20 Best Cheap Duck Calls (2022 Updated)

The Duckmen got it right with this call. Out of the box it sounds great and is one of the most realistic calls I own. Very easy to blow, and I’d recommend for beginners or experienced callers alike. There are a few areas to grow, (hence the 4 stars): Barrel could use more sanding at mouth piece before finishing.

It still had splintering and was abrasive. Reeds seem to stick easily with moisture, which can be remedied by applying some Armor All. The barrel and insert are difficult to separate in the field for cleaning.

None of these would stop me from purchasing again though. I’d recommend this over any of the DC calls I’ve tried.

I purchased my first Origional Commander three years ago and had it on the opener in Utah. We had set up for geese and after the flocks had came in we were standing outside of our blinds in full sight with our guns still in the blinds.

My brother looked at my lanyard and asked if the shiny wood call was new, I told him on a whim I had bought it and thought it was one of the best sounding calls I had ever owned. A few minutes later a Gadwall came over our decoys high and one of the group said let’s see that call work that you have been bragging about.

I grabbed the call (while the group was laughing) and gave it a short burst, the Gaddy turned straight around and came right at us. Needless to say we almost let him get away. Since then it has happened many more times, my son is now also using it.

While out hunting people will ask about my calls. With all the hype about “Custom Calls” which I still have some of them hanging on my lanyard, I always show them what others refer to as a beginner call.

For me I have been duck hunting since I was 12 and am now 50 plus and I take it very serious. I have gotten past the shiny and price of other calls, this is a great call. I wish he also made goose calls, you cannot beat a mfg.

that uses what they build. Since then if it looks like the ducks wont turn I hear “Blow that good call again”.

The quality of these calls has dropped substantially. I have some of his “Reacher” calls from the early 90’s and the differences are plain as day. I’m not sure if all of the Duck Commander calls are being made in the same fashion as this Classic Commander I recently purchased.

If so, the quality aspect has certainly fallen to the wayside and they are just pushing out novelty items, not duck calls. My Classic Commander doesn’t even come close to sounding like a duck but would make a great Blue Heron call, if only they were legal to hunt.

I live in lower Alabama and I duck hunt public land about 90% of the time. Where I am from, we unfortunately don’t have the pleasure of hunting the thousands of greenheads, and other migrating species of duck that the hunters in the main flyways hunt.

Heck, i am a 22 year old college student and I’ve been a die hard duck hunter as long as I can remember, and with all my years of duck hunting, I can honestly say that I only see a few small groups of mallards each year while hunting (most years we don’t see any at all).

Duck hunting is a totally different ball game down here in LA, so pretty much 95% of the time, we are shooting nothing but woodies. With this being said, my duck hunting strategy and knowledge is pretty much all catered to nothing but killing wood ducks.

The reason I am saying all this information about myself, is so y’all reading this will have a good sense of my hunting habits and believe my credibility when reviewing this product. (I would not want to buy a product based off good reviews people who have little experience with other products make.

) I’m sorry and I mean no disrespect, but I wouldnt listen to someone who hunts only flooded timber and rice fields for mallards tell me how to kill wood ducks when they might have only killed one passing wood duck in there lifetime.

Any ways to the product. I have had many, many wood duck calls in my life and none of them come close to the DC wood duck call. Just about all the other wood duck calls I have had or seen, have some sort of a pinched reed system which funnels your blowing air in order make that high squeal sound.

These types of calls are very easy to blow, but you are kinda limited on the different types of pitches you are able to achieve when trying to make different woodie calls (sitting hen, sitting drake, yelp, flutter etc.

) The duck commander call on the other hand, has a reed system that I have yet to find on another call. The reed is able to “break” (shown in the video of Jase using the call I think) and the user is able to manipulate the air flow to make VERY realistic wood duck sounds.

There is a huge difference in the sound quality of the DC wood duck call than In any other call I have found. I make a big deal about sound quality and the ability to manipulate that reed because I have had calls in the past where I thought I was sounding like a wood duck sitting on the water and had group after group after group (we have a load of wood ducks in Alabama) fly by and not even think twice about coming in and we would usually go home with a few ducks.

