Summary: Great duck callers are made not born. With desire, practice, and following the three steps below you will become a competent and skillful duck caller.
Regardless of the level of skill you currently possess or you will possess, you will never sound any better than the duck call you are blowing. As far as calls are concerned, we believe "You Get What You Pay For". A quality duck call will allow you to produce the full range of sounds that a hen mallard can produce. It will also allow you to produce these sounds time after time and year after year. Don't cheat yourself on this very important step. For more information about choosing a call be sure to read our duck call selection guide.
The next step in calling ducks is to sound like a real duck. This means you need to learn how to proficiently operate a duck call. For on-line duck call instruction be sure to check out TakeEm's Duck Calling Instruction.
Practice and master the fundamentals.
All great athletes have two things in common. They have a mastery of the fundamentals of their sport and they are constantly practicing and improving their skills. Your goal should be no different. Step one is to start with the basics and master them first before you go any further. The basics for the hen mallard are the quack and the feeder chuckle. These two basic sounds are the foundations for everything else you will ever do with your duck call.
One of the reasons that many competition duck callers are great callers in the field is because of the amount of time they spend practicing their calling. They don't just pick up their call the day before the season starts; they practice to some degree all year long. If you will practice throughout the year your calling abilities and success will skyrocket.
The last step to becoming a great caller is to be able to read the birds. This really boils down to situational duck calling. This means you will be able to adapt you’re calling to the situation versus calling the same way every day. An example of this is Calling Ducks In Strong Winds.
Learn to vary your cadence, tempo and volume.
After you master the basics, you want to master call cadences and tempos. It's what helps you sound more like a duck instead of sounding like someone blowing a duck call. Since not all ducks sound the same and they do not have the same monotone volume or tempo, your goal is to sound like a lot of different ducks. This is only possible if you understand and master cadence, tempo and volume variations.