The Primacy of Waterfowling

As with most things you’ve read here, what follows is a matter of opinion.  If you and I are similarly-minded, then I imagine we are not going to have too much to debate in the below ramblings.  If we are found to not share such ideals, then I defer to the time-proven axiom of “to each their own” and I can still share the field with you if you’d have me.

I haven’t hunted African plains game, and may never get the chance. 

I am a neophyte by most standards in that I possess less than a decade in the turkey woods, although I am a full convert to that particular aspect of our religion. 

My deer hunting experience is of less than a score of years, which is as much an accident of birth and the public policy at the time of my hunting certification as it is a function of my love of stalking the ghosts of the fall woods. 

Small game was once a deep passion, although a shortage of suitable hounds and a personal disinclination as I grow older to spend time in cold winds and deep snow has dulled my desire to chase grouse and rabbits.  Perhaps the acquisition of a sleek beagle may rekindle those fires, but for now they smolder low.

Moose hunting, while available, has always played second fiddle to deer hunting for me.

Predator hunting, while exciting and raw, often lacks the payoff of promised game meat for the eating.

Elk, bears of all fashions, antelope, and the like are all unavailable to me, for reasons of logistics, time, and finances respectively.

What the list above details are two things.  First, there is a literal glut of riches available to the North American sportsman.  Secondly, at least for me, is that all of the above opportunities finish behind the pursuit of waterfowl as the act that most defines my hunting experience.

My dad is a deer hunter.  He loves the ducks dropping in and the geese turning and cycling down into a set up as much as I do, but if you asked him what he’d rather be doing, he would say deer hunting every time.  I’ve had similar conversations with a couple of my cousins and friends and they all fall on the side of deer hunting, although there are a few that are fast becoming converts to the hallowed tradition of chasing wild turkeys.

Perhaps it is my instinctual desire to dissent from the group, perhaps it is my relative lack of success in killing deer and turkeys, or maybe, like the Grinch, my head isn’t screwed on just right.  Whatever the case may be, hunting ducks and geese tops my list of preferred hunting trips, although that’s a lot like trying to rate pizza versus ice cream versus sex.  I suppose you could prioritize them if you wanted to, but you really would never turn any of them down.  Hunting is like that.

Carrying on.

It is true that I love waterfowling above all else, and frankly, what isn’t there to love?  Sure the weather can be awful, but at the end of the day, you don’t have to go out in it if you don’t really want to.  Yet time and time again, a multitude of duck and goose hunters are out in the most tragically terrible weather, getting frost-nipped, wind-whipped, and generally cold, soaked and miserable.  And why is that, you ask?  Two reasons: first the ducks and geese don’t seem to care; in fact it seems that often the hunting gets better the worse the climate is.  But the secret, untold second reason is that waterfowlers need that lousy weather to make them feel like they are truly ‘hunting’.  Just as deer hunters need the fall colours and the cool in the air, and houndsmen need the bay of a dog to set the atmosphere, so it is with the men and women that chase after webbed feet and billed birds.  I’ve had good shoots on bluebird days, but the best ones that I recall had some pretty drizzly, damp and all around unpleasant weather.  It just made it ‘feel’ right.