None some days. I thought the problem was my decoys, my camouflage, my placement pretty much everything. But one day I went and bought this here DC call. Hardest call I have ever tried to blow at first.

I was so use to blowing all those other wood duck calls I could not figure out how in the world ole Phil and Jase were making that call sound the way it did. Well after about a week of practice with the call I got to where I was pretty good I thought.

Next morning went to my little honey hole on the river and broke out the call, 3 man limit of woodies (9 ducks might not sound like much, but where I’m from if you go on the river and kill a 3 man limit of wood ducks you have done something).

THEY. ATE. THAT. CALL. UP!! For someone who was not there, it would be easy to say that the call wasn’t the only reason we limited out. Well coming from the person who was there, that call is 100% the reason we got our limit.

You could see a group flying 3-400 yards away, hit that little sitting call with that flutter noise and boom, they would swoop right on in to our decoys. EVERYTIME. People who dont kill many wood ducks or know about wood duck habits would probably think “ok? so you got some ducks to come to your decoys big deal”.

The thing is, I go to that same hole a decent amount a year and they never did that before, but they do almost every time now. Anyway, Coming from someone who spends his whole life November-February every year, searching for the allusive wood duck, this call is an absolute game changer.

If the majority of your hunting is wood ducks, then I would say this call is a must for every hunt (ONCE YOU HAVE MASTERED HOW TO BLOW IT!!). But, if you’re hunting mainly mallards or other species and want an easy blowing call just in case you see a group of woodies whistle by, then I would not recommend this call unless you take the time to figure out how to blow it.

If you don’t practice and try and blow the DC call like you blow pinched reed high squeeling wood duck calls, you will not sound anything like a wood duck but instead sound like a complete idiot who has no idea how to blow a call.

P. S For those of you like me, who hunt majority wood ducks and would like to see your trips end with more ducks in the boat. Buy or make you a jerk rig and attach you about 5 or 6 wood duck decoys to it and position it out in your spread.

When you start seeing those early morning flyers, hit that DC woodie call flutter and hen sitting call and start jerking the mess out of that jerk line. They seem to not be able to resist it. It makes it look like they are chasing each other on the water which is pretty much all those stupid woodies do when they are on the water not flying or eating and the added realistic sound of the DC call seals the deal! Hope this helps!.

At first, it sounded like it’s supposed to. I could make the wood duck noises as presented on the DC videos. However, I have it sitting at my desk, and during “backpressure” practice the insert and barrel easily separated, with the reed and plastic “cork” wedge falling to the floor.

Now, I cannot reassemble it to get anywhere near close enough to the original sound (and I’ve tried orienting the reed in every direction). Note: there is not a cork stopper holding the reed against the tone board – just a piece of angled plastic with a slight cant, that “wedges” the reed over the hole as you push the insert back in the barrel.

It’s very delicate to balance and reassemble, and I’ll probably never accomplish the right sound again. I’ve resigned myself to having paid for a call that didn’t even get off the bench to play in the game.

There are a lot of wood ducks along the river around here, so now I’m done fooling around with the least expensive call out there. It’s time to take buying a duck call seriously.

The shipping was amazing and fast but when I got the call itself, it had chips all over it and was bent really bad. I told them and they sent me a new one but the new one was the same way. I just figured it might be how they manufacture them but other than the small defects great job and sounds good.

I ordered this for my 6-yr-old grandson since he’s a Duck Dynasty fan. I wasn’t sure what level of maturity was needed, since I couldn’t tell from the description, but he loved it and can use it efficiently, though he discovered no ducks appeared when he went out in his backyard (Los Angeles County) and no ducks appeared! Fun stuff though!.

An incredible product and an excellent price! A++++++++

great for a beginner or advanced caller. nice sound & easy to use & to keep clean. love it. Don’t have any ducks where I live (yet) but my dogs obey the call. Would buy again or give as a gift.

