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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 Limited Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Jennings. Joining me in studio today is Brooke Richard and Kelly Powers. We just recently did the basic duck calling 101, walked through a little bit of goose calling, but we really wanted to kind of dive down into two different species here. We've got the white front goose and the Canada goose. We're going to do the white front first. Your regular old speckled belly, some people like to refer to them.
Kelly Powers: We're doing specs first because they're better. They're better. Okay. Get that out of the way. Here we go.
Chris Jennings: So they're going back and forth and this is great. It's going to be some good commentary because, you know, Kelly's not as fond of the white fronts as he is the Canada goose. Um, and, and Brooke just- With good reason. With good reason. And Brooke has good reasons why he doesn't like the Canada goose.
Kelly Powers: So- Mine are valid though. That's the difference. Yeah.
Chris Jennings: So we'll do this kind of the same way we did with the duck calling where, you know, approach this. I guess we want to look at it as kind of a one-on-one, uh, which we did with the duck calling, but then we got a little bit more technical and some different behaviors and things like that. Uh, but with this, we'll do it the same way. You're sitting in a blonde, Brooke, and you're sitting in a, let's say a pit in Northeast Arkansas, which is probably going to be covered up in specs. You've got a guy sitting next to you. He's like, man, I just bought this spec call. Um, where do I start?
Kelly Powers: I've done this a bunch of times, uh, and I get asked this all the time is whether they want to learn how to spec call because the reality is the specs are showing up in places that they normally haven't been. It's a good opportunity for people, especially in the Mississippi flyway. People are getting into spec hunting and spec calling. So I get this a lot and I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I can actually help people. Uh, it may not be the best way, but it's the way I teach people and it always comes full circle in that scenario. Somebody leans over and says, man, you're really good on that thing, or it's working on this hunt. I need to learn how to do this. So when I go back home to wherever I can call the specs that are flying over me. So if they bought a spec call, um, I would say, you know, what kind of spec call is it? This is the most important thing is to know that the spec call that high blow and I recommend is a big bore spec call. Of course we make spec calls. I designed the, the power call spark with the team at power calls. It's a call made for me. It's not for everybody. Best call for anybody is one that's made for them and tuned for them. But when buying or selecting a spec call or wanting to learn how to blow a spec call. It's important to have one that's capable. So there's several out there. Get on Facebook, Google search. There's a lot of brands. Most of them are all of my friends, companies that make calls. There's a lot of them out there. Get a call that you're looking for a big bore spec call. I don't care if it's a half inch, three quarter inch, five eighths, get a big bore spec call. And what that's going to allow you to do is the back pressure is built into the call. Yeah. So, if you do that and you get a big bore spec call, that's capable. There's a lot out there. The first step is knowing how to hold it. So, it's the most important thing in learning how to spec call. It's going to be hard to articulate here on this podcast. It's visually a lot easier, but you're going to hold a spec call just like a duck call, and you're going to put your thumb and index finger around the insert of the call. and not cover up the exhaust. A lot of people get in their own way. They'll cover up the exhaust hole. They'll use their other hand, their off hand, which if you're right-handed, you're going to hold the call in your right hand, and you're going to use your left hand to complement your right hand. It's not a goose flute. You don't want to get out in front of it. You don't want to use it like a Canada goose off hand. What you're going to do is stick your left index finger in the exhaust of the call with your right hand, grab your spec call, just like you would a duck call, and grip the call on your finger that's in the exhaust there. And then you're just going to pull your left index finger out of the call and not move your own hand. That is what I call home base. That's where you want your hand. You should have a gap about the size of your index finger. into the exhaust of the car. What that's going to do is it's going to allow the car to have enough back pressure to break up and down. So once you get comfortable or recognize that your hand's in the right spot, a great way to test that is what I call the ambulance. So what we're going to do is we're going to just blow steady air through the car, not hard. We're just going to blow air through the car, and we're going to find out the right amount of back pressure with where my hand is to make this call work for me. I'm not having to work for the call. So with your hand in the home-based position, like we spoke about, you're just going to leave your jaw dropped, and you're just going to blow air through the call, and it's going to make a noise. Now, now that you do that, all we're going to do is we're going to increase the speed of air, not the amount of air, by bringing our lower jaw up. So when we bring our jaw up, it makes the air speed up naturally. It's like a jet in a carburetor. So we're going low jaw, and then we're going to bring our jaw up and the call should break over. That's where you want to be. So that octave change right there is, is the call breaking up. It's breaking up whenever I'm bringing my jaw up. So the air speeds up, the reed goes up. and it won't come back down until I drop my jaw. That is the beginning of a yodel. It's the beginning of knowing where your hand needs to be. So, if you're doing that, your hand's in the right spot. Step number one is the most important thing in speck calling is hand placement. Get your hands in the right spot so you're not fighting yourself. If you do this correctly, everything's a lot easier. Now, once you know that your on hand is in the right spot, you're going to take your left hand, And not like a Canada Goose call, all you're going to do is place your index finger on your left hand or off hand and put it on top of your pinky finger on your own hand. So you're just making like a bell of a trumpet. You're not getting out in front of that hand. You're just making the exhaust bigger. Once you do this, you should still be able to do the ambulance. Low jaw, high jaw call is going to break up and down. Okay. So we're there. Our hands are good. We've tested it. We know it's there. This is very elementary and very base level, but people come to me all the time and I can't do that in a spec call. And these are good spec hunters, good spec callers, but they're so limited in their calling ability or can't get more out of their calls because they didn't learn the right way. We need the call to work for us. Everything's built into these big board spec calls. They will do anything. And once you get your hands right and learn how to blow it that way, you don't have to move your hands all over the place and be crazy. The call's doing the work. All you have to do is stay out of the call's way and just use your hands slightly to make inflections and, you know, add emotion to your calling, but… And everybody's amount of pressure they're putting in that call is different.
