By Jim Spencer

They come from different generations, backgrounds and occupations. John Stephens is a young businessman. Bill Erstine is a middle-aged manufacturing plant supervisor. Tommy Aycock is a rice, soybean and wheat farmer who, though still actively farming, is approaching geezer status.

Aside from living in or near Stuttgart, possibly the only thing all three of these men have in common is they are accomplished duck hunters and duck callers. Their shared hometown is probably the reason. When you grow up around Stuttgart, you are bombarded with so much duck propaganda you either ignore it or embrace it fully. These three chose the latter route.

I've hunted ducks with all three, and I want to set the record straight from the beginning: Even though I'm a Stuttgart native, too, I don't consider myself anywhere close to their skill level in calling, wingshooting or just plain old duck savvy.

Bill Erstine, now 53, hunted ducks a little when he was still in grade school, but didn't start seriously hunting until age 16, when he was old enough to drive and could reach the flooded rice fields of his cousin's farm. He was addicted from the first, and learned the basics of calling from his state-champion and runner-up world-champion cousin. He now has more than 35 years of experience hunting rice fields, swampy lakes, dead-timber brakes and flooded timber, both public and private. He's never tried the competition circuit, but he's good enough to compete.

Tommy Aycock started duck hunting as a grade-schooler during the years of World War II, using the rag-tag, hand-me-down gear common to farm kids of that era. He has lived all his life farming in the duck-rich country between Stuttgart and DeWitt, and during his 60-plus hunting seasons he's been within easy striking distance of the sort of duck hunting most of us can only dream about. Being around that many ducks for that long opens the door to an advanced education in the finer arts of duck hunting and duck calling, provided you pay a little bit of attention. Tommy paid attention.

With something like 120 years of duck hunting and calling experience among them, it's not surprising that these three veterans have formed some definite opinions on the methods relating to the sport. What may be surprising is they often diverge from one another's opinions - as on the topic of the relative merits of field-calling and timber-calling, for example.

Tommy Aycock cares little for competition calling, but he's killed far more ducks than most champion callers will ever see. Photo by Jim Spencer

Stephens doesn't call as loud or as much to field ducks as he does when hunting the timber. "I want to get their attention, of course, and for that I'll hit them with a short, snappy hail call, five or six notes, and then switch to a chatter and other softer stuff. I try not to call any more than I have to in a field, because it's open and easier for them to pinpoint the sound. In the timber you have trees and brush to hide behind and for the sound to bounce around on, and they can't pinpoint you as well.

"So I tend to be a lot more aggressive when I'm hunting timber. I try to sound like a lot of ducks, because in the timber you've got to get their attention and keep it. Because even if you're using decoys, the ducks can't see them all the time. I don't call constantly, but I do call quite a bit, and I use the chatter a lot in the timber, too."

Bill Erstine has a slightly different take. "There's not a lot of difference in the way I call between field and woods hunting," he said, "but there's a lot of difference between the way I started calling and the way I call now. When I started, I used the 'Stuttgart' style, with lots of long, ringing hail calls. But I married a DeWitt girl and started hunting with her daddy. He was an old P.S. Olt shaved-down reed customized-type duck caller, and he was without a doubt the best duck caller I've ever hunted with as far as being able to pull flocks of ducks in. I don't know if he had a philosophy, but he hammered at 'em from the git-go.

"He had a unique approach to far-off ducks that consisted of the first three notes of a hail call - ack-ack-ack; then, stop. And you felt like you were falling off the table when he stopped, waiting for him to finish. He'd do that continuously. And you'd be surprised how many ducks it would attract. Once he got 'em thinking his way, then he'd tone it down and break into his other stuff.

"I don't do that, but it's similar. I call loud to distant ducks, but like a duck. A duck's highball consists of five or six notes, so I do a lot of short notes, changing pitch and volume and trying to sound like more than one duck. It's not fancy, but it's loud, and it works."

With more years of hunting under his belt than the other two veterans combined, you'd think Tommy Aycock would have taken a position on this pretty basic subject, and sure enough, he has. In a nutshell, his opinion: He's not sure.

"You can't just say ducks are harder to call than they used to be," Aycock said. "You can't say field ducks want softer or louder calling than timber ducks, or late-season ducks are tougher to call than early-season ducks. Sometimes all those things are true, but sometimes they're not.

"The difference between field-calling and woods-calling is hard to explain, but it really depends on what the ducks want you to do, and the only way to learn what that is is to try things. I usually call louder in the fields than in the timber, but that's mostly because most of the ducks you see in fields are farther away at first and you have to get their attention. In the woods, a little chatter is, lots of times, all in the world you need, because they're closer when you see 'em.

"If you're talking about early season versus late season calling, sure your calling techniques will change. Normally it doesn't take near as much calling to convince early ducks as it does the last week of the season, except for those lone drakes and small bunches of drakes in late season. If you get some of those birds within hearing distance, they're usually a lot easier to call."

Aycock believes it's important to not get so caught up in calling that you don't let the ducks come in. "I've been guilty of it a lot," he said. "You get ducks working, and it's fun, and you keep calling too loud or too much and they keep circling and won't come in and eventually they leave. Sometimes you have to let off on them to let them come in. It's pretty easy to tell by their body language if they want in or not. If they give you that sharp, steep wingover, it means you hit the right button. You've already won half the battle. Don't mess it up by overcalling."

Aycock also believes that becoming an expert caller is overrated. "I never have been one to practice a lot at my duck calling, once I learned how in the first place" he said. "I knew I could blow it, and a day or two before the season opened, I'd blow a little bit to make sure everything was working right, but that's about all. Unless you're a contest caller, you're going to get as good as you're going to get, and then that's where you stay. It doesn't take a lot of practice to get back to that level - it's like riding a bicycle. You don't really forget how to do it, and it doesn't take much practice to get back to that level. You can practice a little and get pretty good, but then it takes a whole lot of practice to get any better.

"Anyway, your accent doesn't matter so much as what you say. I'm not a contest-level caller and never wanted to be. I'm a duck hunter, and as long as I can sound like a duck, that's good enough."