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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Chris Jennings: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Jennings. Joining me in the Ducks Unlimited Podcast studio today is Brooke Richard and Kelly Powers from Higdon, Mo Marsh, and Power Calls. Guys, welcome to the DU Podcast.
Brooke Richard: Thanks for having us, Chris. Always a pleasure. Glad to be here.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, this is exciting. I know Brooke and I have probably had the conversation to do this type of podcast with both of you guys. We probably had this conversation two years ago and it's finally coming to fruition. Before we kick off, you know, just to let our audience know, what we're going to do here is we're going to actually let both of these guys get on the calls, talk about how they're doing it, basically like a duck calling, goose calling 101 intro. And then we're going to spin off into some separate episodes where we're doing Canada geese and speckled belly geese with both of these guys. It's super fired up to do this. But before we do that, I'm going to let these guys both introduce themselves to our audience and just kind of who they are, what they do, where they're from. So Brooke, you want to go ahead and kick that off?
Brooke Richard: Sure. If you guys don't know who I am, my name is Brooke Richard, originally from Lafayette, Louisiana. I work at Higdon Outdoors. My wife and I moved to Paducah, Kentucky, March of 2016. We've been there ever since. Duck hunting's great, don't tell anybody. But yeah, I'm a duck hunter. That's who I am. I grew up speck hunting in South Louisiana, duck hunting in the marshes in South Louisiana. ventured out chasing specks as the migration started drifting towards southeast Arkansas. So naturally, that's where I spent a lot of my time. Started guiding and ended up getting a job offer from Higdon. So it's been seven, eight years. Time flies, but it's been a really good time. My passion, much like Kelly's, is derived out of chasing waterfowl, hunting with good family and friends. Really got my start in this whole industry in contest calling. As did Kelly, and that was derived just off of the desire to want to chase waterfowl and learn about them year-round instead of just 60 days a year during duck season. So Kelly's a lot more accomplished than I am on stage. I've had a little bit of luck. Like duck calling, like speck calling, like hunting. You got birds, call me. Yeah.
Chris Jennings: Awesome. Well, we're happy to have you in studio for sure.
Kelly Powers: Kelly? Yes. So, you know, I was born and raised in Union City, Tennessee, just up the road about two hours here, north of Memphis. Obviously, like Brooke, you know, we come from a farm family and we, farming and waterfowl hunting go hand in hand. When you're not in the fields in the summer, you can be in the marsh and the flooded fields in the winter. Grew up kind of was a passion of mine when I was in high school I thought you know I wanted to work in the outdoor industry but I didn't know how or didn't know the avenue to get there and I kind of took a somewhat what I call a redneck hobby and goose calling contest and not calling contest and I thought maybe this could kind of springboard me to. cement my name on a resume, where if I walked into a company, they would know who my name is before I walked in that door. And kind of that dream was a dream of mine in 97 when I graduated high school and started calling contest in 98. 1999, I was fortunate to win the World Goose Calling Championship. And that kind of started a career, I should say, really in the calling contest world. And I was fortunate because in the late 90s and 2000s, calling contests just started soaring. And I was there for that apex and that peak. And Went on to win World Goose Champion of Champions, and the Masters, and US Open, and several other titles there that I kind of wanted to make a checklist. To go down that list for me is from an accomplishment standpoint. But all along the way, interesting, I was one of the early employees with Higdon Outdoors back when we just had goose decoys with their dad, Mark Higdon. And we started, myself and my two brothers, we started our retail store, Final Flight Outfitters, and they kind of went hand in hand. We sold Higdon products and all of that. And truthfully, I've been fortunate to grow with Higdon, still be a co-owner and a co-founder of Final Flight. So retail and manufacturing, wear a lot of different hats, but it's kind of fun now to look back 24, 25 years later, and those companies have just really soared. And I'm proud to kind of be a part of that. Yeah, so like I say, same with Brooke, love to duck hunt, love to goose hunt. A lot of people look at me being from Tennessee thinking, man, where did you get coming from a goose calling background? You know, there's not that many Canada geese in Tennessee. Well, back, you know, back in the 80s growing up, there actually was. Roefoot Lake would win, you know, probably 100,000 Canadas. So even Wheeler Lake, Alabama was a big winter destination for Canada geese, and specifically Horseshoe Lake Crab Orchard in Illinois was just up the road about an hour and a half, and it was strong for Canada geese. So I kind of grew up in that era and was fortunate to kind of rub elbows with a lot of the big guides and call makers of that time, and so kind of didn't know any different. But truth be told, duck hunting is still my passion, specifically timber and stuff like that there in Northwest Tennessee. That's a little bit of my background and we can get into more here I guess later on.
Brooke Richard: because of our occupation is traveling all around the country, duck hunting with our TV show. And, you know, a lot of these, these times and places we get thrown in to situations where we've never been, never hunted this group of birds, regardless of species. Kelly Powers is the guy that is very methodical. The people he's hunted with along his way and his journey and his life, the things he's learned, he's one of the few people that we could show up in the dark. And if he says the sky is going to be magenta in the morning, I believe him. I mean, he's seen, he just understands it. Uh, he thinks about things through. It's taught me a lot, but Kelly is a, an expert at understanding the hunt and he's done a lot. He's seen a lot, been a lot of places with a lot of very talented people. So, um, I'm blessed to be able to hunt with him. He has to do it cause it's his job. You know, you have to tell me, no, that's the only reason he does it. But Kelly is a true master of his craft, both in calling and pursuit of, of especially waterfowl.
Chris Jennings: Yeah. And, you know, and that's one thing, you know, just what you guys do, you kind of mentioned it, but showing up in random locations throughout the country, whether it's the Puget sound or, you know, you're going to Saskatchewan, you know, you, when you show up there, especially with the TV show, there's so much pressure, like. You know, you really want to have a good shoot. So, like, I mean, it makes sense that you want to use every, you know, every single skill in your bag to make this situation, even if you don't know what it is, you know, you're still, you have to make it exactly not perfect. I mean, you want it to be perfect, but water fouling is never perfect.
Kelly Powers: That's right. I've seen, you know, I've always kind of, not the definition of a bad hunter, but, you know, that sounds a little harsh, but one that doesn't necessarily think outside the box or travel outside their normal locale to hunt. And everywhere in the country you go to, there's different techniques and all that, but it all has the same common goal. And I've been fortunate to learn from going to those areas, and you kind of see things done a little differently here and there. And it may be, you know, at the end, you still have the same common goal, but whether it's decoy strategy, calling strategy, and all that, and you kind of pick up bits and pieces there, and there's somewhat of general consensus you can land in. And fortunately for me, when I, even through the last, I'm 45 years old, and my whole life had been, goodness, I've been so blessed to hunt with some of the world's best hunters. I mean, from goose to duck, from, I mean, from, you know, growing up obviously passionate with Tim Grounds and, and what he's helped me do in my career, you know, and then you hunt with the duck guys and, and relationship with the Richintone guys or, or Eli Haydel, you know, and, and those people. And you look back on a life and some of those folks are not with us anymore, but you look back and think, goodness, how blessed was I to be able to, collaborate with those and on hunting expeditions and things and for multiple species. And now you look back on it, it's like, goodness, like when you go in these areas that you've never been into before, you're like, boy, I remember, you know, Tim, you used to love these hilltops. Remember, you know, and you don't realize you're learning from people during that time, but you are. And truthfully for me too, though, Rook, it's no different. I mean, even our whole crew, I mean, everybody, we all learn from each other. No matter where you're at, you still pick up something every single day that benefits you tomorrow.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, and I think that's one thing to note too. And what I do, you know, dealing with all the product coverage for the magazine and online, Full Redux Unlimited, I deal with a lot of call manufacturers. Some of the older guys from the past, some of the newer guys. And I think what's interesting with the call manufacturing group, in other areas of water balling and the outdoor industry in general, even in fishing, it's very, very competitive. And it seems like the call makers and they all just, you guys are all friends. It seems like you all know each other, you all, you know, talk all the time. I mean, I know you guys talk to the Richitone guys all the time, like you mentioned Tim Grounds, you know, like, why do you think that is just with that calling group?