Chris Jennings: Sure.
Kelly Powers: And that's why you got to find it. That's right. You're finding that ambulance there where that call's naturally just wanting to break over, not by you having to force more air into the call. or do anything crazy with your hands, but just by you speeding the air up by how low or high your jaw is. I tell everybody it's like, it's like a race car, right? So, you've got your throttle, you've got your carburetor jet, you've got all these different variables that make the car go faster. They need to work together. So, if you can remove all these inconsistencies and you're only having to worry about one thing to get the result you want, you just got one carburetor, your lips aren't pinched, they're open, you're blowing through the call, and all you have to do is move your jaw up and down, half the efforts It's all there for you. You know, why would you fight it and add more hurdles put in your way? That's a lot, but it's super important to talk about, and it is the base foundation of spec calling, learning how to spec calls. Make sure your hands are in the right spot. If you have any questions, you know, feel free to reach out to me on social media. I'm happy to help people. Every day I get messages and I'll send you a video or talk you through it. We'll figure it out together. And there's a lot of great videos on YouTube too, but that's the biggest part that a lot of people skip is just learning how to hold the call.
Chris Jennings: It sounds super, super… Yeah, no, I mean, that makes sense to me. I mean, I think the biggest… hurdle for a lot of people that I know who just start. They don't know how to either stop the back pressure or start it. Right. And that's basically what that hand control is doing, correct?
Kelly Powers: Yeah. Well, I mean, you'll see, you'll see people do it and there's a lot of people out here and it's not wrong. It kills specs, you know, but. And it halfway sounds like specs, but it doesn't sound like a real spec is what we're trying to get is they'll grab a call, any call, doesn't matter if it's a great call or the worst spec call on earth. They'll immediately grab it, get out in front of that insert, choke the call way down, and they'll do what I call like the ha-ha-hoo-hoo. It's a burst method, and it sounds like this. That's what a lot of people do. And the reason they're doing that is because that's the only way they can get the call to do it. But when you cover that call up, you're losing all your volume and you're losing all your range and you're really losing all your control. It's you're a one trick pony at that point. You can ha ha hoo hoo. And, and honestly, a lot of people shoot a lot of specs doing it. And if it works for you and that's what you're happy with, go do it. But I don't think that's people on this podcast here. You know, they're wanting to progress or wanting to learn the right way. And if they're going to learn, you might as well learn the right way. It's not going to take any more effort or energy. And it would stumble through doing it the wrong way and creating bad habits.
Chris Jennings: No, I mean, I think that's great getting people off the ground and running here, but, you know, kind of explain, you know, we talk about with Canada geese, um, Kelly, I mean, you probably have more variations of this than I can even speak to, but you know, your clucks and groans and moans and double clucks. And, but what is. What is that same relation with specks? Like what, you know, we always talk about the yodel. We don't do a yodel for Canada geese, necessarily.
Brooke Richard: A lot of, I mean, truthfully, obviously terminology is different, but a lot of it's similar. I mean, your clucks and moan, I mean… Are you saying that a goose is a goose, Kelly? No, I'm just saying a speck wants to be like a Canada goose, you know. So, no, you know, and I mean, but it's not, a lot of the terminology though, obviously terminology is different, but From a vocabulary standpoint, it's, there's a lot of similarities to it.
