Haydel's Wood Duck Call ????

[Doc & Nash]

Has any one tried it, or had any luck with it last year, I picked up one this weekend at BPS and have still not figured it out.

[mississippi_duc_htr]

well C-M-D i havent ever tried a regular one but I did read somwhere awhile back and someone can correct me if I'm wrong I think it was in wildfowl that a woody can make 112 diffrent sounds. I have used a woody drake call but all you do on it was say taaaaweeeet,taaweeet and thats about it.

[Doc & Nash]

you would think that out of 112 different sounds I could get at least one of them to sound half way decent

[BPSHammer]

I have one and I like it pretty well.I try to do a whoooeeet whoooeet in it and they will come to it.

[Judd Irland]

CMD,
I have one I got before this past year. Not enough ducks to make a definitive judgement as of yet. I tell ya though, it is VERY loud in the timber. I found myself using a fingertip to baffle it down to a tolerable level. If ya want to, email me and we'll get on the horn and see if we cant get that thing workin for ya.

[Doc & Nash]

Do you just blow thru it or is it like a regular call that comes from down deep?

[hotty toddy]

I have one and like it. I don't think it works to really work woodie but I do believe it gets their attention. The hadels is good but the best imitation of a woodie I have ever heard comes out of a cap off of a bottled beer. I can show you how to do it.

Keep those calls out. In the early am it works to make a turky gobble.

[Wildfowler]

It's been my personal experience that the only way you can call in Wood Duck is by being in the right place at the right time. Wood Ducks, as a general rule, don't respond to calling at them, particularly when they are flying in groups. The only exceptions to this might occur when a bonded pair of Wood ducks are broken up. I'm no biologist, but Woodies seem to exhibit the strongest pair bonding of any of the puddle ducks that I have observed. I think a displaced member of the pair would seek the other out, perhaps by sound, or maybe even primarily by sound. Someone here said they can make 112 sounds. Well I heard a hen Wood Duck make a sound this year that nearly broke my heart. I heard the worst crying call you possibly imagine. I've never heard anything like this before. It was one of those deals where I shot the drake and the hen kept coming back looking and calling for her mate. Had I been able to duplicate the sound of a male Woody, I'm sure she too would have come in for a look. This example doesn't happen very often and I just don't think you can get a group of Wood ducks to deviate from their mission by blowing a call at them.

I think a Wood Duck call is a gimmick, kind of like a Mallard drake call. I admit that a Mallard drake call when properly blown sounds very life like in the blind. But have you ever heard someone blow a Mallard drake call from a short distance away? Say 75 yards. All you hear is a faint whistle. Is this really what you want the duck to hear? I'm sure there are plenty of you who swear by these calls and would completely disagree with me. To each his own, I don't like them.

I think you should master how to blow a Mallard hen call for use with other ducks. Not only learning how to make it sound good, but more importantly, learning how to know when to make no sound at all. If you routinely hunt Wood Ducks, I think the best thing you can do, is to take the time needed to figure out how best to put yourself directly under their flight path rather than trying to call in to decoy. Just my opinion, hope it helps.