Another niche that I fit cozily into when it comes to duck and goose hunting is the calling.  Although a strong argument can be made on behalf of a gobbler, few other animals respond to calling and decoys like waterfowl do.  All my life I have been intrigued by the language of animals (and languages in general, but that’s another story), and the way that hunting allows me to more or less ‘talk’ with ducks and geese is a thrill that I simply cannot get enough of.  Listening to the birds as they work, and watching their body language as they respond positively and negatively to the sounds you are feeding them is both education and exhilaration.  My favourite memory from calling waterfowl came on a breezy, cool, sunny day in late September.  Our camp group was working a small flock of about nine geese, and they were making wide circles as they eyed up our spread.  As they made what turned out to be their second-last pass, I made a low moan on my call, and to my astonishment, one of the geese mimicked it exactly.  Not similarly, not comparably, but precisely the same note, tone, and duration.  Naturally, I made the same call again (which may shock those of my friends who accuse me of never making the same sound twice) and the goose answered back again with the same sound.  So back and forth for five or six more sequences this goose and I made the same sounds.  It would call then I would call the same note back, and as their broad circle tightened and then straightened into a final approach I had a ripple of adrenaline course through me.  I was talking this bird, and the group that was with it, right into where we needed them to be.  And that was the point.  We took home five or six out of the group, and while I scratched down one of them, I can’t say for sure if the bird I got was the one that was communicating with me, or whether that bird was even in the bag at all.  But it didn’t matter of course, because aside from the feeling of accomplishment that comes from tricking a supremely evolved specimen of wildlife into a trap, I knew that for even a few short minutes I was intentionally communicating with a wild animal using their language, which was beyond anything I had done or experienced before.

I consider waterfowl to be some of the most delicious wild game meat I’ve ever eaten.  And I’m going to go so far as to be on record say something that some may find controversial.  Geese are delicious too.  Now I’ve heard from reputable sources that speckled-belly goose meat is the height of epicurean delights, and I’ve had some of the best roasted ducks out there (although the orgasmically tasty canvasback has long eluded me) but foremost I think Canada geese get a bad reputation when it comes to the plate.  Now before I continue I will say this; I have eaten some absolutely atrocious Canada goose meat, but that particular platter was filled with birds that were primarily “suburban geese”, and I don’t mean geese with mortgages and family sedans.  I was hunting with a friend on a farm that was just barely beyond the city limits of Guelph.  I believe we were legally hunting by about 50 yards.  We were helping out a farmer that my friend knew, and he had often complained of the geese, so we took a trip out to thin the numbers a bit.  Upon scouting we found that the birds were spending most of their day at a local public park about three kilometers away.  We shot three or four and upon consuming them the next day, I can safely say I have never eaten any wild game as unpleasant as those few birds.  Although I think they were eating some grain on this farm, I attribute most of their flavour to them eating chemically fertilized grass and what I can only assume was their own feces for most of their days.  Really “wild” geese, the kind that truly migrate and spend limited time in urban/suburban areas have never troubled me with their flavour.  In fact, a good late season goose with a layer of corn and grain fed fat on them is so darn good roasted and stuffed with apples, lemons, and rosemary that I could never think of skinning them for their breast and leg meat.  Early season geese aren’t as succulent in terms of that, and they usually are still a bit “pinny” as we say, so more often than not that meat goes into the grinder, which isn’t a bad way to enjoy the fruits of a goose hunt either.  Last year we took a pin-feathered mallard drake that was not even two hours expired (talk about fresh organic!) and made a great little appetizer by butterflying the breasts and then pan frying them with the whole, skinned legs.  We rarely go hungry during duck and goose season.

The atmosphere of the goose hunt itself also endears it further to me.  I do enjoy the silent solitude of deer and turkey hunting, but silence is mandated by the nature of the prey.  Deer, and to an even greater extent, wild turkeys have incredibly acute hearing.  I’m not disputing the hearing of a duck or a goose, but I find the waterfowl hunting experience just slightly more gregarious for those doing the hunting.  First off, we almost always do this a pretty large group.  Five or more at a minimum.  It is just too labour intensive with decoys, blinds, guns, ammunition and the assorted paraphernalia to not have many hands to make the work light.  In fact some of us take it much lighter than others.  Secondly this group mentality makes it easy to have a good time.  We often just stand in a ditch or along a well-concealed fencerow and half-shout jokes and barbs at each other.  We tell amusing stories about our spouses, friends of friends, or the hunting companions that have gone before us, some of whom have sadly departed.  We laugh and giggle until we weep, we try out each other’s calls, and we generally have a raucous time, all the while eyeing the horizon and the heavens for birds.  When we miss, we taunt and deride each other’s failures as human-beings, and when we succeed everyone claims the credit simultaneously, particularly if one of the many birds that hit the ground is wearing jewelry.

