SORTA SINGLE

So, you ‘sorta’ want to blow a duck call . . . but you don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of money.

Well, Memphis-based Buck Gardner Calls has got just the call for you. In fact, BGC’s got two of them – the Sorta Single and the Pocket Rocket-Sorta Single.

Both calls are among several new BGC products on the market just in time for the 2007-08 waterfowl season.

For sure, Sorta Single is a catchy name, which isn’t surprising since while most folks who work at BGC have several jobs, Buck says, “everybody’s job is to come up with a name for some of the crazy stuff that I develop.”

That’s crazy . . . as in smart.

It’s the only way Buck knows how to do business and it must work since BGC is celebrating its 20th anniversary in the call business in 2007.

We’ll let Buck, a former World Champion and Champion of Champion competitive caller, explain just exactly how the Sorta Single line was developed.

First, Buck says he wasn’t’ completely satisfied with the sound of a similar call BGC produced in 2006-07.

“The quack was a little croaky,” he says. “Most people wouldn’t take the time to get it wet and see what it really sounded like. So, I kept playing around with it and I put a little short reed on top of that single reed that is about half of the length of what a double-reed top reed would be like. I tried it out and it was amazing. The quack is just rock solid.

How rock solid?

“It’s perfect,” Buck says of the Sorta Single. “It sounds good whether it is wet or dry. We’ve had everybody blow it from people who blow double reeds, single reeds and people who are beginners. And they’ve all loved how easy it is to operate. I’ve had some of the best that there is blow the call; hunting-style callers and contest callers and the meat-calling guys and everybody just loves it.”

We’re talking about a call that really sounds like a custom single reed, but is easy to blow like a double reed; one that has an all new hand-sanded tone board with custom-cut reeds.

And it retails for $29.99.

How’s that for a bargain?

But there’s more for 2007 from BGC.

The next step up on the BGC call ladder for 2007 is the Pocket Rocket-Sorta Single ($39.99), which, Buck says; being a part of the company’s famed Spit Tech family of calls is guaranteed to never stick.

“It’s in a shorter barrel in what we call a buck-brush type barrel,” Buck says.” It will do everything that a wide-reed call will do and a little bit more . . . on the top end and the bottom end. And it will never stick.”

One of the many things Buck likes about his job is to receive calls from satisfied customers.

Like the one he got recently from a man wanting to thank Buck Gardner Calls for making his day.

“The guy called wanted to let me know how tickled he was to get a call like this one (Pocket Rocket-Sorta Single),” Buck says with an obvious note of satisfaction. “He told me he’d been blowing the call for over a week, trying to make it stick. He even put it in the refrigerator over-night; got it out the next morning and it still blew. He couldn’t believe he could buy a $40 duck call that is better than anything he’d ever had.”

And then came the kicker to the conversation, Buck says.

“He said, ‘As soon as the world finds out this is what you’ve got I can’t imagine you being able to make enough of them,’ ” Buck says. “I said, ‘That’d be OK with me. ”

So, just what is this thing called Spit Tech that BGC has unleashed on the call making world?

Well, that’s a question Buck can’t answer.

“Spit Tech is a trade secret,” he says with a laugh. “It’s like what’s in Coca-Cola. Most people when they look at it can’t figure it out. So far we haven’t had anybody else that has been able to duplicate it. There’s just a couple of things in there that I’m sure somebody is going to figure out sooner than later, but the normal places that you look at to see what makes a call stick or not stick or not the only places that make this thing work and run the way it does.”

Buck admits Spit Tech is driving some people crazy, trying to figure out just how it works.

“It’s got that low end ‘weeeee, weeee, weeee’ low whine sound like a mama duck whispering and generally to get that sound you’ve got to lay the reed real flat and when you do that as soon as you get any spit in it, it sticks,” Buck says. “Anytime somebody who is a real, real good caller picks the call up it’s like a light goes off and they think, ‘I’m going to make this sucker stick.’ ”

Only trouble is, they can’t.

“And that just drives them nuts,” Buck says. “It just freaks people out.”

The Sorta Single and Pocket Rocket-Sorta Single are currently available through Mack’s Prairie Wings 2007 catalogue (1-877-622-5779) and will be stocked by select Bass Pro Shops nationwide or by contacting BGC at (901) 946-2996.

By Larry Rea, Media Director

For additional information, please contact Buck Gardner at 1-901-946-2996.