Shop Sessions with Big Sean
Nestled up to the banks of the St. Croix River is Stillwater, MN, considered by many to be “The Birthplace of Minnesota”. The quiet picturesque town is home to Sean “Big Sean” Hammock, founder and owner of Big Sean’s Championship Calls, or “BSCC”. What started as a passion and grew into a business, Big Sean operates out of his home shop, assembling each call by hand to ensure the best product possible for his customers. Split Reed spent an evening with him to see just how much blood and sweat goes into each one of his signature calls
“I don’t own any mass production equipment. Each call is sanded, drilled, and assembled by hand, finishing with a hand tune,” Big Sean mentions as he sits at the sander, smoothing down the base of the current call he’s working on. His shop has a unique vibe to it, one of grit and grind. Each call starts with a sanding, which smooths down mating surfaces of the call parts. From there he moves on to Dremel work, where he hand-notches each tone board and goes so far as to replicate duckbill grooves on the tone board sides. “The purpose of the grooves is to prevent the reed from sticking, by allowing more opportunity for air to get between the reed and tone board and break it free. No call is truly ‘anti-stick’, but the grooves help a lot,” he explains.
Using a heated punch and mallet, Big Sean creates the hole in each of his calls that contain a rubber barrel. This hole isn’t unique to his brand, but he feels it adds more versatility by allowing the user to sound like multiple ducks at once simply by placing or removing their finger from the barrel hole. It also allows the user to get very quiet, by plugging the barrel and using the hole as the only source of air.
Big Sean sits in his shop chair, shaving a reed and assembling guts for a call. He squeezes everything together and spits a quick call sequence through it. “Too high pitched,” he comments, as he takes the call apart and re-adjusts the gut system. Another test of the call, and he’s happy with how it sounds. He sets it to the side and moves on to the next one.
BSCC has recently started offering calls made with a new rubber material, instead of acrylic. He likes this as it retains the true goose sound but allows the call to be much more durable, specifically in cold conditions where acrylic can shatter. Another benefit of a rubber call is the ability to bite down on the call and continue calling, if both hands are occupied with flagging. Try doing that with acrylic, and you might end up with shattered teeth.
When asked the one thing he wants his customers to know, it’s that he puts time into each call he creates. He takes pride in his hand-made methods and his attention to detail, and that’s what makes each of his calls unique. You can check out his full line of products at https://bigseanscalls.com/.
Ben Buchholz for SPLIT REED
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