# Help switching to short reed



## birdog105 (Aug 23, 2008)

I'm trying to switch from my flute to a short reed and so far no luck...has anyone used Mick Lacey Chinook? I picked up a Pit Boss, and I can't get it to work consistantly... don't want to spend more than 50 if possible, any suggestions???

calls I've been looking at

~Mick Lacey Chinook Acrylic(good reviews on Cabelas)
~Zink Poly PC1(read mixed reviews)
~Foiles Meat Grinder Poly(supposedly tough for a beginner)
~Zink Power Maximus Poly(no reviews)

PS Cabelas is selling feather dusters for 60 bucks but I don't wanna spend that if its a call I'm going to fight with all season


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## diver_sniper (Sep 6, 2004)

birdog105 said:


> PS Cabelas is selling feather dusters for 60 bucks but I don't wanna spend that if its a call I'm going to fight with all season


I'll start off by saying that no matter what short reed you buy, you're going to be fighting with it if you try to go to the field with it this year. I don't mean to sound discouraging, I just think that you should be aware that learning to blow a short reed is no simple task. Also be aware that short reeds don't come with training wheels, no matter which call you start with, it's going to be just as tough.

As for calls, that ones I always recommend are the poly carb Super Mag or the Quackhead Goozilla. Everyone is going to tell you different things, these are just two of the less expensive ones that I really like.

I haven't blown the Mick Lacey. I don't think I've blown a Meat Grinder either, at least not recently. I don't see why it would be a difficult call for a beginner though. I have owned both of the poly Zink calls you listed and do not recommend them. I didn't pay for either of them luckily, one was a gift and one came with a blind I bought. It was so long ago that I don't remember everything I disliked about them. The one thing I do remember is that I left them in the truck in the summer a couple of times, they never sounded the same after that. I've never had that problem with any other short reed I've ever owned.

Here's my other advice. I think that your best bet would be to wait till the end of the hunting season before you try to learn this short reed thing. The first thing anyone will tell you when you start is that you need to put your flute away and not take it out anymore, because you operate them in completely different ways. If you keep switching back and forth you're not going to grasp the muscle memory that it takes to improve on the short reed. You'll just end up twice as frustrated. So what I think you should do is finish out this season on your flute and after your last hunt put it away in storage and begin your journey with the short reed. This way you'll have 3/4 of a year of development under your belt when you hit the field.


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## Ron Gilmore (Jan 7, 2003)

Short reeds take practice and trying to switch now is most likely not a good thing to do. Two reasons, first is that habits one develops blowing a flute hinder the change over. Learning to reduce the amount of air used is the hardest. Muscle reflex has to be relearned, and this is hindered if you go back to the flute at all in the beginning.

Second is choice of calls. There are a host of calls, but all are different in how easy they are to work. Most calls out of the box need some fine tuning to suit ones style. Some are easier to adjust than others. Myself I struggle with this today as well as calling with a short reed.

For a beginner call Winglock calls are the most forgiving from my experience. I have picked up the calls you listed at different times and found them to be less than desirable. If $60.00 or so is your price limit look at the Winglock woods. I own 6 different calls and if I was to start someone on any of them it would be my Winglock.


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## pinfeather (Nov 3, 2007)

Take my (and others) advice....hunt the season with your flute and when season is over practice your short reed. There is a topic on I believe members forum that gives you the basics. I still have not got the hang of the shortie, so back to the flute for the season, this time next year I hope that my flute is in the garbage forever.PRACTICE, PRACTICE THEN PRACTICE SOMEMORE.It Sofar I have failed, however one day I will figure it out.......good luck :2cents:


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## jonesy12 (Apr 1, 2008)

Everyone has pretty much summed it up, practice, practice, practice in the off season before you take it into the field and get frustrated. It does indeed take a lot of time to get used to it. Good luck :beer:


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## barebackjack (Sep 5, 2006)

diver_sniper said:


> . Also be aware that short reeds don't come with training wheels, no matter which call you start with, it's going to be just as tough.


I gotta respectfully disagree.

Some short reeds are harder to blow than others. Ive only been on a short reed a little over a year now. I tried learning first on a super mag and it gave me fits. Picked up a cheap poly carb power clucker, and was making goose sounds in several days. I would choose a call that requires less air to blow to learn on.

Now that I know what im doing with one, I blow the super mag 75% of the time probably, the rest is with my heartlands. But for learning on, the mag was not the greatest.