The duck call started having issues, I think one of the flaps was broke when it arrived. It doesn’t sound right. I think it was broken when arrived

First impressions…… feels good in my hand, looks pretty good, and sounds good!! Able to blow soft and still be crisp. Look forward to trying it out

My son purchased this with some of the money he got for Christmas. He absolutely loves it and is learning to make the correct calls. We had some avid duck hunters visit us a few weekends ago and they were very impressed with this duck call and gave my son some pointers.

Wish it would come with a link that would direct a beginner on how to correctly use it :).

Have use Primos calls for years and found them excellent. The Wench “family” are easy to use and sound great—especially if you follow the video instructions. Not all calls use the same wind pattern, so you need to use the call as designed by the manufacturer.

The “tuning hole” is a great feature because with practice it is very possible to make two distinct tones that sound like different ducks. Also, these clean easily and can be tuned without sending to the factory.

All of this is explained on the video. Am re-purchasing mine, since my son “borrowed” mine.

Product arrived ahead of schedule and looks great. Sounds great and going to use it next week on my first Duck hunt of the season. Great price and value.

I’m new to duck hunting and this was one of the first calls I purchased. It was very easy to learn to use and sounds great on the quack, greeting call, comeback call, and feed call. Great for any level of caller.

The tuning hole is an awesome feature. You can’t beat it for the money. It sounds better than a call I Paige $50 bucks for!.

I’m no serious duck hunter but I need to call ducks to train my Jagdterrier pup. I raise gamebirds as well as mallards for dog training. This call is really easy to call and sounds just like my mallards when they start quacking.

The pitch is perfect; at least to my ears. My higher priced one sounds a little too high compared to this one. Others say this will freeze in cold weather so I guess I’ll find out. Also some don’t like the fact that this call does not have a groove to attach to a lanyard.

I just put 2 round water hose gasket around it and it works fine. Might buy another for back-up if it freezes.

I’m not sure why this call rates so high. Once it gets any moisture on the reeds it stops working. I live in Arizona so it’s not freezing up. The reeds just stick together. There are numerous reviews saying the same thing so it’s not just the one I had, which I have returned.

I have used this call for two seasons now. It is a great sounding call when it works properly. The problem I’ve been having with it is that when using it to the Duck Commander guidelines, using the “ten, ten, ten” calling method, the call gets very wet inside and it does stick.

This causes it to not produce proper sounds and it’s even squeaked a couple times. It’s not difficult to pull the call apart and wipe off the reeds and put back together, but its an inconvenience to do in the blind, especially if you have birds coming in.

I have a buddy who uses this call as well and the same thing happens to him. If you can figure out a way to prevent this from happening then this is a great sounding call and well worth the money.

ive had this call for a few years now and i hunt ussally timber but occasionaly open water. this call is good for both. for those guys who would prefer single wreeds or your learning to blow and want to blow a single wreed this is the call for you.

ive killed many ducks off of this call! would recomend!.

This call was recommended to me and so I decided to give it a try. It has a higher pitched raspy sound. When I first started blowing it it sounded too high pitched and then I slowed the air down and discovered that it had a real nice ducky sound to it especially when in the marsh.

I found that it will stick a little after the call sits awhile after being used. I think this is normal for most calls. I am an intermediate level caller and I am able to get most of the hen mallard sounds but it does a good Cajun Squeal which I can’t get to this extent from my other double reed calls.

This is my first call made by Echo and I am satisfied with it.

I bought this call after seeing good reviews on it and was looking for a really loud call. The call is the loudest one ive got by far but it doesnt matter since it comes nowhere near sounding like a duck.

Ive tried tuning it but the reeds were cut too short to begin with. I guess ill have to buy my reeds separate and turn it into a decent call.

This call is very good as it comes out of the box. Raspy and can get fairly loud. But it is far better when retuned as a single reed. Easy to change just pull the bottom reed out and then put the call back together and it sounds even better!.

