Speaker 1: I have one question, and that question is is it
Speaker 1: September yet? Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the
Speaker 1: Distance podcast. I'm Dirk Durham, and there are sixteen days
Speaker 1: left until September. I can't even believe. It seems like
Speaker 1: this summer is just kind of blown by. It's been
Speaker 1: super busy for me. We've had lots of camping trips,
Speaker 1: done a lot of family stuff, and a lot of scouting,
Speaker 1: and it seems like there's never enough days in summer.
Speaker 1: You know, the short window of getting to the back
Speaker 1: country here in Idaho is it's tough because you know
Speaker 1: a lot of them places are just not accessible until
Speaker 1: after July first or so around fourth of July you
Speaker 1: can start hitting almost everywhere in the country just do
Speaker 1: to There's just so much snow. It just kind of
Speaker 1: lingers a little too long. But be that as it may.
Speaker 1: This episode, we're going to talk about lip balls, grunts, chuckles,
Speaker 1: and barks. Right, if you remember, back in episode number
Speaker 1: eighty six, we covered calling fundamentals, cow calls, and basic bugles. Well,
Speaker 1: this is the next episode and final episode of this
Speaker 1: little calling series where we're going to kind of go
Speaker 1: over all the best practices to help you guys get
Speaker 1: a little better at Colin Elk and have a little
Speaker 1: more confidence as fall. But first, before we get too
Speaker 1: far to get too carried away, we have a question
Speaker 1: answer segment sponsored by Pendleton Whiskey Letter Buck. Now, this
Speaker 1: question is not one in particular from one person. This
Speaker 1: question comes from direct messages, in person questions. People have
Speaker 1: called in and asked about this question. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do my best answer here. It is a very popular
Speaker 1: one and maybe some of you can relate. And the
Speaker 1: question is I can't chuckle very good and I'm worried
Speaker 1: about messing up my chances and calling in a bowl.
Speaker 1: Can you help me with my chuckles? Well, first off,
Speaker 1: if you're struggling with chuckles and grunts and aren't confident
Speaker 1: with them, you can always just eliminate them from your
Speaker 1: calling routine. There's been several bowls over the years that
Speaker 1: I didn't chuckle or grunt at all when calling them in.
Speaker 1: And there's been a lot of bulls over the years
Speaker 1: who haven't chuckled or grunted. They just they did big bugles,
Speaker 1: they did big screams, things like that. So it's not
Speaker 1: always one hundred percent necessary. Now, on the flip side,
Speaker 1: there are some bowls that that's all they do is
Speaker 1: chuckle and grunt, So you don't necessarily have to know
Speaker 1: how to chuckle and grunt to call in a bowl. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say, we'll definitely add to your confidence if
Speaker 1: you can get proficient at it. And I think where
Speaker 1: most people kind of struggle with chuckles and grunts are
Speaker 1: the cadence rhythm tempo. And after doing lots of calling
Speaker 1: classes with a lot of folks, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: show them how I do it and kind of coach
Speaker 1: them to see if they can become better, I've noticed
Speaker 1: that a lot of people will take one deep breath
Speaker 1: and then try to do all their chuckles and grunts
Speaker 1: with that breath instead of breathing in, breathing out, breathing in,
Speaker 1: breathing out. And when you just take one big breath
Speaker 1: to do your grunts and chuckles, then you kind of
Speaker 1: ran out of gas halfway through. Right, Let's say you
Speaker 1: want to do seven chuckles or seven grunts, then about
Speaker 1: number five your start lives an arrow and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I got to fit all these things in. So a
Speaker 1: lot of times people will kind of like change the pace,
Speaker 1: change the tempo and almost like hurriedly. But but also
Speaker 1: they get kind of weak towards the end because they're
Speaker 1: just they don't have enough air to make a good
Speaker 1: articulate chuckle or grunt. So I like to say, let's
Speaker 1: let's slow this down. This is kind of back to basics.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like Mosquito, right, This is like like
Speaker 1: it's almost I feel like it's almost like dumbing it
Speaker 1: down too far. But I feel like if we can
Speaker 1: dumb it down so far to how I learned things,
Speaker 1: I need all the help I can get when I
Speaker 1: learn things. So I'm going to simplify this I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I always recommend making one chuckle or one grunt and
Speaker 1: then taking a deep breath and making another one. And
Speaker 1: I'm focusing on making one perfect one before i start
Speaker 1: adding another one and another one. It's almost like reading
Speaker 1: a book too quick. It's like you start reading the
Speaker 1: book it is get interesting. You don't want to just
Speaker 1: flip through the pages and get to the back of
Speaker 1: the book and see how it ends, right, as tempting
Speaker 1: as it can be sometimes, so it's like we don't
Speaker 1: want to try to get to the end of our chunkles,
Speaker 1: chuckles or grunts too quickly. We want to make sure
Speaker 1: we have plenty of time. We're in no hurry to
Speaker 1: get there, just we want to just make sure they
Speaker 1: sound good and sound articulate. Now, you might say, what
Speaker 1: is the difference between a chuckle and grunt? Okay, isn't
Speaker 1: that the same thing? Well, some people call it the
Speaker 1: same thing. Here's how I look at it. Chuckles to
Speaker 1: me are a lot faster paced. They're a little shorter notes,
Speaker 1: more staccato, whereas grunts are gonna be more elongated, they're
Speaker 1: gonna have they're gonna have more time on the diaphragm,
Speaker 1: and then at a little bit slower tempo. So I'll
Speaker 1: give you a demonstration here. So here's chuckles, just fast past.