Kelly Powers: The same common theme and calling contests today is, honestly, it's changed a lot. I mean, I remember used to back in in the heyday when I was calling, I mean, man, backstage it was, you know, myself, Tim Grounds, you'd have Fred Zink, Alan McCree, Sean Stahl, I mean, I can go on down the list. And Phil Hudnall, absolutely. I mean, and still some of these, some of my dear friends, um, and, and I mean, we can go on down the list, Scott Trotters that are a hundred, you know, really a hundred individuals we can say, but When you look at that, to be quite honest, I'm very competitive, and I'm going to beat you. We're on stage, it's game on. That was my attitude. But the ones that I didn't win, I'm so happy for the winner. Because when we're backstage, truth be told, we're talking about, hey, where are we going to eat afterwards? Because at the end of the day, we always joke, Wade Walling always said it best, this is a bird whistle. Like, you know, yes, it's a tool that helped launch careers for a lot of us, but at the end of the day, it's just a bird whistle. It's just an instrument, and we're doing this, and it's fun, but, man, they're some of my dearest friends, you know, and we're talking about sports, football, whatever, even though, yeah, we're competing against that person across the table from us, you know, but at the end of the day, like, there's a common camaraderie of that, and then to take it a step further, when hunting season gets there, a lot of these guys I'm traveling with, You know, and you're doing life with.
Chris Jennings: You know, you're driving around in the car for 12 hours, staying in hotels.
Brooke Richard: It'd be really awkward if y'all didn't like it. Yeah, and you're talking about family.
Kelly Powers: You probably wouldn't do it. Yeah, and you're talking about family and kids and this and that, and I mean, goodness, I mean, and literally, and a lot of those folks I've mentioned, even though we may have drifted apart, they're some of my dearest friends. You know, like, goodness, I mean, where does time go? Like, you don't talk for years, but you're like, man, how you doing? How's family? You know. Because you remember those times, so.
Brooke Richard: Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, it's just mutual respect, too. Like, those people, if you're in a world championship duck calling contest, you're sitting back there with 50 other people that are more like you than anybody else you've come in contact with outside of that area. So, I mean, for me, it's just always, like, just a mutual respect of, you know, recognition of their talent. And it's not just about that 90-second routine or that contest. Whenever they leave, they're still chasing ducks. They're probably fishermen. They're probably going to turkey hunt. go to church, not that, you know, that defines a person by any means, but they're a lot like you. You know, they're just, they're there because they love it. They respect you, it's mutual respect.
Kelly Powers: I remember the Winchester World Open Goose Calling Contest, which used to be, back then, was probably almost as big, or from a lot of colors, was probably harder to win than the world in Maryland. And just because of the talent that was there that came out of the Midwest, and it was held in, you know, in Southern Illinois, right there in Carterville. And I remember, you know, Tim would always have a big cookout on Sunday, the contest was on Sunday, so on Sunday night he would have a big cookout, he would have a big shrimp bowl, and there's a photo, and one of the last ones that we had, and goodness, there's like 50 of us there. But you look at the individuals that were there and where they are now in the outdoor industry, And like, they're either own companies or start, you know, and highly successful, incredible callers. But, gosh, it was so much fun. Like, we were there just to hang out and do life together, and it wasn't even a, you know, the contest was kind of an afterthought. I mean, everybody at the contest, we won't need to hurry up and get over, you know, because we're all going to go hang out and watch football games and all of that. That is definitely some good memories.
Brooke Richard: It's so cool because calling is just one small part of it. And I'll refer to Kelly as a surgical technician when it comes to hunting. He's very methodical and he brings his experience and his willingness to try different stuff to the table. But that's honestly why he's such a good caller, you know, or why he's such a good hunter is because calling is, you know, let's just say calling is 10% of the hunt. You know, you got to know how to do it, whether it's 10% or 80% on any given day, but he's perfected that. That's why he's successful in the field is because he's not going to leave a stone unturned and calling is a big part of your success in hunting, whether it's turkey hunting or duck hunting or goose hunting or spec hunting, snow goose hunting. You've got to remember to charge the battery on your e-caller because it's important. So a lot of, a lot of these guys contest calling, you know, they're, they're a lot like Kelly and I, they're. They're going to perfect that 10% and it's going to be 100% perfected so they don't have to worry about it when they go hunting. And that's it. I mean, calling is important. It's a huge part of success, especially in waterfowl. So, it's just, you're going to perfect every small piece of the puzzle and then you're going to have the best opportunity or best chances to maximize on your opportunity on your next adventure.
Chris Jennings: Yeah. And, you know, communicating. It's all about communicating with these birds.
Brooke Richard: I'd quit hunting if I couldn't call them. Yeah, absolutely. If I couldn't call them in or fool them. I don't know if I'd still do it. I mean, I'd probably still do it, but it would not be nearly as fun.
Chris Jennings: Yeah. No, I mean, and that's what it is. I think a lot of people, even amateur callers and people who are just getting into it, that's the lure to it, is being able to communicate with that bird. And doing it, using the tool to do it, is one thing, but also knowing when to do it.
Kelly Powers: Knowing when to do it. Yep. Some of the best advice, you know, I've heard, and credit to Harold Knight, dear friend, and he said this multiple times, you know, when you're When you're on the X and you're where they want to be, and specifically if they're coming to you, and a lot of this is with turkey or any species, but let's just say that it's with ducks or geese, when they're coming to you, some of the worst things that you could do is actually call. And it's knowing when to put the call up. And there's a lot of younger calls that will make that mistake because they want to hear themselves call and they want to think that they're making an impact. But in reality, sometimes it's like you said, it's reading the birds and knowing in reality, hey, they're coming, just hold tight. And always say, if you're playing cards, you save your trump card. You know, don't throw the trump card out first thing. You always kind of save that, and then, you know, let them come. They're coming, let them come. If they don't finish that first swing, when they go, you know, come around, well, then you give them a little bit more. Well, then the last thing you do is a trump card, and at that point, if you haven't effectively worked them into range, then so be it. You've given it, you know, your best effort. reading birds, more importantly, um, is like, is the number one thing, you know, from a, from a skill, before skill level of actually operating a call.
Chris Jennings: Yeah. We're going to do the goose episodes completely separate. So we're going to start out here with just duck calls. The cool thing is we've got. You know, Kelly's got some calls, Brooke's got some calls here. We've also got some new calls, some kind of species specific calls that they brought in that we'll be, uh, we'll be showcasing here in the July, August issue of DU Magazine. But, um, I think the first thing that I'd like to do here, just kind of getting you guys on the call is you're sitting in a blind with someone who's like, man, I've always wanted to be a dog caller. What's the first thing I need to do? And you're basically handing them a duck call and you're like, make this sound or how, you know, how, how do you teach that? You know, being good duck and goose callers also comes with, you know, teaching people how to call. And I know you guys have made video after video, after video, kind of teaching people how to do this, but you know, what are you saying to them in the blind when you're like, all right, man, let's start out with this.
Kelly Powers: Yeah, one of the best teachers, and I think I could speak for Brooke, and I could speak for a lot of people out there, I say, just drop this guy's name, is Butch Richenback, and working with kids and new callers. And he always had a technique, and I remember we'd used to go out to Camp Woody at South Carolina, you know, for the youth camp, and be guest instructors, and watching him interact with these kids was remarkable. But he kept things simple, you know, he would start with a quack, and presenting Aaron to the call, and just that one quack, And he would get these kids to keep it simple. Start with one note, one quack. Well, then do two quacks together. Then do three. Then do four. Then, what you do, then you break that down and you take your first one, a little higher, you know, louder, and then go all the way down to the fourth one. The last thing is inflection with your hands. And seeing him go through that process, and I know I kind of went through that quick, uh, but seeing him go through that process and simplifying it and seeing the light bulbs go off with these kids, like it, it, it, I'll always remember that, you know, and it was a simplistic way of kind of the basics of calling. Um, and honestly, that whole sequence I did, even though it was a quack evolved into a somewhat of a hell call, um, it's still just a quack. It's still just one note back to the basics, you know, and then Brooke, you can go into kind of the others, the feed and stuff that as well.