Kelly Powers: Yeah. And unlike duck, you know, goose calling in general, I'm not going to bring snow geese into this because you're kind of a different monster. No, wait a minute. Canada's inspects are, their vocabulary is a lot more intricate and meaningful when you're trying to convey emotion and what you're trying to sell to these birds. The, the vocabulary is just more intricate as compared to ducks. So Canada's and specs just make a lot of different noises. There's moans and clucks. There's just a lot of different moving parts and not that they mean anything different than the terminology we use in duck calling, but there's just more to it, you know? And when, when you get more pieces and you have to put them together to sound goosey and sound like geese, not a goose caller, it's just more variables plug in there. And you can use, you can use those as a tool to sound more realistic. So yeah, it's probably, I would say no offense to anybody, but I would say. Uh, learning to blow a goose call in general, whether it's Canada or spec is going to be a little bit harder than duck calling. Uh, so if you're a duck caller listening to this and you're that person that is a proficient duck hunter and duck caller that is now seeing specs and you want to learn how to spec call, just, just cause you're a good duck caller does not mean you're going to pick up on this quick. You should with the right tools and the right amount of practice, but they, the two do not correlate whatsoever. They're different sounds or it's different. It's just, it's a different thing. It's like being really good at the saxophone and thinking you can play the violin and they're just different things.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, and I think a lot of hunters understand that, but I do think that the newness, which you mentioned, is one probably a massive benefit to the industry. Just expanding ranges of white fronts, you know, like my, we've talked about it on this podcast many times. My buddies in Indiana are hunting white fronts every day now. And when I lived there, I never even saw one until I moved here. You know, like there's, they were not there. Um, but I think that newness is very intimidating too.
Brooke Richard: Absolutely. Uh, you know, Brooke and I, we always have a, always pick on each other about specs and my, my love hate relationship with them and with good reason, but I can come at it from a kind of a different perspective and a little insight. And, you know, from a, you know, obviously one of the world goose and Canada goose and stuff years ago, I'm coming at it from a Canada goose hunter perspective, power hunting, big spreads. all of that, and you know, even, goodness, 20, 30 years ago, you know, going up and hunting in Canada and all of that, and we're, even if we're filming, we're over, you know, we're not intentional to hunt specks. To be effective, you have to be intentional to hunt specks. And I was coming at it the wrong way, like, we're intentional hunting Canada geese and ducks. And you can do a multi-species hunt over a spread like that, but if you really want to do it right, you need to be intentional and just go speck hunting. And then that real quick involves different techniques, different, you know, smaller decoy spreads in a lot of sense, and Brooke can elaborate on that here in a minute. So that's kind of where my love-hate relationship is with him, you know? They don't like me, I don't like them kind of thing. I feel the same way about Canada Goose. I do naturally pick on him because I'm like, ah, that's not a real goose.
Kelly Powers: A Canada Goose is a real goose, you know? But that's the only thing he has to make fun of me about. He has not been paying attention. Yeah, exactly.
Brooke Richard: A lot better things. And truthfully, he called up a spec for my son on a youth hunt, and then a couple days later, one of the worst things that you can hear as a dad and a waterfowl hunters, I heard my son blowing a spec call in his room. Kids going places. Was he grounded? Oh yeah, I failed. Like, I have failed as a dad. I was like, what do you got in your hand? What is that, son? Let me see it. Who gave you that?
Kelly Powers: Next thing you know, he's going to walk into the kitchen and ask you to make crawfish etouffee and gumbo. It'll be good. Let me guess, he'd still be wrong.
Brooke Richard: I say all that to say this, and we always used to, as goose hunters and Canada goose hunters, we struggled because truthfully, we weren't intentional hunting them. We can do the multi-spread or multi-species setups, and it's relatively easy shooting ducks over a Canada goose spread. Shooting specks over a Canada goose spread, it can be difficult. you know, in not the right environment. So I had to learn the hard way and doing things the wrong way. And then we would film and, you know, different TV shows across the country. And then we'd go to Louisiana and the out for me was guys were like, we're going speck hunting this afternoon. And I'm like, man, I'm out like y'all go ahead, you know, whatever, you know. And I was like, well, we don't have any decoys. He's like, oh, he needs three. I'm like, wait, what? And I watch these guys go down there, and they'll put three decoys out, and they go sit in a Finch Rover or a Ditch Line, you know, whatever. And every spec that flies over just decoys in perfectly, you know? It was an eye-opener for me, because I've never been exposed to that. I'm like, wait a minute. We're going in. We're putting 200 decoys out, and that completely different. But it's wrong techniques, wrong attitude. And everybody's always told me, Kelly, you're way overthinking this.
Kelly Powers: Everybody, just remember, Kelly's not as young as he used to be. has changed from that, unfortunately. It's turned into more of a snow goose thing. But you can still do it effectively, but the component that allows you to go with a few amount of spec decoys is very good realistic calling. You can still do it effectively. These birds have just got a lot more pressure, and it's true. Like, when you talk about going shoot Canada geese, you may need a giant spread, and sometimes you may need a small spread, but historically, especially in Louisiana, big spreads would hurt you. I mean, you'd go out with half a dozen, two dozen, and it's a real thing. Super good hide, good calling, good enough calling back then. Now everybody's a good spec caller, it seems like. That's true. And just a decent, a realistic looking spread. So 6, 18, I'm kind of an even number guy, don't judge me. Yeah. But, you know, and they just look good and hid well and they'd fly over and they're so reactive. So if your calling was good and you knew what you were doing, you didn't need a bunch of decoys, you just needed a good hide in the right spot. And like Kelly said, almost everyone that flew over would just ride in, you know, so. Yeah. That's what got me hooked to it.
