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In goose hunting, you have several different types of calls that you will want to use. Obviously the first one you will
use will be the hail call for when you first see the birds and try to get their attention. Then, you will use a greeting call when
that flock first starts to turn your way. This builds on the hail call, but picks up the pace and gets quicker, essentially greeting the incoming flock.
As the birds get closer,
you can transition to your feeding call, which is just a collection of clucks, moans and honks. In this sequence, you speed it up a bit and generate more excitement.
Often the birds will come in, but start to slide off or leave, and this is the time to use the comeback call, which is a series of pleading moans or fast
clucks to convince the geese to come back. Once they turn back, you finish the birds with softer notes, your laydown growls, and coax the birds with confidence
calling all the way to the gun.
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The Honk
(low-pitched note) |
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The Cluck
(high-pitched note) |
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| Full Honk |
The Honk - The Basic Goose Sound
The standard goose honk is often made too complicated. It's just made up of two notes - a low and then a high pitch note. The low note is the deeper
guttural sound, and the high pitch being the cluck or the honk after the call breaks over. So when you are working on these things, keep that sound in mind.
This is the first note to a two-note honk.
The second part of that sound is where you are popping air across the flute with your tongue. On a short-reed call you are bringing the air up from your
diaphragm - just kind of huffing air across the reed to make it pop and the second sound from that is just a cluck.
When you put the two sounds together you get the honk. You simply bring the two sounds together as you break the call from the low note to
your high note.
Everything else in goose calling is just a variation on those two notes, outside of the feeding growl, which we will get into in a bit. But your
clucks, your moans, and your honk are all variations based off those two notes. You can do some different things, be it with a flute or with a short reed
as you manipulate your hands a little bit, utilizing a higher pitch sound or a lower pitch sound. Along with that you can change the pressure of the air you
are putting across the reed. Then when you start to vary both of those at the same time you can get a whole range of sounds from high to low and everything in
between.
The Growl or Murmur
The other sound that varies off that path would be the feeding growl, where you make the reed in the call vibrate with the low guttural sound that contented
geese make when they are on the ground and they are talking. Often referred to as a murmur, gabble or growl, it is just a deep buzzing sound made with little
air pressure that sounds like "wah, wah, wah, wah". On many short-reed calls it works to almost "gargle" into the call as if you were using mouthwash - "Guh, guh, guh, guh."
This call adds realism to your calling sequence, and most importantly, mimics contented geese as you coax those birds the final yards. Then you can throw some
clucks in there to add to the realism of the entire scene and create the impression of multiple geese.
With a handle on the basic notes that make up the Canada goose's vocabulary, let's now walk through a normal calling sequence as you first see birds on the
horizon and explore each of the calls in a bit more detail.
The Hail Call
The hail call is just a loud drawn-out version of the honk we explained earlier. If you are sitting in a blind next to someone making this call, it really
doesn't sound like a goose. But it's an attention getter, and if you get 100 yards away, it sounds more like a goose. But again, this call is designed to get
the attention of distant geese - you want to be loud and want to be noticed. For realism, you can mix some shorter honks or clucks in there but you want that
loud, drawn out sound. That is the attention getter.
Two-Goose Call
One of the most sought after sounds in goose calling is trying to sound like multiple geese. For starters, it is best to try this with two separate geese and go from
there. That is probably easiest accomplished with the cluck. Once you get that cluck down to where it is perfect all the time, start to vary your hand position a
little bit. When you have your hand more closed, it results in more back pressure on the call and when your hand is more open that is less backpressure.
Knowing this,
you have to adjust accordingly so when you have more backpressure, you need less air to make the reed break and when you have less back pressure you need more air to make the
reed break.
But with just a subtle movement of your hands, you can get two differently pitched clucks that sound like two geese. Once mastered, you have upped your odds
of killing geese. Mix up the cadence and pitch a bit more to create the illusion of a flock of geese.
This technique is just moving your hands a little bit and not really changing the air pressure put through the call. Just a subtle movement in
the hands is all it takes - when your hands are closed you get a deeper cluck, and when your hands are more open you get a higher-pitched cluck.
Greeting Call
Once those birds hear that hail call, they take interest and start coming your way. You want to start picking up your pace a little and use what is called the
greeting call. This ensures that you keep the birds' attention and keeps them headed your way. In this, you will use a version of the two-goose call (detailed above) and try
to add in more clucks and moans.
Feeding Call
One thing that is really important is to keep an eye on the birds. As the caller, you want to be concealed, but in a place that you can keep track of the birds'
reactions to your call. Hopefully, you will start to notice their heads starting to look around, their wing beats slowing down like they want to take a look and
that is when you want to get into the feeding call. This is just an extension of your greeting call where you begin to add even more multiple goose sounds and
crank up the excitement. Just start by picking up the pace, add more excitement, and alter your cadence with more clucks and moans to sounds like an excited,
feeding flock of geese.
Comeback Call
In calling geese, you let the birds tell you what they want to hear. But you want to keep them excited, interested, and zoned in on the landing hole in your decoy
spread. Many times, geese will come in, and then they start to slide off. If this happens, stay with your excited calling - you don't want to lose their attention.
If it looks like they are leaving, you get into your comeback calls. It seems like everyone has their own comeback call and there are a lot of different
variations. In this, you get back to the sounds that aren't quite so "goosey" but if the birds are leaving you don't have anything to lose.
Basically, you are going to throw it all at them and try to reach a very excited and dominant calling sequence, almost begging or commanding that those birds
turn. You get back to a drawn-out honk - almost like the hail call - but just a little bit more pleading.
Many people also like to use a variation of the double cluck for a comeback call. This fast two-cluck sound is a bit harder to master but can really mimic excited
geese and sometimes win
them over, and is especially effective if birds are trying to land outside of your spread and you want to keep them in the air.
In comeback calling, you want your calls to be pleading and draw out those notes. You will be surprised at how well this works.
Lay Down Call - Close In
Once you get the birds flipped back around, they are working back into you. Depending on how far out they turned, you probably need to just go back through your
steps and re-greet them. Next, transition back into your feeding call. When they reach that last 75-50 yards you are trying to finish them and get them to put their feet down.
Since they are close, you don't want to blow them out of the spread. This is where you get into your "goosey" sounds, that as mentioned earlier, are trying to mimic
a contented flock of feeding and resting geese on the ground. Again, realism comes through by mixing up the calls, but a sequence of soft feeding growls, moans, soft
clucks will help you bring them all the way to the gun.
Take 'em!
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