Brooke Richard: I mean, the biggest, biggest thing to me, and it doesn't matter if you're. a six-year-old kid or a 60-year-old man, whether it's your first duck hunt or your 1,000th duck hunt, regardless of your skill level on a call, depends on how solid your foundation is. And that's what Butch was so good at, was Butch recognized that these kids or these new callers had to have a great foundation in duck calling and the vocabulary of Mallard ducks, especially. A quack is everything. A quack can mean anything. You can build off of a quack with just the simple mechanics of a quack. If you can master that, and then you crawl, you walk, then you run, you don't just go straight into running, your potential is endless. You've got the roadmap. I tell people all the time, people, whether at work or just generally, people will come to me and want to get into Main Street duck calling. What do I need to do first? And the answer is, what do you know? Oh, you're pretty far down the road? Okay, forget everything you know. Because it's going to be a lot easier to teach you without bad habits than it is to start with your bad habits and try to manipulate them because you're limited. So, I always ask people, whether it's in a blind, like, okay, what do you want to do? Do you want to learn how to call ducks? Do you want to just make a few notes so you can help your buddy call? Like what's the end goal here? And it always goes back to the quack, you know, just a simple, the simple mechanics of a quack and the way you think about it. You're not just huffing air into a call. If you pick up a duck call, number one, hold it right. Place the insert of the duck call, which is the smaller part generally of a duck call in the web of your hand and just let, let the call breathe and just put air in the call. Don't worry about grunting or anything. We're just blowing just smooth, fast air into the call like you're blowing out a birthday candle. And once you do that, you'll notice that it's less raspy. This is pretty raspy call.
Kelly Powers: Which is a key point that I just want to interrupt real quick before you go into the segment. Blowing hot air into the call, and the best definition for that is you can blow air into a mirror and not make the mirror fog. Right. but you, hot air is being, you're bringing air from deep down in your chest to where you want that mirror to fog. So, if you want to know if you're presenting air in the right set, you could go to your house, if you've never called before, blow into your mirror. If it doesn't fog up, you're not bringing air down from deep in your diaphragm and from deep in your lungs.
Chris Jennings: That's pretty awesome. I've actually never heard that, and that's always people's biggest issue when they pick, I know just people have never called before, like, let me see a call. They just like, blow like they're blowing out a birthday candle, like you mentioned, but there's more to that.
Kelly Powers: Buck Gardner really always used to use that terminology, and I thought it was actually a pretty creative way of explaining it. But instead of puffing your cheeks out, you don't want to puff your cheeks out, because if you puff your cheeks out and blow into a mirror, it's not going to fog. So when you, you know, it trains your body of how to present air correctly to a call. So if you've never blown a call before, go to a mirror and try to make it fog up.
Brooke Richard: But go ahead, Brooke. Yeah, so I mean, and that's exactly where the conversation was going, so it was perfect. You know, if you're blowing fast air or cool air, you're not fogging up the mirror, like you're blowing out a birthday candle into the call, This call is pretty raspy, so it may not come through clearly, but when you translate cold air into hot air by flexing your stomach, bringing air deep from down, like you're trying to fog up glass, the call will get raspier. So, once you figure out how to do those two different things, you've got all the tools you need. Now, the rest of it is just technique. And I always tell new callers, think of a whistle. Hopefully they can whistle. If they can whistle, it's pretty easy. If they can't whistle, I don't know how much time we have to teach people how to whistle. It's kind of one of those learn on your own type of deals, but if you think about a whistle, just, you know, at the end, there's almost a T. If you remove the actual whistle out and you present air the same way and just focus on the end of the whistle. At the end of that note, what you're going to have is your tongue, everybody does it different, but you're going to stop that air abruptly. When you stop that air abruptly, it creates the quack, right? So you're starting the note and then you're ending the note. And that's a big point that I hear some of the best hunters that you see on social media in the world that think they're just the best callers or whatever, you'll hear them pick up a duck call and they'll go, You know, it's because they're not stopping the note before they start the next one. I'm not saying you can't kill ducks. I'm not saying it's not good. You may think you sound great. Your buddies might think you're great, but if you perfect the quack, you don't have to worry about any of that. And it gets very simple done the right way in the back of the call. Think of a whistle present, hot air, stomach flex, fogging up a window, turn the call around. They're just quacks. So you can literally listen to this over and over again, pick up a call and do it until you get it right. Once you get it right, then you can move on. And like Kelly explained, add a note, then add another note. Butch used to always say, you know, three blind mice, three blind mice. Once that sounds good, add two quacks at the end. then you literally have, you understand the language.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, and that's basically your five-note greeting call. That's it.
Kelly Powers: That everyone talks about.
Chris Jennings: You speed that up. Breaking it down as this basic, you know, and that's perfect. It's the book.
Brooke Richard: It's five notes, right? So, it's three, blind, mice, quack, quack. You have to know the quack. You have to do it right. You have to stop the note before you start the next one, and then the same cadence sped up quickly. It's like a greeting call, right? So, you can make it even longer, and then it's more of a hail call. So it's the same thing. You're just, you're understanding the quack and you're adding a longer quack. You're adding a shorter quack. You're speeding up your quacks. You're stacking more on top of each other to plead. You're only doing a few to not draw too much attention to you. So it's, it sounds very easy. And of course we've had this conversation a million times, it seems like, but there's just so much importance on learning the right way. Don't be in a hurry. Don't take off running before you know how to crawl and walk. Just get the quack. Don't be embarrassed. If you're in the blind and you ask somebody to teach you, you know, tell them that you want to learn the right way. A lot of times the right way is the fastest way and it's the best way.
Kelly Powers: Yeah. And always keep in mind that, you know, what a human can teach you, we can teach you the physics of the call. We can teach you what that air is doing as it travels through that call. We can teach you the mechanics of how to hold the hands. We can teach you all of that. But there's only one true source, and there's only one true expert, and that's the species that we're trying to imitate. So, fortunately, today's age, you know, we have, even on the Ducks Unlimited site, you have audio that you can go and listen to audio. Go to the real source. Go to the park, go to a refuge, listen to ducks, listen to geese, whatever you're trying to imitate. Always rely on us, or humans, to help give you shortcuts and how to achieve that, but keep in mind that there's only one true source. And, you know, that's the species that you're trying to sound like.
Brooke Richard: If you were to learn how to play the piano, you can't watch a 20, 26 minute YouTube video and then go play some Mozart right after. You know, you've got to put the time in. So you just, you just have to understand the basic functions of it. Have good direction. Perfect practice makes perfect. Buck used to always tell me that Rome wasn't built in a day, but buddy, I'm a bulldozer. I'll get you there. You know, so, and he did, he helped me out a ton, but it was because he understood the foundation, the importance of the foundation. And then, you just have to spend time, hours, countless hours, whether you're at the house, or you're driving, or just, you just gotta have a knuckle in your hand. The more time you spend, the better you're gonna be.
Chris Jennings: And this just popped into my head, something that I think you guys would be awesome at answering. You know, a lot of people don't even know what is making that sound in the call. You know, now granted, we've all taken our calls apart, and you're looking at it, but a lot of people don't know the actual anatomy of the duck call. So, they don't really know what they're trying to do, not only with just air control and air flow, but you're trying to get that read to start and stop when you make it start and stop. So, kind of just explain the, you know, tech call part and the anatomy of these calls.