Brooke Richard: It's not like that everywhere now, but it's awesome. And to be truthful, and this is recorded, so I may not just say this, but… I love you, too. I give them a lot of appreciation. No, in all sense, like, you know, even the warmer winters we're having, the speck wintering areas have shifted a little further north. It's created a lot more hunting opportunity. I know even up to Central Illinois and, you know, they're having opportunity to hunt specks that they didn't have 10, 15 years ago, you know, and that is a good thing. And then number two, more importantly, If you really start to study the habits and the migration routes that these specs are making, it's fascinating. Oh, yeah.
Kelly Powers: It's crazy.
Brooke Richard: And I have a fond… I mean, that is… that's amazing. Kelly's a bird nerd, and we… It is, and I know, like I said, we have a love-hate relationship, but, like, it's unreal, and if you're listening to this, just go into some of the studies on this, and, I mean, these things are wintering on the northwest slope of Alaska and making these long flights and very little stoppages, like… Oh, yeah. It's unreal.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, we had Dr. J. Von Bank on, I don't know, it was probably last fall, early fall. Actually, it would have been in October because we had him on when that white front landed on the field at the World Series. I don't know if you guys remember that.
Kelly Powers: Oh, I did. Oh, yeah. It was the Padres. They had our Higdon Specht decoy. It was their mascot. That's right. I remember it clearly.
Chris Jennings: That was a good one for you. But we had him on and we were, you know, we broke that down from like a biological perspective, why that bird would do that. And it was really cool, but you know, he also went on to talk about that redistribution. um, across the winning grounds and, and got into it where, you know, those, those birds are absolutely fast.
Brooke Richard: It makes you feel like, you know, we were in Canada hunting and you're like, okay, they're going to roost here. And you're thinking, okay, do I need to set up on this part of the field tomorrow or this part of the field? And well, that's kind of getting close. You know, we're thinking things on a micro level. And when you realize that, you know, it took me 27 hours to drive to this destination in Canada where I'm hunting and I'm not even halfway to where he spends his summers. Oh, yeah. Like, it blows your mind. It's big. How far, and then it makes our… And you might not be halfway to where he spends his summer. Exactly. You're neither, either or. It makes you realize how small we are in this world. Yeah. And like, you know, I'm thinking things on a micro level, man. I'm hoping they'll fly in the morning and all that. You know what? He may take flight midnight and he's in Louisiana tomorrow night. That's right. And that's real. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Absolutely.
Chris Jennings: Let's talk a little bit more about the calling and in doing so, we'll have you demonstrate, kind of like we did with the duck calls, where you demonstrate a couple different ways that you approach, you know, whether it is kind of like the hail call, you know, approach or, you know, what are you doing when these birds are, you know, hesitating, or I think you and I have had the conversation before when you get one of those days. And I've had them, had them a lot more this year. It doesn't matter what you do. Some things like your best, your best plan of action on some days with a spec is like pack it up and go eat breakfast. They can be, now they can also be feet down in your decoys with just a little clock.
Kelly Powers: High risk, high reward.
Chris Jennings: It's absolutely high risk, high reward.
Kelly Powers: Well, yeah, I'd love to talk about that. I think it's important. You know, a lot like the quack in a mallard call, the most fundamental and important piece to learn in spec calling is the clock. It's what people should learn and perfect before they do anything else. And it's sprinkled out throughout the entire spec vocabulary and it teaches you the correct mechanics to do all these just crazy spec notes that people want to do that are very effective, that we'll reference here when we kind of break it down and what it means. And so we'll start with the clock. You know, biggest thing is like we talked about earlier, hold your call right, get in home-based position. Your index finger should fit snugly in the end of the call while you're on hands on it. Put your index finger on your left hand, on top of your pinky on your right hand, make a bell of a trumpet. Keep that hand in one spot and think of a whistle, a lot like in a quack. It's… You're gonna end that note hard. When a speck flies over, you hear it. And it's what you hear when specks fly over, you hear… there's almost a K on the end of that sound. You have to stop that note hard to make that reed slap. So all we're gonna do is blow air into the call and stop the note hard. So we're just gonna make a whistle, for lack of a better term, a whistle exercise while blowing air through that whistle and just really focus on stopping the note hard and it should sound like this. So you can hear that reed pop. If I do it in the back of the call, you'll actually hear it stop that hard.