Speaker 1: I've even over the years, I've even had bulls that
Speaker 1: sound like almost like a monkey like. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a funny, funny little sound. Nay make that's like that's
Speaker 1: a monkey bowl. But then here's grunts. You noticed are
Speaker 1: just longer, louder, Maybe not louder, but yeah, usually a
Speaker 1: little louder. But they're a longer, longer call it's a
Speaker 1: little slower pace. It's not so fast paced, And does
Speaker 1: it matter when calling bulls if you do chuckles or grunts,
Speaker 1: I usually like to match the bowl. If the bull's
Speaker 1: doing chuckles, I like to chuckle. The bull's doing these big,
Speaker 1: thunderous grunts, I like to do those too. And it
Speaker 1: might just be me, but I always feel like the
Speaker 1: younger the bulls, the more chuckly they can be. Big
Speaker 1: bulls will chuckle, but they just they sound different. When
Speaker 1: you hear a four point bowl, like a two and
Speaker 1: a half year old bull chuckling, it's almost like he's
Speaker 1: just learning how to call that day. Sometimes they can
Speaker 1: be pretty terrible, but the pace, the tempo and such
Speaker 1: will sound like a real elk. If you are a
Speaker 1: hunter and you're trying to do this with one breath,
Speaker 1: you're your your pace, the sound, everything is going to
Speaker 1: get kind of constricted and kind of weird, and it
Speaker 1: won't be won't be authentic. That's how I always tell
Speaker 1: if it's a hunter in the woods off Most times,
Speaker 1: if if the chuckles and grunts, if I hear a
Speaker 1: distant bugle, I'm like, oh, there's there's a bugle, And
Speaker 1: then I'm listening, I'm like, oh, yeah, they're chuckling. Grunt,
Speaker 1: and then it seems like hunters kind of kind of
Speaker 1: messed that part up. It's like, oh, yeah, that's a dude.
Speaker 1: But I have been fooled a couple of times. I mean,
Speaker 1: no matter how much time you spend in the woods,
Speaker 1: it seems like you know it's in hearing elk. You
Speaker 1: can be fooled, especially elk or hunters. At a distance.
Speaker 1: You can't quite hear a good clip crystal clear, you
Speaker 1: can't hear them really well. Then I've been full before.
Speaker 1: It's where I'm like, well, I got to go get
Speaker 1: a better I gotta hear this better. So I'll climb
Speaker 1: down or climb up. I'll climb over to where I
Speaker 1: can get a very good read on it. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times yet not a lot of times, but
Speaker 1: there's been a few times that it's been a hunter.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, shoot, dang it, now I have to
Speaker 1: climb six hundred feet back up to where I was
Speaker 1: at before. Uh So, but if you can identify those,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty helpful keeps you from chasing chasing the
Speaker 1: wrong thing in the woods. Right, So back to learning
Speaker 1: how to make the perfect one. So make a perfect one,
Speaker 1: and this is basically like an exaggerated col cal a
Speaker 1: grunt or a chuckle. The chuckle is just a shorter one.
Speaker 1: So we're just doing We're just doing a quick burst
Speaker 1: air across the diaphragm, and then we're adding our voice
Speaker 1: and then at the end that punch to the gut.
Speaker 1: If remember we did that punch to the gut on
Speaker 1: the bugles, We're going to do that again here, but
Speaker 1: we're only hitting. We're only blasting that latex for just
Speaker 1: a moment. So without the tube, it's gonna sound like this. Oh,
Speaker 1: so just super short, super high pitched. Now to do
Speaker 1: the grunt, it's gonna be a little longer. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: just longer. So you're gonna have more of that, more
Speaker 1: of that almost cow sound. But we're not gonna let
Speaker 1: it slide off the back. We're not gonna slide off
Speaker 1: that back real nice and slow. We're just gonna keep
Speaker 1: it up that high note. And whenever after you make
Speaker 1: that high note, then you're gonna completely drop your jaw
Speaker 1: and drop your tongue away, so the diaphragm quits making
Speaker 1: that that little noise, and then you're gonna throw in
Speaker 1: the punch of the gut almost like your beat boxing.
Speaker 1: And sometimes we're with folks coaching them, they kind of
Speaker 1: struggle with that whole making the making the punch to
Speaker 1: the gut at the right right time. So there's definitely
Speaker 1: a line in the sand. Once you make that noise,
Speaker 1: once you make that chuckle or grunt with your diaphragm
Speaker 1: and you and you drop your jaw, that's when you're
Speaker 1: you're you're punched to the gut comes in. You're reflecting
Speaker 1: your voice. And sometimes folks will blend that that voice
Speaker 1: in to the diaphragm sound and it'll sound something like this,
Speaker 1: which you just it don't sound quite right, especially you
Speaker 1: know you even in the tube, it doesn't sound right.
