Goose Calls & Calling Techniques

[Outdoors Junkie]

Here is an article I found on the Ducks Unlimited site.

GOOSE CALLS & CALLING TECHNIQUES
All goose calls are not created equal, nor are the hunters who use them

By Chuck Petrie

There are probably few sounds in nature as melodious and soothing as the asynchronous, resonant, flutelike calls of Canada geese. Nor are there few sounds more irritating than the shrill to strident, discordant, grating, caterwauling notes produced by a nimrod hunter blowing a man-made goose call?usually a hunting buddy who, to your misfortune, is sharing a goose blind with you. (Yeah, right, Larry, you?re really great on that call. But, could you tune it down a notch? Like . . . below the threshold of pain?) Fortunately for all of us, call makers keep producing better, easier to operate goose calls as well as improved goose calling instructional tapes and videos, and those hideous Spike Jones calling performances are becoming things of the past.

Man-made goose calls have existed since about the turn of the 19th century, but because early waterfowlers preferred hunting ducks rather than geese, goose calls didn?t appear until almost 50 years after the first single-reed duck calls were manufactured. In fact, all the early goose calls were designed much like the first single-reed Arkansas-style duck calls. Consisting of an air chamber inside the call?s barrel, and a reed assembly contained in the end piece, these early designs, still somewhat popular today, are known as resonate chamber calls, as are their counterpart duck calls. Today, however, in addition to resonate chamber calls, hunters have three other distinctive types of goose calls available to them: the flute call, invented and developed in the 1950s; the tube call, developed in the late 1970s; and the short-reed call, developed in the late 1980s.

Resonate chamber calls are the most popular and the easiest of the four types of calls to operate. The hunter merely exhales into the call, pushing air at first slowly from his diaphragm into the call?s mouthpiece, following the slow exhalation with a quick exhalation, or air burst. The slow exhalation produces the low, guttural Her sound of the Canada goose?s familiar Her . . . ONK recognition call, the quick exhalation the higher-pitched ONK sound. In a resonate chamber call the air chamber is built in front of the reed assembly (see diagram). Air pressure builds inside the air chamber as the call is blown, causing the reed to vibrate and produce first the guttural sound, then the higher-pitched note as the call ?breaks.?

One drawback of the resonate chamber call, despite its ease of operation and ability to produce relatively high volume, is its limited tonal range. It cannot reproduce many of the midrange notes that geese make, especially those notes that mimic the pleading sounds of the Canada?s comeback call. Nor can the call?s reed break quickly enough to produce a fast series of clucks or double clucks, allowing the caller to simulate the calls of more than one goose.

In 1954, the P.S. Olt Company introduced the first flute call, the Olt A-50. A redesigned reed assembly placed in front of a long flute-like air chamber allowed this new call to reproduce most of the midrange notes made by geese. The ability of the call to make these ?confidence notes??the imploring sounds of the comeback and the rapid clucking notes geese make when oncoming flocks arrive on their feeding areas?soon made it a favorite with goose hunting guides and professional callers on the goose-calling competition circuit.
Flute calls?today made by more than a dozen different manufacturers?have two disadvantages; 1) they don?t have the volume of the loudest resonate chamber calls, and 2) a flute call must be operated with a caller?s tongue, hand, and larynx movements. How fast the reed vibrates is determined both by back pressure on the reed and forward pressure from exhalation. But because a flute call?s reed is in front of the air chamber, back pressure must be controlled by cupping the hands over the bell end of the call (see photo, page 99), allowing more or less pressure to build in the chamber as the hands are closed or opened, respectively. Additionally, the flute call design requires the operator to raise his tongue to the roof of his mouth to crisply stop each high-end note, and to blow a laryngeal growl into the call to reproduce guttural low-end notes in a hail call or the murmuring low-end notes in feeding or lay-down calls. Coordinated breathing, tongue, larynx, and hand control, and considerable practice, then, are required to properly operate a flute call and enjoy all of its advantages over a resonate chamber call.

The tube call, long used in turkey call designs, was introduced in its goose call configuration by Harold Knight, of Knight and Hale Game Calls, in the late 1970s. Considering its construction, this is the simplest goose call of all, comprising a short plastic tube, a rubber diaphragm, and a rubber collar to hold the diaphragm over the tube.

The tube call is perhaps the most realistic sounding of all man-made goose calls, evidenced in part by Knight?s using one to win three world goose-calling championships. Indeed, in the hands of an expert, the tube call reproduces sounds indistinguishable from those made by wild geese. Additionally, the tube call does not freeze up in cold weather as reed-type calls are sometimes prone to do.
There are, however, few tube call devotees and fewer tube call experts because, of all the major goose call types, the tube call is the most difficult to learn to operate. The tube call is also the quietest of the major call types and thus not effective for long-range calling or calling during windy conditions. Add to this the fact that it is a difficult call to keep in tune, and it?s easy to see why few hunters even attempt to master the tube call.

Just as some inventors are always attempting to build a better mousetrap, call makers have also kept trying to improve upon goose calls. In the 1980s, call innovators Keith and Charlie Hess did so by modifying an existing resonate cavity call, the Olt L-22 Regular Goose Call. The Hesses altered the call?s reed and tone board, then took their creation to Harold Knight and David Hale of the Knight and Hale Game Calls Company. The result was the Knight and Hale Double Cluck Plus?a resonate chamber call employing two reeds: one that vibrates on exhalation, the other on inhalation?followed by the single-reed Magnum Clucker model.

