Tune Your Goose Calls

  • July 9, 2010 11:45 pm

Tune ‘em up, Please.

Picture this: You’re safely hidden away in your hunting bind when a large flock of Canada goose comes winging toward you. In your efforts to bring these birds closer to your firing range, you excitedly blow on your short reed goose call.

Then the unthinkable happens: The birds do a u-turn and fly safely away?

What happened? The odds are that something about your goose call sent these birds winging away. If you’re an experienced caller, one who knows exactly how to produce that perfect mating or feeding call, then perhaps there’s something wrong with your goose call itself. Perhaps your call is out of tune.

A short reed goose call that is out of tune can instantly spoil the day of even the most veteran of hunters. Geese are no dummies; they can determine, nearly instantly, when a call just doesn’t sound right. And once they determine this, you can bet that they won’t be flying any closer to you.

There are two ways to handle a goose call that has fallen out of tune, something that can happen to even the priciest of calls. Your first, and perhaps simplest, option is to send your goose call back to the manufacturer for a quick tune-up.

However, if you want your call back and in service quickly, you can also learn how to tune your goose call on your own. The best news? Doing this is a relatively simple task.

The easiest way to tune a misfiring call is to adjust the reed of your short reed goose call. First, set the reed on top of your call’s tone board so that its tip can barely be pushed down into the board.

Next, place your wedge down to about 1/16th of an inch below where the reed’s taper ends. You can then push this combination into the call’s insert. Push until about 1/16th to 1/18th of an inch of the wedge sticks out from the goose call’s end. Remember, it’s important to have just a small gap between the groove in the call’s tone board and your reed. This guarantees a more realistic and clear-sounding call.

If you find yourself constantly needing to tune your call, something is wrong. A goose call should rarely have to be tuned. If your call is an exception, speak to a manager at the store from which you bought it. You might simply have a defective call.

Be careful, too, to be certain that your call really is out of tune. Often, inexperienced hunters fail to sound a realistic call. They blame the problem on a goose call that is out of tune, when, in reality, they themselves simply haven’t practiced long enough to master their instrument.

Mastering Snow Goose Calls Can Make Or Break Your Hunting Trip

  • July 9, 2010 11:40 pm

Hunting snow geese is no easy task. It requires skill, marksmanship and patience. But buying the right snow goose calls can give you the edge you need when you’re hunting these beautiful birds.

Snow geese, also known as blue geese, are clever enough to stay out of your hunting sights unless you entice them with a perfectly recreated snow goose call. A perfectly timed mating or feeding call can bring these white-plumed birds near your blind, giving you your best chance to go home with a big catch.

Problems occur, though, when you fail to purchase the right goose call for your skill level. If you’re a novice hunter, you’ll want to purchase the most affordable and simplest of snow goose calls. This will give you the chance to learn the art and skill of making these calls before you move on to costlier goose-call models.

We’ve all heard of hunting trips ruined by poor goose calls. You don’t want to be that one person on a hunting trip who misfires on a mating call, spooking a full flock of snow geese in the other direction. Your ride home with your friends won’t be such a pleasant one.

That’s why it’s always best for new hunters to start simple. They should buy the basic snow goose calls from their hunting retailers. And they should first master the simplest of bird calls before moving on to more advanced techniques.

Mastering snow goose calls is no easy task. It requires hours of practice. It requires mastering your store-bought goose call. And it requires the patience to truly master a call before moving on to a more involved version.

Fortunately, today’s basic goose calls are extremely easy to use. With just a few minutes of practice, you’ll be able to recreate the sound of a wild goose. Of course, recreating a basic sound and mastering an entire cadences of whistles, honks and beeps are two different things. Don’t overestimate your skill level. Practice for a more experienced hunter friend; this friend should be able to tell you whether you’re ready to move your goose calling to a higher level or whether more practice is called for.

