One of the nation’s leading deer call manufacturers is Louisiana’s very own Haydel’s Game Calls in Bossier City. Founded by Eli Haydel some 30 years ago, Haydel’s calls are famous for their ability to “blow when wet.”
In 1986, Haydel marketed the nation’s first tube deer grunt call, named the GD-87, which I have used to take a number of bucks.
Rod Haydel, Eli’s son, is now the company president, and he took the time to sit down with me to share his considerable knowledge about deer calls.
“We still make the original GD-87, and we have a modification of that called the VDG-92 that we came out with some years later,” he said. “It has a hole drilled in it to allow you to cover it with your finger to get a low pitch or high pitch. It’s kind of like a flute.
“Then we have another one that we came out with a few years ago, mostly for guys who hunt up north and have problems with reeds sticking in cold weather. It’s an inhale-type call we call a non-typical deer call or the NT-02. You inhale it so it’s a little bit of a softer call, which to me is a benefit. Everybody wants to get something louder and louder and louder, but what you really want is just enough to get the deer’s attention. Just because it’s loud doesn’t make it better.”
While explaining the sounds and pitches of various deer calls, Haydel pointed out one way in which his company differs from others.
“It’s a misconception that you need a real deep call,” he said. “If you have a buck out there that’s been running does and he’s exhausted, the last thing he wants is to get into a fight with a big buck unless he thinks there’s a doe the other buck is chasing that he might steal.
“The reason why we are so successful is our calls are tuned to about a year and a half deer and not real low-pitched. It’s almost non-threatening. If you have an old buck nearby and he thinks there’s a teenager running around, he’s more likely to challenge it.”
Curious because Haydel has access to so many different types of deer calls, I asked him which one he would use if he was limited to just one throughout the season.
“I would probably go with the non-typical NT-02 because you can blow and inhale them,” he said. “It was originally designed to be inhaled, but if you need some extra volume, you can just turn it around and exhale into it.”
Haydel remembers the first time he grunted up a deer.
“I had never deer hunted much at the time, but I was helping to develop a call and felt like it was my responsibility to get out there and try it some,” he said. “I was on my stand and actually heard a deer grunting out in the woods, and I grunted back. I wasn’t sure if it was someone using a call or what, but I wound up calling in a 2 1/2-year-old buck.
“I had my bow with me and didn’t get a shot, but after I called that deer in, I got a lot more interested in deer hunting.”
The first buck Haydel managed to kill with his grunt call was in Bienville Parish.
“The lease I was on kept really good records for the previous six years,” he said. “They also kept up with who hunted on what stands, what they saw and what they killed. I was new in the club, and everyone had their favorite places, so I found this stand where a good one had been killed five years earlier but no one had really hunted it much since.
“I got on the stand and heard a deer chasing some does, but I never really saw him that morning. I went back the next day and started grunting, and about 8:30 he actually came running out, and I ended up killing him. He grossed at 139.”
Haydel and his staff spend countless hours in the woods testing their grunt calls, and through trial and error have learned when to use one and when not to.
“I think probably the biggest mistake hunters make is calling to a deer when they already have its attention,” he said. “If you grunt at a deer after it has stopped and acknowledged it heard you and he’s looking in your direction, it doesn’t take much for him to pinpoint you.”
The time Haydel has put in the woods testing his products has also convinced him there’s one time of year when grunt calls work best.
“Without a doubt the best time of the year for a deer call is the pre-rut, that time of year when you have all those bucks just waiting for it to happen and anxious,” he said. “That seems to be when guys are having some real success with it.”
Haydel played it close to the vest when asked if he was developing anything new, and explained he likes to test calls for a long time before putting them on the market.
“Just because something works a few times in the field doesn’t mean it’s necessarily something I want to have my name associated with,” he said. “I don’t want to have something that might get me some bad publicity down the road. We try to come out with products that are going to stay with us down the line.”
Editor’s note: This story is part of the article titled Calling all bucks in the December issue of Louisiana Sportsman magazine, now available on newsstands or in a new digital edition.