Brooke Richard: Which is very, exactly the right airflow for a cluck on a Canada goose call.
Kelly Powers: Maybe that's why it's the only note I can make in a Canada goose call.
Brooke Richard: I mean, when you turn the call around, that is the exact, matches the exact airflow on a Canada goose.
Kelly Powers: And it's just, it's, it's the most important, and honestly, it's the most effective tool. Whenever you're hunting, clucks are like your feed call and a duck call, right? So you can, you can make them in a lot of things, but it's just realistic noise. So these are single clucks. Once you, once you perfect that cluck and get that read to snap, All we're going to do is essentially ride the wave. So we're going to start slow. We're going to get a little bit louder and faster, then bring it back down. And what that's simulating is just birds on the ground kind of getting excited, but it's realistic. And that this is a single clock sequence. You can use that anytime you're calling specks and it's non, it's non-threatening. That just sounds like specks on the ground. It's just clucks. But what's cool about it is it's in every other sound you're going to make in a spec call outside of your murmurs. It's all your yodels that you hear and people think of specs and what the sound they want to make. It's a two note yodel, right? That last part is just cluck. It's clucks. All we have to do now that we perfected our cluck is add the first part. And the first part is what we started with was that ambulance. If your hand's in the right spot, you've got a low jaw, you're blowing air, you bring your jaw up, their call breaks up. We're going to hold it there, and we're going to drop our jaw. It's going to break back down. So the first part of that two-note yodel. Add a cluck. Get comfortable with that. Crawl, walk, run. Go faster and faster, and you'll have a two-note yodel. That's it. I mean, it sounds easy when we're doing it right here, because I already knew how to do it, of course. And you've done it for your whole life, so that helps. But that's it. I mean, it's easy. Your two-note yodel, your cluck is just a whistle that you're putting emphasis on the end, making it snap. Think of a K. L-U-K is how I spell it out, but I'm also half-deaf, so that's how I do it. It's luk, luk. Want to do a two-note yodel? La, luk, la, luk. Want to do a three-note yodel? Add another part on the front. So you start putting those pieces together right there. And if we're in a blind and we see a block of specs far off and we want to break them, you'll just use a combination of clucks, two-note yodels, and three-note yodels, and we'll just start stacking them together. But really, spec calling, It's not that intricate from a, what do I need to go successfully call specs? You need clucks, you need yodels, and other than that, you just need to sound like specs. You're going to listen, they react well to something, keep giving it to them. It's like ducks, call them on the corners. No one to call them, no one not to call them. So once you perfect the cluck, the single cluck, and you start getting your two-note yodel, My favorite spec sound, which the spec hunting community is probably not going to like me saying this, but I'm going to give everybody a little nugget of advice on if you want to learn one sound and if you don't know what sound to make to get those specs in a little bit closer, my go-to in finishing specs is a double-cluck, a quick double-cluck. What I mean by a double-cluck is just like our clock, it's kind of a ground noise. But when I hold that pressure up, I'm gonna hold it there, then drop it again. So it's gonna make two sounds, kinda like a tikka and a duck call. Instead of tick, it's tikka. You stack them together. Just imagine we've got real loud, we broke these specs. They've turned, now they're working in. We'll do some softer stuff, just bump them in. But that little double click right there, just look-a-look-a-look-a-look. Learn that one. That's it. There's one you're gonna learn, but you have to have the single cluck first. You gotta know how to shut those notes off. Three things, three sounds, single cluck, double cluck, and a two-note yodel, and I don't want you hunting next to me all of a sudden. No, it's not that big of a deal. It takes time. It sounds easy on a podcast, but that's where you should be aiming, and you gotta spend time. Unlike Canada goose calling, speck calling's actually hard, and you have to practice to get good at it.
Chris Jennings: You know one thing you mentioned and I kind of chuckled about it in the previous podcast where and both of you had mentioned it of not practicing before the season starts and not spending enough time with the call to be comfortable physically to do this and what's the funniest thing is you know who didn't practice in the early spec season in Arkansas. Oh yeah. Typically, they're in a pit or in a layout or something like on a levee or something in an uncomfortable position and guys are picking up these calls. And I've been there, I'm not gonna lie. I've bailed out of layout blinds with a cramp in my diaphragm, like, ugh, I can't do it. But, you know, that's something for people to keep in mind, too. You know, just, and you did mention, and both Canada and Specs, both are a little more, I feel like, a little more physically demanding. Sure.
Brooke Richard: All without a doubt.
Kelly Powers: Yeah. I mean, that's 100%. You're using muscles in your mouth and your cheeks and your throat. Yeah. That, I mean, not that you, duck calling is hard, don't get me wrong. And especially at an elevated level, the amount of volume you need to do certain things and pressure, but there's just pressure applied constantly in these, these goose calling vocabulary sequences where you're just having to really focus on shutting notes off, starting them hard. You're just, you're using a lot of small muscles.