Kelly Powers: So, you know, and to try to keep it simple, you know, growing up, that was, I mean, in high school, friends of mine were may go out at night, and I'm sitting at home and destroying calls, tearing them apart, because I'm thinking, well, if a human built it, a human, you know, I can put it back together, because I wanted to learn. I was so infatuated with the physics of a call, what it's made up, you know, different things. From a duck call standpoint, and a goose call too, they're both very similar. Obviously, components, you have a barrel, you'll have an insert. The insert is what holds the internal, the engine of the call that's actually making the sound. The barrel is just somewhat as a hollow bore that air travels through. On the insert, you can take apart, you'll always, you'll have a tone board. The tone board is the longest piece on the call. On top of that, you'll have a reed. And then on top of that, you'll have somewhat of a wedge block that actually helps seat that whole component together inside the insert. So collectively, the insert will have what we call the guts. which will be your reed material generally is mylar, although you do have some metal reeds and some other stuff. But for the most part, you'll have mylar. Goose calls generally is 14 thousandths. A lot of duck calls, it's 10 thousandths. That's 10 thousandths thickness, you know, if you run a caliper on it. But duck call generally is a little thinner material, specifically on single reeds. A lot of double reeds, you'll see some 14 thousandths as well. Double reeds will have a dimple that'll separate the reed. It'll create a little bit of separation to create rasp. But what happens is when you present air into the call, the air travels through the barrel. When it hits the reed, the air has to escape. So, obviously, the only escape route is through that little tone channel. When it travels through that channel, that reed material will start to vibrate. That vibration is what is bringing out the sound. So, in duck calls, generally, it's going to have a longer reed, so it's going to have a different sound vibration than a goose call. A goose call will be more of a shorter-style reed. And what happens is that, you know, through vibration and through that angle and the pitch of that tone board, whether it's a higher pitch vibration or a lower sound, a lot of factors come into effect. Meaning, the shorter the reed, the higher pitch vibration. The longer the reed, the lower the pitch. The more abrupt angle of a tone board pitch is going to give you a deeper sound. A lot of your cut-downs have that today, your cut-down style call. If it's got more of a longer plane, of a tone board, it's going to give you more of a per se, could be more of a higher pitch sound. So that's kind of what's going on. As air travels through the call, it vibrates that mylar read material, which is like a plastic, and then the air escapes out of the call. And then that's where you're obviously holding onto the insert with your hands, and that's kind of where inflection comes into play. One of the best quotes that I've always heard on calling and calls, and my good buddy Scott Tronin always said, it's about goose calls. He said, you know, you can have a $200 goose call and $2 hands, and you have a $2 goose call. And it's so true because how you, it's specifically in goose calling, you know, how you hold onto the call and what your hands are doing completely changes the tone of everything. You can sound like a guy calling, or you can legitimately sound like a goose, and it's all in the hands.
Brooke Richard: It's 100%. The most important thing in spec calling as well. If you can get the muscle memory on where your hands are and what your hands are doing in correspondence to what you're putting into the call, they work together.
Kelly Powers: I've had kids at shows that sound incredible on a goose call, and their hands are so far out that I would literally hold the call for them, and I would say, hey, blow that same sequence. And I'm moving, I try to memorize the sequence that they're doing, whether it's a couple of clocks, moles, pull back, all this different stuff. So I try to memorize it so I can forecast what's coming, what they're fixing to do. So they will do it. And I'm, I'm doing the hands and they sound like unreal. And like they're using my, I'm actually working the call with my hands, but they're actually presenting the air through it. And it's, but it's that, it's that philosophy. And when you do that once for them, then they're like, okay, yeah, I get it. Like I need to work on my hands and it's, it's hand eye coordination. Kind of like if you're swinging, trying to hit a baseball, it's very similar. Your hands need to be in sync. with the amount of air as it travels through that call. It's an instrument.
Brooke Richard: I mean, at the end of the day, it's a trumpet or whatever you want to, you know, reference to.
Kelly Powers: And I would encourage callers, listen, if you have some sort of a musical background, then that's a big plus. I grew up, I was big in percussion. I love percussion and playing the drums, and I was just, you know, reading sheet music, and I was always a pet peeve of mine, and I hope that when I pass, maybe this will come on, but There's never a standardization when it comes to calling and music as far as writing notes down. There's not. In music, there is. There's a standardization, you know, 4-4 time, 3-4 time and different things. And calling it isn't that. You know, the year that I won the World Goose, the year before that, literally I wrote my routine down on a sheet of notebook paper. And I use my own terminology because there wasn't terminology that was a standard. There's not a standardization of what a cluck should be on a sheet music. There's not. And I'm hoping calling would evolve to where maybe people will start. Because realistically, I could see in 50 years from now, you know, people look at a sheet and just like they play the piano, they pull the sheet music out. Well, then they blow that duck routine. They blow that goose routine based on what's written on paper. Um, and they do that right now with the trumpet or with drums or with piano, but it's missing in, in, in game calls.
Brooke Richard: Or like, just like famous musicians right now, they can't read sheet music. You can be as talented as you want it. It doesn't mean you're not going to be a good caller because you can't read sheet music, but it's way harder to be that good and not be able to read or write music.
Kelly Powers: But I, I, anyway, it's just a pet peeve of mine. I've always thought, cause it's, it is a musical instrument and I would have, you ought to be able to have a, slide me a sheet of paper. And, hey, I'm gonna blow your duct retain real quick.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, and I think that's one thing that maybe, you know, I've sat in blinds with guys who just don't even have calls. And I'm like, well, I mean, you're not even gonna try. But to be honest, it is, what I've seen is, and I'm not a great caller by any means. I try, I say that. But, you know, it's so intimidating for, especially now, for kids, it's a little different because they're getting into it. But, you know, we're hunting with adults who don't call. And I'm like, well, why don't you call? And they're like, man, it just, I don't know where to start. Kind of, you know, and that sheet music, that would make sense to look at that, but also just even conversations like this podcast or videos that you guys are creating, you know, hearing that, you know, how to hold your hands is so important. Most guys who don't call have no idea.
Brooke Richard: Not only that, there's just a million things that come into play. How fast you're putting air into the call. You know, a call's design, it can only accept so much air because it can only release so much air at a time. So the speed of the air, you know, the amount of vibration with voice inflection that you use to start the note is going to start the note deeper. If you take that voice out, it's… So, all these things correspond very directly to what the call is doing versus what you're putting into the call. So, it's a musical instrument just like anything. You just need to spend a little time. It's like getting a really, really fast car, your first car. Like, you don't know if you're stopping too early until you hit something, or you don't know how fast your truck can go until you put your foot to the floor. You kind of have to dabble around. Do not do that, children. That is not what I'm suggesting. Don't go drive around. But you need to get familiar with it. So, don't be intimidated. Get a call. Mess around with it to a point where you're comfortable going to ask a buddy, you know, to teach you. And in a duck blind, when the one duck you've seen all day after hunting with your buddy flies over, now is not the time to learn how to blow a duck call.
Chris Jennings: I think that's also the biggest intimidation factor for people who don't call. One, they don't know when to call, and two, they're so worried that they're gonna screw it up, you know, because we all don't, you know, there's not just ducks flying right in at all times, you know, so people are, they want to capitalize on those opportunities, so they don't want to get that call out, but there's a catch to that, I feel. You know, like you said, you want to spend a lot of time maybe in the car, in the garage, practicing, making those sounds, but also you want to do it in the blonde.
Brooke Richard: Well, it's the kind of definition of insanity, you know. That's right. But at some point, the only reason I'm halfway decent at anything in my life, because I'm never the smartest person in the room, is I've learned from my own mistakes. You have to go learn what not to do. It's a process of elimination. I like to call. I've blown a lot of ducks out of the hole. I've called too much. I've not called enough. I've ran out of wind because I don't practice and not been able to call as much as I wanted to. But you have to try. You just got to try. And if anybody in the blind who sees it, you're actually trying. is telling you to throw your calls away. You know, that's probably because you took advantage of the situation a little bit and got a little too frisky, but hunt with people who will encourage you to better yourself. You know, ask somebody, Hey, I'd like to call it the next one. Would you mind just, just walk me through when to call, tell me when to call. I'm gonna make this sound. It's the one sound I know how to do. Tell me when I can use it to help you out to better our hunt. Because it's half the, I mean, for me, it's half the fun is to being able to just communicate with these birds. I mean, it's, I want to do it. Now you put me, Kelly, Ira, Beau, whoever, all on a blind together. We all understand we don't need to blow our call the whole time. Doesn't mean we're all not going to reach for our duck calls the second any duck flies over. And if somebody starts, you know, and they need help, we'll help them. But it just comes with learning. You have to do it. We're all there to have fun, but. you know, do your group, your group that you hunt with a favor by not waiting till the day before duck season to go buy your first duck call.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, now that's right, the practice. You mentioned that and I was envisioning that in my head. You know, people who really like to call, I've hunted with a lot of pretty good duck callers, and even when they're not calling, it's funny to watch them. I don't know if you guys have seen this, you guys probably do it, but even when they're not calling, like ducks will fly by and they know they're not calling because there's already three dudes who they've already had the conversation and they're calling, but those ducks fly by and they're like, they raise their hand, they've got that call in their hand, you know, they're not putting it into their mouth, but they're like, I'm just going through that motion of grabbing the call, getting it right, getting your hands right, doing that. That's also something to think about when, as we do all this. One thing I do want to mention, we're flying, we're kind of flying through this, and this is some pretty in-depth calling conversations, and I know we're going to skip over something. There's going to be something that we're… So, I just want to throw out a disclaimer. If anyone is like, you didn't do this, you didn't talk about this, we can send those emails to John Hoffman. No, I'm just kidding. That's our photo. No, you can send them to dupodcast at ducks.org. Send those emails and tell us something that we might have forgot about. But as we continue on, we may touch on it.
