from improving their calling skills. And although all vocalizations may not be used regularly, the ability to produce them is a plus.

“Knowing how to make those notes can make a tough day in the field better,” Mann says. “There are times when the ‘kitchen sink rule’ applies. I like to teach folks to always have the notes at their disposal but to use them only when they will have a positive impact on the results of the hunt.”