THE OUTDOORS : Calling All Ducks : Eli Haydel of Louisiana, Expert Waterfowl Hunter, Likes to Toot His Own Horns

Perry Webb, a duck hunter from Fullerton, went to Eli Haydel with a serious problem.

“I’m having trouble with the quack,” he said.

“What kind of call are you using?” Haydel asked Webb, who named the brand.

“Oh, well ,” Haydel said, reaching into a valise. “That doesn’t sound like a duck. That’s for calling judges.”

Haydel then produced one of the 60-some calls for waterfowl and big game he manufactures at his factory in Bossier City, La., near Shreveport in the northwest corner of the state.

He gave it a few toots-- QUAA-aack, quack-quack-quack-quack --and, sure enough, not a single judge came running.

“There’s a difference in calling ducks and calling judges,” Haydel told Webb. “It’s a matter of being fancy and catching the judge’s ear . . . like on a hail call, they hit about 40 notes. You don’t do that in the field.”

Haydel has done both successfully--partial evidence being nearly 100 trophies he and his sons have won in various calling contests from local to world class.

Ducks are his game, but Haydel also wears a brass manhole cover for a belt buckle since winning the Gueydan International Goose Calling contest.

He claimed: “If it can be called, I can come up with a call for it.”

At the time, Haydel was wishing he could come up with a call for people. A scheduled seminar under a canopy at this year’s Raahauge’s Shooting and Fishing Sports Fair at Norco wasn’t drawing.

So Haydel, 49, sat patiently and waited, which is what duck hunting is about, and chain-smoked cigarettes.

A week later, over Memorial Day weekend, he had a heart attack, then a triple bypass several days later. He doesn’t smoke anymore, which is costing the tobacco companies about a grand a year. It could also be bad news for ducks.

“I was up to three packs a day, but I haven’t had one since I left the hospital,” Haydel said. “I’ll probably have more power for calling now.”

At Raahauge’s, as Haydel demonstrated calls for a few serious hunters, passers-by became curious about the strange noises.

Quack. Cluck. Squawk. Squeak. Yodel. Several were attracted, just like ducks, and soon there was a crowd.

“You won’t call every duck you see,” Haydel told them. “Even a live duck won’t.”

Haydel found his calling growing up in Cajun country southwest of New Orleans. He learned the art from Amos Faulk and other legends of the Bayou, which is along the Mississippi Flyway--one of the country’s four major migration routes and winter habitats for waterfowl. If you can call ducks in Louisiana, Haydel believes, you can call ducks anywhere.

“I feel the callers down in Louisiana are far superior, because the ducks are getting shot at all the way down (from Canada),” he said. “By the time they get to Louisiana, you’ve got to be a good caller.

“There’s a style of callin’ in Louisiana known as the squeal style. The old market hunters made their calls out of cane. The reeds were made out of Ace hard-rubber combs. Their thinking was that when ducks were feeding in the rice fields or the marsh, the rice would cause their vocal cords to be restricted and they’d emit this hoarse squeal at the end of each note.”

Haydel has made a call to imitate the mournful cry, which sounds like a duck whose voice is changing.

“When ducks were flying over and heard this sound, they’d be attracted because they knew there were groceries below,” Haydel said.

Sometimes ducks aren’t the only ones fooled.

“I was hunting on a ranch once,” Haydel said. “A guy crawled up and shot my decoys.”

Haydel’s reputation also has put him on the spot. When he was in the Air Force--a clerk typist in Intelligence--a couple of colonels asked him to take them hunting.

“This was in the early ‘60s, when redheads were illegal to shoot,” Haydel said. “Needless to say, a couple flew over and one of the colonels dropped both of them before I could say, ‘Don’t shoot.’ ”

Haydel quickly retrieved the birds, cut off their heads and announced, ‘Look here, Colonel, a nice brace of greater scaup. I cut the heads off so they’ll bleed out.’ ”

In the ‘70s, when Haydel and his sons already had won several contests, the president of their local duck club organized an impromptu contest to decide who had the best method of attracting ducks.

“They had me call first,” Haydel said. “No applause. Next, my sons. Still no applause.

“Then the president stepped up and said, ‘My turn.’ He reached into his pocket and threw a handful of corn across the floor. Everyone applauded.”

Baiting is illegal. Last year in Texas, next door to Haydel’s home hunting grounds, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service climaxed a three-year undercover sting operation by busting 40 private hunting establishments for baiting and other waterfowl hunting violations.

“It gave everybody a black eye,” Haydel said.

Duck populations on the Mississippi Flyway are down considerably, anyway, because of recent dry years. Many longtime hunters--Haydel included--have become conservationists.

But on the most productive day he ever had, he shot 67 ducks.

“I overdid it. In those days I thought I had to kill every duck I called. Now, once I’ve got a duck at the 25-, 30-yard line, as far as I’m concerned it’s over. I don’t have to shoot it. I’ve shot my share of game. I want to have duck hunting for my grandchildren.”

Haydel is content to sell his calls and teach the art to others.

“I tell the guys to practice in the car, because it usually drives the wives nuts,” he said. “They’re the ones that get the funny looks, driving down the road with a duck call in their mouth, quackin’ away.”

Game calls are like musical instruments. Different types produce different sounds. Haydel credits a musical ear for his success in developing various kinds.

“I have a background in music from when I was 14 . . . play saxophone by ear, so I’m able to pick up sounds, the rhythm and the tempo of wild game.”

His deer grunt call has won acclaim.

“A buck deer grunts when he’s calling a doe in heat. If a big buck is in a thicket and he hears that sound in his territory, he’ll think some rival is after one of his girlfriends and he’ll come out to run him off.”

He also makes calls for elk, bears, javelina, rabbits, crows, quail, squirrels, raccoons and turkeys. Turkeys are the toughest.

“Their hearing and eyesight are 10 times better than ours,” Haydel said. “I’ve shot ‘em with a bow at 10 yards, but if they could smell we’d never kill ‘em.”

Who needs game calls? Why not just use tape recorders?

“It’s illegal,” Haydel said. “They’ve done it with snow geese--and a lot of guys have gotten caught.”

Besides, the game is to fool the creature honestly. That’s the primary appeal it has for Haydel now.

He isn’t apologizing when he says his plastic calls “are the least expensive on the market,” from $5.95 for a BQ-84 Bob White Quail to $22.95 for an MEB-85 Magnum Elk Bugle.

“This call here is $19.95,” Haydel said, displaying a GF-88 Goose Flute. A wooden call in that model could cost you as much as $150.”

Some purists put down plastic calls.

“Yeah, but when a wood call gets wet it swells,” Haydel said. “And when it swells, it changes that arc, that radius, (and) it’s going to change the squeak and the squawk.”

But Haydel also knows that some sportsmen would rather have the more expensive item, even if it doesn’t work as well. Human nature.

For them, Haydel sells Diamond Wood Mallard and Diamond Wood Goose calls for $34.95.

They probably impress the judges, if not the ducks.