Since some of us purchased layout blinds, the experience has changed only slightly.  We still do all of the above, we just do it from a reclined position.

I could wax poetic about the time-honoured history of waterfowling in North America, about how it built economies and industries, of how it nearly died as a tradition in the early 1900’s, and how it has staged a comeback.  I could tell the indigenous inhabitants of North America’s legends related to ducks and geese that I have learned.  I could write about the powers of survival possessed by ducks and geese (powers that I have read about, heard about, and witnessed personally).  I could go on at length about the conservation successes originated by Delta Waterfowl and Ducks Unlimited, and I could lecture on our need to be even better conservationists to preserve our privilege to keep hunting ducks and geese.  There is just so much to tell of and to write about.  I’ve had more hunts than I can literally remember, and I’m not even 35 yet.  Think of the stories I have and that everyone else has that go untold; those that hunker in saw grass blinds, corn rows, flooded rice, and sinkboxes.

I haven’t even talked about retrievers yet.

In the end though what I say is likely just things that have been said before and known of for ages.  For my part I don’t need convincing.  As someone who loves and studied history, there is just far too much tradition, both personal and in the preceding years for me to ignore.

For those that do need convincing though, think about those histories while you are making your own.  And going forward, when you watch them lock up and drop in, as you thumb off the safety, rise and shout “Take ‘em!” or “Now!” or “Cut ‘em!” or whatever it is that you’ve made your war-cry, make sure that you commit those ones to your memory too.

Because when the hunt is over, that’s all we get to hang on to.  Until the next day out duck hunting that is.

Counting Down...to Lunacy!

Here I sit just a few short days (thirteen to be precise) away from the start of goose season in my neck of the woods; for some of you in my province, the fun begins again on September 1st, and you have no idea how I envy you.

This is usually the weekend when my goose hunting putterings reach a fever pitch.  This year is likely to be no exception.  I'll clean my shotgun, put in the correct choke, lay out or pack almost all of my gear, and then obsessively go through it every day until it is time to get out there.  If you're like me (and there is a reasonable chance that in some ways you might be) this meandering and pointless busy work serves to soothe twitching nerves that have been stretched thin by the prospect of goose hunting.  Or maybe you are normal, and this isn't you at all.

Fair enough.

For me though, this year brings new anticipation.  On Sunday, my layout blind is being delivered.  Oh glorious day.  Yep, I caved in and bought one.  Now I get to do what is really the most thrilling although in truth, penultimate, act: assembly.  I think I'll do this in my basement, so that it is out of sight of my loving wife and away from the tender ears of my son, since I will invariably get frustrated, lose something, or end up being a general sweary and unpleasant character until it is completely put together.

But then...oh then.  I'll of course shout like a five year old for everyone to come down and look at me as I lay there in it.  Maybe I'll do a jack-in-the-box (or Shawn-in-the-blind, if you will) trick and try to surprise my son until he wets himself, although that is a pretty common occurrence, so it's not really much of an accomplishment, but still.  I'll then have my wife takes some pictures, I'll probably at least put on hunting coat while I lay there in the blind (for research purposes only you see) and I most certainly will hide in it, close the doors, and practice my goose calling.  Hell, I may even try sleeping in it...just...ya know...for research again.

At some point I'll break it down and try to stuff it into my comically undersized commuter car, just to make sure it transports well.  If it doesn't fit, then bungee cords and old blankets will be packed in the same clown-car so as to allow for the new toy to join me on all future hunting trips; I'm sure my co-workers in the Toronto-area will have never seen anything quite like it.

Oh, yeah.  Somewhere in there on Sunday I'll need to run the BBQ for my son's 2nd birthday party.  Maybe I'll assemble the blind first and put it in the backyard so the other toddlers can play with it.  It will be just like an amusement park.  I'll put some decoys around, blow my duck and goose calls, and fun will be had by all.

