1. Scouting

There is no way around this, you need to be out there and paying attention to where the ducks are.  There really is no facsimilie for seeing where the ducks are resting, feeding and flying.  This particular guide only guides 4 days a week.  He guides the weekend, scouts Monday, guides Tuesday, scouts Wednesday, guides Thursday, scouts Friday and rinse repeat.  If this guy is not guiding 7 days a week (and trust me, there are weeks he could) then there has to be a good reason.  He is setting aside short term money for long term success and a great client base.  Simply said, you need to pay attention to what the birds are doing to ensure high quality duck hunting.

2. Concealment (i.e. quality duck blinds)

Now this guide almost exclusively is hunting out of fields, so he uses layout blinds to a great degress.  They are great for the on the move hunter that is hunting on dry land.  He is manic when it comes to making sure that everyone is greatly hidden.  He watches the birds, and immediatlely changes things if they are acting differently than they should.  If he is hunting in snow, he puts white sheets over his laydown blinds.  A muddy field?  He uses the mud from the actual field to ensure it looks the same.  Corn stalks?  Same concept.  He paints his face!  Most would think that is overkill, but pilots have repeatedly said that a human face is like a pie plate when they are looking from above.  You think the ducks don't see that?

So why should you care what a guide thinks?  It is a popular concept across all endeavors in life to copy the successful people at what they do best.  If he continually puts birds in the bag, he must be doing something right.

What are your thoughts on these two key tenets?

To begin with, we must separate out duck calls into single reed and double reed. A single reed call is a very versatile call that can run the gamut of sounds and ranges, but it more difficult to master. Especially for a beginner a single reed call might not be the best choice. The double reed duck call has two reeds and therefore lacks the range of a single reed, but makes up for that in terms of being much easier to blow and master. Double reeds are generally softer than single reeds which is great for calling in close quarters.

Another aspect is what material is the call made out of. The two most common high quality materials is wood and acrylic. You will also find a fair amount of poly calls as well, but in general I have found them to lack the sound you are looking for. The key difference in materials is that acrylic calls can be much louder and carry much further than wood duck calls. This is especially important when considering what type of hunting you will be doing. In an open space you want a loud call and should gravitate towards an acrylic duck call. Another key aspect is that acrylic has less variance in sound over the temperature ranges you would expect to see in a duck blind. Wood expands and contracts to a much greater degree leading to different sounds depending on the air temperature.

Personally, if I were to pick a perfect duck set up it would be two calls. A single reed meant to reach out and grab them, in which case I would choose a Rnt Daisy Cutter duck call. I would couple that with a double reed meant to work the close in birds, and that would be Fred Zink XR-2 Paralyzer duck call. Both would be in acrylic due to the wide array of temperatures I hunt in.