How I got started….

hunt0168

hunt0168

Well-known member
I was digging around and found a couple of my first handcalls. A Quaker Boy Screamin Cottontail closed reed (gray bottom row) and a Herter’s World Famous Predator Call (top left) that a friend gave me. Those two calls started this addiction back in the mid 90’s for me. They we’re responsible for a fox here and there, but it wasn’t until a fella a decade and a half my senior took me under his wing and mentored me that predator calling success became more consistent. At some point I added a couple open reed calls. One I believe was possibly a Knight & Hale split reed that I lost at some point, but I cannot find any proof that such a call ever existed? It was black plastic with dual air channels in the soundboard. If I remember correctly it was labeled as a “Howler” but I managed some distress sounds from it. I also cannot recall what the horrible open reed, segmented call (bottom left) was called or who made it. If I used just the short mouthpiece section I could get pup sounds and distress, albeit not very natural sounding. Over the years I added more old calls everywhere from antique shops to ebay mostly as decorative pieces in my garage hangout, but occasionally would hook them to my lanyard for a bit of calling. The Circe calls (bottom right) in the pic sound decent, but the Weems and older Herter’s, not so much!
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Digging out the calls got me looking at ebay again and I scored a couple “nothing special” calls for cheap decorative pieces. A Faulk’s P-60 with box and instructions and a PS Olt T-20. Haven’t received them yet. I even made the mistake (not really) of going to Kerry Carver’s website and buying another howler! Lol… I literally have no control when it comes to calls!

Just thought I’d post for something to do and maybe spark some conversation.
 
Ahhh, good ol' Herters.....the "worlds best___________________." Spent a lot of hours poring over their catalogs as a teenager, built my first loading room around their Model 3 press which earned it's keep for 72 years until just last year when it found a new home w/AWS. Used a number of their reloading dies, powder scales, etc.
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Still have the first two predator calls I bought circa 1959 or 60, the Weems All Call box is long gone and the Burnham box is pretty shabby, but calls still work.

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72 years and still running! Nice! Erich seems to have a fondness for the old stuff so that is right up his alley!

I never had the privilege to flip through a Herter's catalog, Clarence. I guess I was more the time of Cabelas, Bass Pro and Gander Mtn catalogs.

My Herter's call was given to me by a friend that had no interest in hunting predators. His uncle gave it to him along with some duck decoys. He gave me the decoys too, and I made use of all of it. I picked up a second one at an antique festival because the box looked older and it had the instruction paperwork in the box as well. There is a slight difference in the plastic cone, but otherwise the calls are the same. I also have a Herter's Box from a #99 Squirrel Call from the antique festival. I should probably search out the call itself to fill it! I'm not sure what years these calls were made, but they are pretty easily obtained so the value isn't all that much. They just look pretty cool displayed.

Just digging some more through old supplies and I found a spare reed and wedge for the 'horrible" brown segmented call that I didn't care for. It also had a small sheet explaining the uses and differences between the reed thicknesses. Much was aimed at getting turkeys to shock gobble of all things. It did kind of spark the memory banks though, and I think the call was a Song Dog. I did a quick google search and it looks exactly like a Critr-Call Song Dog except no markings as such? I switched the reed out in that old call and will give it some windshield time tomorrow on the way to work just to see if the heavier reed and many years of experience running open reeds might make it sound more like a coyote.

Also, also... The more I think of the split reed call, I think it was made by Sceery, not Knight & Hale. That one is still in question though.
 
I 'member almost buying that press just to get the catalogue, Clarence ;). I spent a lot of time and hard-earned cash as a teenager from those pages.
 
Awesome stuff hunt0168!

I had a few of those old Circe calls myself but I never respected them enough to keep them intact, I would try to alter them to change the pitch and end up trashing them. I too started in around 1990 and back then we didn't have coyotes here, only foxes. It wasn't for another 10 years before I called my first coyote in. What an exiting night that was I still recall vividly. Now we are hard pressed to call in a fox as they've all been irradicated by the coyotes. There was a season I tried recording my own calls and using a ghetto-blaster to play them but the distortion was ridiculous and it sounded like crap, so I went back to my hand calls.
 
@RSG223 way more fox than coyotes for a good long time for me too. We still have a solid population of both Reds and Grays but I no longer shoot them unless directed by a landowner to do so.

@LONEHOWL Thanks for that tidbit on the dual reed. I’m quite sure at this point it was a Sceery call. It wasn’t anything special but I wish I still had it.

On another note, after putting the heavier reed in the “SongDog?” Open reed and ripping on it in the truck, it’s not a bad sounding call. It didn’t get much field time in my younger days because I thought it sounded like crap. Probably not any fault of the calls at that time! 😂 I still don’t think it’s a Critr-Call, even tho it’s an exact replica of one. I just feel like I had heard enough about Critr-Calls and Major Boddicker that I would have put the pieces together.
 
Its a Critr Call Songdog..Major Boddiker, the owner, licensed out the calls for private branding. Youll see the same call sold by several different companies.
They were meant to be a howler but I did away with the barrel segments and just used it as a distress call cause I liked the bigger air channel compared to the Standard.
 
@LONEHOWL Interestingly enough, (And not to beat this SongDog thing to death) I just got it in my head that I wanted a Cow Horn Howler. You know... because I don't have one! Lol... Anyway, I purchased a Rick Robbins cow horn howler from allpredatorcalls.com because it was reasonably priced and Mr. Robbins is a call maker that I have heard nothing but good about. It has one of his tone boards inserted into it and not the traditional tone board cut and shaped from the horn itself. So I got to looking at call makers that do that and on Tony Tebbe's Predator University sight I see he has Critr-Call TT Series calls. Same call, just has Tony's markings on them. Not 100% sure, but I think mine was a Carlton's. Again, doesn't matter at all, but when something gets in my head there's an internal battle to free up hard drive space! Lol...

On the Cow Horn Howler thing... I came across lots of old posts about Rich Cronk's horns. I kind of wish I had the desire to get one a few years back before his passing. I always enjoyed his posts and contributions to the forums.
 
The new owners of Critr Call are on this board. Im glad they bought and revived it...Ive been using them since the 80s and as far as open reed calls go they are #1 in my book and always will be. They are that good and are what just about every open reed call is based upon nowdays. Youll see them private labled all over the place as well as stuck into every manner of howler barrel custom build.

Rich Cronk was a good man. He was a bit stubborn and not real open minded regarding alternatives to his open reeds lol but he taught and inspired a lot of guys in the predator call building realm. There are still tutorials out there that he posted showing how to make open reed calls. I believe one is still on the PM homepage. A bit of internet history that will disappear one day like everything else.
 
Not real related but I mentioned Ed Sceery above...talked with him a couple years ago after I moved to Texas, I was asking him some questions about New Mexico. Real nice guy and I appreciated his help.
I heard through the grapevine that his company was for sale and heard a number. I spent some time considering approaching him about it but I eventually backed up.
 
LONEHOWL said:
Not real related but I mentioned Ed Sceery above...talked with him a couple years ago after I moved to Texas, I was asking him some questions about New Mexico. Real nice guy and I appreciated his help.
I heard through the grapevine that his company was for sale and heard a number. I spent some time considering approaching him about it but I eventually backed up.
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Ed’s a down to earth fella. I haven’t talked to him since the Predator Posse days. I don’t even see the calls for sale anymore.
 
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Thats the problem...market presence. He was wanting to retire or is retired and it wasnt clear where the company was headed. Plus the current hand call climate...I was interested but decided it wasnt for me.
 
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