Speaker 1: It's not horrible, it's not a it's not a game
Speaker 1: changer or a deal breaker. You can still call out
Speaker 1: like that. But if you want to try to sound
Speaker 1: as authentic as you can, you want to kind of
Speaker 1: break that down. So if if you're struggling with that part,
Speaker 1: try to make the diaphragm sound first, and just as
Speaker 1: soon as you do that, make put the voice inflection
Speaker 1: in kind of like this, So slow it way down.
Speaker 1: If you're struggling, just slow everything down, right, We don't
Speaker 1: have to do it fast. Slow it way down until
Speaker 1: we train our brain and our tongue, our internal core, diaphragm,
Speaker 1: all that to work together, so it'll sound something like this.
Speaker 1: Come just slowly, work at it, work at it until
Speaker 1: you break it down. You just first make that sound,
Speaker 1: and then once you kind of get that figured out,
Speaker 1: speed it up a little bit, put them together a
Speaker 1: little quicker until you can do it like this. Now,
Speaker 1: once you've learned how to make the perfect one, right,
Speaker 1: so we can make every time you put the diaphragm
Speaker 1: in your mouth, you can make that you know what's
Speaker 1: gonna come out. You can make that perfect grunt or chuckle.
Speaker 1: Oh great, we can make one perfect one. So make
Speaker 1: a perfect one inhale. Get a big bunch of air
Speaker 1: in your lungs. Be careful, don't don't suck the diaphragm
Speaker 1: down your throat. A good buddy of mine, Jermaine Hodge,
Speaker 1: world champion collar he was showing his wife and kids,
Speaker 1: is like, all right, here's how you gotta do it.
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta in between each chuckle or grunt,
Speaker 1: you have to. You have to inhale real big, and
Speaker 1: he kind of over exaggerated as inhale, and he sucked
Speaker 1: that diaphragm down his throat literally and uh, it took
Speaker 1: a while for it to come out, but did it
Speaker 1: did everything. He didn't have to have surgery anything and everything.
Speaker 1: Nature took its course. But you know that can be scary.
Speaker 1: You know, it could have blocked his throat and he
Speaker 1: might have had to go to the emergency room. So
Speaker 1: just it's you got have to be careful when you're
Speaker 1: when you're doing this, either working with yourself, working with kids,
Speaker 1: or working with others. You never know. You could suck
Speaker 1: one of these diaphragms down your throat and that would
Speaker 1: be that'd be a bad day. So anyhow, build make
Speaker 1: that perfect one, take a deep breath, make another perfect one.
Speaker 1: We're not in a rush. We're not in a rush
Speaker 1: to make seven. Our goal here is to make one
Speaker 1: perfect one. Take a deep breath, make another perfect one.
Speaker 1: Take a deep breath, make another perfect one. Something kind
Speaker 1: of like this.
Speaker 2: Oh, oh, just slowly work through this.
Speaker 1: This is how we're practicing, over and over and over
Speaker 1: again to where it just becomes natural. And then once
Speaker 1: you can do that, then we want to quicken the
Speaker 1: pace a little bit. Almost like almost like a chew
Speaker 1: chew train. Uh take enough. You know, you're you're building tempo,
Speaker 1: You're building, you're building uh pace. You know, it gets
Speaker 1: a little quicker till we get the one that we
Speaker 1: want to go with. Now, if it's a really fast
Speaker 1: one for chuckles, if it's a lot slower one for grunts,
Speaker 1: I'll let you decide. And it's just going to take
Speaker 1: practice to do this. So make a perfect one, deep breath,
Speaker 1: Make another perfect one, deep breath, make another perfect one.
Speaker 1: Then slowly build that tempo, and I will say, practice
Speaker 1: this with your tube. I've been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: these demonstrations with without my tube, just to kind of
Speaker 1: give you the sound profile, but definitely practice with your tube.
Speaker 1: It seems like the more we practice whether tube, the
Speaker 1: more comfortable we are with the tube. I've during these
Speaker 1: coaching opportunities I've had over the years and working with folks.
Speaker 1: If we if we spend too much time practicing without
Speaker 1: a tube, then when we pick the tube up and
Speaker 1: put it to our lips, that just adds a whole
Speaker 1: new layer of different Right. Okay, you've trained your brain,
Speaker 1: your your tongue, your diaphragm, you your core all of that,
Speaker 1: you've trained that, and then you put a tube to
Speaker 1: your lips, and now your lips are like what do
Speaker 1: I do with my lips? So you have to, like
Speaker 1: I would, I would say practice if you can't practice
Speaker 1: this with a tube as much as possible, maybe to
Speaker 1: get the very fundamentals down. You know, if you're having
Speaker 1: trouble hitting that, you know, breaking apart the diaphragm and
Speaker 1: the punch to the gut, you do that without a tube.
Speaker 1: But just as soon as you can start figuring that out,
Speaker 1: put your tube up there, seal off all the air,
Speaker 1: don't let it come around the edges. Don't have any
Speaker 1: cracks or gaps on your lips. We want all this
Speaker 1: sound to go inside the tube. We want that good
Speaker 1: hollow thump sound from your punch to the gut. Right.