Kelly Powers: We could do this for a year. I mean, we could talk, I mean, yeah, we could talk one note and talk all day on it. Yeah, and I, Brooke always picks on me because I'm such an analytical and overthink a lot of things, but like, yeah, just the approach of different things. And like you were talking about that one caller of looking at the other callers and trying to go through the motion. And we run through this a lot with the show is, you know, we're filming episodes and you have multiple accomplished callers. But, you know, we've even had the discussion internally like, hey guys, look, realistically, we're all, obviously everybody's calling, but When it's foggy and still, we all don't need to call. And the problem is, is, you know, Brooke's calling while I want to call, or Beau's calling, or vice versa. Like, at some point, you got to have the mindset of like, hey, we need to be realistic here. And what are we, what are we kind of putting out there and really scale it back? And I only have one person calling. Just because, realistically, birds are sitting on the water and they're not very vocal during those, you know, conditions. So, let's try to, you know, copy that.
Chris Jennings: One thing before we, before we move on, you know, we kind of did the brief on the greeting call. Uh, let's talk about the feed call. Because really for me, I, I have buddies who can do a feed call, but can't blow a five note greeting call or a hail call. They just, they just don't put time into practice. They don't do it, but they can do a feed call. And the benefits of having that additional feed call in the blind sometimes is awesome. Now, sometimes you don't need it, but, um, let's kind of talk about the feed call.
Brooke Richard: The worst case scenario, it's a great place for the experienced caller in the blind that's doing most of the work to take a breath. You know, so, for what it's worth, if you can learn one note or just one thing, just learn that one thing and perfect that one thing, whether it's a feet call or a clack, I'm full support of it.
Kelly Powers: The best way to describe it is to keep it very simple. Sound like… Another quote that Scott Tron has always said, you know, a lot of people can sound like a lot of ducks, not many people can sound like one duck. And he's used the same thing really specifically for Canada geese. A lot of people sound like a lot of geese, but not many people can sound like one goose. And same thing with ducks, you know, a lot of people want to go and you hear the feed calls and they go crazy. We can go and do all that junk and all that, but let's sound like one hen. That was two. And it was, yeah. But like, yeah, they're kind of fighting for food, but keep it simple. And I'm just, if I'm going to turn the call around backwards, You're still using that hot air. Yep, still using the hot air. You hear that kind of popping noise in the back of my throat, just tick tick tick tick tick. I always say the word like tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Now, if you want to sound like multiple hands, multiple feeding, you can go into more of that what we call refuge feed or junk and stuff like that. But keep it simple. I mean, you have multiple guys in a blind that's doing that. I mean, it becomes real then.
Brooke Richard: Just to be, just to fully disclose, anyone who shows up and says, man, I can feed call and they do this really fast machine gun feed call. It's not bad, you know? Yeah. But it's not really realistic. You don't have to do that. What Kelly was just doing is what I would refer to as single cuts. It's not tick, uh, like you hear a lot of people do. Not that that's bad, but they're just very simple single cuts. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. The double cut, as I would call it, like that rolling feed, it's two notes, one motion. You don't have to do that. That's where a lot of people get really caught up and start stumbling on themselves. They try to go too fast. You can go slow. You can do the more machine gun effect, just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And it sounds very good. It's, I would rather that over the fastest, loudest rolling feed. On earth, in a hunting situation, you know, you need to be able to sound like one duck.
Kelly Powers: The latter of the rolling feed, it's just you're trying to sound like multiple ducks, you know, but learn to sound like one duck first, and then when you try to sound like multiple ducks, you're not just doing a rolling feed, you're doing a combination of all of it, you know, and we could do a rolling feed. We can do it, you know, but when you mix the both together, You know, when you start mixing all that together, then it's real. And the problem is, is a lot of people want to go from, you know, they just want to hit the home run right out of the gate and ignore sounding like one duck.
Brooke Richard: Yeah. And sounding like one duck, in my opinion, is so much more useful because when you get really good at those single cut feeds, what Kelly was just explaining, that ka-ka-ka, ka-ka-ka-ka, ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, you can use that. You know, everybody, whether you're hunting public or not, you know, birds fly over and you hear the same thing over and over again. Every blind, that one does get caught out the same way. But one thing you can do with single cut feeds, the slower version of it is you can actually use it really aggressively. And a lot of people do it in cut down calls. You'll hear it, but you can use that as a greeting call. You can use that as a hail call. So you get really good at that single cut. There's multiple uses for it. So instead of having to do that same five note cadence that the last 20 groups on the WMA just did and got no reaction, you can do. And that is something different for that bird. It knows what it means. It's not volatile. It's not going to scare the duck. It may, but at least it's something different and it's very easily to communicate with that duck. Clearly, if there's a duck feeding, the duck's probably going to look.
Chris Jennings: And you can vary the volume on that. I feel like even a lot easier than a quacker. You can get a lot, well, I should say some amateur callers can get a lot softer with a feed call. much easier than they can doing some other things.
Brooke Richard: It's a great note. It's that part of a duck's vocabulary, the feeding is what I would call like busy noise. It's not aggressive. It's not, you know, you're not telling the story other than we're real ducks.
Kelly Powers: And you know, no matter where you hunt, if you're hunting in a pressured area, let's just get into an analytical mindset. You have a flock of ducks. It's every little cut or break in timber that they fly over, once they get to the outer edge of that trees, I would say 85, 90% of what they hear is what Brooke just said, a hail call. they're hearing that, that's what they're hearing. Because that's what majority of hunters are doing. On the contrary, let's flip it and let's go actually real and do something different when they get to the edge of that break. Most of the time, that is enough to bank them.
Brooke Richard: I don't care what experience level you are as a listener of this podcast, if you ever go park on a refuge and listen to 20,000 ducks, you will hear a lot more feed calling than five note hail calls. You'll hear them just… Everybody in the blind. I don't care if you're hunting with two people or ten people. All the five node cadences aren't working. Get everyone in the blind and just feed call. Just everyone feed call. Let's see what happens. It works. I mean, it's real. It sometimes can be too much, but it's a great tool to learn and it's a very easy one to master. If you can learn one thing after the quack, it's a quack's foundation. That single cut feed call, you'll use the rest of your duck hunting crew.
Kelly Powers: And to even take it a step further, understand what they're doing when they're making that note. They're feeding. They're eating. If you're in a situation weather-wise, high pressure systems, just both through storm, hard cold front, majority of time, if ducks are making long flights, the first thing they're doing, they're trying to build those fat reserves or feeding heavily. If you're hunting in an area… that is 20 feet of water, they're not doing that sound a whole lot. If you're hunting in an ideal condition, 18 inches or less, and you're in a feeding scenario, it's early in the morning or late in the afternoon, high pressure system, front just moved through, let's be honest, majority of those ducks, they're feeding. A lot of times they're feeding heavily.
Brooke Richard: And they're looking for where the other ducks are feeding. That's the story. That's it.