Brooke Richard: It's a lot more, even on Canada goose stuff. I mean. even your hands become another element that you're not using in duck calling. Yeah. Like, it's another step above. I mean, and there's a reason, even look at a lot of successful goose callers, Canada goose callers specifically, it's highly successful in duck, you know, and then you don't necessarily see, necessarily, duck guys much that go into the Canada goose, you know, it's just, it's a different, and not that one's more than the other, it's just completely different instruments.
Kelly Powers: Right. Yeah, the good news is, and I tell this to everyone, Because everybody's a duck hunter, right? They grew up blowing a duck call their whole life, in theory. Now they're seeing specks, they want a speck call, but they really don't want to have to go through that process of, man, I just really need to know a few sounds and what do I need to go call these things? Speck calling and Canada goose calling is the same way. If I, right now at this table, could get 10% better at speck calling, that would translate in a 10% more successful hunt. The better you can call at specks, The bigger your vocabulary, the better you get as a caller on a spec call. That will immediately translate into more success and a better reaction out of birds. So, it's not for nothing. If you get out on a spec call, you're going to see these birds do things that otherwise they wouldn't do. I've seen Kelly put Canada geese in the timber. I've put specs in Walmart parking lots, you know, flying over. I mean, you can get these birds to do things. They react so well to calling and good calling. that it makes it all worth it.
Brooke Richard: I do think, and this may be incorrect, but I do think that of all species, waterfowl that we hunt, specks are the, there's the most amount of room of calling them in versus any other species. I mean, ducks, let's be, you know, you can have certain, the way decoys are today, whatever, there's a lot of times you put the call in your pocket, they're coming in. It's an attention getter. Same thing with Canada goose, I could wave a flag, call in the pocket, they're coming in. If I become more proficient on any one of those, more proficient on a call of any one of those species, I have the most room to gain on specs. Because a good spec caller in a field will hurt you if he's beside you. No doubt. They're extremely vulnerable.
Kelly Powers: More than a Ducks and Canada's. It's emotion. I compare, and I'm not a turkey hunter, full disclosure. I like to go, but I'm not a turkey caller. But Bo, that works with us, Bo Brooks, you know, he's one of my best friends. He lived with me for a long time. We turkey hunted a good bit together. The amount of emotion that he can put in a turkey call gets these birds to do things that are crazy. And that's the only thing I've seen similar to that is speck hunting. But I mean, not that specks are like turkeys or vice versa, but turkeys for sure do that. If you're a better turkey caller, you get turkey across the river. If you're like me and you're running a box call and I don't know what you're doing, he's gonna go the other way and laugh at you. But spec and spec hunting, it's, it's similar just at a lower scale. If you can call better, all of a sudden you can get away with a little bit more. You can have less decoys, have more decoys, have a little bit worse hide, get them to come just a little bit closer, get them to come at all. So, I mean, for anybody listening here, if you're, if you're wondering if you should dedicate, you know, a couple hours a week between now and next early spec season to justify… Oh, it'll make a difference. You will become successful. I mean, just spend, spend a couple hours learning a cluck, learning two note yodel. And the week before season, take your calls back out, blow them for 10, 20 minutes each day and just build your wind up and go out there. If you went from not having a spec call or not being able to make basic sounds to putting a little bit of time in between now and next spec season, you will go out there and you will. Probably want to go home and practice more because you'll see the direct correlation to the amount of effort and time he spent learning how to blow a spec call to your bag limit. I mean, it's 100% related.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, and you both have spoke about that where it's, you know, the better you get at spec calling, the better, more success you're going to have no matter what. But there's always one thing that pops out to me and I hear it a lot. Speck calling, I guess specks in general, are a little more forgiving in a sense that you can be vocal and your tones don't have to be perfect. And you can still decoy these birds. There's a little bit of leeway there.
Kelly Powers: A lot of times the things that hurt you the most when speck calling is whenever you stop calling. And at any time, I mean, I've spec hunted all over the place, and I've done it a long time. Not that I'm any better than anyone else, especially now. I'll show up to hunt somewhere, and there'll be somebody I've never met, and he's a better spec hunter than I am, and he's from Lone Oak, Arkansas, and he's 14 years old. Everybody's a good spec hunter.
Chris Jennings: It's crazy.