Speaker 1: And some some ladies, you know, have a hard time
Speaker 1: with this part coaching. Some of the ladies they just
Speaker 1: they're not they don't have a naturally deep voice, or
Speaker 1: they're not they don't naturally go around making beat box
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot of the guys do. For for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. So one gal, I'm like, oh, you gotta
Speaker 1: get like you gotta you gotta dig in deep, like
Speaker 1: what makes your husband? What does your husband do to
Speaker 1: make you mad? You know where you're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just you're really getting frustrated. Maybe you may have
Speaker 1: to tap into that inner inner beast a little bit
Speaker 1: that you maybe you have never set free or maybe
Speaker 1: you don't set free very often, but you have to.
Speaker 1: You have to experiment with that, and I know you
Speaker 1: can do it. You know, ladies or even guys sometimes
Speaker 1: because there's a there's a young lady. She's a teenage
Speaker 1: girl from from eastern Oregon. She came to one of
Speaker 1: my seminars one time and the and she was probably
Speaker 1: thirteen the first time I ever heard her call and
Speaker 1: she said hey, after the seminar was over, she's like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I can I do some calling for you? And
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your calling. And I was blown away.
Speaker 1: She had mastered those deep guttural thumps for her chuckles
Speaker 1: and grunts. She could inflect her voice like we did
Speaker 1: on the on the on the bugles where we kind
Speaker 1: of cleared our throat like it was amazing. She can
Speaker 1: bugle at thirteen better than ninety percent of men that
Speaker 1: I've heard out there so very very cool. So I
Speaker 1: feel like if that thirteen year old young lady could
Speaker 1: could do that, you know, any any ladies can do it.
Speaker 1: Any guys can do it, even kids. It's just finding
Speaker 1: that spot. And I feel like maybe guys have a
Speaker 1: little easier time with it because we're always trying to
Speaker 1: flex our bravado with our deep voice. Or maybe we
Speaker 1: like listening to rap music and we kind of like
Speaker 1: to do the puck stuff. I don't know. So some
Speaker 1: of us come at it real naturally and others have
Speaker 1: to work at it more. And that's okay, just work
Speaker 1: at it. It's because like any anything, like some people
Speaker 1: tape can can can pick up an instrument or some
Speaker 1: kind of sport or or anything and just pick it
Speaker 1: right up there and natural at it. Well, some elk
Speaker 1: calling is no different. Some people pick right up to
Speaker 1: elk calling right away. Others of us we have to.
Speaker 1: We have to practice a lot, so don't get gets discouraged.
Speaker 1: I've some of the folks have coached over the years
Speaker 1: have messaged me a couple of years later and sent
Speaker 1: me a bugle and chuckles and all the calls, and
Speaker 1: they're like, man, I finally figured this out. It just
Speaker 1: took me a while. And now you know the great
Speaker 1: caller is going to be able to call in elk,
Speaker 1: so so don't don't give up. So anyway, back to
Speaker 1: the back of the chuckles and grunts to practice those
Speaker 1: with the tube. And once you you kind of start
Speaker 1: making the chuckles and grunts and you're like, oh, it's working,
Speaker 1: it's working, then you can push to get a little
Speaker 1: bit different notes. You notice I can get some little
Speaker 1: higher notes, a little lower notes with the with the
Speaker 1: diaphragm portion of my of my chuckle or grunt. That's
Speaker 1: just experimenting pushing a little harder with my tongue, you know,
Speaker 1: to hit that higher note, or or not pushing quite
Speaker 1: as quite as hard with my tongue to hit those
Speaker 1: lower notes. All right, So since we've been talking about
Speaker 1: chuckles and grunts, it seems like we should be talking
Speaker 1: about barks barking, right, And basically a bark is an
Speaker 1: exaggerated grunt, and you might you might say, what, what
Speaker 1: the heck, why would you want to bark at an elk.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in episode ninety four in Non
Speaker 1: Typical Elk Calling, we covered barks and other elk vocalizations,
Speaker 1: and the bark is not always an alarm. A lot
Speaker 1: of times when bulls are hung up, they will bark
Speaker 1: at us, will come in, they'll rake the horns, and
Speaker 1: if that other bull at I e. The hunter, doesn't
Speaker 1: show themselves, that bull will kind of get nervous and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I came all the way over here.
Speaker 1: You know, we were having an an argument and I've
Speaker 1: challenged you and you have not shown yourself. A lot
Speaker 1: of times they will bark and kind of say, they
Speaker 1: will kind of say, you know, show yourself. In my mind,
Speaker 1: that's what they're saying. Now, who knows in in an
Speaker 1: elk's mind, But to me, that's what they're saying. And
Speaker 1: just from my anecdotal experience is that that kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense. Just because they'll come in, they'll hang up,
Speaker 1: they'll rub for a while, and if they don't, if
Speaker 1: they don't just come in after that, they kind of
Speaker 1: get nervous. They'll bark a couple times, and that's when
Speaker 1: I bark back at them. And a lot of times
Speaker 1: after I bark, I'll bark and chuckle. I'll bark and scream,
Speaker 1: and I'll do what I call the old we iype
Speaker 1: wisbang we Ipe is the small North Idaho town I
Speaker 1: grew up in as a kid. I don't know I
Speaker 1: call it that. It just came out. I blurted it
Speaker 1: out one day. Kind of a stupid name. But anyway,
Speaker 1: what the Wei wiz Bang is is I bark, scream
Speaker 1: or bark and chuckle whatever seems appropriate at the time,
Speaker 1: and then I'll charge up like I'm a pissed off bull.
