Forcing myself to learn

[aunt betty]

Sounds like the call I gave Adam.
It's a Timber, not Timbre, and cost only $20. (regular price $40)

Small bore with molded guts.
Tuned really light where if you blow it hard it locks.
Tuned a zink power hen the same way after taking the top reed out.
I re-named it Fink after Cody. Not sure he liked that.

You can make anything sound good once you get good like John.
I bet he can make one of them tiny calls you get at the gas station work too.


Do some random feed chatter and you're gold.

[aunt betty]

There isn't any use for "hiccup" in the duck call vocabulary but for some reason when I started fiddling around with hiccups I gained 100% control of my duck calls.




Try it sometime.

[Rick]

Curious if you've found tone changes with the toneboard orientation of that call? My CWF reminded me of a Lares in terms of inherent rasp, but was appreciably more fussy about where its toneboard was than the Lares I've owned. The CWF and a Gaston Strait Barrel have been the only two of the way the hey too many calls I've owned that ran different with differing toneboard orientations no matter how long I ran they and they alone.

That the Lares would become orientation dependent when I was switching between it and a RNT but didn't when it was the only call I ran for several days makes me suspect a quirk in my air presentation, but know I'm not alone.

[aunt betty]

The MVP is where you're going to end up.
I try to keep every one that anyone has ever let me try. So far nobody is giving theirs up.
The DC drives like an old 1947 Dodge that has no power steering.

[Rick]

From out here in the cheap seats, I'd guess it will depend on the type of contest. Appears tough to beat a MVP's range for mainstreet, but the raspier stuff seems to have an edge on meat or "live duck" type contests. Would expect John to have a better handle on that than I.

(In the field, high, crisp and clean have most often shown the most leverage on tough tall traffic days - in my hands. But how much of that can be credited to the confidence I've gained from years of past success with a MVP so tuned then being put back into its use is hard to determine. Have always run my over-bored MVP tuned lower and raspier than the more successful standard one, and a Stanley Deceiver tuned more like my standard MVP both out reached the standard and out-shown that lower pitched, over-boared MVP at long range last season. So my "new" call audition next season will likely be that old over-bored MVP with a new, higher and cleaner, tuning just to see how that fairs against the Deceiver at range.)

Re: the Daisy Cutter, I put a new, easier running DC's toneboard to emery cloth to recapture my old half-scroll era DC's sound and running characteristics - in large part because I like what practicing with it does for running my working calls. Much like what running in sand does for running on hard ground.

[Rick]

That call sounds much the same as I remember my early, half-scroll, DC. (Which I'm sure all varied some.)

They apparently had a very narrow sweet spot and could be troublesome enough to prompt design improvement, which many of us felt wasn't. Mine was initially quite prone to locking on the quiet little clucks and chucks I'm inclined to do while marking time between more meaningful licks, so I sent it back to Jim who got some of that out but called to say he'd rather send me a new insert than go farther and maybe lose what he felt was spot-on DC tone. Since I wanted to keep that "Janis Joplin of Susies" tone, and it was only locking on what amounted to a nervous mannerism, I had him return it like he liked it. Was less prone to lock but still did occasionally, and any tiny bit of trash on the toneboard could screw it up until the day I broke its trim tab ten or so years later. Fussiest call about cleanliness I've ever run much.

[aunt betty]

Another thing that took me to a better level of calling was, hate to say it, destroying some old calls.
Not pounding them with hammers but learning the do's and don'ts on tuning.

For two decades I blew cheap two-reed disposable calls that I could afford to lose. Didn't know shit and there was no internet or I hadn't found it yet. Single reeds uh uh.

Transitioning was tough and every single reed ever was tuned for some guy who had lungs twice as big as mine.
That forced me to start fiddling with shaving reeds and shortening them up a bit.
Eventually I got decent enough to make a call sound good enough to make the ducks curious.

It's part of being the guy that everyone is trying to sound like. I recall listening to guys who I later found out were using cut down Olts back in the mid-80's and trying my ass off to sound like that. On public there is sometimes one guy who can call meat and it used to really matter. I learned by listening to that guy. He's gone and the marsh is named after him now. Mac McGee.