About the Owner
By the Owner: Wade Carpenter
Here is a little history on me: I have been making calls since I was 11 years old. I have been hunting ducks since 8 and though I wasn’t old enough to carry a gun at the time, I still went with my dad – sometimes carrying a BB gun to shoot leaves and empty hulls during the slow times. I spent many years driving my poor mother absolutely crazy while I was learning to blow a duck call, and then later learning to play the saxophone. Little did I know that the two would be related as I learned better air control and perfected my embouchure (pronounced: ˈäm-bü-shu̇r') while learning to play for my school band and Jazz Band. I have grown up around hunting, hunting dogs, calls, and camouflage. Hunting is my life!
Today, as I sit at my computer with my Labrador Retriever “UH HR Wade’s Duckpoint Bijou Gunner” watching me intently as I write this, waiting for me to grab the gun and calls for a trip to the field, I look forward for the day I can make these types of memories with a family of my own. I know that hunting and wildlife has made me the man I am today, I cherish every bit of it and can’t wait to share it with anyone who will listen.
Making my own calls became the icing on the cake. Then to top it off with a cherry and sprinkles, people wanted to buy the calls I had made. Of course the call making bug bit me at an early age. I’m sure my dad would phrase that as my, “Younger and Dumber days”. I started out with some green willow branches from the old willow tree out by the pond, a pocket knife and a drill. That didn’t go so well, and I decided I needed something better. Being 11, I didn’t know a lot about the world of tools unless they were exposed to them at home. Well, I had never seen a lathe, nor heard of one for that matter. So my mind went to creeping through all the stuff I did know about, and then it hit me, the PERFECT idea. My dad would beg to differ on my assertion of the perfect idea, and did with great enthusiasm, later, once he had learned of my ‘perfect idea’ as he was at work during this whole process.
My “perfect idea” involved a few tools in the garage; a drill press, various files and rasps – including a drywall rasp, a hack saw, and a 3-inch long lag bolt. (Can you see where this is going?) I took the lag bolt, cut the hex head off so that I had a nice wood screw thread that I could easily mount in the drill press. (Get where this is heading now?), then I took a chunk of green willow branch and cut it to what looked like ‘just the right size’. I then drilled a hole down the middle, well, as close to the middle as an 11 year old can, and proceeded to thread it onto the lag bolt stuck in the drill press chuck. I set the speed really slow and flipped ‘er on. BINGO! It was PERFECT!
So now I had a piece of wood spinning around all nice and pretty just begging to become the next great duck call of the world. I immediately went to the shelf on the north wall just above the drill press table where dad kept all of his rasps and files. I grabbed a plain old wood rasp and laid it to that spinning hunk of wood. Much to my dismay, the rasp filled up quickly with that sticky wet willow bark so I began my search for the best way to handle that gummy stuff. Back to “the shelf” I go. Rummage rummage rummage piddle and dink and there it is, like the Holy Grail staring you down, a dry wall rasp. At the time I had no idea it was dry wall rasp, as it was 5 years before I ever had any drywall experience. If you know what a drywall rasp is, you know why I was so drawn to it. That nice big cheese grater looking blade, a big pocket in the back to hold all of the shavings, it was THE tool I needed. I was right, it dug right in, peeled the bark off and commenced to removing the wood as I so elegantly tried to control the movement of the rasp against a less than round chunk of spinning willow.
Pretty soon, I had rasped my way to what was starting to look like a duck call and that’s when it happened, the tell all of tell alls, the chuck popped off the spindle of the drill press. At the time I thought nothing of it, and put the chuck back on, whapped it with a hammer and finished out my call. I then sanded it down so it was ‘kinda’ smooth, and backed it off the lag bolt. Then I pulled the lag bolt out of the drill chuck and stuck in a drill bit and proceeded to, okay, attempted to drill down the center. I managed to get through, and only a lot off center. I went through the motions again for the keg end that I was going to stick some old Faulk’s guts in. Needless to say, the call wasn’t the next world’s best call, it wasn’t even a good representation of a bad call. But I found out then and there, that I could make a call. The next day, dad was drilling something on the drill press and the chuck popped off. Being of sound mind and suspicious of his son as any father of an 11 year old should, he tromped into the house to ask me about it. That was when I got to show him my new creation. I never knew someone could be impressed and ‘not impressesed’ at the same time, but that day I learned all about it. That day I got a lesson about what a lathe was and what it was for. The next day we took the old rusty pickup in to town and picked up our very first lathe. From there on it was a downhill slide into the addiction known as call making for both of us.
As High School rolled around I became a little more interested in girls and pickup trucks and less interested in call making. Then came work, and then college, and then work again. Shortly after college my interest in call making was renewed, and I started acquiring the necessary equipment to start making calls again. Shortly after, I became more serious about call making. I decided to invest in some metal working equipment so I could make some of my own tooling. Little did I know that some of the tools I made for my own call making endeavors would soon be a desired commodity in the call making world. From there things just blossomed. I expanded my efforts from not only calls and calling, but also to call making tools, call making parts, and other items to help make the call maker’s job a little bit easier. What you see today is the fruit of that labor.
I am very lucky to have the privilege to do what I love and love what I do. I hope that I can help you make the call you have always wanted and help you make many more special experiences and memories of your own, with a call you made yourself. What a feeling of triumph and satisfaction.
-Wade