I may even charge admission.

Then I'll have a couple of burgers, some cake and ice cream, giggle like a pre-teen, tell some jokes, and generally enjoy my son's big day.

Then hours later, after everyone has left and while my house lay in the tattered aftermath of a toddler's birthday party, I may return to the basement, grab a beer, put on some huntin' songs and go through my goose hunting checklist once more.  All while laying in my new blind.

This season better open soon.  I'm in very real danger of losing my mind (or my wife, but I could probably always find another one of those).

Seriously, though, all the anticipation and build-up is just one facet of what makes it great to be a hunter.  I hope everyone is savouring this next couple of weeks as much as I am.  And by the way, to my dearest spouse, you're a great sport...please don't leave me.  I'll be all better in two weeks time and then things will be back to normal.  Promise.

When Calling May Not Be My Calling

Saturday, August 20^th saw me standing with twelve other hopefuls at the Canadian Open Goose Calling Championship.  We were milling around a boat that was on display next to the contest stage, most (myself included) were holding their goose calls in their hands and chatting perfunctorily with the other contestants.  Already it was kind of apparent who the threats were.  The group of five or six guys with the official call-company t-shirts and camo hats that all apparently knew each other from their goose-call sponsorship deals, guiding jobs, and the contest calling circuit were clearly the unofficial front-runners.  For me and the other seven guys, well, let’s say that it wasn’t hopeless but it was clearly going to be daunting.  In whispers behind the stage we all cracked some jokes, talked about what calls we owned, where we hunted, and other various pieces of hunting-specific small talk.

Surprisingly, wine and classical music never came up once the whole time I was there.

Unlike anything else “competitive” I’ve ever been at though, there was no intimidation, no brash and over-the-top warm-up routines, no clique-ish airs.  Just a bunch of guys who all like calling geese, some more or less amateur, and others clearly what you could liberally describe as pros just standing around shooting the breeze and waiting to get up and do their routines.

I saw some call brands I recognized.  I saw one brand I’d never seen before (more on that below).  One guy (arguably the oldest contestant) had a young-looking black Lab with him; the dog’s lead looped securely through the man’s left hip belt loop.  The dog was placid and immaculately well-behaved, which was nice to see.

We drew numbers from a bucket to determine our order.  In some bizarre cosmic comedy, I always seem to end up drawing to call first at these contests (up until Saturday I’d called first in every duck, goose, or turkey calling contest I’d entered) but this time I drew to call eleventh out of the thirteen guys.  Not too shabby, I thought.

Then some of the guys got up on stage and started making a serious racket.  And, for me at least, that was when the very small sliver of hope I had for winning this thing vanished, and survival instincts kicked in.  Now I’d been practicing, but it was obvious that the sounds I was making and the sounds that these cats were throwing down were very different.  Continuity turned out to be the key.  I made (generally) the same sounds that these other guys made, but they strung their clucks, moans, barks, bawls, murmurs, and the very effective (but also tough to master) train notes together so seamlessly, and with such ease that it really was beautiful…if you appreciate those kinds of things.  Me?  Well I was fast, and kind of all over the place.  In practice I could draw the routine out to a full 80 or 90 seconds (which is right around the max) but in competition I was done inside of 70 seconds.  Not that I was nervous…but I did get a bit excited.

As I’d said…perhaps I was overly-optimistic to think I could win, but making it out of the preliminary heat was my minimum goal.  Once I saw who was calling 10^th though (read: right before me) I was pretty certain that I was buggered.  Calling right ahead of me was Josh Brugmans; a nice, down to earth guy who I’ve talked with once or twice, who just happens to be a goose-guide and top level caller with three or four contest wins since 2008 under his belt.  He had just won the Old Man Flute contest half-an-hour before and had given me a thorough beat down (proverbially) the one other time I called in a contest against him (in 2008 at the Southwestern Ontario Calling Classic, an event he coincidentally won that year).  And in the first round on Saturday he basically did what he always does and called really well…at least to my ears.  He would end up finishing third overall, which gives you an idea of the caliber of the other callers there Saturday as well.