Kelly Powers: So when oncoming flocks are flying over and when they hear that note, then you have a little competition that comes into play. And you see that, we see this a lot, and especially in the prairies in Canada when you're hunting over dry fields. You know, a lot of reason your spinning wing decoys are popular and all that because they're trying to beat that other duck to the ground because they're competing for food. They're hungry. You know, and same thing when you're in a flooded field or wherever you are hunting back at home, that feeding sound, if they're hungry, if there's all those other scenarios are checked, then yeah, it creates a competitive aspect.
Brooke Richard: That's the story you're trying to sell. Exactly. You're trying to communicate that with the duck and the duck call on your hand is your best tool to do that. So yeah, spend 10 minutes learning how to do a feed call.
Chris Jennings: But I think that's what a lot of people like about calling at ducks and geese is that it's not just necessarily the tool, but it's the knowledge to know. Like you said, if you've got flight ducks, you know, big flight days, are you hunting on a massive lake where they're not feeding? Or are you hunting in a rice field where you know that bird is going there? Well, not know, but it's going there to feed.
Kelly Powers: It's looking for something. Every day, no matter where you are in the world, there is a perfect prescription for that hunt. There is a perfect prescription for every single flock of ducks. And the hard part is, is every flock of ducks, it changes. The wind may be a little different. The wind may be from a different direction. You may have precipitation. You may have rain. You may have snow that moves in. So it changes. Every flock of ducks changes. What we try to do, and I know this sounds crazy and hard, I want to be 100% efficient. If I see 10 flocks all day, I want to work all 10 flocks. If I see 100 flocks all day, I want to work all 100 flocks. Now, obviously that's impossible.
Chris Jennings: That's true Duck Hunter's optimism, though, is what that is.
Brooke Richard: I want an 11 out of 10. I don't know what he was talking about.
Kelly Powers: But the goal is, is let's find the perfect prescription. So every flock that doesn't do that, we have to learn from. Okay, why didn't that flock come in? So then you're analyzing decoys, you're analyzing are we hid well, do I need more brush, who's calling too much, calling too less, calling. So there's so many factors. that go into play to finding that perfect prescription. So, for us, like even when we're filming a show, it's just like, I mean, every day for me, my analytical mind starts going. I'm like, okay, what do we need to do, you know? And then, let's bring topography into play. If you're hunting a spot that you've hunted your whole life, well, you know, when they get to that side of that tree, they're probably going to work in easier than they get to the other side. So, you know those obstacles in play. For us, if we're in a different area, we kind of have to learn the topography, you know, on the whim. So, we're kind of having to learn you know, they may not want to swing over that area, or they may not want to swing over that dry ground, or that, if we're goose hunting this hilltop, they're probably going to want to land on that rise over there versus this valley that we're in.
Brooke Richard: You have to ask yourself, you go scout a field, let's just paint the scenario, you're in central Canada, prairie pothole region, September, October, you go there and see 20,000 ducks in a field. Why are the ducks there? How many of them are there? Oh, that's 20,000, great. When are they coming there and when are they leaving? Okay, well, they're coming there for food, and there's 20,000 of them, What that equals to me is let's get there before, let's beat them there, whatever time of the day that is. So we have to get there before they're there. And they're used to seeing a lot of ducks in the field. So let's hide very well because they're living there. They're coming there consistently. We have to make sure our hide's good, put the sun in our back so they can't see us, have a decent decoy spread. And that's your hunt. I mean, if you go to a loaf pond with 26 Canada geese on it and you've seen them there, you have to ask yourself, why are those birds there? Oh, it's because it's the only pond in the County that isn't getting hunted. You're not going to want to show up and put 50 dozen decoys out. You're going to want to show up, put one or two, hide very well, realistic calling. If no calling at all, you just have to ask yourself the questions of what is my actual hunt? And then go hunt the hunt.
Kelly Powers: You know, and it's interesting, we went through this as a Tennessee hunter, you know, when they first went, allowed us to hunt to the end of January, you know, traditionally growing up, you know, our duck seasons close around middle of January. January 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th, kind of in that range. You're getting old. I know. Well, so, but the first year they allowed us to hunt to January 31st, you know, we noticed a pattern to where a lot of the ducks Obviously, they're paired up, you're starting to see a lot of that pattern, courtship flights, but we were struggling. We were hunting over the same spread that we hunted over in the early part of January, big spread. mixed with Canada goose decoys, duck decoys, all of that. The problem was, is we watched the behavior. I remember one particular flock, we would work and they landed way out in the big open field, shallow water, way out by themselves. So, another flock came and they worked, you know how when you have ducks on the property, like, well, you either got to jump them up, you're not going to kill anything. Other ducks came, they would work that live group of ducks, but they would land 150 yards from them. And not a single duck landed with the other birds. They would pitch out and land elsewhere. And then you start watching their behavior, and a lot of those hens on the water are what's kind of guiding the flight. But those hens are being harassed so bad on the water, they see species of their kind that they're attracted to, but they don't want to land with them and intermingle them. So, then I asked my brother, I said, well, as a hunter, what do we do? Like, we got duck decoys and all that. We pulled every single duck decoy we had and hunted over Canada goose decoys the rest of the season. And it was night and day difference. So, we would hit a duck call every now and then on the swings, but then we would finish everything with goose calls. Because now we're presenting a realistic scenario, but those hens aren't going to be harassed when they come and land with these goose decoys. And it was a night and day difference. Like the rest 10 days of the season was unreal. Yeah.
Chris Jennings: And that's just understanding bird behavior. That's, you know. And it's just, he's a technician. Observation, you know, really just watching what these birds are doing.
Kelly Powers: And those are a drastic thing, you know, but at the time we were in uncharted waters because we've never had the luxury to hunt. that late in the season, you know, previously. So it was kind of like, hey, we got to learn as we go. But when you watch natural behavior and they do that, it's like, wait a minute here. Well, we take drastic measures. Otherwise, the definition of insanity comes into play. You keep doing it, we're going to have the same results.
Brooke Richard: Wise man once told me, your best bet on any hunt is to only be one step behind Mother Nature. We're always playing a game of catch up. But you don't have to be ignorant, for lack of a better term, and put yourself 10 steps behind from go. You can kind of consider all these things that are going on and learn and grab these tips and tricks from other people, whether you're like me and you have to do it wrong a few times before you actually retain it. But, you know, you just try to be as close as you can to being one step behind the ducks. You know, it's, it's a hard thing to do and they're smart, but just remember, we have thumbs and they don't. So you can, you can get real close, but you can outsmart them. It's not going to be every day. You're not going to be perfect, but you know, you can always learn something on every hunt, get a little bit better and just reduce your risk of having quote unquote failure by just getting busted by every duck or not being able to call them in or not being able to decoy any. It happens.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, it happens to me. And that's a lot of, you know, like I said, the bird behavior, the understanding. It's the whole, you know, we've referred to it several times in different articles on ducks.org, like lifetime skills for a waterfowl. You're learning these skills and constantly learning, like you said. It changes. It can change quick. But one thing before we get out of here on this, you know, kind of calling 101 episode, you know, something you had brought up earlier and we've kind of hit a little bit, but really like team calling. You know, if you and you got a buddy that you hunt with all the time, um, you know, how do you basically set that conversation up to be like, Hey, you know, let, let's do this when we're calling. So we're not calling over one another. How do you guys approach that?
Brooke Richard: I can tell you how I approach it. If Kelly and I are hunting together and what he's doing is working, I'm going to put my hand on my shotgun and let him keep working. A lot of time, that's the mentality. We all want to call ducks, but I mean, at the end of the day, do what's necessary, and Kelly and I are both very similar in the way of we want to leave a little in the pocket, you know, because you're going to need it. You're going to have to let that rope out at some point. You're going to need it. You know, if you're successfully calling group after group of duck and you're only giving them about 25% of volume or skills that you have, why would you give them 50%? Let's dial that back to 10% and save it. Why work harder? for the same result or why work harder for a worse result. So, team calling can be advantageous, but just understand what you're saying to these ducks and when you're saying it to them, and then you can work as a team and you can both call and both be successful.