Listen to the constructive criticism given by other, more veteran hunters, too. Remember, they want you to succeed. They want their hunting trips to be fruitful ones. So pay attention when they provide you with tips or advice.

Remember, nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Work your way up from basic snow goose calls to more advanced versions. When you’re bagging some impressive bird totals with every hunting trip, you’ll be glad you did.

Goose Call: Mastering The Basics

  • January 18, 2010 8:35 am

Like all arts (If you believe it’s an art, because some people argue that it’s a science), goose calling is not a skill that can be mastered quickly. It’s surprisingly difficult, even with the most expensive goose calls on the market, to accurately mimic the call of this waterfowl. And by blowing an unnatural call, you’ll do more to chase geese away than you will to bring them to your favorite hunting spot.

Fortunately, even if you’re new to goose calling, you can quickly – and with some practice – learn enough to attract waterfowl on a consistent basis.

Start by learning the standard goose call. This call comprises just two notes, a low note followed by a high one. It’s easy enough to blow this sound with a simple soft-reed goose call, one that doesn’t cost an exorbitant amount of money.

Many hunters are tempted to experiment with this basic goose call before they’ve mastered it. This is a mistake. Don’t get too fancy. The fancier you are, the more likely you’ll be to sound a call that sounds just a bit artificial. When you’re out in the field, geese will recognize a call that doesn’t sound quite right. They’ll then avoid your hunting spot, and you’ll go home empty handed at the end of the day.

Practice the basic goose call on a daily basis until you’re absolutely sure that you’ve mastered it. Once you’ve done this, you can move on to more advanced calls.

Many hunters will move from the basic call to the growl or murmur. When geese are feeding, they make a low, almost guttural, growl. This is the sound that geese make when they are on the ground searching for food and communicating with other geese.

Basically, this is a deep buzzing sound that hunters can duplicate by pushing just a bit of air through their goose call. The best way to describe this sound is that it resembles a soft “wah, wah, wah” noise.

Once you’ve mastered this call and the basic honk, you can mix the two sounds together throughout your hunting trip. It’s a good way to add realism to your goose calling. You can also rely on this combination to make it seem as if there are several geese in one location.

Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake that inexperienced hunters often fall into: They try to get too complicated with their goose calling. Instead of blowing a simple honk or a buzzing feeding sound, they’ll try to mimic mating calls and other more complicated versions. This is fine for experienced hunters who have already mastered the art of goose calling. For newcomers to the art, though, it’s a recipe for disaster: The more complicated a goose sound, the more likely you are to sound it incorrectly.

You can also watch goose calling videos under the videos section.

Goose Calling Basics

  • December 5, 2009 10:38 pm

This video provides you with the basics of goose calling.

Goose calling: The simpler, the better

  • November 22, 2009 3:26 am

It’s happened to even the most experienced of hunters: You’re sitting in your blind and a flock of geese are flying overhead. You blow on your short reed goose call. Then it happens: The geese suddenly veer off in the other direction, out of the range of your shotgun. Fortunately, you can prevent this scenario from taking place again by mastering the first rule of goose calling: Keep it simple.

Today’s newer short reed goose calls are extremely easy to blow. Unfortunately, many hunters erase this benefit from trying to get too fancy with their goose calling. They’ll blow several triple honks in a row. Or they’ll go for a highball call.

Unfortunately, these calls rarely bring geese closer to the blind. In fact, they often bring the opposite result. That’s because geese can easily detect honks that don’t sound quite right. And the more complicated the call, the more likely that it will strike the false notes that will spook geese.

By concentrating instead on short, simple honks, hunters can more easily fool geese. They’ll go home with a larger catch, and a greater feeling of pride.

Here’s why simpler is better: The next time you’re on the hunt, pause for a moment and listen. What sounds are the geese flying overhead making? The odds are good that they’re making the simple, single honk. Geese simply do not make fancier calls all that often. It’s why they respond so much better when hunters give up the fancy calls and instead use their short reed goose calls to make short, simple honks.