So there I was, ascending the stage not as Shawn West but as the anonymous Caller #11, right after a top-class caller had just done his very proficient thing.  In fact, there were no nerves at all.  I felt the pressure was off, and all I could do was get up and let slide.  I elected to take my ten second warm up…no problem, no wonky sounds.  I nodded to the MC and he gave the word that this time it was for the real thing.  And off I went.  I hit every note I wanted to, and I hit them in order.  About the time I was doing my laydown work, I noticed that the red-light that signals the very near end of the 90 seconds had not come on yet.  Only then was I slightly panicked.  It was obvious that in my excitement I’d moved through my routine much too quickly (go ahead, make your inappropriate jokes now) and was in jeopardy of finishing far too early.  But I was also out of ideas, and anything else I called would have been repetitious, so I wrapped things up.

I got some approving nods and “nice calling” remarks when I returned to the group of contestants, and one of the guys eliminated in my round sought me out later and asked about a call I had made and how he could do it too, which was nice.  Still, when the MC went through the list of the six numbered callers that were advancing; number eleven was not among them.  Such is life.

They whittled the thirteen down to six, and then down to four.  In the final four, they actually had a call-off for first place, with two guys (I don’t know either of their names, sorry) having to blow through their routines again before a winner was announced.  I believe the same call maker swept the final four and therefore the podium, which is good for them if true, but then again I didn’t formally interview the four finalists to find out what call they were blowing so I could be wrong on that front.  I was hoping to do my part and put a Tim Grounds call in there, but was unsuccessful…due more to operator deficiencies than any intrinsic problem with the manufacturer; eight world titles for Tim Grounds calls more or less speak for themselves and do much more justice to the standard of this particular product than my ham-fisted and weak-lunged attempts at contest calling could.

One brand of calls I had never even heard of, but that sounded really, really good (again in the hands of competent operators) was a homegrown Ontario product called Schuyler Goose Calls.  Made in Port Dover, Ontario and limited to a run of 200 calls manufactured per year, they sounded very good, as I said, but they also looked really sexy too (and don’t act like flashy looks aren’t important to a goose hunter).  The one guy blowing this call in my division (caller #6, I believe) was also a nice, approachable guy with very good things to say about the call and the call-maker; he advanced into the second round but did not make the final four.   My take away was that this was obviously a well-constructed, locally manufactured and tuned product with good sound and a catchy but functional design; check out the website here if you want to look into the product.

Family commitments drew me away from sticking around to see the outcome of the Senior Duck Calling Contest (with the winner qualifying for the Worlds in Stuttgart, Arkansas) and also of the Two-Man Goose Calling Contest, so if you’re seeking news on the victors in those competitions, might I suggest you slide on over to the Contest Calendar section of one of my preferred websites http://www.callingducks.com/.

As for me, far from wallowing in self-pity and discouragement, I’m galvanized anew.  I picked up some very good sounds that I can use on the real thing in a couple of weeks when the season kicks off down here in Southern Ontario in just under 20 days, I had a good time, I talked to some friends I had not seen in a while, and maybe made one or two new ones.

But that brings us to the final question: will I compete again?  Maybe, but for now I think I’ll stick to this semi-anonymous, self-directed writing gig.  Because like my goose-calling, I’m just proficient enough at this to be entertaining and get the job done, but maybe not quite good enough to take on the world just yet.

Now if only I could master that train-note…

Calls For the Rest of Us

I’ve been practicing like mad these last ten days or so in preparation for embarrassing myself in competition at the Ducks Unlimited 2011 Canadian Duck & Goose Calling Championship and as such, have managed to squeeze some “interesting” sounds out of my goose call (since I’m not competing in the duck contest).  Most have been pseudo-goosey and by next Friday night I hope to have a reasonably sound (no pun intended) routine ready for August 20^th.

