Handmade Wooden Duck Calls

In the right hands, a wooden duck call becomes, in the words of collector Dean Dashner of Custom Calls Online, a "magical musical instrument" that draws the elusive fowl to the hunter and his decoys -- but not always with a gunshot as the final outcome. "Many find great sport in just calling the birds," says Dashner. Handmade calls have a history that spans more than a century, with enthusiast organizations dedicated to the art and craft of the call, and carvers eager to show and sell their wares.

  1. History

    • According to the Illinois State Museum, researchers place the earliest mechanical duck call at around 1850. The first patent for a wooden duck call went to Elam Fisher of Detroit, in 1870, for a model that was called a "Tongue Pincher." The wooden calls gained credence with the ban on using live ducks as decoys, a law enacted in 1935. Carvers typically handcrafted the calls out of a wooden block about 6 inches long. They turned the wood on a lathe to create the rounded shape and carved grooves into the call. The lathe remains a standard tool for wooden duck calls today.

    Materials

    • Crafter Rodney Dubois of Louisiana's Fowl Talk duck-hunting service has used exotic woods like cocobolo, bubinga and zebra wood for making duck calls. But crafters also use domestic hardwoods like cedar, walnut or rosewood. David Schneider of Quiet Elegance Woodtuning recommends the denser woods for their moisture-repelling characteristics, which is vital to the hunter in the marsh. Other materials in a wooden call include a reed, which facilitates the call sound, and brass fittings.

    Career Crafting

    • When Kelly Beltz inherited his father's wood lathe, he found himself drawn to the life of a duck-call crafter. "Unfortunately, there's no school to go to, no Duck Calls 101," Beltz told LJ World in 2006. "I reverse-engineered some. They were rather crude."

      But Beltz honed his craft until his calls attracted the attention of companies wanting him to mass-produce the items. He resisted the temptation, saying, "I think once you become a manufacturer, the art goes out of it." Like Beltz, many home crafters make and sell wooden duck calls via websites -- a far cry from the early days, when vendors used mail-order catalogs.

    Organization

    • The Callmakers and Collectors Association of America was launched in 1987 as a group of duck-call experts intent on promoting interest in the craft. This organization grew to 500 members by 2005 and its events include annual competitions. The 2011 contest for working duck calls specified that entrants must have hand-crafted the barrel, stopper and tone board from natural wood, and that judges would assess hail calls, feed calls and other sounds from the entries.