Wildwood Duck Calls

I’ve been a keen Duck hunter since I was big enough to hold a shot gun. Like most hunters I still remember shooting my first duck. It was on a small farm at Awamunga in South Otago and I was 12. The duck fell into a tiny creek and wedged itself in some windfall. No mater how I tried I couldn’t reach it. Eventually I stripped off and waded into the freezing water the recover my prized trophy.

I made my first duck call a few years ago by disassembling a commercial unit and using the plastic soundboard in my own turned barrel. I worked ok but was nothing special.

This year I decided to design and build my own Duck Call from scratch. I research the subject and learned that the quality of the sound was a function of the soundboard and reeds more than the barrel and the harder the soundboard wood the better. New Zealand Southern Rata is one of the hardest and most dense woods in the world and I had stored some that I had recovered from the West Coast a few years earlier. So I make all my soundboards out of Rata.

Like all my products I wanted my Duck Calls to not only be functional but also attractive and unique. There is nothing more unique in New Zealand than making something functional out of our national weed “Gorse” I carefully select spalted gorse which is then stabilised and fashioned into the very attractive barrels on my Wildwood Duck Calls.