The duck call works well, however, it would be nice to have a wooden duck call option. After watching videos and looking through the duck commander selections online, I was a little disappointed by the plastic option only in Academy stores.

Like it says, the range on this call is awesome, and it makes an excellent hail call. The bad part is that if you don’t clean it every 5 minutes, it wont chatter at all. I take it with me every hunt[except for when I forget my lanyard] but I remember to switch to the camo max to chatter.

This thing broke within 2 weeks of just practicing in my car. Reed sounds wack now. Starts squeaking. Bummer.

Awesome, affordable speck call. I was pumped to see this call at this price because I hunt specks about 3 times a season and it didn’t make sense to buy an expensive one but man was I please to hear it keep up with the best.

Love this call. Definitely recommend.

It’s a great teal call and is louder so I think it is more effective than most.

I love this call. Sounds awesome. Dirty low end, great top end. Soft when you need to be, loud when you need to be. Guy that commented below with a 1 star review must not know how to blow a duck call.

Just what i wanted. does the job well. Nice clear sound with different pitches. Great value.

Acme duck caller works well does exactly what it supposed to do . Prompt delivery

Well made , great sound , very realistic indeed ,highly recommended,

This is my second duck call. Buyed this one to have more diversity and because it s not expensive. For the price, i cannot hope better. Prefer this one to my sweet meet by Tim Ground. and the price is similar.

Just a good buy. Nice raspy sound and easy to blow. This is my second Zink call and i will continu with it. Love my pc goose call and this one. Thank to Zink for the good product and thank to Cabelas for your good service and fast shipping.

Got this call for my son as I have the acrylic version and he was always hinting at me getting him one. When I saw there was a poly version I immediately purchased one. Comparing it my acrylic Ive found it sounds nearly as good and is louder.

Overall a very well priced great sounding nice looking call. I may have to get myself one.

I bought a few weeks ago and used it for the first time yesterday. Never duck hunted tell now and I’m telling you the mallards were curious

so I started with the non camo one first, and only enough it had a different sound that I liked until I tried this one. its my second season with the camo call double nasty and this is my every detail honest review.

when I got it I liked it, but it had almost a break in of about an hour before It got perfect. it has a really crisp but raspy sound with amazing control. I will say that it doesn’t stick, but if your hunting really cold conditions defiantly warm it up a little but before shooting light and put it inside your jacket when your not using it because if it freezes it legitamently has to be re warmed up.

thats one of my 2 complaints ab whats wrong with it, but the call is so rich and amazing its worth the extra 2 seconds of tucking it in your jacket neck to keep it warm. the second thing that is mentionable Is the other day I hunted in 21 degree weather, everything was freezing even my calls, I forgot to tuck it for probably an hour and when I went to blow it it didn’t sound right.

I warmed it up and it still didn’t sound right for about 10-15 minutes of having to be blown and I can’t describe it. but its all great now and sounds amazing still. in this review I only focused on the 2 small things ive ever found wrong with these calls in 2 years, they’re amazing calls and well worth 30$.

the feed call is amazing because they have good back pressure and control. I def recumbent to beginners and pros.

Very easy to blow call. Camo patter looks good too. A good call to learn with.

The Buck Gardner Double Nasty Duck Call is a great value at this price. Excellent sound quality and with the spit tech tone board it does not stick. The Double Nasty is easy enough to blow for a beginning duck caller, but is plenty versatile enough for the accomplished caller as well.

I got this call because of the good reviews. I couldn’t make good sounds with it and I now see that on my last hunt the guts fell out. I understand Zink won’t ship to canada so I have an expensive acrylic tube.

Looking into different brands. This is my 3rd zink goose call and I haven’t been happy. If Zink cares to read this I’d love to chat.

All of Fred’s calls are spot on. NBG is my first single reed call I’ve ever used, I always used a double reed in the 40 years of Waterfowl gunning. I love it, no sticking, no freeze up on bitter days.

A must have in your arnsenal.

