How to Use Your New Buck Gardner Call

How to Hold the Call
Hold the call in the hand that you don’t write with. This is for safety. Hold your gun with your best hand. Learn to hold the call with your off hand. Put small end piece of the call between your thumb and index finger and form a semisalute. Now put the barrel end up to your mouth as if you were drinking out of a Coke bottle. You should lay the call on your bottom lip and make your top lip mirror the top edge of the call and then form a seal so that you do not lose air when you operate the call. 

Quack
Say the word “Quit” into the call. Force the air up from your diaphragm just like you would push your air out as if to fog a window. Do not puff your cheeks out and blow. Cut the air off with your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

Cadence
To get the cadence of a hen Mallard, think about the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice. In your mind, say the words, just the way the musical rhyme plays out and you will have the cadence of a hen Mallard. To fill the call, just add a quack or two on the end.

Hail Call
This long distance greeting/attention getting call is done by putting together a 10-12 quack series that starts loud and descends smoothly throughout the series to the end. Kind of like this: Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit. Make sure you cut off each note sharply and doesn’t sound like a laughing duck.

Comeback Call
This call is used to get ducks to do just what is says, turn around and comeback when they are leaving. It is a series of fast quacks that are repeated until the ducks either turn and come back your way or they leave. It goes like this: Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit. Again, make sure you cut each note off sharply.

Lonesome Hen
This is the clincher. You will be talking dirty to them. This is the call you will use to finish the deal. It is a series of Quacks that goes like this: Quuuiiit, Quuiit, Quit, Quit, Quit, Quit. Drag the first two notes as if to beg or plead. Sharp crisp notes all the way through.

Feed Call
Make the shortest burst of air into the call that you can by building pressure behind your tongue with it against the roof of your mouth and letting just a little go and then shutting it off quickly. Try and say “Tick Tock” just like a clock. Then learn to say “Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick”. This will sound like ducks feeding on the water and can be used with and after the Lonesome hen.