Kelly Powers: You know, I mentioned already part of the prescription. I mean, team calling really comes into play on windy days. where you need volume, you need noise, you know, because just a single caller sometimes is at a disadvantage. I do think a common theme, though, amongst a lot of hunting setups is over-calling. And my point is, is every blind location anywhere in the world, any setup, whether it's blind, doesn't matter, any setup, there's topography that comes into play that can become obstacles to allow that duck or goose to approach and within, you know, safe gunning range, okay? When those obstacles come into play, whether it's a tree line, a hilltop, whatever, your calling has to be in sync to avoid those obstacles. So if your wind is pushing downwind and there's a tall three cypress trees, well, if they get on the left side of that cypress tree, common sense with the wind, they can't finish. So what happens when you have team calling and there's too much calling, as those birds are going away from you, you need to hit them at the right point to where they're going to swing right and not swing left. If they swing left, it's not a finishing swing. And if team calling, if somebody else in the team calls at the wrong time and allows them to swing left, well then that's one swing that those birds got to pass back over you again and do that. And from an analytical approach, realistically, there's probably only about four swings that a duck's going to give you. So every time they fly over you and don't commit, the law of diminishing returns, the likelihood you're going to get them in decreases. So you only have so many swings. So what I try to do is maximize that. So team calling. Be aware of your conditions. If it's a calm day and all that, be aware of your surroundings, because we need to have those ducks to swing right at that tree. And if they're starting to lean left, don't call. By all means, don't call. If you see one of those ducks look to the left, because if somebody calls in that group and they swing left, well, there's one swing now that they've got to pass back over. We know they're not going to finish.
Brooke Richard: And that exact situation, I agree with Kelly. It's kind of like leading from the back of the pack. Kelly's calling these ducks. He's worked on the first swing, maybe even a second swing. I haven't really called much at all. maybe helped him break them, and then I'm kind of just holding my call. That duck gets to that tree, and I know what Kelly's doing. I know he's about to call and turn those ducks right. If those ducks don't turn right, and they just kind of look soft, like they're just not responding well, that's a perfect time for me to help Kelly. You know, just do what he's doing, try to be as loud and aggressive as I can, and as soon as that reaction happens from those birds, I stop and Kelly's driving again. So it's, you're leading from the back of the pack. You're there. You understand the message. Your buddy looks at you, whether he's blue or he's like, you know, indicating call.
Kelly Powers: That's a good time to call. And let's, and let's flip the contrary. Let's say the scenario is real hard code front. Strong north winds. And I love, every hunter loves these scenarios. Um, and you're seeing ducks that are not responding to the calling. I'm, I'm looking around. It's like, Hey guys, let's, let's get on these pretty hard. And a lot of it's that real hard choppy feed. It's really one of the reasons your cut down calls are so popular. They can get that cut down. You know, that real loud volume. And I'll tell guys, do not stop until their toes are on the water. Like, do not stop. Like, all the way to the water. Because what happens, a lot of guys, once they start getting close, people reach over and they grab their gun, or they quit calling and they let the lead caller call. You know, well, that's a scenario where team calling is, hey, it's 100% all the way to there on the water.
Brooke Richard: And a lot of people, and I'm guilty of it too, want to have to call like that on every hunt because it's so rewarding until you actually have to do it. And then after about the third group, you're about to fall over and you just wish you actually didn't have to call on this hunt. So, for what it's worth, that's not what you want.
Kelly Powers: And believe me, team calling, like, when we're filming an episode and me, him, and Bo were out, and they're incredible callers, and we've had this talk, but like, those days that it's calm, Like, you can get off at a distance and listen to us, and if we're team calling like that, sometimes we sound hideous. Like, we are not real. At some point, you have to be disciplined in realizing, hey, only one of us need to call. And it's got to be very minimal. Like, because we're hurting ourselves. You know, and granted, when the cameras are rolling, we all, I mean, we want to, we sell duck calls too, and we sell goose calls, and we want to, it's fun, and we enjoy calling. But at the end of the day, like, there's a time to know when to put it in your pocket. And a lot of times, in a lot of scenarios, that's more often than the team calling comms that we're very aggressive. You know, and that's just, again, it's finding that perfect prescription, being aware of your atmospheric conditions and your terrain and all of that.
Chris Jennings: Cool. Now, I think that's eye-opening for a bunch of people, for a lot of people who hunt with multiple callers. I mean, just hearing you guys talk about that and like, hey, sometimes you just don't call.
Brooke Richard: You all don't have to call.
Chris Jennings: You know, that's kind of, and that's also something you can communicate with your honing partners.
Brooke Richard: Yeah, more is not always better, but more is always more and more is not always better. Yeah, there you go. Just pull it back. If you need more, you got it. If more is too much, you know, maybe you just let your buddy call or say, hey man, how about I just call? And then he says, get out of my blind, go home, you're never hunting with me again. But you just have to, like Kelly said, you just have to understand what's going on. If the birds are reacting well, if you've scouted right, you're exactly where they want to be, the weather's perfect, your hide's perfect, guess what? None of it matters. So, that's where you should start. You try to get yourself in that position, then you use calling and team calling to help turn your hunt into a more successful hunt.
Chris Jennings: It's just a part of it. And since I got you guys in the studio here, and we've just kind of run through kind of the Duck Calling 101, Uh, maybe even got to like 110, 115. There was some pretty advanced stuff in there. Um, but let's just walk through real quick. You know, let's go from your quack, your single quack to your, whichever one of you guys wants to do it. Both of you want to do it. Doesn't matter. We just kind of walk through. We want your, you know, quack. Or a single quack. Explain them or just to… Yeah, I mean you could explain it.
Kelly Powers: Yeah, why don't you do, Brooke, like you can go through and do a, just do a hail and then a quack and then a feed, and that way they can understand what to hear.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, so what you're about to hear is a hail call, a quack, and then a feed.
Kelly Powers: That's right, yep. And start with your quack first, and then I'll kind of talk and navigate as he's going through it as well. Single quack. And then when he goes into a hail call, it's actually single quacks kind of stacked together, but then he's using inflection, where the first one is higher pitched and louder than the second one, and so on. If you shorten each individual one of those notes, we come back to a quack. Got me? So that's pretty simplistic. And then you go- The end's a quack.
Brooke Richard: Yeah. Last note's your- It's all a quack. It's all a quack. You're building on the top to get to a quack. Yeah. And then go into your feed. I like single, hard, aggressive feeds, so this is like single cut mixing with some double cuts. So there's a little bit of everything going on in there. You can add drag notes, which are just quacks. You'll hear just that little quack slide in. You can add cadences inside your feed. So, really, they're all just quacks. You know, you're just mixing in quacks among things to sound like ducks.
Chris Jennings: And a good thing to remember in that last variation that you just did, like you said earlier, you're trying to sound like a bunch of ducks.
Brooke Richard: You're trying to sound like a pile of ducks sitting somewhere. It's just, look at me. I want your attention. You're demanding attention.
Kelly Powers: But realistically, let's just do some cutting on some quacks, but not the aggressive. And just your two callers, you know, I want to sound like two hens, and he's going to sound like two hens, and it's kind of how it'll go together. That's relatively easy to do, and collectively, when you get off at 60, 100 yards away, that's real. You know, and we're not doing the crazy stuff. It's just ka-ka-ka, ka-ka-ka, ka-ka-ka. You have two or three guys in a blind, majority of weather conditions, that's all you need. Yeah.
Brooke Richard: If you're in the right spot,
Chris Jennings: You can do a whole bunch. Yeah, that's right. Well, that was an awesome explanation. One last thing, we've got, you've got a couple new calls in here, some different species specific. If you want to blow on them and kind of explain which one is which and what our audience here is listening to.
Brooke Richard: So, we've got a, you know, we've got a mallard call, a teal call, a wood duck call, and two Canada goose calls. So, naturally, I'm just going to go ahead and do the Canada goose calls because Kelly's not qualified.