Speaker 1: I'll call charge up. If the bull's fifty yards, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll charge up twenty twenty five yards. If they're sixty
Speaker 1: yards thirty yards right, I want to try to cover
Speaker 1: half the distance to where once that bull unlocks and says, oh,
Speaker 1: I got to see this other bull and they step
Speaker 1: out from behind the tree they've been hiding behind, I'll
Speaker 1: be within shooting distance. Now sixty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: It works every time. I don't even know what works
Speaker 1: that much, but it is a very effective tool. And
Speaker 1: I've killed a lot of bulls that way. I've called
Speaker 1: in a lot of bulls that way. Sometimes they didn't
Speaker 1: just didn't get to get the shot because there's too
Speaker 1: much brush, good old, good old Idaho brush in the way.
Speaker 1: But I kept him from leaving because a lot of
Speaker 1: times they'll come in and they'll bark, and if you
Speaker 1: feel like, oh man, man bark, Now you're pinned down right,
Speaker 1: I can't do anything. And that's a I remember having
Speaker 1: that feeling as a younger caller, a less experienced collar,
Speaker 1: and I would kind of go quiet, like, oh man,
Speaker 1: he saw me, he heard meath something's not right. And
Speaker 1: if they bark and they don't get the right reaction,
Speaker 1: a lot of times they just walk away. And once
Speaker 1: that bull walks away and he gets eighty yards to
Speaker 1: one hundred yards away and walks away that far. At
Speaker 1: that point, he's kind of deemed you as a chicken.
Speaker 1: He's like, man, this guy, he's a chump. Heete. He
Speaker 1: talked a lot of game, but I shut him right up.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times you you can try pretty
Speaker 1: hard and you can't get that interaction going again. It's
Speaker 1: like once they kind of write you off, then you're
Speaker 1: done for the day with that bull. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of why I like to escalate a little bit at
Speaker 1: that last time. Whenever they bark, then I will I'll
Speaker 1: bark back, and I'll move up and just walk. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it like I take five steps just enough to where
Speaker 1: I'm popping some brush and breaking some sticks and that
Speaker 1: right there is enough. They're like, oh, here it comes,
Speaker 1: and they'll pop out and they'll want to they want
Speaker 1: to see that bull that's approaching, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's broadside, which is kind of counterintuitive. This is
Speaker 1: like a great solo tactic because a lot of folks, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, as a solo hunter, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times you'll get them coming in front on you know,
Speaker 1: a frontal shot, but a lot of times they'll come
Speaker 1: out kind of broadside because they want to make theirselves
Speaker 1: look big. At this point, they hear that bull coming,
Speaker 1: It's time to show off, right, I want to show
Speaker 1: this other bowl how big I am. I'm gonna stand
Speaker 1: here broadside, puff up, I'm gonna display my antlers. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put my antlers back and kind of move my
Speaker 1: head around, or I may just stand there facing my
Speaker 1: head turned towards him. You know, just just wanting to
Speaker 1: make myself look big. And if you can get move
Speaker 1: up a little bit, stop knock your arrow and be
Speaker 1: ready for that interaction to happen. A lot of times
Speaker 1: you can get a shot. So back to how to
Speaker 1: make a bark. So, like I said, it's an exaggerated
Speaker 1: an exaggerated chuckle or a grunt. More of a exaggerated grunt.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little longer than a chuckle, which
Speaker 1: is an exaggerated cow call. So remember back in this
Speaker 1: previous episode we talked about how to you know, do fundamentals,
Speaker 1: cow calls, bugles, all that, all those little things. Learning
Speaker 1: learning all those basic sounds from the beginning will help
Speaker 1: you all along this journey. So the biggest difference between
Speaker 1: a bark and a chuckle or a grunt is the intensity.
Speaker 1: So let's say a chuckle or a grunt that's level six,
Speaker 1: level level five. As far as intensity and volume, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be super loud, just has to be
Speaker 1: well articulated. But a bark, we're turning the knob up
Speaker 1: to ten, maybe even eleven. Right, this is going to
Speaker 1: be loud. If you ever hear an elk bark, it's loud.
Speaker 1: So I'll demonstrate my version of one wow. A lot
Speaker 1: of times they'll make one big high one big bark. One.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll even make a bark and then a second one.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's not quite as high pitched, but I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make that thing as high pitch as I can
Speaker 1: and inflect as much voice as I can. And there again,
Speaker 1: if you're struggling separate in your voice and the diaphragm sound,
Speaker 1: you just have to practice that. You know, slow it
Speaker 1: way down until you can do it slowly and execute
Speaker 1: it perfectly, and then pick it up make it go faster.
Speaker 1: And then after you do that, you could even add
Speaker 1: some chuckles. Sometimes I'll just bark and scream and they'll
Speaker 1: charge forward, doing the old weipe whizbang all right. Last,
Speaker 1: but not least in these advanced calls, is the lip ball. Now,
Speaker 1: I'd say, what the heck's a lipball? Some people call
Speaker 1: it all sorts of things, but basically, you're buzzing your
Speaker 1: lips to make a balling sound, kind of a gut ural,
Speaker 1: wheezy sound. You're adding that kind of sound to your bugle.