Ive always used cheaper calls with the thought that it’s not the call it’s the caller that makes the difference. Boy my old school thoughts went out the door the minute I tried this call. Even for a beginner this call is almost foolproof.

The sound and ease of use blew (lol) me away. Cheap calls. I’ve always found myself blowing my lungs out and never achieving the satisfaction of a good sound. This call let’s you blow easy and work the birds.

Would highly recommend for any new hunter because of the ease of which this call works. Not to forget about how affordable it is.

This is an awesome call. Have three seasons on a poly Single Shot and still going strong. Very easy to operate and the judges (ducks) love its sound. I must say though, I hunt ALOT and have been blowing a duck call for 35 years.

This is a single reed. If you don’t know your way around a duck call, you will have to learn to control your air pressure to get duck out of any single reed. That’s why they are great to learn on. they force you to learn proper mechanics to get a duck out of them.

If you don’t want to learn and just want duck to come out when you blow. you need to purchase a DOUBLE Shot~~.

This is my go-to call for hunting eastern Canadas. Very easy to blow and has an awesome range of sounds. I have expensive Sean Mann’s and others on my landyard that I now ignore because the Field Proven Poly Raptor can out-do them in my hands and it’s a tiny fraction of the price of those others.

My buddies will steal this one off my lanyard first when they’ve forgotten theirs. It is high-pitched so if you want something lower for greaters or whatever, try FP’s aftershock or other models. I’m not prostaff.

I just want to get the word out about an awesome call for less $. A heck of a deal!.

This call can produce great sounds from hails to feeding. However, I gave it 3 stars because the reed sticks when it was only in the lower 40s outside. I had to switch to my double reed which didn’t stick at all.

Kind of frustrating cause I had high hopes for this call. Ill keep hunting with it on my lanyard as I have other calls I can use if this continues to happen. I will decide if it’s worth keeping or not.

It was only $30 so I’m not out a lot. I was hoping it would perform better.

This call is great. this call sounds more like a duck then both of my single reeds but is much easier to blow. The only thing I didn’t like about this call is that it can’t make soft feeding chuckles.

It’ll make loud ones just fine but hunting in the south late season you need a softer chuckle for those weary ducks. All in all I love my call; it looks and feels great, it is very easy to use and it brings the ducks in.

Greetings, I have been hunting ducks and geese my whole life and have been using a long-honker/ flute style goose call for many years but I’ve been searching for a quality replacement that is more compact.

After hearing hearing this call and the endorsement in the Bobby Guy videos, I ordered the Dux Pro Series Goose call. It is beautiful and the quality of construction is excellent. However, because it is a short-reed call (that I’ve never used), it did not sound very good and didn’t sound like the one in the video.

So initially, I was a little disappointed. I then realized that using a short-reed call is completely different than calls of the past. After a little research, altering my technique, and some practice, I found the sounds that I knew must be there.

Now I absolutely love this call and with more practice, the call and I will get even better. So if anyone is on the fence about this call, just buy it, you will not be disappointed. Quality, value, and performance are all excellent.

However, just know that going in, you may have to alter your technique and you will have to practice with it to bring out the best in the call.

The call sounds amazing and it’s a really simple call to master. My calling has only improved after purchasing this one. I’m glad I spent the money for quality versus just skimping out on a call. My previous call wasn’t built as nice and when I tried tuning it, it never put back together and I ended up ruining it.

The Dux Pro series goose call is easy to tune (if need be) and I’m not worried about damaging the gaskets or messing up the reed. I’m extremely satisfied with my buy and I’d be looking to buy more from Dux soon.

My only complaint is the website, I wish they had more sweatshirt options and I wish they had a bigger selection on calls!.

Call is decent I got it on the 50% off sale so for $50 I was pretty happy but I don’t think I would have been so happy if I had paid $100. I’m decent at goose calling not a pro by any means. It has a good goose sound and the call seems to be quality material.

But when I try to hit higher notes it does want to cut out on me some. Might just be a me probably I’m not sure. Overall it’s a decent call especially if you catch it on sale!.