I had been hunting waterfowl for nearly 20 years when the RNT-V crew invited me to join them on a hunt that drastically changed my perspective on calling ducks. The seminal moment came as I watched the show’s producer and host at the time, Jim Ronquest, standing in the Arkansas green timber while mallards skimmed the treetops, the early-morning sun lighting up their green heads and white underbellies. Ronquest had a call cupped in his hand, but he just stood there in silence. He wasn’t calling ducks; he was studying their flight patterns.
With my face pressed against the coarse bark of a willow oak, I watched Ronquest for some indication of what the plan might be for the swirling masses of mallards above. After spending some more time quietly scrutinizing the ducks, he slowly put the call to his lips and barked a continuous feeding chatter interspersed with single quacks. He was focused on a tight bunch of 40 to 50 mallards flying almost wing tip to wing tip. As the ducks turned, he hit them with a five-note comeback and then went right back to the hard chatter. He kept up a steady calling rhythm, stopping only momentarily to tell us to get ready.
As he began a final feeding chuckle, I looked through the tree canopy and watched the mallards dip their tail feathers, set their wings back, and flutter through the leafless branches into the hole. Ronquest didn’t stop the chatter until the first 10 mallards had touched the water. Then he took one big step away from his tree and bellowed, “Go on ahead and pick ya’ out a greenhead!”
That day I learned that I wasn’t nearly the duck caller I thought I was. More importantly, I learned that calling ducks isn’t just about powering through a set sequence of calls. It’s more about knowing when, why, and how to call based on the behavior of the birds and a multitude of other factors. The following tips and techniques from some of the nation’s most experienced callers are designed to help hunters of all skill levels call more effectively and, hopefully, put more birds on the strap this season.
Calls and Effect
David St. John has been calling ducks in Arkansas for 40 years, and he won the World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest in Stuttgart in 2014. So he knows his way around a call, but with his contest calling days behind him, he is no longer worried about impressing the judges on Main Street. Today, he’s more concerned with how the ducks react to his calling than how it sounds to human ears.
“In the old days you could get away with a lot more hard calling, including hail calls,” St. John says. “Now the ducks are called at so much from September into January—they’ve seen and heard everything.”
St. John advises hunters to maintain a flexible mind-set and adjust their calling in real time based on what the ducks want to hear. “We talk a lot about how you’ve got to read the ducks,” he explains. “If I hit a really hard hail call and the ducks turn their bellies, that means they don’t want to hear that. I’ll switch to softer notes to see if they respond and then hit some transitions with a feeding call. You have to watch the ducks’ behavior and then find what works on that particular day.”
St. John adds that versatility is crucial when calling today’s highly educated ducks. The more calling techniques that you can pull from your bag of tricks, the more likely you are to find the right combination of sounds that will appeal to the birds. “Once you get their attention, there are times when you have to call them hard all the way to the water,” he says. “But you may have to stay off the call entirely some days. There are mornings that I will use nothing but soft lonesome hen calls—very soft quacks. It’s all about adapting to the situation rather than just blowing a call.”
THE TAKEAWAY: Pay attention to the ducks’ behavior. If a hail call isn’t working, switch to single quacks and a feed call. The same calls won’t work every day, so it’s important to be flexible.
Focus on Five
If it flies, walks, or hops, Beau Brooks is more than likely trying to figure out a way to communicate with it. A competition caller and avid hunter who travels the country with Higdon Outdoors, Brooks relies on his experiences in the field to dictate his calling methods. While he is among the most versatile duck callers in the country, he contends that the only calling sequence beginning hunters need to master is the five-note greeting call. This familiar “decrescendo” call is the basis of long-distance communication for mallards and many other dabbling ducks.
“The biggest problem many callers make is trying to do too much,” Brooks says. “When I’m hunting, I try a little bit of everything, depending on the geography and weather conditions, but I always start out with a simple five-note call. That’s a call that just about any hunter can learn with a little practice.”
Brooks explains that learning the five-note call begins by mastering the single quack. Once you can reliably produce this basic duck sound, you can progress to the five-note call simply by stringing together five quacks that gradually descend in pitch and volume.
“It really doesn’t matter where you hunt; the five-note call is about as versatile as it gets,” Brooks says. “You can blow it really softly on calm days or when ducks are close, and if the wind kicks up, you can blow it as loud as you can. There are certain sounds that ducks just respond to almost magically, and the five-note is at the top of that list.”