My vote would be for the Zink PC. The poly carb is cheap, and even though its not the greatest sounding call in the world, its easier to blow, which I think makes it easier to learn on. Once you get some experience with that, you can upgrade to a better sounding call.


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## Blueman (Feb 13, 2008)

If I were you I would start on a big river flock talk thats how I've learned how to blow a short reed. Easiest call in the world to use. I've tought 3 other people to use short reeds with this calls.


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## USAlx50 (Nov 30, 2004)

I found feather dusters to be the easiest call to learn on. Thats what I learned on after having a little trouble with others. I would think that Foiles calls would also be easy to get the basic clucks and moans down with.


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## nodakoutdoors.com (Feb 27, 2002)

pinfeather said:


> Take my (and others) advice....hunt the season with your flute and when season is over practice your short reed.


Good advice...don't try to blow both. You'll find yourself trying to blow like a flute into a short reed and it will be discouraging.

You need to forget everything you know with a flute to start with a short reed. It's kind of like trying to switch from casting with a spinning reel to a fly reel...bad habits carry over.


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## Bustin Lips (Mar 16, 2008)

The Mick Lacy is a good call for the money and relatively easy to blow. I have found that this call takes less air than other short reeds I have.


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## birdog105 (Aug 23, 2008)

Also, Found a TG Super Mag for 35 bucks(orange plastic only, haha :roll: ), been told that that would be a good start as well... Thanks for all the advise, the call is my last piece of the puzzle to start field hunting geese, I always just shot them if they came into my duck spreads on water, never actually hunted just geese or field hunted for that matter, picked up 2 dz FB's and a blind, needed a decent call, but this short reed thing is perplexing lol!....


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## MRN (Apr 1, 2002)

I'll give a different perspective - switch now - throw away the flute, if it were doing the trick you wouldn't be changing.

My advice is to try a bunch out and get one you can get to crack with the least amount of air (and doesn't require a big resonant chamber using two hands to control the back pressure). Such a call is much easier to blow and you can practice while driving with just one hand.

And try out the top-of-the-line acrylic calls behind the counter. Spend more money on one good call now, instead of a slow expensive upgrade path. I've been doing this and spending too much money along the way.

I zoned in on GiantKiller and RNT calls from the low air volume each requires (and they sound as good as anything else). A good quality, low air volume call is much easier to learn with than anything else.

Get the dude behind the counter to teach you how to do a cluck on the single read of your choice, and you're already miles ahead of the flute.

M.


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## carp_killer (Nov 24, 2006)

like said before just set the flute down and dont evenlook at it. i blew a flute all summer and then bought a feather duster comp call right before the season needless to say i sounded alot more like a crow since i was trying to blow it like a flute 2 weeks ago i finally got the breaking point figured out and its finally coming together now. so just forget everything about the flute that you no and just experiment blowing different ways into the call then you will get 1 good cluck every now and then and wont no how you did it then you get another and then after awhile you get the muscle memory needed to do it every time.


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## huntinND (May 1, 2008)

If you buy an instructional DVD it will save you hours of frustration. I just got started a few months ago and I'm already making a lot better sounds then with My old flute call. I got the power clucker with the instructional DVD. Although very basic the DVD will teach you a few important things to get started correctly.


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

What is the normal expected learning curve with a short reed?

And if a guy is going to get a decent one, what is the expected price of a better than average call?

And a high end call is $xxx.xx?

I'm curious what you all think is a good better than average call, yet not one that is just more $$$ for a brand name.

Are RNT calls around $150 too much?


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## MRN (Apr 1, 2002)

I don't know the expected learning curve - I just think it'll be much much steeper if you start with a good call. I started with some crappy single reeds (Meat Grinder, acrylic Buck Gardner). I still can't make a lot of the sounds with these bad calls that I can make with a good call, especially making it sound good, but quiet. To do it again, I'd save $$ and time and buy a good acrylic call first.

M.


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## diver_sniper (Sep 6, 2004)

R y a n said:


> What is the normal expected learning curve with a short reed?


That kind of depends on what point in the process you consider the person "learned". It also depends on how good is considered actually good. It takes 2 things for person to learn it quickly. They need something to learn from, a movie or cd. And they need to work on it consistently. People who only blow their call for 10 minutes 2 times a week generally won't get very far. Guys who get a call and spend 45 minutes a day on it are the ones who progress. For a guy like that, depending on how naturally it comes to him, a really rough estimate would be 2 to 3 months before he's good enough for the field. From that point there's really no limit. Compare it to playing the guitar. Being able to play a couple songs takes a little time and is like knowing enough of the basics to shoot some geese. Playing in a nationally known band takes a ton of work/time and is like being good enough to win contests. Two very different levels of the same thing. It all just depends on how far a guy wants to take it.