Speaker 1: It's real nasty. You've you've probably heard it, you've probably
Speaker 1: maybe you've heard other hunters do it, but maybe you
Speaker 1: haven't heard a bull do it. But essentially, you're making
Speaker 1: a bawling sound by buzzing your lips. And this is
Speaker 1: probably the hardest call for most folks. Right after chuckles
Speaker 1: and grunt. Some people even get pretty good at this
Speaker 1: but still struggle with the chuckles and grunt. So pick
Speaker 1: your poison, right. Everybody has their own weaknesses and their
Speaker 1: own you know what things they excel at. But I
Speaker 1: do know when I first started trying to make this
Speaker 1: lip ball, I sucked. I couldn't do it. It's it was like, man,
Speaker 1: because I was thinking so much about all right, make
Speaker 1: the lip buzz thing and then trying to get the
Speaker 1: bugle to come along with it and have a good
Speaker 1: smooth transition. It would just it just never sounded right.
Speaker 1: So at that time, I was working hard at trying
Speaker 1: to be a competition ELK caller, you know, for the
Speaker 1: World Championships that the Rocky Mountain ELK Foundation puts on
Speaker 1: every year. And I'm like, well, I can't compete with
Speaker 1: all these other hunters or callers if they can do
Speaker 1: that well and I can't. So I began practicing, and
Speaker 1: I felt like, okay, as with anything calling, don't practice
Speaker 1: what you're good at, practice what you suck at, which
Speaker 1: happened to be the lip ball. So what I would do,
Speaker 1: and it was the whole buzzing of the lips right,
Speaker 1: and I'd watched lots of people do it, and most
Speaker 1: of them put their tube on the front of their lips,
Speaker 1: right below their nose, you know, that little dip under
Speaker 1: your nose. It looks like somebody pressed their finger right
Speaker 1: under your nose and left a mark, you know. They
Speaker 1: centered centered their tube up with that mark, you know,
Speaker 1: right in the front of their lips. And I really
Speaker 1: struggled with that. But then after I messed around and
Speaker 1: played with buzzing my lips on my tube, I found
Speaker 1: that putting the tube on the right side of my lips,
Speaker 1: almost in the corner of my lips, my lips buzzed better.
Speaker 1: They buzzed really well there. So some people they they're
Speaker 1: a left side buzzer, sometimes they're a center buzzer. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're a right side buzzer. Like me, you just have
Speaker 1: to explore, you have to you have to experiment with
Speaker 1: buzzing your lips. And it's not a natural It's not
Speaker 1: a natural thing to do. As kids, you know, we
Speaker 1: walked around being especially boys, you walk around being annoying
Speaker 1: to everybody, buzzing your lips, making weird and goofy noises
Speaker 1: and stuff. Girls not so much. Seems like just us
Speaker 1: boys are just so annoying. But by practicing spearmenting and
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out how do you buzz your
Speaker 1: lips the best. And if you buzz your lips too tight,
Speaker 1: if you if you flex your lips too tight, they
Speaker 1: don't get a good buzz if you if you don't
Speaker 1: do them tight enough, they won't hardly buzz at all.
Speaker 1: You have to find that that perfect, perfect tension on
Speaker 1: your lips. And it's a lot easier to practice this
Speaker 1: on your tube than it is without a tube. I
Speaker 1: found I kind of struggled to do it without a tube.
Speaker 1: So you could make like the okay sign with your
Speaker 1: thumb and your and your first finger. You can make
Speaker 1: a little circle there if you didn't have a tube,
Speaker 1: and you could put your lips on it. It's just
Speaker 1: it just nice to have something to place your lips
Speaker 1: on it. They seem to perform a little better. It's
Speaker 1: so silly. You can buzz your lips doing that. Now.
Speaker 1: I sat down and I watched I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to practice this every night. I practiced every
Speaker 1: night for a month. They get off work, be watching
Speaker 1: TV with the wife and kids, and I would cover
Speaker 1: the end of my tube, so it wasn't loud, and
Speaker 1: I'd sit there buzzing my lips watching TV. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can imagine the eye rolls I got from my wife.
Speaker 1: She's just like, you're a weirdo, what do you do
Speaker 1: with this? But she kind of kind of expect it,
Speaker 1: you know, she knew I'm kind of weird anyway, making
Speaker 1: all these animal noises in the house. Some of us
Speaker 1: don't have that luxury. Some might just get kicked out
Speaker 1: of the house. Right, So if you if you have to,
Speaker 1: you know, this is something you can do on your
Speaker 1: on your drive to work, on your commute. You can
Speaker 1: do it out in the garage, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of man time out in the shop. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't have to do it for hours. But if you
Speaker 1: were sitting there for you know, ten minutes a day
Speaker 1: buzzing your lips on your tube, you'll figure this out.