Kelly Powers: But I love when other people, no matter how good you are, if I go spec hunting, and I know that we're hunting an area that has a lot of specs, and we're competing with other birds, And it takes a good bit of effort and energy to break these birds or get them to start flying my way. I would pay to have a second person who could do the bare minimum on a spec call just so I can take a breath. Because when you stop calling, the boogeyman's out. I'll be calling, calling. It takes forever. It's like I'm forcing them in, pulling them in with rope and lasso. And then I've got to take a breath at some point. I'm only human. And when I let up on them, They think it's like, hey, you see a body of geese on the ground. Whenever they get quiet, their heads go up. The hawks after them are coyotes in the ditch. So more calling is good. So not even that you really need to sound perfect. You don't have to have all these great enunciations and pronunciations and your notes are perfect. But I mean, you have to have those for building blocks. But when you get going, if you mess up, it doesn't matter. Just don't stop. You know, you have to be able to sustain. sustainably call for extended periods of time, five minutes, you know, 10 minutes at the most, but not that it should ever take that long. But if you practice that, just being able to blow a spec call, be able to call for 10, 20 seconds, take, take a breath, keep going, take a breath, keep going. That's what you should be aiming for. To be able to blow a spec call and only take breaths or half breaths every few seconds and be able to call for three minutes, that is what really Put specks on the ground, to be honest with you, because that makes you a bird, or a body of geese, that makes you not a caller. And those birds understand what, you know, silence is not good in any situation.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Don't stop. You know, the other thing that, I mean, we're already talking, we've kind of alluded to it a little bit, but… Um, you know, we've talked about the importance of calling, and that's what this whole podcast is focused on, but also, since I've got you here, just, you know, what's your go-to decoy spread? I mean, what are you looking for when it comes to, you know, like you mentioned, Kelly, you're throwing a pretty big can of the goose bread out. But these, the spec, it's kind of getting smaller, but then Brooke also alluded to, eh, it's kind of getting like snows. People are having to put out more decoys.
Brooke Richard: And… Yeah. And I'm sure that, and Brooke would agree with this, I mean, that… There's a lot of variables there that go into play, you know. I mean, highly pressured. I could see where you're, you know, getting more decoys in some sense and all of that. We just, we just hunted them. And I say we, like, this is 20 years ago, you know, even in Canada, like we're, we're actually hunting Canada geese first. Ducks second. Specks, you know. Maybe.
Kelly Powers: Maybe.
Brooke Richard: You know, I mean, so like, we're not intentional about it, you know. But, but if you want to be intentional about it, To be fair, go hunt specks. Only bring speck decoys. Yes, you'll see them intermingle, but let's be realistic. There's not a whole lot of that. Even in Canada, there's not a lot of co-mingling. Generally, if you see them there, they're kind of off to their side.
Kelly Powers: They'll follow other dark geese around, but even then, when they land in the same field, they're kind of segregated or they're on one side. They're not kind of sprinkled in. I don't blame them. They're just kind of doing their own thing. They're just where they are comfortable. But I mean, to answer your question, Chris, like if I'm going spec hunting and I want to take you on your first spec hunt, which you've been, but hypothetically, someone wants to go on their first spec hunt and see it in its rawest form. Every field's different. Every body of birds is different. Every state's different. I don't think they're any smarter or dumber anywhere in the flyway, anywhere on this continent, other than they're smarter where they're hunted. You know, I don't care if that's Arkansas, California, Kentucky, South Louisiana. If you're on a farm and you're hunting a population of birds that hasn't been hunted, you're going to be able to get away with more. If you're hunting a population of birds that has had pressure applied to it, it's going to be harder. You know, so just know when you're hunting, that goes into all your calling too. Sometimes you just, you don't need to call a lot. You just call them on the corners. And if it only takes one clock in a two note yule to get these birds to grab their ankles and come one swing in, I'm sure as heck not going to pull my spec call for the next 15 seconds. I'm going to, you know, make sure I've got my gun in my hand, but that's what I would do if I'd go find a really good field where we could hide first and foremost that has birds flying over. It doesn't have to be where the birds are sitting. It's just these birds are flying over here. They're not pressured. I know I can hide. That's where I would go and I'd run six decoys. Yeah. I mean, that's what I would do to go speck hunting. And I, that's, I'm a purist, call it what you want. I'm all about picking my battles and I'd rather go on a hunt with, you know, three or four people. We can shoot two a person. That's great. You know, we'll go shoot 10 specks. May not sound like much, but it's a lot of specks. Yeah. It's pretty good. If we can do that with nine decoys, we can shoot more birds than we had decoys out. That's where my head is because you really don't need a lot of them if you do it right. But. The reality is most people listening to this podcast are who are interested in learning about speck hunting or getting into speck calling. They're duck hunters. They're going to have a big duck spread out. They're going to, you know, they're probably not hunting the timber. If you are, you're crazy. Don't, don't worry about spec hunt and go find a rice field lease. But let's just say, I mean, let's paint the picture. You got a guy, let's say they live in Georgia. They lease a pit in Northeast