In the mid-1980s, the Hesses also worked with professional goose guide and goose call manufacturer Tim Grounds of Johnston City, Illinois, in developing Grounds? Half-Breed Goose Talk call. Grounds, also a former world-champion goose caller, dubbed his new call a ?short-reed? call, in part because it looked much like a cut down version of his Guides Best flute call. Despite the outward resemblance, however, Grounds? and other manufacturers? short-reed calls are actually close cousins to the older resonate cavity calls, with the reed assembly contained in the call?s end piece (referred to as a ?stopper? in a resonate cavity duck call), but with a much shorter reed, and some differences in the tone board and wedge (the reed, tone board, and wedge make up a call?s reed assembly, which is friction fitted into the end piece). Also, most short-reed calls? reeds are shaved slightly thinner at their midsection, which allows them to flex more easily and thus break faster.

Because a short-reed call?s barrel is slightly shorter than a resonate cavity call?s barrel and much shorter than the barrel of a flute call, its reed assembly is closer to a caller?s mouth and thus produces a louder, higher-pitched sound. Since he introduced his Half-Breed call in 1987, Grounds has experimented with slightly shorter or longer barrels, different barrel bore sizes, reed thicknesses, and other variables to produce more than a half dozen short-reed call models that produce a range of pitches, from the very high-pitched Half-Breed to lower-pitched short-reed calls such as his ?Long Mag? model. ?That?s because,? says Grounds, ?high-pitched calls get the attention of geese at a distance, but you also need lower, bottom-end notes to finish them.?

? Short-reed models vary in their barrel lengths, and the closer the reed assembly is to your mouth, the higher pitched the call will be and the more difficult it is to blow,? says Fred Zink, of Clayton, Ohio, a prot?g? of Tim Grounds and himself a professional guide, call maker (Zink Calls, which includes short-reed models such as the Paralyzer SR-1, the Power Clucker PC-1, and the Power Maximus PM-1) and a former world-champion goose caller. ?The farther away from your mouth the reed assembly is,? Zink adds, ?the easier it is to blow and it produces a deeper pitch.? The real advantage of a short-reed call, though, Zink says, is in its sound-producing versatility. ?The old resonate chamber calls are easy to blow, but they only have a three- or four-note capability. You can only use them to honk, cluck, and murmur. Flute calls produce more notes, but many are difficult to blow, have a nice mellow pitch, but are not as loud as a short-reed call. By comparison, the short-reed is more difficult to blow than a resonate cavity call and easier to blow than a flute call; it has the widest range of notes?25 to 30 notes or pitches?and is loud and sharp.?

According to Sean Mann, of Trappe, Maryland, yet another call manufacturer (Sean Mann?s Outdoor Products, which include the Eastern Shorty short-reed call among other duck and goose calls), professional guide, and yet another former world-champion goose caller, ?Not only do short-reed calls produce the widest range of notes, they can also produce them faster, because of their more flexible, faster-breaking reeds. A short-reed is light years faster than an Olt A-50 and flute calls of similar design. A short-reed call is also louder, snappier, more percussive, than a flute call, which is more melodious and natural sounding, but you can also still use a short-reed to make the sweet sounds that geese like to hear at closer ranges.

? As with other types of duck and goose calls, the tonal quality and volume of a short-reed are also affected by the material it?s constructed of,? Mann adds. ?For instance, if you take the same reed assembly and end piece and stick it in an Osage orange wooden barrel, you?ll get a softer, more raspy call. Stick it in an acrylic barrel, and you?ll produce the sharpest, raspiest, loudest sound; and in a coca bola wood barrel it will make softer sounds that accentuate base tones. The barrel material creates resonance differences that affect the reed?s vibration.?

While most call makers extol the unique virtues of the short-reed call, not all of them agree on the best way to operate one. Part of this is due to individual calling technique, however, and partly due to regional calling styles. While all agree that you must use your cupped hands to create back pressure as well as to provide acoustic sound chambers for a short-reed, much as you do with a flute call to create various pitches and notes, not all agree on other variables. According to Mann and Grounds, for instance, you need to press the top of your tongue against your upper palate to crisply start and cut off certain notes such as the honk. Zink and call maker Jeff Foiles, manufacturer of Foiles Migrators calls, advocate keeping the tip of the tongue down, behind the front teeth, and varying the arch of middle tongue to make all of the notes a short-reed can produce. Foiles and Zink create honks by blowing ?pops? of air into the call, in the same manner that they?as well as Mann and Grounds?create other goose sounds such as the cluck, moan call, and the comeback call. Otherwise, while most call makers utilize their larynx to produce growling sounds that give low-end notes a raspier sound, Mann doesn?t advocate that practice but instead uses entirely a breath- or air-flow approach, which is more a reflection of his Eastern Shore roots, where the goose-calling style includes clearer notes without the more raspy sounds sometimes preferred by callers from other parts of the country.

Regardless of their calling styles, most professional guides and call makers feel that the most important goose vocalizations to master for hunting are: first, the cluck; then, the deep, drawn-out moan call; followed by the double cluck, the honk, and finally the murmur (or feeding call).

In a very large nutshell, that?s it. But don?t expect to pick up a waterfowl call and become a proficient caller overnight. As in learning how to play any woodwind instrument, blowing a duck or goose call requires plenty of practice, and you?ll need to follow the directions of experts like Tim Grounds, Fred Zink, Sean Mann, and Jeff Foiles, all of whom have produced instructional videos, audiotapes, or CDs that explain the fine points of using their products. (Looking for a Christmas gift for your hunting buddy Larry?).