Speaker 1: You First off, you have to become very proficient at
Speaker 1: buzzing your lips, so every single time that you put
Speaker 1: that tube to your lips, it's going to make that
Speaker 1: right buzz. Now, if I found like there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of technique like which is kind of hard to
Speaker 1: explain without showing you in person, right, But there's some
Speaker 1: lipballing that you do with more the out outer part
Speaker 1: of your lips, the part that's gonna buzz closest to
Speaker 1: the tube. Then if you really, if you almost like
Speaker 1: do duck lips like the girls used to do on
Speaker 1: social media right back in two thousand and nine, If
Speaker 1: you do duck lips and the more inner part of
Speaker 1: your of your lip, the fleshy inner part closer to
Speaker 1: your teeth, if you can learn to make that buzz,
Speaker 1: it'll make a nastier, dirtier buzz and a dirtier lip ball,
Speaker 1: which is super desirable. Like people people love that ELK
Speaker 1: love that it's going to sound a lot more realistic
Speaker 1: because no matter how hard and how good we practice
Speaker 1: and how good we sound and how big and badass
Speaker 1: we see when it comes right down to like going
Speaker 1: bugle for bugle for an elk and you're standing there listening,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, that's like fifty percent. Like even like
Speaker 1: a five point, like a two and a half year
Speaker 1: old five point can sound pretty wicked compared to a caller,
Speaker 1: especially if you step back, like let's say the caller is,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty sixty eighty yards away and the bowl
Speaker 1: is the same. It's just like there's no comparison, and
Speaker 1: a real elk is is really hard to compete with.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people will say, you know, never
Speaker 1: never overdo it. You want to call as whimpy as
Speaker 1: you can. Well, if I call wimpy as I can,
Speaker 1: I'm not even I'm not even the same world as
Speaker 1: a real elk. Right, even a wimpy elk. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of wimpy elk out there, but there's sure volume there.
Speaker 1: Volume that comes out of their lungs across their vocal
Speaker 1: cords is amazing, right, So I feel like when a
Speaker 1: bowl is bugling aggressively making those big nasty lip ball
Speaker 1: type sounds, now he's not doing that he with these lips.
Speaker 1: He's he's doing that with his his vocal cords. And
Speaker 1: over the years, like there's been some bulls, like old,
Speaker 1: old mature bulls, I don't know how old they were.
Speaker 1: They had big orange handlers as some people call them,
Speaker 1: and giant body looked like a school bus pushing through
Speaker 1: the brush, right, And some of these bulls would have
Speaker 1: no high pitch at all to their bugle. It would
Speaker 1: just a just kind of a groany, wheezy sound that's
Speaker 1: from for the last ten years or twelve years, however
Speaker 1: old this bull was from just destroying his focal cords
Speaker 1: from bugling. Now, I will say a two and a half,
Speaker 1: three and a half year old five point that thinks
Speaker 1: he's tougher than John Wayne's kid, Well that bowl. Those
Speaker 1: bulls can can be pretty deceiving too, Like they can
Speaker 1: they can really get grolly and get that gravelly voice
Speaker 1: and almost lose their the high pitch to their voice.
Speaker 1: I've heard, I've seen it. So like they say, you
Speaker 1: can't you can't judge a bull by by his bugle,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times you can. But it's not
Speaker 1: a it's not a perfect science by no means for anyone,
Speaker 1: for for anybody that I know this haves have spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time, you know, in the woods listening
Speaker 1: to bulls. But back back to I kind of got
Speaker 1: side railed there, back to how to make this call.
Speaker 1: So we're buzzing our lips. You buzz, buzz, buzz, put
Speaker 1: your lips on the tube. You don't want to, you
Speaker 1: don't wanna, you don't want to purse your lips and
Speaker 1: make them tight like you're trying to operate a blowgun, right,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe the blowgun people are bringing to comment
Speaker 1: and say, well that's not how you run a blowgun either.
Speaker 1: But but put your butt your lips up there and
Speaker 1: just make you know, tighten them up just enough tension
Speaker 1: to where you can can make a buzz. Now you
Speaker 1: just have to experiment, uh uh uh ah, and you
Speaker 1: sit there and buzz. Now. Be in a band a geek, right.
Speaker 1: I played band in high school as a saxophone player,
Speaker 1: if you will, a real kinney g except I was
Speaker 1: not that good. But I remember the trumpet people, you know,
Speaker 1: the brass folks that had the little mouthpiece that where
Speaker 1: they buzz their lips, you know before the big concert
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know that our band instructor would say, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: you know all the brass people, pull your mouthpiece off
Speaker 1: of your instrument and buzz your lips into the mouthpiece
Speaker 1: because that warms up your lips, It gets the blood
Speaker 1: flowing in there, It desensitizes them and makes more pliable.
Speaker 1: And this is this holds true for buzzing for your
Speaker 1: lip balls too, for elk. So that first, what you're
Speaker 1: gonna find it's gonna be unnatural. Your lips are gonna
Speaker 1: feel kind of tight. But as you do this, like
Speaker 1: within thirty second, if you just start doing every breath
Speaker 1: for like thirty seconds to a minute, you're gonna start
Speaker 1: noticing your your your lips are gonna fill a lot
Speaker 1: more pliable, a lot more soft, little bit more a
Speaker 1: little almost almost numb actually. So warm up your lips
Speaker 1: and then just practice and practice and practice, and once
Speaker 1: you can get to the point where every time you
Speaker 1: put your lips on that tube and you can buzz them,
Speaker 1: that's when we put our diaphragm in our mouth and
Speaker 1: start practicing that. So remember our good old friend Mosquito. Well,
Speaker 1: Mosquito is gonna help us out here again. Remember that
Speaker 1: high note a lot of folks struggle with. If you
Speaker 1: can master that from the beginning, Okay, we're gonna use
Speaker 1: it for our lip ball here. So we're gonna hit
Speaker 1: that high mosquito, noight, high mosquito note and buzz our
Speaker 1: lips and hold it. And then right at the end
Speaker 1: we're gonna quit buzzing. We're gonna drop off the back
Speaker 1: side and we're gonna do that punch to the gut right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the combination of a few different things.