Arkansas. They want to know how to spec hunt. They've got 20 dozen floater mallard decoys out, two spinners. They may have a dry field on one side with a bunch of spec decoys or snow goose decoys. I mean, you're duck hunting. The majority of your spread is ducks. I would tell you get really good on a spec call. Uh, your duck decoys are your worst enemy. These birds are pressured. They understand that when they fly over levees with duck decoys floating around them and they fly over at 60 yards, they get shot at every time. So what I would recommend is take your duck spread if you can, and just move them upwind. So on the approach, when specs are finishing, they don't have to fly over those duck decoys. If you can get good at calling, you can get away with it. I've got a blind in Northeast Arkansas and I do it every time. I've got 25 dozen duck floaters out. I've got a lot of goose decoys out too on the opposite side, but most days the specs will have to finish over the duck decoys and they hate them. Because they're just taught. They're educated. They understand what it is. But I'm head well enough to where I know if they fly over at 60, it's not a problem. When they get to 30 yards, if they have to fly over the duck decoys, 50-50. If they're at 30 yards on the deck and I've got to get them to, they're flying to me and I've got to get them to come 10 more yards for my wife to have a little bit more time to shoot. And the duck decoys right in front of them, they're going to bump off of them. So I would tell anybody listening to this, just be conscious of where your duck decoys are and on the downwind side where you know these birds are going to approach on their final swing, or maybe it's their second swing over the top at 30. That's fine. It's a great place to shoot specks. They're a great target and they do it all the time. They'll fly over where the sound's coming from. Move your duck spread to where those birds don't have to fly over them. It doesn't matter if they're there, just alleviate the pressure that those birds are going to see. They'll pick them out. So just move your duck spread if you can, or if you're willing to put in the effort, it's worth it. A hundred percent. And then of course have spec decoys, but you know, you don't need a hundred dozen of these things in most situations. If you're duck hunting and you have 20 dozen duck decoys out, You're better off throwing all your duck decoys away and putting two spec decoys out than you are adding 50 dozen spec floaters and still having specs try to finish over duck decoys.
Chris Jennings: Yeah. I think one of the great, one of the great things about hunting specs too, and this probably comes from me growing up hunting Canada's, you know, I loved Canada goose hunting.
Kelly Powers: This is all making sense now, Chris. That's why you got the invitation. Who is it getting hot in here?
Chris Jennings: But there is not numbered. There is. I mean, seeing Canada's finish low, even on water or in field is hard to beat.
Brooke Richard: I'll tell you what there is. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
Kelly Powers: What did you say again? Sorry, my headphones must have gone out. Y'all broke up there for a minute. You better turn those headphones off right here.
Chris Jennings: But moving down and hunting primarily in Arkansas and Mississippi and really starting to get into specs and appreciating what they do and how they react to calls and things like that, there's just about nothing better than seeing that flock of seven to 10 just go straight wings out and circle a decoy spread without ever flapping. And then you just see those feet drop and they just… Like, just straight down. It's, that's just, that's one of the greatest sights. I tell people all the time that people who, some of my buddies still come down from Indiana and they're still not real familiar with them. And they see them and they're like, they immediately fall in love too, because.
Kelly Powers: They're hard not to fall in love with when you do it right. I mean, really. And the only thing stopping people from doing it who are hunting in a spot where they're flying over. half of it, you're calling, you know, in duck hunting, I'd say location and hide is 80% of it. In spec hunting, you know, hide and location is important, but you can offset a lot of those variables with better calling. Calling is half of it. You go out with the best spread and the best place where the specs are going or flying over, I should say, and you can't call, you're going to shoot a lot less birds than you would if you could, at any capacity, blow a speck call. You know, so it is very, do not, if I'm going speck hunting, I leave my speck calls at home, I will stop what I'm doing, drive three hours the other direction, go get a speck call and come back because, yeah, we may shoot one or two, but, I mean, you're just not, it's not gonna work.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, it's game-changer when it comes to these.
Kelly Powers: It's like going turkey hunting and forgetting your face mask. Yeah, yeah. You need it. Mandatory. It's 100%. Not, not take anything away from duck hunting, you need them, but… In duck hunting, it's here I am. Either you like it or you don't. Now all I've got to do is control it and convince you to come here. in a manner to where you don't figure out what's going on, and in goose hunting and speck hunting, like, you have to have it to get them to do it. It's not even an option.
Chris Jennings: Yeah, no, that's awesome. Well, this has been great. We're gonna wrap this up. I think we went through the majority of the calls, some scenarios, reminded everyone that Kelly does not like white-fronted geese.
Kelly Powers: He loves them.
Chris Jennings: We're gonna break down those walls, KP. This has been a fantastic conversation, and I appreciate you guys coming in and doing it.
Kelly Powers: Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you having us.
Chris Jennings: I'd like to thank my guests, Brooke Richard and Kelly Powers, for coming on the show today and talking about hunting whitefronts, calling whitefronts, and what makes those birds so special. 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.