However all this huffing and puffing into a length of hollow acrylic got me to pondering about the language that we are presenting to geese and ducks.  Sure, the standard calls are pretty, well standard.  For ducks, or mallards at least, everything is based on a ‘quack’ sound.  The hail call is just a loud, long series of clear quacks, the come-on call (as it is popularly known) is just quacks that are sped up and blown with some urgency and excitement.  The feed chatter, often argued to be the toughest of the duck calls to make, is (in my opinion) just a very fast series of very short raspy, guttural quacks.  This video from Echo Calls (not a sponsor, although I wish they were) shows some of the finest contest-style feed chatters I’ve ever heard.  Most hunters I’ve met (and yours truly as well) cannot do this, but it is still pretty awesome.  Goose calling, for Canada Geese specifically, is similar in that most calls, in hunting or in contest calling, start with a cluck.  A honk is a loud, drawn out cluck, approach work or come-on calls are a series of rapid double and even triple clucks, moans and lay down work could be described as variations on the first part of a cluck without the break in the call, and so on.  Not an encyclopedic (or even a marginally correct assessment) of waterfowl language but just what I’ve been mulling over in my mind as I get quizzical looks from my neighbours and lower everyone in the proximity’s property values with my constant noise.  At least I shut it down for two hours on Sunday while my next-door neighbours had an open house with their realtor. No one wants to buy the house next door to the place that sounds like a duck and goose convention for three straight hours every evening.

So given that I generally understand the basics of waterfowl calling, here are some of the calls that I wish were formally recognized by serious callers.  Most are scenario specific, and all are completely made-up.  Enjoy.

The “Please Don’t Call So Loud” Call

This one is ideal for those rare occasions when you may have celebrated the arrival of hunting season a little too hard the night before the hunt (admit it, it happens; just try to be safe out there, okay?) and you are nursing a headache in the blind.  I imagine that through a duck call it would sound like a feeble, squeaky quack, and for a goose hunter just a half-hearted, plaintive moan.  It would signal to the birds that if they just wanted to continue to go along on their way, you wouldn’t really be bothered by that at all.  It would signal other hunters in your party, on the off chance the birds actually committed and tried to decoy, that everyone should just let the birds land without being shot at, since the sound of a shotgun report might actually make your head explode open like an over-cooked bratwurst on a grill.

The “You Didn’t See Anything…Honest” Call

This one actually exists, because I think I’ve both heard and performed this sound.  It is usually an inappropriately loud and totally uncharacteristic series of calls made by an embarrassed hunter that has just inadvertently moved and spooked the flock just as they were about to drop the landing gear.  Usually accompanied by flaring birds and much swearing from others in the blind, sometimes the non-guilty join in and this call is almost always continued in desperation for over a minute, long after the birds have made a beeline for the next county.  It ends when the offending hunter incredulously looks around and says “Who the hell moved?!” while casting accusatory looks at everyone else in the party.

The “Wha’ Happened?” Call

This call is made after a hunter empties their gun at birds that were so close and moving so slowly that they were ‘sure things’ and despite this, misses everything completely.  Accompanied by geese pumping their wings powerfully away or ducks trampolining straight up and out of sight, it is an attempt to convince those birds that you just missed cleanly to come back for a second look.  It differs from any accepted comeback calls because it usually sounds angry, since the poor nimrod doing the calling absolutely cannot believe they just wasted three shells (okay, two if you shoot a side-by-side or an over-under) at birds that should, by all rights, be laying belly up in the decoys.  The birds can sense this anger (and likely saw you rise to shoot) and thus they rarely, if ever, return.  In a tale related to this call, I was once hunting geese with my Dad on a foggy Thanksgiving Monday when the ceiling was twenty feet at best.  I could hear geese but rarely could I see them.  Miraculously I had managed to scratch down a double (another story altogether), but was still one bird shy of the limit.  I put the call on a distant single and the bird came as if on a string.  He (I’m assuming masculinity here, don’t be offended) was gliding in no more than fifteen feet off the ground and I whiffed on him twice inside of twenty yards.  Still for some reason he landed and stood in the decoys so I put the bead on his throat patch and attempted to shoot him turkey-hunter-style.  I failed, whizzing a load of BBs over his head.  As he clumsily ran and got airborne, I started howling a “Wha’ Happened?” call at him while ramming my last three shell into my gun with my other hand.  I never did get my limit that day.  Dad, predictably, did get his three geese that day.