Short and simple makes sense financially, too. These are tough economic times. No one wants to spend more money on anything if they can help it. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on the latest and greatest goose calls to get good results, especially not if you concentrate on the single honk.

That’s because the market’s simplest, and, therefore, cheapest, short reed goose calls reproduce that single honk with ease. You may need more expensive goose calls if you want to practice creating fancier calls. But doing that is mostly a waste of time and money.

Effective goose hunting is complicated enough. You have to buy the right clothing and loads of equipment. You have to find the perfect place for your blind. And you need large doses of patience as you wait for your prey to fly into your sights. There’s no reason to make the sport any more challenging when it comes to goose calls. Master the basic goose call. You’ll rarely, if ever, need anything else.

We’ve all heard that classic saying: “Keep it simple, stupid.” Well, nowhere is this saying more appropriate than when it comes to goose calling. If you want to catch the most geese possible, with as little stress involved, don’t try to do too much with your goose calling.

Goose Calls

  • November 12, 2009 4:48 am

Goose calling is not that easy but that’s what makes it more fun and people consider it a sport because you do need to be skilled which only comes with practice. There are different types of calls. Practicing and mastering these five of the general calls will add to the excitement of the sport.

HAIL CALL – It’s a extended distance call focused to greet, it consists of a sequence of spaced out rhythmic honks. A honk is  really  a low and high pitch note. Low is note is a rasping sound, and the high pitch is the squawk. A hail call is a attention getter, it helps you to get noticed.

GREETING CALL – Now since you have the birds attention.  You can start picking up  your pace of calling, which is known as greeting call. A greeting call is an excited contact call often made when one group of geese meets another. A greeting call helps you to keep the birds coming to your way.

LAYDOWN CALL – Descending geese make this quick signal note call when approaching to land.  Birds make this call as they are approaching on descend flying towards you.

FEEDING CALL – As the birds fly in and land, they are more cautious but after a while you can start to notice that their head are looking around to find food, they wings will start beating slowly. This is a sign that they are willing to stop and look around. It’s a low volume call among geese that basically shows their satisfaction in a feed zone, that exactly what you want. You can also pick up the pace to add more enthusiasm, change your rhythm with more cackles and moans to sound more excited.

COMEBACK CALL – As you can guess from the name of this call, this is used to get the attention of passing or geese that are leaving. In other words, these are series of plea hail calls that are directed toward geese that flying away. This call keeps them excited and focused towards an area, in this case, you want them to flying into wherever you decoy spread is.

Goose Calling

  • October 19, 2009 1:25 am

As the fall season arrives, you can see the birds migrating. Activity increases significantly in the geese migration as well, and you can see them in the feeding areas, and you can start to notice the common sights and sounds of geese. A big flock of big Canada geese flying in “V” pattern is a season’s visual joy for many. Calling geese within the certain distance is very tricky and difficult. As the fall season progresses flocks are more wary and careful. Good calling is essential to be successful. Knowing what you are doing, practicing what you know and being able to reproduce the exact results under different situations and circumstances is very significant.

There isn’t really a magic call that you can just buy online or from a store and make calls that will be perfect. The best thing to do would be to first research some geese calls (That’s exactly what you are doing right now, so you are doing the first part), then learn the call you like from your research and start to learn and practice. You can go to a park that has geese and ducks and listen to them, as that will help you with your own calls, because you can differentiate between different calls easily that way.

Waterfowl calling are not that easy, but then I guess that depends on you as well. If you are willing to put some work into it and practice, it will be easier for you. But if you are just lazy, and don’t want to put some effort into it then nothing is easy, let alone goose calling. So PRACTICE, PRACTICE AND PRACTICE. Make it a fun experience, just like when you learned how to drive a car, enjoy this learning experience as well and you will reap the benefits of your hard work when you will see a bird flying into the decoys and around 40 yards away from you.

Outdoors Blogs
Outdoors blogs