By Robert H. Cleveland, Jr.

The shrill burst was deafening, originating as it did less than a foot from my left ear. It was startling, and it shook me out of what had been a moment of hibernation in the corner of the duck blind.

I opened both eyes, but to my credit, I didn't overreact. I peered to my left to see where Keith Quayle was looking. When my eyes found his, we were about eyeball to eyeball.

"Six ducks, to your right, looking," he said. "I got their attention. They're coming."

Then, as an afterthought: "Get a good nap?"

Actually, it had been a pretty good sleep there inside the thatched walls of the blind in a corner of a brake near Lake Washington in Washington County. Tucked warmly in my down jacket and insulated waders, I had taken advantage of a tip from our host, "Dr. Bob" (who, for fear of poachers, prefers anonymity). He had told us that he had ducks in his brake, but not ones that were early arrivers.

"Get there by daylight," Dr. Bob had told us. "But you can sleep once you get set up, because it will be 8:30 or 9 before they come in." He then passed along the most important tip of all: "Keep your calling to a minimum. It's late in the season, and they've heard it all."

That was good news to me, especially since Quayle had shaken my bones with that first, short hailing blast. There would be no more calling.

"Now let's see if the good doctor is right," Quayle whispered, dropping his call back around his neck and craning to see around the corner of the blind to follow the six ducks coming from the north.

Sure enough, they made the circle, coming around the back of the blind and appearing next from our left about 200 yards south of us. Quayle never went for his call.

"Tough, ain't it?" I said, kidding him, because I know how much he loves to blow his calls. "You're dying to toot - aren't you?"

He answered with an abrupt elbow to my rib cage.

Photo by John N. Felsher

It was Dr. Bob who finally broke the silence from the far end of the 15-foot-long elevated blind. He broke into one of the prettiest, lightest chattering calls I've ever heard. It was barely audible 15 feet away, so I wondered how it sounded to the ducks that were still circling, now 100 yards straight in front of the blind.

I didn't have to wait long for my answer. On the next circle, when the birds came around the south end of the blind, the lead duck, a greenhead, turned into the wind and flew right toward the decoy spread. The other ducks followed in formation. I could feel a slight shake to the bench as Dr. Bob and Quayle inched forward and prepared to get into shooting position. No other calls were needed; the next sounds I heard were those of two men rising, boards creaking and two shotguns blasting.

Three of the mallards fell in the water before I had my hands on my shotgun - naps can be costly - but I was able to get one of the other three as they tried to escape.

"Four's not bad," Dr. Bob said. "That's a start."

It wasn't the end, either, as more ducks made their late visits to the brake. Over the next 90 minutes, we had several groups check in with fewer checking out. The hunt didn't produce limits, but it produced a lesson: You don't always have to call a ton.

"Especially late in the season, when the ducks have heard it all," Dr. Bob said, pointing out that it was the last week of the season. "Think about it: These ducks started flying this way about three or four months ago, beginning either in Canada or the Dakotas, and have come through thousands of blinds and hundreds of duck calls. They get spooky. They don't want to hear a lot of calling.

"To me, calling plays the smallest role in late season hunting. We kill a lot of ducks in this blind without ever uttering a single call. We let the brake do the work for us, and we pretty much stay out of its way. All you have to do is get their attention and then shut up."

Is it always like that? I asked

"No," Dr. Bob replied. "Early in the season we have to do more calling, a lot more calling. And sometimes late in the season, when it's been a wet winter and there's water everywhere in the Delta, you have to be more vocal. When ducks have more choices, you have to be more vocal. We still kill a lot of ducks, because this brake is so darn good. But we have to work harder."

Quayle, a former hunting guide and a long-time duck hunter, takes it a step further. He is, by his own admission, call-crazy - he loves to blow his calls. But he's quick to lay them down when the ducks don't want to hear it.

"The most important thing I ever learned about duck hunting is reading ducks, and how they react to every facet of the hunt, especially calling," he said. "Every day can be different, and every hour of a day can be different as weather and sun conditions change. You better be getting a read off every duck that passes, from the first one on, and see how they react to call. Do they run from a hail? Do they like light quacking? Do they want to hear multiple calls? Do they like a lot of chatter? Eventually you will find a pattern that will work."

The strategy of using multiple callers is a favorite of a lot of hunting partners, who learn to team up on ducks. Number brothers Bill and Barry Thomas of Southaven among that group. They've hunted together most of their lives, amassing over 40 years of experience. A hunt with them, which is a rare invitation outside of their extended families - it's a large family with only so many weekends in a season - is an education.

Both are former competition callers, but that ended decades ago after each one earned trips to the world championship in Stuttgart, Ark. Now they just call ducks.

"We used to think we were great callers when we were winning contests and all that, but if you think calling in an auditorium and calling in the wild have anything in common, other than the tools of the trade, you're nuts," Bill Thomas said. "Ducks don't score you -they either like you and come in or hate you and take off."

In the case of the Thomas brothers, it's usually the former.

"We kill our share," Barry Thomas offered modestly. "And we do it on public and private land, in timber and in fields. We team up on them pretty good."

"Team-calling" - a general name for the technique of multiple callers working simultaneously - is as old as the sport. "It's effective all year, but it really works good for us late in the season when we get the seriously educated late migrators," Bill Thomas said. "You better be ready to offer them something different, or at least attractive enough to do two critical things - first, fool them and, second, pull them away from other callers."