Happy, Happy, Happy (19 page)

Now imagine trying to replicate a duck’s sound by ear—without a duck’s bill! When we’re building duck calls, we try to use the same methods as people trying to learn to play music by ear. They can’t read musical notes or charts, but when they hear
notes, they memorize them, and then they sit down at a piano and play exactly what they heard. They duplicate the sounds in their heads and play them from memory. We do the same thing with duck calls. We hear ’em while we’re out hunting, and then we build a device that sounds exactly like what we heard. Just like on a piano, we have to make sure we have the right pitch, note, inflection, and volume to ensure that our duck calls sound exactly like a mallard, green-winged teal, wood duck, American wigeon, or whatever duck species we’re trying to imitate.

It isn’t easy, and it requires a lot of trial and error to get a duck call to sound exactly right. After all, it’s not like we were trying to replicate Daffy Duck—
thufferin’ thuccotash!
Each duck species has a very unique and distinct sound; you can’t call a wood duck with a green-winged teal call or vice versa. And this probably won’t surprise you, but female ducks always sound different from males, even if they’re of the same species.

Despite all the variations in sounds, what we’ve discovered over the years is that if a duck whistles, then you use a whistle to duplicate the sound. If a duck quacks, you use a call with a reed in it. One species of duck—the gadwall—requires both a whistle and a reed.

We build calls for all kinds of ducks. There is a certain percentage of waterfowl hunters who are mallard purists, but we appreciate all ducks. Of course, there are a few species that we’ll
draw the line on and won’t eat. We don’t eat the common merganser, and I understand there are particular sea ducks that are nearly inedible. For us, it’s just as much fun to hunt wood ducks as mallards or green-winged teals. I think the most elegant, graceful duck is the pintail. For good table fare, our favorite ducks are the green-winged teals and close behind them are the wood ducks. If we really want a good duck gumbo or duck with dressing, we almost always go for the green-winged teal. They go fast around our table, especially if Willie has pulled up a chair!

The green-winged teals go fast around our table, especially if Willie has pulled up a chair!

Of course, the species I dislike the most is the Steven Seagal ducks—the ones that are hard to kill!

The very first duck call I made in 1972 was the Original Commander Call, which was designed for the mallard hen. The mallard is probably the most recognizable of all ducks and is the ancestor of many of the breeds we see in the United States. The mallard hen is covered in feathers of uneven hues from buff to very dark brown and usually has a brown or orange bill. The male mallard has a white neck ring, which separates its distinctive green head from its chestnut-brown chest. The rest of its body is mottled in lighter brown to gray to black, and its speculum feathers are a distinct purple-blue with black and white edging. The
male mallard’s bill is yellow, and its legs and feet are bright coral red. The male mallard is really a beautiful bird. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from dropping them from the sky whenever I’m given the chance!

I made the mallard-hen call first because most ducks will respond to that kind of sound. We still make the Original Commander Call today, and each one tends to sounds different because every one is still made by hand from wood. Of course we still blow on every call to make sure it sounds exactly right. The Original Commander Call is the quintessential duck “quack,” and the mallard hen typically gives the call in a series of two to ten quacks that start loud and get softer as she goes (sounds a lot like a woman I know at home). Now, not all mallard hens sound exactly the same. When you’re blowing on an Original Commander Call to attract a mallard hen, you can quicken and sharpen the cadence to replicate a young mallard hen, or slow down and draw out the cadence to get an old, raspy mallard hen. There are three distinctive sounds for a mallard hen: quack, feed call, and hail call. The mallard hen call is very versatile and effective.

The Mallard Drake Call came along next. We were the first company to build one, so we patented it so our competitors couldn’t copy our design. The male mallard doesn’t quack; it’s more of a quiet, raspy sound. When I set out to build the Mallard Drake, I superglued various sizes of PVC pipe together and finally
mastered it. When I finally built a call that sounded exactly like a male mallard, I went tearing into our house and told Miss Kay, “I have it! We’re going to revolutionize duck calls as we know them!”

I blew on the Mallard Drake Call for her.

“What is that?” she asked me. “Is it a frog?”

If you blow too high on a Mallard Drake Call, you really do sound like a tree frog—and there’s no meat on those suckers! You have to catch the plump bullfrogs if you want a meal. The Mallard Drake Call is different from any other duck call. With most calls, you say, “Ten, ten, ten,” while you’re blowing into it. But with the Mallard Drake, you’re basically saying, “Aaaaah,” on a very low bass note as you raise your fingers off the call. It’s an easy thing to do, unless you’re a tenor. The Mallard Drake Call is controlled by your vocal cords and is really a whistle with a stem on it. You have to remember that when you’re on an amplifier, whether it’s with a guitar or any other musical instrument, you get maximum vibration when you hit a bass note. So you have to go really, really low when you’re calling mallard drakes.

