While most of the hunters prefer mouth-blown or electronic calls, which imitate certain sounds appealing to quails, others choose the traditional path, making the call by themselves. Mouth-blown calls are actioned by a blowing action, while the electronic ones have an automatic mechanism.

However, making a call is not as difficult as it seems. You can either make it from wooden branch or clothes pins. It’s slightly easier to use pins, as the wooden branch must be cleaned and cut. Below there is a presentation of the two methods.

First, you should put the branch in a bowl of water for 30 minutes. This way it will lose bark. The rest of the bark you can strip off with a small knife. Next thing to do is to slice the branch in to and place the halves with the cut side up. In middle of each half, now make a curved, 1-inched section. Stop whittling when the deepest part of the curved section is half as deep as the original depth of the halved.

Now scrape a line through the center of each branch, lengthwise. This should be 1/3 as wide as the branch. Place a rubber band or grass blade over the length of one branch half. Cover the rubber band or grass with the second branch half. The curved, uncut side of the branches should be on the outside.

Make sure one end of the quail call is secured, by adding rubber bands or a blade of grass, creating a whistle. Hold the whistle horizontally and place your mouth over the hole made by the whittled section. Pull on the unsecured end of the rubber band or grass to make it taut.

You need wooden clothes pins, electrical tape and one #33 rubber band for each call. First of all, what you should do is to take the clothes pin apart and get rid of the metal spring. Then, around each end of the clothes pin tape two to three wraps of tape. It will create an opening for the sound reed which is made by the rubber band.

The third step would be to stretch the rubber band to loosen it up there so that the sound reed is flexible. Then take a strip of the rubber band and lay it over the flat part of the clothes pin length. Then, place the other half of the clothes pin flat to flat with the portion of the rubber band between the two, trapping the rubber band between the two halves. To make sure that the two halves are secured, hold the pin between the thumb and index finger and with the other hand pull and twist the rubber band, bringing the loop around the two halves of the clothes pin.

At the end, the rubber band forms a reed suspended along the inner length of the call. Blow into the crack that is now between the two halves. Vary your calls by cupping your hand over the call, stretch or release tension on the rubber band or by pinching the ends of the call.

However, if you are not a fan of making your own call, there are various options you can choose from, such as mouth-blown calls or electronic ones. Although the mouth-blown are activated through a blowing action and the electronic calls have a more complex mechanism, they are both efficient. If you want to read more about them and find out which is the best, check our Quail calls page