Cooking, cleaning, shepherding his two young sons to and from school — oh, and talking to mallards, wigeon, pintail and snow geese — is all in a day’s work for Shane Rossen, a 42-year-old Mill Creek resident.
Rossen is a stay-at-home dad while his wife is away with the U.S. military in Kuwait. He’s also a five-time Washington state duck calling champion, an experienced competitor in the national championships held yearly in Stuttgart, Ark., and is ranked as one of the two dozen best callers in the country. He finished as the fifth runner-up in 2007, he said; not bad when up against 75 or 80 of the nation’s top talents. And he finds time to practice with his calls daily, to give calling seminars, and to represent waterfowl hunting equipment, including a line of Tennessee-based Buck Gardner calls.
Rossen was at Holiday Sports in Burlington recently, judging a calling competition and giving a seminar on basic duck talk. For those interested in becoming more effective waterfowl hunters, or calling as a hobby, he had the following tips:
SPEND TIME around live ducks and geese, listening to and observing their vocalization, particularly ground to air. If you can’t do that, there are CDs available, Rossen said. A couple of the best are “Mallards Gone Wild,” and “Canadas Gone Wild,” by Zink Calls. They should be available online or at most local sporting goods stores that stock hunting equipment.
BASIC CALL TYPES include single-reed, reed-and-a-half, and double-reed. Rossen said a double-reed call is probably the easiest to learn and is suitable for casual hunters who get out two or three weekends a season, but that single or reed-and-a-half calls really teach you how to actually imitate waterfowl sounds. Another major factor in call construction, Rossen said, is the varying diameter of the exhaust port — the hole the sound comes out of. A quarter-inch port is quieter and more mellow. A three-eighths or larger port tends to be louder and more strident. Choose the smaller one if most of your hunting is done on small waters, perhaps with sound dampened by foliage. Use the larger call if you frequent wide open spaces with wind and other noise.
CALL MATERIALS are be basically divided into wood, acrylic and polycarbonate. Wood calls produce the softest, warmest tones, Rossen said. They sounds are more realistic and not overpowering. Acrylic calls are louder, more suitable to open areas with perhaps competition from other hunters. The polycarbonates are generally the least expensive.
CALL PRICES can range from really cheap to maybe $150 for top-of-the-line, field-grade (not collector’s art) products. “Buck Gardner makes a very good, midrange, custom acrylic item called the ‘Working Man,’” Rossen said. “It runs about $60, is made in the USA, and would be a great beginning choice for the hunter who wants to learn to call well.”
DIFFERENT SPECIES: One duck call does not fit all, Rossen said. At a minimum, hunters in this area should have a couple of calls: one for whistling ducks (pintail, teal, wood ducks and wigeon) and a mallard call for the others.
“We have lots of wigeon and pintail here locally,” Rossen said, “and to be effective, you should have a whistler.”
If you don’t want a whole cluster of various calls dangling from your lanyard, Rossen said Gardner makes a pretty good six-in-one call that can be adjusted for whistlers and drake mallards.
SNOW GEESE are a completely different critter. Rossen said snow goose calls are usually white, easy to identify on your lanyard, high-pitched and loud. “Basically, with snow geese, the main factor is how much racket you can make,” he said. “There are some great CDs on the market showing you how they communicate, but basically what you need to successfully hunt snows is a large decoy layout, lots of motion in your set, and a whole lot of noise. There’s a great CD called ‘Snow Bait’ on the market, which makes an excellent learning tool, and a web search should find it.”
AFTER ABOUT THE THIRD week of the season, Rossen said, most of the dumb ducks and geese are gone, and at least adequate calling ability becomes crucial to hunting success. “Get a moderately priced double-reed call and a copy of Buck Gardner’s ‘Straight Talk’ basic calling CD,” he said. “Then practice, practice, practice.”
CONTACT INFORMATION: Buck Gardner calls, CDs and other equipment, www.buckgardner.com.
Local waterfowl club, The Washington Waterfowl Association, NWDucks@frontier.com, or Northwest Chapter president Rone Brewer at 206-595-7481 or Rbrewer@SoundEco.com.
For information on Shane Rossen’s faith-based hunting/calling organization, which offers help, advice and fellowship for members as far away as New Zealand, and includes turkey, elk and predator calling, visit www.callersforchrist.com.
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