Conversely, there are three types of ducks that are whistlers: teal, wigeon, and pintail. Believe it or not, I built our first whistle from a children’s musical toy set. None of the flutes and horns in the toy set sounded like a duck, but after I spent an hour with a band saw and used plenty of superglue, I built a whistle that sounded like six birds! For pintails, you put your finger in the
opening while you’re blowing; for wigeons and teals, you blow straight into the whistle. You can even use our whistle to call mallard drakes, doves, or quails if you want. That’s why we call our whistle a six-in-one call.

The green-winged teal is the smallest of the North American dabbling ducks. It has a short neck and small bill, and its chestnut head has a green eye patch that extends to the nape of its neck. It’s another pretty bird. Male green-winged teals have a high-pitched, single-note
peep
sound, while females are relatively quiet. But the females will let out a sharp, high-pitched quack when they’re flushed. Like most women, you’ll know when they’ve been bothered! When you’re calling a green-winged teal, you don’t do it very loud, and you use fine, little short notes while you’re blowing air directly into the whistle. It’s almost like a miniature mallard hen call, but when you get four or five people
peep
ing at the same time, it’s exactly what teals sound like on the water.

There are also blue-winged teals and cinnamon teals, and they’re identifiable by the colors their names suggest. The blue-winged teals, which have blue-gray upper wings, are common in the northern prairies and parklands of the central United States. We see a few blue-winged teals every once in a while, but they tend to winter farther to the south. The male has a high-whistled
tsee, tsee
sound, while the female lets out loud, evenly spaced quacks. The blue-winged teals are a lot of fun to hunt because
they fly very fast and make erratic twists and turns as they fly low over your decoy spreads. The cinnamon teal, which has a cinnamon-red head, neck, breast, and belly, are common around the Great Salt Lake in Utah and the central valleys of California. They winter in Mexico and other parts of Central America, so we don’t see them in Louisiana. The male cinnamon teal makes a series of
chuk
notes, while the female gives off more of a quack.

We see a lot of American wigeons, which are also known as baldpates and have a bluish gray-tipped bill. The males have a white crown on their heads and a green face patch. The wigeon drake gives out three high, squeaky whistles, like
whee, whee, whee
. To call a male wigeon, you stick the whistle in the corner of your mouth and clench your teeth. You blow three times and make sure you accent the second sound. The female wigeon, which has a gray head with a brownish-black crown, gives out a quack sound. We usually end up seeing a lot of American wigeon ducks; they nest in parts of Canada and are usually the first to migrate south for the winter.

The northern pintail is a long, slim duck with long, narrow wings, a slender neck, and a long tail. You can’t mistake a pintail for any other kind of duck. Some people call them the “greyhounds of the air,” and the males have chocolate-brown heads with a white stripe on each side of their necks. The male lets out growling, guttural notes, and they’re not easy to duplicate. If you
look in the mirror, you’ll see a round piece of meat hanging in the back of your throat. God gave us that piece of meat to call a pintail duck. If we didn’t have it and couldn’t flutter it as we blew air into a whistle, we’d sound like a backhoe backing up:
beep, beep, beep!
But because God gave us that piece of meat, we can sound exactly like a pintail duck. The female pintail quacks and sounds nothing like a male.

Now, I can’t take credit for all the duck calls that Duck Commander has developed over the years. One time when my son Jase was hunting with me, he had a mallard hen call in one corner of his mouth and a whistle in the other and was blowing them at the same time. As Jase was blowing on both of them, a flight of gadwalls turned and came right down to our decoys. After we shot ’em, I asked Jase, “What were you doing down there? It sounded like a gadwall.”

Jase had a mallard hen call in one corner of his mouth and a whistle in the other and was blowing them at the same time.

“Why do you think they came down here?” Jase asked me. “They thought I
was
a gadwall.”

As with the Mallard Drake Call, we were the first company to introduce a gadwall drake call. Gadwalls are about the same size as mallards, but there’s really nothing very distinctive about them. The male gadwall is gray-brown with a black patch at its tail, while the
females are patterned with brown and buff. The male gadwall makes short, deep, reedy calls that sound like a burp; the females quack like mallards, but with a higher pitch. To call a gadwall, you give the call one
tat
every four seconds or so.