OK, dont get me wrong here. Hunters are a completely different story than a guy who has never called game and goes out and buys the parts to make a call so he can make a quick buck.
If you are a hunter, you know what works and what doesn't and you will tinker with it until you get it right. And that's someome I would buy a call from.
It does not matter what you put in a call if as long as you make it sound good and it does it's job in the field.
If you go to a show and there are 100 call makers there, and 99 of them make their own tone boards and inserts and you use molded ones, if yours sound better than everyone elses, you will sell a boat load of calls.
This stuff really only matters to other call makers and some collectors. Huntes don't care. They have a limited time to hunt and when they go out they want stuff that works. You mark my words, but if you make a call with someone elses inset and the call does not do it's job, the hutner is not going to bad mouth the insert, he is going to slam the call maker.
But even that is not entirely fair to the insert. I remember a post a few months back where a caller came into a forum and wanted to buy some tone boards for a bunch of predator calls he had. He said the tone boards in them just did not work and he would never buy another call with one of those cheap tone baords in it.
But think about it, if a hunter had built that call, he would have worked on the tone boards to make them sound right, and work the way he knew they should.
But they were made by guys who know nothing about calling or calls, just to get in on the money end of it. Now the guys using that tone board who know what they are doing are screwed. They will never sell one of their calls to this guy no matter how good it is because he thinks the tone baords are junk.
I brought this up in another thread on this forum, but it is one of the reasons I think call makers should put sound files up with their calls. First, if the call maker can't run the call, he can't make the call, and second, if the call sounds like crap, and you buy it anyway, that's on you.
Sometimes we call makers are our own worst enimies. Here's a good expample from a call maker who at the time was just getting his start and has come a long ways since this but....
he goes into a forum and post a call for sale.
People seem interested and someone fimally ask, How does it sound?
The call maker replied, I have no idea because I never played one before. I have no idea how it is supposed to sound.
This really happened - and you can see why it makes us look bad as cal makers.
It's one of the big reasons I stopped selling crow calls. 90% of people who buy them have no idea how to use them, and it causes problems.
Another good one is I sent a call to a guy and he sent it back and said he couldn't get the high pitches he wanted out of the call, it just wasn't high pitched enough for him. I took that call out with a buddy of mine and blew it on a stand. I didn't say a word to him about the call or what happened and I had made no changes to it other than to wash it off under hot water.
My buddy came over after the stand and said, Man that is one high pitched call.
Which brings me to my last pont. A lot of people buy calls from new call makers and then tell everyone how great the call sounds, how easy it is to play ad how good it is blah blah blah. But when you ask the caller how many calls he has used, or how long he has been calling, he says this is his first call.
I say post a sound file. If you do, and the call sounds great, it wont matter to the guy who only has one day a week to hunt and only a few hours at that, he is gong to buy that call because he knows it will call game and that is why he is out there.
Call builders put calls together, call makers make them work. And I will say it again and again and again, it doesn't matter what is in that call if it works because that and that alone is the bottom line.
Al @ THO