R y a n said:


> And if a guy is going to get a decent one, what is the expected price of a better than average call?


Anyone who is experienced on a goose call should be able to make any call sound decent, so it's hard to really say where the price range starts. It's basically plastics, then acrylics. This time I'll compare it to sunglasses. You can pay 10 bucks for some gas station shades. Or you can buy 150 dollars Oakleys. On the basic level they do the same thing, but if you start looking at the finer details, you're getting a better product when you pay more. Is it necessary? Well, it's up to everyone to decide how important those details are to them.



R y a n said:


> And a high end call is $xxx.xx?


IMO, high end starts when you get into a custom individually turned acrylic or wood call. That can be anywhere from the 50ish range to as much as someone is willing to pay. Another indicator of it being "high end" is if you can send the call back to the shop it came from for a tune job if you need it.



R y a n said:


> I'm curious what you all think is a good better than average call, yet not one that is just more $$$ for a brand name.


They've all got a brand name. I guess I don't really know what to say for this one. Like I said before, it's a lot more about the caller than it is the call. When we get into these arguments about pitches and tones, it's more just the nit picky details than anything else.

I will say that there's can be a ridiculous amount of brand loyalty in calling. There's also a cases where people buy expensive calls just to look cool but never learn how to use them. I'll be honest and say that both of those things are kind of annoying, and the guys with the 1,000 dollar lanyards that don't know how to use them are the ones throwing their money away.



R y a n said:


> Are RNT calls around $150 too much?


I don't think so. But then again I buy into the whole thing about calls needing to be fairly expensive so that these companies are able to keep themselves floating. Does the average hunter need to spend that much if he doesn't want to? No, not at all. But the option is there for him if he ever wants it.

Like I was saying with the sunglasses and guitar examples, the person has to decide how serious they are about calling, and what they want to do with it. If they are passionate about it and enjoy working their butt off to get really good at it, why not do it on the call that costs 150 dollars if that's the one they feel sounds the best? Or the other way around, if someone is smacking birds blowing a 15 dollar call and they're satisfied with their work, more power to em.

That's just my take on it (and something more entertaining to focus on than studying), I'm sure others see it differently and that's fine, just my opinions.


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## flockstalker (Oct 17, 2008)

i started practicing on a cheap short reed, it sounded ok but the reed cracked. now i blow a tim grounds super magnum and i think i payed around 60 bucks. its not the most expensive or the cheapest but it sounds nice and seems like a quality call


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

Thanks Diver!

That is _exactly_ the insight I was looking for, as I'm not any type of calling expert, but I'd like to get something decent and work on learning something new over the winter months!

:thumb:


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## shooteminthelips (Jun 13, 2007)

Buy as many calling instructional cds and dvds you can get you hands on.. Then listen to them each 25 times with call in hand it wont take lond until your clucking them into the decoys..


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## barebackjack (Sep 5, 2006)

Ryan,

Another thing that shaves ALOT of time of the learning curve (at least for me) is having an experienced short reed caller to show you things and offer constructive criticism.

I had a buddy that showed me alot of stuff, helped me pick out a call that worked FOR ME (which was nice not having the guy behind the counter who was just pushing the most expensive call in the case on me). And pointed out and put a stop to "bad habits" I was developing. Its alot easier to not develop a bad habit than to try to get rid of it once its a habit.

With his help I was making very passable goose sounds in just a week, im sure with just videos it would have taken me months.


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## birdog105 (Aug 23, 2008)

Thanks all! picked up a Chinook in cherry wood this weekend, blowing it well enough to bring it in the blind with me, just had to find the right call.


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## jonesy12 (Apr 1, 2008)

Congrats on the call and good luck. You can never practice too much with it. Go year round with it and by next year you'll notice a huge difference. And don't over look CDs and DVDs. Get them and listen to them time after time. It will help tremendously!


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## tsj (Jul 22, 2006)

it will take lots of pratice ive got both of the zinc calls the power maxius is the hunter combo or something like that wood mouth piece poly bottom both blow fairly good. i had a hard time at first but the tutorial in the members area helped alot good luck.


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## sdgoosekiller (Mar 26, 2008)

get a canada hammer after you an blow it save some money up and get a triple crown.


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