Mouth Calling with Todd Larson
Brenden Gallagher for SPLIT REED
Duck calling can be a true art form. Whether it's up on the competition stage or down in the marsh, duck calling and duck calls are a historic symbol of the tradition and among the many duck callers across North America, there are a select few that have mastered and refined it. Every Once in a while though, we see the occasional video clip floating around the internet of people trying to call ducks without an actual call. One of these individuals is Todd Larson of Mouse River Outfitters who has been calling in ducks with only his mouth almost his entire life. The caveat? He’s damn good at it.
“My father was an avid duck hunter, he took me when I was three and he was never a big caller he hardly called at all. Well, he had noticed I could kind of call ducks with my mouth a little bit as I messed around and tried to imitate the sounds. As I started getting older probably 6-7 years old he would just bring me and I would mouth call for him. It wasn't until I got to about probably 15-16, someone told me that I should go to a calling contest. I practiced a little bit but I had no idea I was competing against guys with calls, I thought it was a mouth-calling competition and that everyone could do it! I had entered into the hunter division and all of us callers were standing at the end of a dock ready to call. When it was my turn I walked out there and took the deepest breath I could and let out the first highball and there wasn't a mouth in the audience that was closed. I threw out the hardest call, I did the whole routine and when I was done I turned around to walk down that dock and it looked like that dock was 100 yards long. The further I walked down that dock the dizzier I got because I think I did that whole routine in one breath. I ended up taking 6th place out of 12 guys and that was my first competition. I continued competing for quite a few years, maybe 6-7 years after that. In the hunter’s division, I would always place somewhere in the middle, the best I ever placed was 4th place. I could just about do everything a guy could do on a call, the only marks I would get on scoring would be on volume because I just couldn't get the volume the calls had”.
Todd's mouth calling, while incredible to say the least, was not only just a party trick or just a way to help him in the blind. “It was fun and it was actually my lead into what I do now as an outfitter, that's when I met the owners of Webfoot Connection during a calling contest. They asked me to come down and start guiding for them in Texas and from there it just snowballed and that's how I ended up buying my outfit in North Dakota and I’ve been doing it ever since. I can't mouth call like I used to because they pulled out my wisdom teeth but I'm walking along and I don't have a duck call, I’ll still just quack at them and spin them around and kill them! When we're duck hunting and it's hard I’ll finish with my mouth call because it lacks an echo. It’s another thing the guys get a kick out of when they come hunting with me. We’ll be sitting there and I’ll do that and the guys will be like I just heard a duck, where's that hen at?! They’ll be looking around and I’ll be like yeah where is that duck?!”.
“It’s taken me to a lot of places, it’s how I got to hunt the Suisun Marsh in Napa Valley over in California. I was guiding this guy for grouse and he told me he was a duck hunter so I quacked for him and it just floored him, he wanted me to come out to his duck club and do it for the guys there. So the guy actually sent me an airline ticket and had me come out and hunt with him for a week! It's also the way I got to hunt in Arkansas because the one thing with mouth calling is there's no echo. If you've ever listened to a duck call in the timber or a closed area, there are a lot of echoes so the guys down there loved the mouth call, birds responded to it really well. For those first few years of guiding too, I would use a goose call but I wouldn't use a duck call until later, I just used my mouth”.
Along the way, Todd has met some amazing people and had the chance to visit some amazing places. Not only that but in his calling competition years, he had the honor of meeting and working under some true legends of the waterfowl world. “The Flag Man Randy Bartz, who invented the goose flag, took me under his wing the first time he heard me blow the mouth call and we actually used to do a skit together at all the sports shows. Randy would pick someone out of the audience to teach how to blow a call, he would be like alright here's what we're gonna do. I’m gonna stand up here and blow the call and you're going to use this call and stand behind me and mimic the sounds I make. Well then I would quack with my mouth but I was standing in line with them so the people from the side could see me but the people straight on couldn't. Then I’d lean over so everyone could see me doing it without a call and they would just be jaw dropped! We’d start off real light, do some feeder calls then Randy would hit a high ball on the call and everyone's eyes would get big waiting for me to hit a highball with my mouth and they’d just be mind blown when I did it. Paul England also took me and my brother under his wing, he was big when short reed calls first started coming out. Paul started making duck and goose calls for us, he’d make like an eighteen-gallon tote of calls and we’d start pulling them out and calling on them and when we got one he liked the sound of he’d actually tune them just for us so we could use those calls for competitions”.
Mouth calling for ducks is a crazy feat that few have ever mastered or done but in more recent times there has been an influx of individuals who can crack and drop their voice to mimic the sounds of a goose. In his time, Todd has met some people that have been able to mouth-call, or even call birds in different ways. “Trey Crawford, the first champion of champion duck callers, I hunted with him in Texas and he could do it but he used the flap of skin between your thumb and your index finger. Somehow he could push on that with his mouth and he could do a hell of a duck call with that. I’ve met a few other guys over the years that could quack and do stuff like that but I’ve also met a lot of goose mouth callers. There's a group of Native Americans that I hunted with and some of them could goose call with their mouth, some of those guys are really good but I’ve met anyone that can do it the way I do it with my mouth”.
If you’d like to see a video of Todd calling, head over to our Instagram page to hear it for yourself! Also, check out our website for our other article on Mouse River outfitters and to find out how you can book your next hunt with the mouth-calling man himself!
Click on Brenden to find him on Instagram