Best Duck Calls for Timber

What timber asks of a call

Flooded timber is the shortest-range duck hunting there is. Birds work a hole in the canopy from directly above, they are usually inside forty yards before you can see them properly, and the trees bounce sound around in a way open water never does. Everything that makes a call good on a big lake — volume, top-end carry, a sharp hail — is either useless or actively harmful in there.

What you want instead is rasp, low end and control. A timber call needs to make a quiet, broken, ducky sound at conversational volume: soft quacks, a lazy feed chuckle, the odd short comeback when a group slides off. Double reeds do that naturally, which is why the Mallard Magic and the Haydel's DR-85 belong here despite being the two cheapest calls on the page. Single reeds can do it too, in the hands of someone who can throttle them — which is the whole reason RNT's calls are a Stuttgart institution.

Volume is the thing to buy least of. The most common mistake in timber is calling like you are on a levee: too loud, too often, and at birds that had already decided to come in. Sound bounces off a tree line, and a duck at thirty yards hears a hail call as a warning. If you only change one thing after reading this page, make it the volume rather than the call.

How to choose a timber call

Start with reed count. A double reed is more forgiving of air pressure and gives you rasp without effort, which is exactly the timber voice. A single reed gives you more range at both ends and demands better control; it is the right buy if you can already run one. The full argument is in single reed vs double reed duck calls.

Material matters less here than anywhere else on this site. Acrylic's advantage is a sharp, loud top end, and you are not using the top end. Wood's warmer, softer tone is genuinely suited to the job — the Daisy Cutter in bocote is on this page for that reason — but wood moves with humidity and needs drying between hunts. Polycarbonate does everything a timber call needs and survives being dropped in knee-deep water.

Buy a call you can service, because timber is wet. Standing in water all morning with a call round your neck puts more moisture through the guts than any other kind of duck hunting. Reeds stick, then squeal. RNT publishes tuning services and a lifetime warranty on its acrylic calls, and Buck Gardner publishes tuning instructions, sells tune-up kits and covers its calls for life. Haydel's and Faulk's publish neither for these models.

Carry two, not one. Most timber hunters end up with a soft double reed for the work inside the hole and one louder call for turning birds that are drifting past the tree line. At the prices on this page that is an easy lanyard to build; if budget is the constraint, see best duck calls under the hundred-dollar mark, where most of these calls also appear.

How we scored these

Every call here is scored on the same five published metrics this site uses for all calls: reed system and ease of learning (30%), material and build (20%), tunability and serviceability (20%), the maker's own sound claim (15%) and warranty (15%), with the weighting on how we score. These are the same scores the calls carry on best duck calls, because a product scores the same everywhere on this site. What changes is which calls qualify: this page is limited to calls whose published voice is raspy, low and controllable at close range. Zink's open-water calls score respectably elsewhere on this site and are not here, because a call built to reach across a lake is the wrong tool under a canopy. Sound is scored as the maker's claim and labelled that way, because we do not test calls.

Who should skip all of these

Open-water and big-river hunters, who need carry rather than rasp — that list is best duck calls for open water. Anyone hunting fields for geese, which is a short reed rather than a duck call: best goose calls. Complete beginners, who should start with an easy double reed and the technique page rather than a call chosen for a specific habitat: best duck calls for beginners. And anyone whose timber hole is not holding birds in the first place, which is a scouting and water problem that no call fixes.

Buy rasp, not volume. For most timber hunters the Buck Gardner Mallard Magic is the call that does the job: a forgiving double reed with the low, broken voice a hole under the canopy wants, backed by published tuning instructions and a lifetime warranty. Take the RNT Daisy Cutter in acrylic if you already run a single reed and want the Stuttgart standard, the Short Barrel if your calling is close and quiet, and the bocote Daisy Cutter if you want a wood call and will look after it. Every buy button goes to a tagged Amazon search for the model rather than to one listing, because these ship in many finishes at different prices. Then spend your time on the part that actually matters in timber — how to blow a duck call covers the cadence, and how to build a duck decoy spread covers the hole itself.