Brooks encourages beginning hunters to get as much calling experience as they can in the field. “That’s the only way to learn. You’ll never be a good caller, or a good hunter for that matter, if you don’t get out there and do it,” he says. “Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Even the best callers mess up sometimes. It’s all part of the learning process.”
THE TAKEAWAY: Practice and experiment in the field using the basic five-note greeting call as a foundation. Blow this call loudly to catch the attention of ducks at a distance and then lower the volume to sweet-talk circling ducks into the decoys. If you can reliably produce a “ducky” five-note call, you can successfully hunt dabbling ducks anywhere and in any weather conditions.
Honk for Decoying Ducks
Across much of the country, waterfowlers hunt ducks and geese at the same time. This can lead to a dilemma when ducks are circling and a flock of Canada geese decides to check out the spread. The rattle of acrylic and polycarbonate calls on lanyards inevitably ensues as hunters anxiously switch from duck to goose calls. Kelley Powers, a three-time world goose calling champion, has played this game many times, and he contends that hunters can stick with a goose call to bring in both species, especially late in the season.
“The reality is that the crack of a Canada goose call is a natural waterfowl sound that will carry much farther than a duck call,” Powers says. “And there’s a lot of commingling between Canada geese and ducks, so it’s very lifelike.”
Powers explains that he and his hunting partners have noticed a change in mallard behavior as the calendar moves closer to the January 31 closing date, especially in areas where a lot of Canada geese are around. “We’ve noticed that as the season progresses, mallards will pitch into a spread totally focused on the Canada goose decoys,” he says. “These late-season birds want to get away from other ducks, and I think that has to do with the territorial behavior of paired-up birds. Late in the season, hens don’t want to be harassed by a bunch of drakes, so sitting with large groups of Canada geese is a way to get away from other ducks. We’ve started using more Canada goose decoys and calling, and it works.”
Powers first became aware of the pulling power that Canada goose decoys and calling have on mallards while hunting with Tim Grounds in southern Illinois back in the late 1980s. Grounds hunted exclusively over a massive spread of Canada goose decoys and had great success decoying mallards and other ducks. This changed Powers’s approach.
“The number-one thing you’re trying to do when you call is to grab the ducks’ attention,” he says. “As you’re trying different calling techniques, throw in a Canada goose call to see if that gets a reaction. You might be surprised with the response.”
THE TAKEAWAY: An acrylic Canada goose call will often produce more volume—and can be heard from greater distances—than a duck call. In areas where honkers mix with ducks, try using a Canada goose call to hail passing ducks, and mix in some goose sounds as birds are working the decoys for an extra degree of realism.
Give a Little Whistle
It can be downright intimidating for beginners to blow a duck call when they’re in the company of veteran callers. While it’s perfectly sensible to allow the experts to take the lead, that doesn’t mean that less experienced hunters can’t make a contribution to group calling efforts.
Robby Mabry, owner of One Hitter Whistles, is fairly new to duck hunting, and he found himself in that exact situation a few years back. Being a CNC operator in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he decided to make his own duck whistles so he could help his more experienced hunting partners bring in the birds.
“I went duck hunting with a friend about five years ago and got completely hooked on it,” Mabry explains. “I’d try calling and it just sounded terrible, so I decided to start using a whistle. I then created my own whistle to add a little versatility and a multispecies option to our calling.”
Mabry not only turned his appreciation for whistles into a call company; he has also become an expert in his own right on this style of calling. “Hunting on Green Bay, we have times when the pintails and wigeon are everywhere,” he says. “I’m a huge fan of these birds, so I created a whistle that will allow me to call them into the decoys, even when I’m hunting over a diver spread on the bay. The ability to call multiple species is a huge benefit, especially on big water like Green Bay, where you never know what the next cold front might bring.”
Mabry says he hands a whistle to everyone he hunts with. This allows everyone to take part in the hunt, even if they can’t blow a note on a mallard call. “If there are mallards overhead, you can hit them with the low, slow dweep, dweep that drakes make,” he says. “If pintails are working, you can reproduce their whistling calls by simply rolling your tongue, and you can easily imitate wigeon whistles and the peep, peep, peep of green-winged teal. I’ve even heard of guys using my whistles on scoters and longtails to grab the birds’ attention when hunting offshore.”
THE TAKEAWAY: Blowing a whistle is a great way for beginning hunters to start out duck calling. Learn the calls made by pintails, teal, and wigeon, and use those sounds to help more experienced callers bring a variety of species into the decoys.