The Belch

This one is usually a specialty of those hunters who like to feast in the blind.  I’m not talking about a granola bar or a Snickers.  I mean guys who bring pop, chips, Red Bull, sandwiches, and little propane cookers with them in a backpack or mini-Coleman cooler when they hit the fields and marshes.  This call usually happens when, after having consumed one pork rind too many, they are startled by a flock that has the gall to interrupt their meal and they then proceed to start blazing away on a call.  This usually gets their diaphragm all messed up and they blow a hiccup or burp right through their instrument, along with food particles of varying sizes that every once in a while render their calls stuck and useless.  It sounds just like you think it does.

So that’s just a small selection of the calls I wish that we waterfowlers recognized.  I’m sure there are lots of others that happen and I’ll post future editions as I come by them.

Less Than One Week to Register for The Ducks Unlimited 2011 Canadian Duck & Goose Calling Championship

Registration for the Ducks Unlimited 2011 Canadian Duck & Goose Calling Championship is closing this Friday, August 12, 2011.  For those of you interested in registering, details can be found in this previous post, or by clicking this link.

 

Don’t feel you can cut it?  Well I certainly can’t, but I registered (for the Senior Goose) anyhow, so hopefully my foolishness should galvanize some of you to join me in testing your skills on stage.  The worst thing that could happen would be that you learn some new calls that may help you scratch down a few more ducks or geese this fall.

 

Hope to see some of you there.

Ducks Unlimited 2011 Canadian Duck & Goose Calling Championship

Here’s a chance for any readers in Ontario or parts nearby to get out and test your calling skills, and maybe win a prize or two.  The event is going down on August 20, 2011 at the Bass Pro Shops in Vaughan (1 Bass Pro Mills Drive for those of you who may need directions), and having been to a couple of DU calling contests (one in my youth many years ago at Wye Marsh, and one more recently in Grimsby…both with limited results) I can say with some certainty that they are a good time. 

The associated forms and rules can be found here and here, but to give a brief synopsis of the event, it looks like they’ll be running seven (yes, seven!) categories.  Three will be in the duck calling stream: senior, youth, and two-man, with a further four in the goose calling milieu: senior, youth, two-man, and a unique sounding senior’s category called Old Man Flute (where it looks as though only flute-style calls, as opposed to the ever-popular short reed-style, can be used). 

For those of you unfamiliar with the format, here’s a Cole’s Notes version for this event.  Youth callers (under 15 years of age and never having placed in a senior-level contest) will call from a blind for 60 seconds, and senior callers will call for 90 seconds.  Five judges are concealed so that they are judging on sound quality alone, and they score you on a points standard. 

Otherwise, it is just a good time.  I’ve found that most of the people that are competing and observing at these events are eager to talk about hunting and swap strategies and stories.  Who knows, you may even make some new hunting buddies.  Aside from that Bass Pro Shops is just a fun place to hang out and covet various pieces of equipment and gear.  I hardly even fish at all and I still like to go check out the bass boats.

I’ve been asked if I am attending/competing and my answer is that I hope to be able to at least come watch.  My goose call is currently in transit to Illinois (I took the extra cheap postage option so it may get there next week) so unless I can get it repaired, shipped back and get some practice in before August 20^th, I won’t be competing.  Then again, I am not really a threat to win in the goose-calling arena, ditto for my work on a duck call.  I’m proficient and confident, but hardly competition-class.