Speaker 1: Mosquito normal bugle, like locater bugle, buzze your lips and
Speaker 1: then drop off the back punch to the gup. Sounds
Speaker 1: like this. Now, if that's the only one you can
Speaker 1: do it, you can't do like a full bugle and
Speaker 1: then put a lip buzz and a lip ball into
Speaker 1: your full bugle and drop it off the back. That's okay,
Speaker 1: this works too, But if you want to, if you
Speaker 1: want to get good at that, just practice that over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over again, just one lip
Speaker 1: ball bugle after another, over and over again, and then
Speaker 1: you'll be like, oh I got this. So come September,
Speaker 1: you start hearing a big bull doing that, you want
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. You can do it now
Speaker 1: for the full bugle, where it's no different than a
Speaker 1: normal full bugle. We're gonna inflect our voice in the
Speaker 1: beginning like we're trying to clear our throat. Then we're
Speaker 1: gonna hit our diaphragm. We're gonna barely touch our diaphragm,
Speaker 1: make a little bit of a noise as soon as
Speaker 1: we get that. As soon as that diaphragm joins our
Speaker 1: voice inflection. We're gonna tighten up and climb the stair
Speaker 1: case of notes. Of course, as you climb the staircase notes,
Speaker 1: you remove your voice inflection. Get to that top high note.
Speaker 1: Soon as you hit the top of that top of
Speaker 1: the ladder with your notes, that's when you buzz your lips.
Speaker 1: Buzz it, hold it, and then drop off the bat
Speaker 1: And at the end that note, that inning note. Right
Speaker 1: before you drop it off, you might even you might
Speaker 1: even throw a little bit of extra air volume at
Speaker 1: that high pitched note and then drop it off to
Speaker 1: that punch of the gut. I'd like to say it's
Speaker 1: simple for me. It is, but I've practiced this this
Speaker 1: like in nineteen ninety seven. I figured this out right.
Speaker 1: So since ninety seven until twenty twenty four, I've been
Speaker 1: proficient at it. So it's second nature to me. So
Speaker 1: if you suck right from the beginning, I did too.
Speaker 1: It just takes some time. Invest that time. We have
Speaker 1: sixteen days till September. You could figure this out in
Speaker 1: the next sixteen days, I promise you. And when you're practicing.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in that previous episode. When you're practicing,
Speaker 1: get on the YouTube you know, watch real elk rut
Speaker 1: and vocalize with each other. There's a lot of channels
Speaker 1: out there who record elk vocalizations in national parks and places,
Speaker 1: and you just get to hear. You get to hear
Speaker 1: the full gamut, and what you'll soon figure out is like, Wow,
Speaker 1: these elk don't really sound like those world champion collers
Speaker 1: I see on YouTube. They sound kind of the same,
Speaker 1: but really there's a big difference. And one of the
Speaker 1: cool differences you're gonna see is there's a lot of
Speaker 1: balls that just don't bugle perfect. They got a weird
Speaker 1: off sound and bugle it's just like wow, that sounded terrible,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't sound like an inexperienced caller who just
Speaker 1: cracked open his his his calls from the walmart on
Speaker 1: the way to hunting camp. Right, He's not making weird
Speaker 1: puppy noises or something. You know it. You know, even
Speaker 1: if you can't master a perfect, quintessential bugle like all
Speaker 1: your favorite YouTube callers, but you sound like a mad elk.
Speaker 1: You know, you sound like an elk that's kind of
Speaker 1: ticked off and it ain't perfect. That's what calls real
Speaker 1: elk in So practice to the sounds of real elk
Speaker 1: and you'll be able to call him in. Well, that's
Speaker 1: it for this episode. One thing I would definitely recommend
Speaker 1: downloading this episode and episode ninety six just in case
Speaker 1: this all you're in the back country and you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, dang it, you get stuck and you're like,
Speaker 1: how did I mean I need to remember how to
Speaker 1: make that one call. If you don't have service, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to listen to it and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that's what he said. You can download that
Speaker 1: and get a little refresher during mid season or whatever
Speaker 1: along the hunt. If even if you're backpacked in you'll
Speaker 1: be able to listen to it up close to your
Speaker 1: at night or something, just to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: getting it figured out. And like I mentioned mentioned last time,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to watch me make these calls, you
Speaker 1: can check out my personal YouTube channel. It's one word,
Speaker 1: the bugler, right, the bugler, and sometimes it'll it'll really
Speaker 1: move the needle to watch somebody making the rather than
Speaker 1: just hear it. You can watch watch me make it.
Speaker 1: You can watch what I'm doing with my jaw, my lips,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It seems like I'm more of a visual learner,
Speaker 1: so I can only think there's probably a lot of
Speaker 1: other people out there too that like to see visuals.
Speaker 1: So I'll put a link in the show notes below
Speaker 1: how you're on this episode. So anyhow, well, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Guys and gals. We'll catch up with you. We'll catch
Speaker 1: up with you on the next episode.
Speaker 2: Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Yeah.