Local craftsman crowned champ of duck calls at national competition

Posted

A quack never sounded — or looked — this good.

Striking awe in both ducks and collectors, local craftsman Ben Tyler III was named Grand National Amateur Decorative Duck and Goose Call Maker of the Year at the annual Grand National Custom Call Competition in Nashville, Tennessee.

That’s right: Tyler makes some of the most dazzlingly designed devices to deceive ducks and delight collectors of such.

His custom calls can cost up to $800.

“Most all these calls are collector items, and there’s a lot of old-time collectors out there, too,” Tyler said.

“The really nice ones, hand-carved ones — most collectors love those things and they put them up on their shelf along with a hundred or more calls that they have,” he added.

Tyler does make calls to carry to the blinds, carved with a checkering pattern that forms a grip, but his award-winners are destined to never doom a duck.

“I don’t take the really nice ones out there,” Tyler said.

And the decoration isn’t necessarily the most difficult part. The heart of each call is one of the hardest to craft; the reeds and the tone board within.

“That’s the tricky part. Everybody’s got a secret recipe on how to shape that,” Tyler said.

That’s where minute variations matter most.

“It does make a difference. You get a coarser sound, or a softer sound, or a higher sound, or a lower sound,” Tyler said.

This variability isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. It all depends on the situation.

“If you’re hunting in the woods, you want a softer sound. If you’re hunting out into a field, you want the ducks way over there to hear you, you want a louder sound,” Tyler said.

Ben Tyler at 22 months old with his grandfather who got him on the lathe for the first time at the same age.
Ben Tyler at 22 months old with his grandfather who got him on the lathe for the first time at the same age.

To get all these sounds solidified, he started schooling in these skills around the same time many learn their first words.

“I was turning on the lathe at 22 months old,” Tyler said.

Those first spins while sitting on his grandpa’s lap made candle sticks, not calls, but he did start learning how to make the sounds themselves around that time.

His grandfather and uncle worked together as duck-call makers in Tennessee, but Tyler didn’t stick with that family business. Instead he made his way to a degree in wildlife resources, which carried him through work in the forest. Then he wended his way along the waters of Alaska before landing in Port Townsend, where he studied at the Wooden Boat School.

He stuck with that trade for 28 years at the Shipwright’s Co-op before finally retiring and turning back to his calling, calls.

“I started carving on them and people started liking them,” Tyler said.

 

He posted pictures of his pieces on social media and inquiries immediately began.

“People asked me how much they were, and I started selling them. And I’ve been doing that for the last 10 years now,” Tyler said.

Fine details like the diamond patterned checkering and hand-carved natural scenes draw the attention of numerous collectors.
Fine details like the diamond patterned checkering and hand-carved natural scenes draw the attention of numerous collectors.

Each call can take anywhere from 20 to upward of 30 hours of work. Very fine, very precise work.

“You do four hours a day and your eyes get tired,” Tyler said.

“I have to use three-power magnifying glasses with a loop on top of those, too, to do this,” he added.

Even the tools of this trade require craftsmanship.

“I make all my own tools,” Tyler said.

“I still have some of my grandfather’s tools he made,” he added.

He uses those to carve patterns out of wildlife magazines onto the barrel of the calls, often scenes of ducks in flight or wading in the water.

“I’ve got books and pages and pages of patterns that I haven’t even used yet that I’m going to get around to using,” Tyler said.

With these, he manages to make around a dozen or so calls a year.

All that effort hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Before the recent victory in Nashville, he also won last year at the Custom Call Makers Association of America in Chicago for Best Design.

Those interested in owning a piece of his famed fowl fooling flair can place a bid at tinyurl.com/BenTylerCall on his first-place winning submission to the Decorative Duck Call category, available at auction until Feb. 25.