Kelly Powers: Here's the, this is the wood duck call. This is actually, we actually talked about this on the way down here today, about call design and inspiration, and Brooke has his fingerprints all over this wood duck, the guts design. Inspiration came from a spec, obviously he has a huge spec background, but very radical, short read, shallow pan, tone board like. It is a 100% built-from-top-to-bottom spec call, where a lot of, or I'm sorry, top-to-bottom wood duck call. A lot of other wood duck calls are kind of modified off another call. This here is, he started from scratch, and he'd come to me and say, hey, what do you think about this? And, of course, I'd try to challenge him because he's so creative and very bright, you know, what he's going to do, and he knocked it out of the park.
Brooke Richard: Like, it was just like, yeah. I made a wood duck call because everybody thought it was a crazy idea. I mean, it may be six weeks of my life I'll never get back, but, goodness, we made a wood duck call. And honestly, well… That's awesome. It sounds great.
Kelly Powers: And it's a really good, yeah. I mean, he did really, really well.
Brooke Richard: You can make a spec call. Once you learn how to manipulate a call, you know, you take a spec call and you get proficient at it, you can actually make it sound like a wood duck or a sandhill crane or, you know, blow it like a snow goose call if you retune it. So, that's really where this came from is we realized that our spec call, our spark, was a really good wood duck call because it's very loud. So, I figured, well, it's, you know, people who are going wood duck hunting don't need to buy a spec call, even though you could. Let's make a really nice, very intentional wood duck call derived off of a set of our pan-style spec guts. And so, we wanted, we knew we wanted to be loud, realistic, have really cool, just subtle tones. I spent a lot of time on the Audubon Society listening to what wood ducks sound like, because you hear them, but you hear that thing they do when they fly away. You know, that's not how you want to call a wood duck. It's the stuff that they do on the water, the little,
Kelly Powers: And those later notes are water sounds. That's what I call ducks. They're doing on the water. And let's be honest, a lot of times wood ducks are hard to decoy, per se, from a calling standpoint. But truthfully, a lot of the notes that people are doing, that majority of the time is a flying note that they're doing. But that And the whistle, those are sounds that you can, that and kicking water and making some noise, you can decoy them. Yeah. You know, um, I mean, it's a, it, it can't be done. And that's kind of the inspiration of that call.
Brooke Richard: You can call Wood Ducks. Yeah. If you don't, if you don't agree, like Chris said, email John Hoffman.
Kelly Powers: Yeah, exactly. And the other call is the teal call, uh, which Bruce Brooke had as well. It's got a little metal reed insert. Um, and actually it's a, a lot of teal calls still will take, you know, the mylar reed material and shorten it. It's a little harsher sound. This here's, to me, is a little more accurate. And it's just a real raspy, just, you know.
Chris Jennings: Now, you're still blowing hot air into that.
Kelly Powers: Oh, absolutely. Everything that we do, there's not a single air presentation call that you're blowing, you know, where you're puffing your cheeks out.
Brooke Richard: The thing to remember, too, is when you're learning how to call, or you're learning about calling ducks, or any species of duck, to be exact, There's being super realistic, which is always valuable and always good. Then there's making certain sounds that are realistic enough, but very, very extremely exaggerated to get reactions out of ducks. So, you know, demanding ducks to do things with sounds, being louder, being, you know, more aggressive, having more base or being cleaner or quieter, even if it's not super realistic, but it gets reaction out of ducks, that's worth doing. You know, the goal is to call ducks, not to sound like ducks and hope they like you. You want both. So, this is a, this next call is an impact. So, this is a molded version of our premium call called the impulse, but it's a, it's a, I mean, it's a $50 molded duck call. And honestly, it's quickly become our best seller. It's a shame it's so cheap, but it's cheap because it's cheaper to make than an acrylic call. But it's a, it's a, this one's actually a double reed. We sell it in a single reed, the impact and then the double reed, which this is the impact squared. It's a J frame style call. Kelly's been blowing it on this same call on this podcast so far.
Kelly Powers: And a lot of these, of course, you don't mean not even coming from, didn't bring my personal calls with me, but blowing these here, these are straight out of the package and some of these here are easier. I mean, you know, it's hard to tune calls for the average consumer because some people are like, I present more air call. And I always tell people, hey man, if you could catch somebody at a show, it doesn't have to be us, anybody that's a call maker, let them kind of tune that for you where it fits. If you're used to presenting more air to the call, whatever, They could kind of do that as well.
Brooke Richard: When you become a really good caller, you learn how to manipulate calls, so the tuning job doesn't necessarily matter, but I promise no one can blow the calls that are on my land. Yeah, me too. They're set up for you. I'm using it to maximize the call, but I could pick that call up and squeal it out, and then I know it's too light for me. I would want it heavier, but… When we're tuning these calls for the general public, we just try to get somewhere in the middle to maximize what that call is designed to do, where people can relate to it. And if they don't love it, guess what? Call us, send it back, tell us exactly what you want. I can tune it for you. The best call for anybody. I know I sell calls for a living, but the best call for you is one that is tuned for you by somebody who understands what you do. So, you find that call company. or that person that works at that call company. I don't care what it is. Just get a call that fits you. A call that fits you is the best one. Absolutely.
Kelly Powers: That's awesome. And the last two, we got two goose calls here. This one actually was out last year. It's a little eye-on. Real short goose call. And I say goose call Canada goose, the original goose. Specks and snow geese don't count. Anyway, that's a inside joke, but no, the, uh, the I, a little short call. What's cool about this is, is when we designed it, it's really short where you can have one handed operation. And this is really for field goose hunters, for guys that are hunting a little lessers and, and cacklers and stuff, but where you can run a flag and also call at the same time. Um, so that's kind of what we try to market. There's a little finger groove on the insert, uh, where it's comfortable for that one hand, uh, calling, um, and that's kind of thing. Uh, last call, this is kind of a version of our wavelength. It's a little bit longer, um, insert. Uh, it's got our broken guts. That's, that's a, literally a copy of my competition guts. I should have already worn in, but it's got a really pretty good deep resident sound. But it's a simple, I mean, it's actually my favorite.
Brooke Richard: I'm a real goose runner. I like to spec up, but that is my favorite can of goose call that we make. It's the current, and it's not because it's a price point call. It's a molded polycarbonate call. It looks like a premium call, but it's a $50, $60 goose call. But the reason I like it is because of its design. It's very easy to blow. I'm not a professional can of goose caller, but when I need a call that fits me well, That's the one I go to because I have a lot of hot air. Everyone knows that. But it's, I can put a lot of air into the colic and handle it, and I can easily manipulate it. So, it's great. And if you know how to blow one very professionally.
Chris Jennings: So, that's a pretty good intro model. Absolutely. The amount of air going in, the hand control, everything about it, dude.
Kelly Powers: This is outstanding. And all of our calls, we did the little, the little insert rubber band on the insert. Um, and a lot of that, obviously it's, it's for branding. No doubt we can put our logo on it, but it's also too for grip. It kind of creates a non-slip grip that your fingers can naturally grip onto. And if it's raining or whatever, it kind of has a nice hold on too. So that's kind of, that's a staple throughout the full line.
Chris Jennings: Cool. Well, that's fantastic. Our audience should see those, all those calls in the, uh, July, August issue, new guns and gear. Um, but. Let's go ahead and wrap this one up, and we're going to do species-specific for Canada goose, and then we're also going to do species-specific for the white-fronted goose. I don't know, Kelly.
Kelly Powers: Kelly's going to do the white front. Yeah, Kelly's going to do the white front. Yeah, we could talk about them if we want to. Nobody really cares.
Chris Jennings: You have to tell more stories, because there's some serious hatred there.
Kelly Powers: I will leave you in Memphis. This cuts deep. There's some long stories there on me and Specs.
Chris Jennings: We will get into the next episode. I'd like to thank my guests, Kelly Powers and Brooke Richard for coming into the DU Podcast and sharing some, really, we kind of broke down everything from Duck Calling 101 into some really, I think, some advanced calling tips that our audience, You should really soak up. They're great. I'd like to thank Chris Isaac for putting the show together and getting it out to you. And I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on DU Podcast and supporting wetlands conservation.