Registration closes August 12, 2011.  For more info review the links above for the rules and registration info or call the Ducks Unlimited office in Barrie, ON at (705) 721-4444 or email calling@ducks.ca for more additional details.

Return of the Gearhead

Saturday past saw me driving at a very early hour from Cambridge to Barrie so that I could go hang out with my in-laws and pick up my son (they had taken him off my hands for a few days.

Now no drive along Highway 400 North is complete with a stop at BassPro Shops.  So that’s what I did.  See, last week I was sitting in my basement blaring away on my Tim Grounds Super Mag (as is my habit) and it made a couple of funny, squeaky notes.  Since this call has been money for me (and plenty forgiving too) I chalked it down to operator inadequacy, which is usually the case so early in the pre-season.  After a half-hour or so, my wife came down to inform me that I ought to consider making practice time over, or she’d make it over by force.  The call was full of all sorts of condensation, so I took it apart to rinse it out when I noticed a couple of cracks starting to form at the tip of the reed.  This call has seen me through almost five years of hard-hunting, constant practice, and even a couple of contests, so for the reed to make it that far was great, frankly.

I would be remiss if I don’t also mention that in my haste I once accidentally slammed it in my car door in the morning darkness…since then it has had a mean chip and crack in the end piece, but it still sounds great.  Still, the small cracks in the reed and the slightly out of tune squeal were flimsy enough pretenses for me to stop in at BassPro and peruse their waterfowl calls, decoys, and gear.

I tested out some layout blinds, priced out some dekes, and attempted to try some goose calls.  I’ll be posting later this week on my findings in the blind and decoy fields, but this post is really about customer service.

I won’t be slagging BassPro; all I will say is that I can’t believe they weren’t able to find “the guy” who had the keys to the acrylic and exotic wood goose calls.  Also, they didn’t have any replacement reeds or parts for my Super Mag, so I decided to look into repairing it through the dealer instead.

In this case, the dealer was Tim Grounds himself.  I went to his website, and gave him a call that Saturday.  I got his shop voicemail, so I flipped him an email with the details on what I need.  Not only did I get an email back from Juda Grounds first thing on the next business day (i.e. today) but I also got a personal voicemail from the man himself.

Not to gush, but I’ve read a lot about Tim, watched him on TV and in hunting videos, and used his instructional tape that came with my Super Mag to nail down some pretty good sounds.  All the testimonials on his site indicate that he’s just a humble, nice guy who is passionate about hunting and hunting calls.  In that vein, the goose call he made that hangs on a lanyard around my neck has lead to the demise and preparation into delicious food of many, many Canada Geese in the last five years, and it has also been hanging around my neck during the creation of some lifelong memories; some of which I’ll be sharing with you the reader in the next weeks and months.  This phone message is about as close as I’ve come to being associated in any way with a real hunting icon, so forgive me my rock star adulation.  My wife doesn't understand it either.

The outcome?  I’m getting a true craftsman that will personally repair and tune my call, a good story, and I don’t have to break the bank.  That’s a triple-win for those of you who are counting.

Jack Miner Calling Classic in Kingsville, ON--April 10, 2011

As the title of this post says, the Jack Miner Calling Classic is taking place this April in Kingsville, Ontario as the kick-off event for National Wildlife Week.

I am strongly considering going down (in the novice category so it is not like my presence would constitue any kind of special attraction) and seeing how I stack up against some far superior goose and duck callers.

Perhaps you've never been to a calling contest and are curious to know what the fuss is about; I can say with some certainty that I've never been to a duck and goose calling contest yet that was anything other than fun.  If you are a vendor thinking of trading your wares, the link above has vendor details as well.

There will also be some retriever demos and other assorted waterfowl-related fun going on.